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Every Tuesday, we grab a past question from the Facebook group, then Meredith and Scott answer it and read some of the answers given by other listeners.

When youre playing the icebreaker game Tell A Fun or Odd Fact About Yourself - what do you say?Show Podcast InformationThe question for this episode:

When you’re playing the icebreaker game “Tell a fun or odd fact about yourself” – what do you say?

Links for this episode:

Meredith episode about curse words:

https://www.meredithforreal.com/podcast-episodes/episode/78996692/ep-149-or-what-makes-a-curse-word-a-curse-word-swearing-science

Popping out your eyeball (don’t do this):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6Yrppn-UXY

Meredith’s podcast is Meredith For Real – the Curious Introvert:

https://MeredithForReal.com

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I remember one of my first Airbnb experiences.

Evi was spied onShow Podcast InformationI was traveling just here in Florida, and I had to stay one night on the other side of the state – in Delray Beach. I picked out a room, and reserved it, and waited for the host to approve it. Back then, I didn’t have much history so there weren’t many other hosts who could confirm that I was a good guest. But it got approved.

And when I got there, I found out the host was an older woman – and I was her very first guest. And she was so nice! She actually cooked me a full meal, and I helped her out with some computer issues she was having, and we hit it off nicely.

But still, I couldn’t help thinking – that night, I was sleeping in one room, and she was sleeping in the room right down the hallway from mine, and it just seemed like it was kind of a dangerous thing for her to do, since she didn’t know me.

And apparently her friends had some concerns too. The next morning, while we were eating breakfast, she said one of her friends called her first thing that morning and asked, “So he didn’t murder you or anything?”

That was years ago, but now, it’s just a common thing – you rent a room in someone’s house, you get a place to sleep, they make some money, and everyone’s happy. At least that’s how it usually works.

My guest today, Evi, was traveling as a young single woman, and ended up staying with a family in exchange for doing a little bit of work for them.

And after staying there one night, she made a horrifying discovery.

Evi, about to leave for New ZealandGertrude Saddle in New Zealand – one of Evi’s favorite hikesFake mirror on the wall to the right of the sinkThe view from the other side of the wallHelpX: https://www.helpx.net/

Full show notes and pictures for this episode are here:

https://WhatWasThatLike.com/181

Graphics for this episode by Bob Bretz. Transcription was done by James Lai.

Sponsor deals:

To listen to THE 82% series, follow THIS IS ACTUALLY HAPPENING on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts!

Go to cookunity.com/What or enter code What before checkout for 50% off your first week.

Go to Seed.com/what and use code 25WHAT to get 25% off your first month.

Go to storyworth.com/what to save $10 on your first purchase!

Get 15% off OneSkin with the code WHATWAS at https://www.oneskin.co/ #oneskinpod

Cancel your unwanted subscriptions by going to RocketMoney.com/whatwas.

This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at BetterHelp.com/whatwas and get on your way to being your best self.

Episode transcript (download transcript PDF):

I remember one of my first Airbnb experiences.

I was traveling just here in Florida, and I had to stay one night on the other side of the state – in Delray Beach. I picked out a room, and reserved it, and waited for the host to approve it. Back then, I didn’t have much history so there weren’t many other hosts who could confirm that I was a good guest. But it got approved.

My guest today, Evi, was traveling as a young single woman, and ended up staying with a family in exchange for doing a little bit of work for them.

And after staying there one night, she made a horrifying discovery.

Scott

Where is home for you?

Evi

Home for me is Hungary.

Scott

Okay. So you live in Hungary and this all started when you applied for what’s called a work and holiday visa for New Zealand. How does that work? And why did you decide to do that?

Evi

I was working in an office in Hungary. That time, one of my colleagues quit his job and told us that he’s going to go to New Zealand with his wife because he got this special visa. I got really interested about it so I asked him what it is and how he got it. Then, he told me about this work and holiday visa. For Hungarians, each year, 100 people can get it and you have to apply in April. So, at midnight in April, they open the application and the first hundred people who fill out the form can actually get the visa. You still have to go to a medical check. If that’s okay, then you have the chance to go to New Zealand.

This visa is for one year. This visa is for under the age of 35. So, if you are older, you can’t apply for it. For Hungarians with this visa, you can travel to New Zealand and work, like, legally but, for us, it’s only three months in one place. So, after three months, we would have to go and work somewhere else. It’s different for every country.

Scott

And how old were you when you did that?

Evi

I was 28 when I applied and got the visa. I was quite lucky because, in a few minutes, that hundred places were gone. So, I was very lucky to get the visa. I tried it for the first time and I got it.

Scott

It seems so random that people in Hungary are so competitive to get to New Zealand. What’s the attraction of New Zealand? Or is it just because your coworker went there?

Evi

No, New Zealand is a very beautiful country but it’s very far from us. So, Hungarians wouldn’t go there for a holiday because a one-way flight ticket would cost more than a month of salary. So, normally, Hungarians don’t go there. But if you have the chance to go there and stay there for a year and work and earn money, that’s very good. It’s not just for New Zealand. Work holiday visas are also for Taiwan, Japan, and Australia. So we have maybe 10 countries where we can get this visa.

Scott

Okay. All right. You just chose New Zealand. I’ve never been there, but it seems like a really beautiful place.

Evi

I love nature and New Zealand is beautiful.

Scott

Yeah. From what I’ve read, you seem like a really kind of outdoors-type person, right? You like to hike and explore new places.

Evi

Yeah, exactly. I love it.

Scott

Also, you registered with a website called HelpX. How does that work?

Evi

So after I got the visa, I was talking to other people who went to New Zealand and they suggested that it’s a good idea to volunteer when you are there. So I looked into these websites where you can volunteer, do a few hours of work for a family, and they give you accommodation and food for that few hours. So I registered. I chose HelpX because I think it’s a good site. So I chose them. I registered there and that’s how it started.

Scott

So it’s just like a place for people who have a room and want to have someone come and do some work and you can connect with the people that want to travel and kind of move around the country, but also you pay your own way just by working.

Evi

Yeah, you can go and stay on a farm. They need some help on a farm but they don’t want to pay anyone, but they have room for people to stay there, or it can be a hostel and they just want someone to work there for free. This is mostly for, like, travelers. So it’s a good way for them to travel and stay for free in exchange for a few hours of work.

Scott

You didn’t go straight to New Zealand, right? You did some backpacking first. What did you do before you got there?

Evi

Yeah. So because it’s quite a long flight and I wanted to explore a bit more, I flew to Bangkok first and I had three weeks until I had to catch another flight from Kuala Lumpur, from Malaysia to New Zealand. I had three weeks to explore a bit, so I backpacked around Thailand and Malaysia.

Scott

All right. Then you arrived in New Zealand. What happened when you got there?

Evi

When I got there, I landed in Auckland and I was looking for a job, and I found the job. I was selling strawberries for three months. After that was finished, I bought a car and started to travel.

Scott

What do you have to do to be able to drive there? Do you have an international driver’s license?

Evi

No, actually for the first year, if you are only staying for one year, you don’t need to do anything. Your Hungarian license is fine. If you stay longer, then you have to apply for a New Zealand driving license.

Scott

At that point, is that when you started looking around for – a host on the HelpX site?

Evi

Yeah. After I got in my car and I started to travel– at that time, actually, I traveled with a German girl and an Aussie guy. We traveled together on the North part of the North Island and I decided that I didn’t want to go back to Auckland yet and I asked a German girl if she wanted to do HelpX with me. I told her about this volunteer thing, about the HelpX site, and she said she wants to do that with me. So then, I called around– the HelpX site is very good because it has a map. So, it shows you where the hosts are. So I knew where we were and I wanted to stay in that area. I looked up the hosts and I called them on the phone if they needed any help and one of the families said, yes, they actually want some help. So we drove there and we stayed with them for one week.

Scott

And what kind of work were you doing there?

Evi

They had two very nice, like, chalets and we had to clean them because they were renting it out. They were all on an island and they rented these, like, little cabins out and we were cleaning that. So we had four hours a day.

Scott

And then you got a message from another host. Normally, you contact the host and say, “Hey, can I come and stay for these dates or whatever?” But this time this host named Tom contacted you.

Evi

Yeah. So that was, like, half a year after my first HelpX, I believe. I was traveling both on the North Island and South Island. I stopped to work on the South Island for three more months in a tomato grass house. At that time, I got a message from Tom who was a HelpX host on the North Island in Wellington and he asked me if I wanted to go and help his family. I told him at that moment,” I don’t want to do that because I’m working on the South Island and I wasn’t planning to volunteer.” But we started to chat because he was telling me that, a few weeks ago, they were in Europe and they had such a good time. They had a lot of helpers before and some of those people kept in touch with them.

Scott

So they wanted to go visit the people that had stayed at their place.

Evi

Yeah. So when they were visiting Europe, they also met some of these people, these girls, and these girls showed them, like, their country. Tom told me that they were also in Hungary. So we were chatting about that because they had a Hungarian helper before and she was very good. She showed them around in Hungary. Her family welcomed them.

Scott

So he already had a good experience with someone else from Hungary. Is that why he contacted you to see if you wanted a place to stay?

Evi

I have no idea why he contacted me because, by that time, I didn’t use the site for two months, so I didn’t refresh my profile. So, even if you do a search, you would see the ones who are actively looking. So I don’t know how he found me because I wasn’t looking at that time.

Scott

Okay, so he reached out to you. Who was in his family?

Evi

His family was him, his wife, and a 6-year-old daughter. But he also had a first marriage and, in that marriage, he had a 16 years old daughter and a 21 year old son but they were not living with him. So, that time when he was looking for help, he was living with his wife and young daughter.

Scott

On this website, are you able to look and see reviews from previous helpers or how did you check him out?

Evi

Yes. On your profile, you write a lot of information about yourself. But if you are a host, you write down what you need help with. Also, you’ve got ratings. So if someone stayed with you before, they can leave a rating after they stayed with you. So for hosts, the guests/helpers will leave a rating and, for us helpers, the hosts can leave a rating. So everyone who’s contacting you, they can see other people’s opinion on you. For Tom’s profile, I saw that his family only had 5-star ratings. I don’t remember exactly how many they have but they were all five stars and I think there were maybe 10. So for that side, that’s quite good. Normally, you would have three or four.

Scott

That kind of made you more comfortable going to their house then?

Evi

Yeah. I only had one rating, so 10 rating was very good.

Scott

How did you end up going there? Did you just go straight there? How did that happen?

Evi

I discovered the whole South Island. After I finished my three months working, I was planning to go back to the North Island because I still had the East Coast there to discover. That was the only part I hadn’t seen. Tom lives in Wellington and, to go back to the North Island, you have to take the ferry from the South Island. Wellington is the place where you’re going to arrive when you take the ferry. I agreed that I would stay with his family for one week and I would help them when I go back to the north.

Scott

Tom’s family was in Wellington, right?

Evi

Yes.

Scott

So the ferry goes there. That’s where you were going to get off. So you figured, “Okay, I’ll just go there for a week.“

Evi

When I arrived, it was a Monday. It was in August 2019. It was dinner time and the family was having dinner when I arrived. They welcomed me to the table. We were chatting. The wife was quiet but Tom was very talkative. So we chatted with him. We also talked about a trip to Europe and everything was okay. After that, Tom showed me the whole house. He showed me where my bedroom is going to be and he showed me the bathroom I can use. He was very proud because he told me– I believe he said nine years ago. I’m not sure, but that’s how I remember it. He said, nine years ago, he redone the bathroom. So I complimented him that it’s a very nice job. After that, we went back to the living room. The little girl went to sleep because it was late. The wife started to read in the living room. Tom was using his computer. I also got my Kindle, so I stayed in the living room with them in case they wanted to get to know me a little bit better.

After a while, Tom finished on the computer and he came to chat. We were talking about HelpX and about previous experiences on it. He was telling me that they had very good experiences except for two occasions when they had two bad experiences with two ladies who were very dirty. He was telling me these stories and I had a strange feeling that something’s not okay, I don’t know. I just had this intuition that maybe I’m being manipulated somehow by these stories. I had a previous bad experience couchsurfing in Jordan when I had the same feeling. I felt very unsafe there and I was very scared. This time when I was talking to Tom, I had the same feeling. I didn’t understand why but I was feeling like something was off. We were chatting for a little bit and then I decided to go to my room and have a shower because it was quite late. So I went to my room. I left them in the living room.

Scott

How is the house laid out? Is the living room near your bedroom and bathroom?

Evi

No, it was quite a big house. As you go into the house, the living room was on the left side and there was a hallway leading to the right. At the end of the hallway, there was my room. Across my room was the bathroom. Between these two rooms was another door. I didn’t know where that leads because Tom didn’t show me that one. It was, like, on the opposite end of the house – the living room and the place where I was staying.

Scott

Okay, so you went to take a shower.

Evi

Yes, I went to take a shower. Tom gave me a towel when he was showing me around, so I took that towel with me. This is winter time in New Zealand. This is August, it’s winter, so it was quite cold. Where I lived, the house was very cold and even the water. So, when I was having a shower, I had to open the tap and wait for a few minutes until the water was warm. I was used to doing this for three months so, this time, I did the same. I opened the tap like how I normally did.

I started to brush my teeth. When I was brushing my teeth, I heard weird noises. As I go into the bathroom, to my right, there is a sink. At the sink, there is a mirror but, on my right on the wall, there was another mirror. So as I’m brushing my teeth, I hear weird noises. It was a little bit like animals moving inside the wall or something like that. I didn’t know what the sound was but it was strange. So I looked into that little mirror on my right. I put my face right up to it, like, looking inside. Then, I checked if I could take it off but it was a built-in mirror, so I couldn’t take it off. And the noise stopped. So I was like, “Okay, whatever, maybe it was the pipes or something.” Then I undressed and got into the shower. As I was showering, I really felt like someone was watching me, so I felt very uncomfortable. That mirror was right behind me.

Scott

The way this is set up– if you’re standing at the sink, if you look to the left, that’s the shower?

Evi

Correct.

Scott

And still facing the sink, if you look to the right, that’s the other mirror.

Evi

Correct.

Scott

So the mirror is facing the shower right across the sink. ?

Evi

Yes, that’s correct. I was very uneasy and I really didn’t want to turn around to face that mirror but I had to. The towel was behind me so I had to turn to get it, and I did. Then, I noticed this towel was very small so I couldn’t even cover myself with it. But I got out of the shower, got dressed, and then I left the bathroom, I went into the bedroom and closed the door. As I closed the door, a few minutes or seconds later, I heard footsteps going towards the living room.

Scott

So someone was near your bedroom at that time.

Evi

Yeah. I find that strange because the time before I went into the bathroom, no one was in that part of the house.

Scott

Is there anything else in that part of the house where someone would need to be there?

Evi

Well, there was that one door between the bedroom and the bathroom that I didn’t know what was in there, so I had no idea. I find it strange. I sent a message to two of my friends in Hungary. We had, like, a little group chat on messenger and I told them like, “Oh, I felt very paranoid while I was having a shower. Someone is watching me. Then I heard these footsteps. It’s so strange.” But I actually didn’t believe, like, someone was watching me. I just told them this is strange but I don’t know what’s going on. But that time, I decided that I will check that third door the next day just to make sure that no one was actually watching me.

Scott

Did you feel like, “Oh, this is silly, I’m just being paranoid”? Or did you think it was really something?

Evi

Well, I watched too many movies – like, these things happen in movies. So, I was thinking, “Okay, I watched too many of them.” There were clues, there were strange things, but I was just thinking, “Okay, tomorrow I will check and just make sure that nothing is going on.” So the next day when I woke up, Tom was in the kitchen with his daughter and they were discussing that she didn’t feel so well. I believe she wasn’t in school on Monday. So, the day I arrived, she wasn’t in school because she didn’t feel so well. She didn’t want to go to school the next day either. So they were discussing this and then Tom asked me if it would be all right if the girl stayed home with me and I said, “Of course, it’s all right.” So yeah, that happened. The girl stayed with me and the parents went to work.

Scott

And what was your plan for the day? Did they assign you any jobs or anything?

Evi

When we agreed that the daughter would stay at home, I asked if I can do anything else, if they want me to clean something or what else can I do? Then, Tom told me that I can clean the upstairs bathroom. So that was all that he asked me to clean and just look after his daughter. We also had a little chat in the morning and he was looking at me very intensely. I don’t know. He was looking into my eyes for a long time and I was looking into his eyes, so I didn’t look away. He was also telling me a weird story about a show. He was a former teacher. He was a drama and history teacher and he told me a strange story about a show the students made, and we had a chat about that.

Scott

You said he was looking at you intensely. How did you interpret that? It sounds very uncomfortable.

Evi

Yes, it was a bit uncomfortable. I don’t know why that happened.

Scott

What you’ve said so far made it seem like Tom is a rather odd person.

Evi

Yeah. Even like the night before, when he was telling me about the bad experiences they had, sometimes, he looked down on the ground and he had this strange smile on his face, like, he zoomed out a little bit. I find that a bit creepy. So yeah, he looked down, had this smile for a bit, and then looked back up and continued with his story.

Scott

Yeah, that’s a little weird.

Evi

The parents left and I stayed with the girl. We went upstairs to look for some games we could play. She decided that she didn’t want to play. She would rather watch a movie and I said, “Fine.” So I left her in the living room and then I went upstairs to clean the bathroom we discussed before. So I cleaned the bathroom and then I remembered that I was planning to check that third mirror at the end of the hallway. So I went downstairs and I put my hand on the handle and my heart started to be very fast, like adrenaline. I opened the door and then I noticed I was in the garage. On my left side was the wall that shares the bathroom. So this is the other side of the mirror, the little mirror on the right. I noticed there were two boards. There was a pinboard and a whiteboard on that wall. I put my hand on them and I was able to slide the pinboard to the left. Then, I put my hand on the whiteboard and I was able to slide it too. When I did this, I got to the back of the mirror and there was a big envelope. I bent down the envelope and I could see straight into the bathroom.

Scott

When you saw that, what was going through your head?

Evi

I got really scared that, somehow, the parents got notified that I went into that room. There was a sensor or I don’t know that somehow they noticed and they’re going to come home and I will be in trouble.

Scott

Yeah, because you knew immediately Tom is a bad person when you found that.

Evi

Well, I didn’t know who it was. But yeah, I thought it’s probably Tom.

Scott

The thing that I would be concerned about is – you were in the garage – what if they had a camera with motion detection so they know when someone goes in the garage? They could have immediately been notified on their phone, “Oh, Evi’s in the garage.”

Evi

Yeah, that’s exactly what I thought. I quickly went into my bedroom and I got my phone and my camera. With those, I recorded a video going from the bathroom all the way to the back of the mirror. I also took pictures. I had a friend. I became very good friends with this other backpacker. So I sent him the videos, the pictures. I sent him the address where I am. I sent him Tom’s phone number and I told him what happened. I sent him a message so, in case something happens to me, he knows what’s going on and where to go.

Scott

That was very smart,

Evi

But I was scared.

Scott

Yeah. You were scared but you were protecting yourself. Maybe that’s a benefit of watching all those movies. Now you know what to do.

Evi

Yeah. Quickly, I sent a message to the HelpX site because I wanted them to know about this and I started to pack because my first instinct was to get out of there. I wasn’t thinking of anyone who stayed there before or could stay there after me. I was just thinking of myself at this point and all I wanted was to get away from that. But then, of course, I had the little girl so I wasn’t able to leave. But anyway, I packed all my stuff and then I was thinking that I’m going to go outside in front of the door and just call Tom to come home because I’m leaving. Then, I was thinking, “He obviously will have an idea of why I want to leave. So what if he hurts me? Okay, that’s not a good idea because who knows what he’s going to do.” I was also sending messages to some of my friends in Hungary telling them what happened. Then I decided to call the police. Because at first, I didn’t want to call the police. I never had anything to do with them before. I was thinking that someone watching me having a shower is not a big deal, so I was thinking maybe this doesn’t concern the police.

Scott

That’s an interesting take to think, “Well, maybe it’s not that big of a deal.”

Evi

Well, I don’t know that but I was thinking that I felt strange telling someone, “Oh, someone watched me having a shower. Can you come and help?” Of course, thinking of it now, obviously, everyone should call the police if something like this happens.

Scott

Of course, you were still kind of panicking – it sounds like.

Evi

Yeah, I was.

Scott

Okay.

Evi

I called the police and they told me what to do because I didn’t know what to do. I spoke with a lady and she talked with someone there and they agreed that they’re going to send me a unit because there was a unit nearby. They sent a policeman and I opened the door. I never had anything to do with the police before so I didn’t even know if I’m allowed to let them in the house because, from American movies, they need a permit to go into your house. So, I didn’t know if I’m allowed to let them in. The policeman said, “Of course, you are allowed.” I don’t know what he said but, obviously, I let him in. The whole time I was doing all of these, the little girl was in the living room on her iPad behind the closed door, so she had no idea what’s going on.

So I let the policeman in. I showed him the bathroom, showed him the mirror, and then he noticed a camera that I didn’t notice before, so I got even more shocked, like, “What? There is a camera?” Yeah, the camera was right there in front of me but I was so shocked that I could see into the bathroom that I didn’t even look around. It was right there in front of me but I didn’t see. Then, this man was telling me, “Don’t touch it,” because I got a little shock, like, “What? There is a camera?” Then he told me that he’s going to call, I don’t know, the forensics. I think they call people to get evidence.

Two other policemen arrived and they wanted to take me to the station and I told them I can’t go because I have the little girl. Then, they were saying like, “We are the police, it’s okay to leave her with us.” So one of the policemen asked me if I wanted to drive or if I wanted them to drive my car to the station and I told him that I would prefer it if he drove my car to the station.

Scott

When you went to the police station, did you bring all of your stuff with you or did you have to go back to the house to get that?

Evi

No, I took everything. I had one big backpack. My car was full of things like camping stuff and a lot of stuff. But the night before, when I went into the house, I only took my backpack. I had one big backpack. I threw everything in there before the police arrived. So, I was ready to leave. I only needed to grab that and then I could leave. We left one policeman in the house to wait for the forensics and two policemen went to the station with me. They took me into the room to take my statement and they were very nice. Even on the way to the station, we were chatting and the policemen were super nice.

When we arrived, he kept asking me if I would like a tea or a coffee and I said, “No, I don’t drink any of them.” Then, he asked me again and I said, “No, thank you.” And the third time I said, “Okay, yes.” Then, I realized later, “Maybe this is not true.” I think he wanted my fingerprints because they never asked for them after. I know they took the fingerprints from the mirror so I think he just wanted my fingerprints, but that’s why he was really keen on me drinking something. But maybe this is not true. I don’t know.

Scott

Well, if he would have asked for your fingerprints, you probably would have given them to him anyway, right?

Evi

Yeah, this is my theory. I didn’t know why he really wanted me to bring something when I told him twice, “Thank you, I don’t need anything.” I gave my statement and a policeman came in and said that if I wanted to go to the women’s refuge, they said they would take me. So he gave me the option to go to the women’s refugee place or go to a hostel. If I go to the women’s refugee place, I could stay at a safe place. By this point, I was like, “Oh, that’s an adventure. I’ve never been to a safe place.” Well, it’s not a good thing that you go to a safe place, but I only heard it from a safe place from movies. So I was interested. Okay, let’s check it out. It was a bit of an adventure that time, so I said yes to that. Then, they told me where to go for the women’s refugee office.

Scott

When you say the women’s refugee place, what kind of place is this? Who would live there?

Evi

First, it was, like, an office – where I spoke to a lady who arranges the safe place. So I didn’t go to the safe place. I was just there to talk with a lady and I told her what happened and then she told me I could go to the safe place and she showed me the direction to the place. So this is a place even the police didn’t know the address to. So even before that, I actually got a phone call from Tom. This was a time when I was driving from the police to the women’s refugee place and I didn’t pick it up. I got a shock, like, “Why is he calling me?” Then, I realized that probably it was the time when he arrived home and he didn’t see my car. So he probably got worried, like, where is my car? There I am. I went to the safe place. There were two other women with their children. Then, I felt a bit guilty for being there because I actually wasn’t feeling unsafe or I wasn’t abused or anything like that. So I felt a bit guilty for being there when actually other people needed to stay there, but it wasn’t like I was taking anyone’s place because there were plenty of places, but I still felt a little bit bad.

Scott

You said you felt guilty for staying there because you were not abused but, really, you were abused, would you agree?

Evi

Yes, because I didn’t give consent to anyone to watch me having a shower.

Scott

Okay, so you started contacting other people.

Evi

Yeah, so I got to the safe place and then this is the time when I remember, “Oh, they had so many people. They were mostly women. They were girls staying with them. All the ratings on the profile were all girls and there was one couple, I think.” So I had no WiFi in this place so quickly I went to a library and I sent a message. First, I sent a message to the Hungarian girl because she was one of the people who left the rating. So I was able to contact her on the HelpX site and then I sent her a message to find me on Facebook. I told her my number – sorry, my name. I told her what happened and I have videos and pictures to show her. Quickly, I put some money on my phone, so I had data from the safe place. So, I went back to the safe place. Then, I started to message everyone who left the rating on Tom’s profile. I sent them all the same message telling them what happened, how to find me on Facebook, and to contact me.

Scott

Did you start seeing contacts coming in from Facebook?

Evi

Yes, the Hungarian girl answered me straight away. We got in contact on Facebook. I showed her everything. She was shocked. Slowly, all the people started to respond to my message, even the couple. They were, like, an older couple. The lady replied to me that, when they were staying at this house, they were only house-sitting. I believe they were house-sitting when Tom and his family went to Europe because they were house-sitting for them for a few weeks. She said they were not affected by this but I should let the police know that they also had exchange students from high schools. So there were underaged girls staying there before. She was also super nice. She offered to help me in any way she can. A lot of girls contacted me on Facebook and it was easier for me to just make a group and put everyone in the group so we could discuss what happened and everyone could tell their experiences and I could give them the contact email address of the policeman. I gave them the case number.

Scott

How many people were in this Facebook chat?

Evi

There were 25. I contacted maybe 10 people. I don’t know. Like I said, I don’t remember how many ratings they gave Tom on the site but I contacted all of them and I put everyone who contacted me in a group. But these girls, some of them were not alone when they were helping at this house. They added more people. Some of these girls, when they stayed with Tom, were also exchange students. So everyone who knew someone who stayed there before, they just added them to the group. So, at the end, we were 25.

Scott

What was the response from the HelpX website when they found out about this?

Evi

It was very good. I contacted everyone I could on the website on the same day this happened because, by the end of the day, Tom’s profile disappeared from the website. So for me, there was no other way to contact anyone or to know who stayed there before. So I was very glad that, after arriving at the safe place, my first thought was just to reach out to everyone. From the HelpX site, I got a message back. They replied, “Did you talk to the wife about this?” And I was like, “Okay, that’s not very helpful. How do I know if the wife is not on this?” So I just replied, “It’s all right. I already talked to the police. The police are handling this. Everything is okay, but maybe next time don’t say such a thing. “

Scott

Yeah. That’s an unusual response when you report something like this and they say, “Well, did you talk to the wife?” Well, I don’t even know what that means. So what if you did talk to the wife?

Evi

But at this point, they didn’t know there was a camera, but they knew that I was watched while I was having a shower.

Scott

How long did you stay at the safe place?

Evi

Because I was feeling guilty for being there, I was planning to stay for only one night, but I actually ended up staying for one week. The lady told me I could stay until next Monday. So I could stay for nine days if I wanted. I stayed because Tom got, like, a court hearing the next week and I wanted to stay in town for that. I also didn’t feel so well. Like, I didn’t want to have a shower on the first night staying in the safe place. The next day, in the afternoon, I was like, “Okay, I have to have a shower.” So I forced myself to have a shower. But, of course, I checked everything and it was okay. I was mostly just hiding in my room. I didn’t feel like eating or going anywhere. That was very unusual for me because whenever I arrived at a place, all I did was go out, explore, go for a hike, discover the beach, and I was never inside.

Scott

Well, you’d been traumatized.

Evi

Yeah. One of the ladies was so nice. She noticed that I wasn’t eating and she came after me to my room and she asked me, “Did you eat?” And I said, “No, I haven’t eaten yet.” So she grabbed my hand, took me to the kitchen, and she put a big plate of food in front of me. So while I was staying in a safe place, more than once she fed me. She was so nice.

Two of the girls who left the rating stayed just right before me. So I was arriving in August but there were two Irish girls who stayed there at Tom’s place in June and there were two girls who stayed there in July. These four girls were still in Wellington. We discussed that we’re going to meet up. So we went to the city center to meet up and talk about what happened. That was the first time I went to a place where there were more people and I felt very uneasy. I was very jumpy when someone was near me. It wasn’t so easy. We met up. Oh, but before this, actually, two of the French girls went to the station. I sent them a message on Monday and, I believe, they went to the station on Wednesday to ask about the case and tell the police that they also stay there and they got the information that, after I left the house, the police took everything from the house, every hard drive, every laptop, every electronic they could find, and they took the fingerprints from around the mirror. They took Tom in for questioning. They also talked to the wife, but they were okay with the wife. They couldn’t find any evidence that she was involved in any way. So they let her go. Tom was arrested and he was bailed.

Scott

So he was arrested and charged with whatever crimes, but he was out.

Evi

Yes. The crime was making an intimate visual recording. He was charged with this, arrested, and he was bailed. He had to appear in court in the next few days. That’s why I stayed in Wellington, because I knew that he had to go to court. So the time the French girls went into the station, the police also took a picture of them so they could identify them from the videos because they found a lot of videos. They told them that it’s a woman who’s going to check all these videos. They will let them know if they find anything on them. The next day, one of the French girls got the news that yes, they have a video of her. The police didn’t really tell me what they found. I got some information from the media because there were, like, articles online. That’s how I knew that they found almost 400 videos and lots of pictures. There were nearly a hundred women in these videos.

Scott

A hundred women?

Evi

Yes, and there were also girls who were as young as twelve. It was, like, 31 hours of videos – what they found in that house.

Scott

And these were all people who were staying there from the HelpX website?

Evi

These were women who stayed there from the HelpX site. There were exchange students from a lot of countries. There were family members, I don’t know, lots of people. He was charged with 53 charges of making intimate recordings. They wanted to charge him with 90 but, because of statutory limitations, they could only charge him with the last five years he was doing this. So that was 53 charges.

Scott

53 counts. And it was making intimate recordings and making objectionable material. And yes, that’s incredible. They can only go back five years. He had been doing it longer than that. After five years, they can’t charge him because of the law. He must’ve thought after all that time, “All those years, I’m never going to get caught.”

Evi

I don’t know what he was thinking because. One of the French girls said she noticed that mirror when he was showing them the bathroom and she said, “Oh, that’s a strange place for a mirror.” And he was like, “Oh yeah. Hahaha. Once I had a shower here and I noticed it too. Oh, that’s strange. What must my guests think of why I have that mirror there? But it’s just there so you can see your profile better.” If I were him, I would be so scared that the girls realize that it’s a two-way mirror.

Scott

But he was just way overconfident.

Evi

And he didn’t even lock the garage.

Scott

Yeah. That’s the other thing. You just walked right in.

Evi

Yeah. And some people told me in the group that they were working there. They were working in the garage.

Scott

Evi, the investigator, went looking and found it. If you hadn’t found it, it could still be happening now.

Evi

Yes, probably, I don’t know. So I stayed in Wellington and, with two of the French girls, we went to the court hearing. We had no idea how these things go and we were thinking that he would be questioned, and he has to give answers, and we wanted to hear these answers. But actually, the whole thing was, like, one minute. He didn’t plea so they just gave him a new date. So it was, like, nothing. So, the next morning, I just left Wellington. I went on my way and continued with the things I was planning to do. I don’t remember when was his next court hearing but he didn’t plea either, and this was going on for weeks and months. The strange thing is that after three weeks of the mirror being discovered, he sent an email out to a lot of these girls who stayed there before. He sent, like, a catching-up email. He was writing about the weather, people being sick because it was a cold winter, he had some teaching issues and he’s hoping that they will be solved, about how important it is to laugh and how good it is for you, and it was strange. These girls by now knew what he’d done and we didn’t understand why he would send this message. It was very strange. In December, he asked the judge for sentencing indications, like asking how long he would be imprisoned if he pleads guilty. By February, they told him that they’re going to give him two years and nine months imprisonment if he enters a plea, and then he did, finally. He said, “Yes, he’s guilty.”

Scott

So that was his sentence – two years and nine months.

Evi

It was two years and ten months, what they told him. So this is February and the sentencing was in June. So, he had the chance to talk to the victims. If he agrees to talk to the victims, he could get less time. By the time June came, he was sentenced to two years and nine months in prison, so they took away some time because of previous good behavior or something. They wanted to give him four years but, because of his good character, they gave him a discount and 25% off for early plea. So the sentencing was, at the end, two years and nine months in prison.

Scott

Is he still in prison?

Evi

No. So it was August 2018 when I found the mirror and he was sentenced in June 2019. After one year of being in prison, he had his first parole hearing and it was at night. Then, he had another one the next year in May and, I believe, they granted that parole. So after two years, he was out of prison. He was released in June 2021.

Scott

How did this affect you psychologically? Did you get therapy to help process this?

Evi

Oh, no, I didn’t. I was all right. At the beginning, like I said, I didn’t feel like eating or going out and felt jumpy but, as the time went and I forced myself to go out and do the things I liked, I was all right. I was always checking the bathrooms whenever I went. I was a bit paranoid. I was covering mirrors and windows when I was having a shower. Yeah, I left that behind. I’m fine now. The New Zealand police were amazing. Whenever there was a hearing or something, they gave me a call and they checked up on me, victim advice, called me to check up on me if I’m all right, and they sent me websites where I could get help. Yes, they were amazing.

Scott

Have you used the HelpX website since then to find other places to stay?

Evi

Yes, I used it one more time in New Zealand before I left. Then, after my visa expired, I went to Australia and I used HelpX site there too. It’s an amazing site. I love it. Even later in Europe, I had amazing hosts. I have very good memories from my stays. So yeah, it’s a great site. I would recommend it to travelers.

Scott

When the police were doing their investigation and looking at those videos, did they find any videos that were of you?

Evi

Yeah. So at the end of August, they sent me an email that they found a video of me. I think that was obvious. Well, maybe not. They let me know there’s a video of me. After the sentencing, they got rid of all the videos. I registered for victim notification. So, every time something happened, every time he had a court hearing or a plea, anything, I got an email.

Scott

I was reading in one of the online articles, Tom made a statement in court and he said he was horrified by himself and was glad that he was caught. Do you believe him? And does it make any difference that he said that?

Evi

Well, for me, it was easy. This whole thing, I got the least damaged by it because I didn’t know this family. I had no feelings towards them. Some of the people had been in contact with them for years and they had a good relationship. Some were family members. This was such a big shock for them. For me, they were strangers, so I didn’t care about him. I don’t know if I believed him or not. I probably didn’t believe him. I think he would just say whatever he wants people to hear.

Scott

Yeah, it’s hard to tell if people are sincere after they’ve been caught. I’m glad that you were a good detective and solved this crime, and thanks for sharing your story.

Evi

Thank you for letting me share my story.

Scott

I’m wondering – does hearing this story from Evi make you think twice about staying in the home of someone you don’t know? Let me know what you think.

If you didn’t catch it, Tom’s career was working as a teacher – but that is now over. And he’s been put on the Child Protection Offender Register, so hopefully he can no longer abuse people like this.

And one more thing – you heard Evi mention that as soon as she discovered the 2 way mirror in the garage, she got her phone and created a video. I’ve seen the video, and it is creepy. She starts recording in the bathroom, so you can see the real mirror and the fake mirror, and then she walks out the door and around the corner to that entry to the garage. She slides the envelope out of the way, and you can see the view right into the bathroom.

You want to see that video? It’s available to watch, in the Facebook group. We’ll also be discussing this episode, and I’m sure there will be lots of comments about this one. You can join me over there, along with over 7000 other What Was That Like listeners, at WhatWasThatLike.com/facebook. If you’ve had an experience like this where your privacy and trust were violated by a stranger, come on over and tell your story.

Graphics for this episode were created by Bob Bretz. Full episode transcription was created by James Lai.

And now, the Listener Story. You know how it works. Every episode, here at the end, we play a story that was sent in by a listener. And we’re still waiting to hear yours! Just record it, something like 5-10 minutes on your phone, and email it to me.

This week’s story is kind of in line with this episode – an unfortunate event while traveling.

Stay safe, and I’ll see you next time.

(Listener story)

I just listened to your most recent episode about Chris and it made me think about the time that I did a study abroad program in Greece. I am a musician. I’m actually an elementary music teacher and I teach piano lessons as well but, in college, I studied voice as an opera singer.

My professor was doing this program in Greece and he invited me to come. I was like, “Yeah, I’d love to travel. It’s like a once-in-a-lifetime experience.” Of course, I was 20 years old. Now, looking back on it, I kind of can’t believe my parents let me travel all the way there by myself. But I was an adult, so I went all the way to Greece by myself and met up with the people there. We took a boat to Athens, from Athens to a little island called Syros, which is beautiful. I was supposed to be there for five weeks. I did end up doing the whole program and learned a lot, got to sing in a beautiful performance venue, and ate a lot of gyros and yogurt and stuff like that on the island.

On my first night there, I was sitting on the beach. Of course, I met a boy. We were sitting on the beach and the beaches there on this island are, like, rocky. So, it’s like a rock beach. We were sitting on the beach on the rock, basically, outside of our hotel. Since we were sitting out there, the romantic time, I ended up, like, sitting on his lap. For some bizarre reason, he decided to stand up and I fell backward. We were on a ledge. I fell backward about, I don’t know, six or seven feet – maybe even higher than that – and hit my head on a rock, and I lost consciousness. I woke up and spent my first night on the island in the hospital and my grandma had given me money to spend on the trip and I had to use it on my hospital stay. So that’s my crazy story.

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Every Tuesday, we grab a past question from the Facebook group, then Meredith and Scott answer it and read some of the answers given by other listeners.

TQ14: Whats a rule that you make everyone follow in your house?Show Podcast InformationThe question for this episode:

What’s a rule that you make everyone follow in your house?

Links for this episode:

Plume of bacteria (AKA “toilet plume”):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilet_plume

Meredith’s podcast is Meredith For Real – the Curious Introvert:

https://MeredithForReal.com

To check out the new Tuesday Question and get in the discussion, join us at WhatWasThatLike.com/facebook.

Sponsor deals:

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If you’re married, you know that there will inevitably be some disagreements between you and your spouse.

Ramon faked his own deathShow Podcast InformationCould be about the most common things, like finances. Or sometimes you might have a big fight about something really minor, like choosing a restaurant.

Usually, these things get resolved. Reasonable adults can figure out a solution or a compromise, and life goes on.

For Ramon, that’s not how it worked out. He and his wife Lulu had gotten to the point where their marriage could not be saved, and a divorce was coming up. But then Lulu decided to take things to a whole new level, and hire someone to murder Ramon. That’s when things got a little crazy.

This is a Flashback episode. Ramon told this story 5 years ago here on the podcast, so after our conversation you’ll hear a chat the he and I had just recently about what he’s doing today, and the latest news about Lulu.

Ramon todayRamon’s bookRamon’s book:

https://www.amazon.com/I-Walked-My-Own-Grave/dp/0578217651/ref=sr_1_1

Ramon interview on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afxOgtRFJWw

Ramon on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/therealramonsosa

Full show notes and pictures for this episode are here:

https://WhatWasThatLike.com/180

Graphics for this episode by Bob Bretz. Transcription was done by James Lai.

Sponsor deals:

To listen to THE 82% series, follow THIS IS ACTUALLY HAPPENING on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts!

Go to cookunity.com/What or enter code What before checkout for 50% off your first week.

Go to Seed.com/what and use code 25WHAT to get 25% off your first month.

Go to storyworth.com/what to save $10 on your first purchase!

Get 15% off OneSkin with the code WHATWAS at https://www.oneskin.co/ #oneskinpod

Cancel your unwanted subscriptions by going to RocketMoney.com/whatwas.

This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at BetterHelp.com/whatwas and get on your way to being your best self.

Episode transcript (download transcript PDF):

If you’re married, you know that there will inevitably be some disagreements between you and your spouse.

Could be about the most common things, like finances. Or sometimes you might have a big fight about something really minor, like choosing a restaurant.

Usually, these things get resolved. Reasonable adults can figure out a solution or a compromise, and life goes on.

This is a Flashback episode. Ramon told this story 5 years ago here on the podcast, so after our conversation you’ll hear a chat that he and I had just recently about what he’s doing today, and the latest news about Lulu.

Scott

On a scale of 1-10, how weird is the feeling of lying down in your own grave?

Ramon

It’s an 11 – it was the craziest thing ever. When the detectives came up to me and said, “We have one more thing we have to do to go through this whole case.” It was to put me in a grave with a bullet wound in my head. I just cannot believe what I was hearing.

Scott

That is just unbelievable! All right. Well, let’s talk about how you got to that point. You came from Puerto Rico and you opened a gym in Houston, correct?

Ramon

Yeah, I was born in Puerto Rico. I resided in the United States and lived on the East Coast for a while. I moved to Texas as a teenager and have been boxing since I was about 8 years old. Boxing has been my life – I love boxing. I competed in a lot of amateur fights. I turned pro when I was 17. Things didn’t go my way because I had the wrong kind of management. I’m still going to be involved with boxing, so I decided to open up a gym and coach, and it started from there. Up to this day, I still love boxing.

Scott

Yeah. Obviously, you have a real passion for that.

Ramon

Correct.

Scott

Two people came into your life – let’s talk a little bit about each one of these people. First of all, Mundo, in 2005 – can you tell us about him?

Ramon

Yeah. I think Mundo actually came up a little earlier than that. Mundo came into my life when I had a gym but it wasn’t my gym – I was helping out at a gym where I had my nonprofit – it was a church. Back then, I had – I still have it – a nonprofit called Young Prospects Boxing. Mundo just happened to walk into my gym. He was a young man in his early 20s and a little bit overweight. He just seemed very honest to me. He told me that he just wanted to learn how to box. He loved boxing but he didn’t have the opportunity to do it when he was young. He said, “I don’t want to compete. I’m just a little too old to compete, but I want to learn how to box.” He was very odd. He told me all about his background and we just, kind of, hooked in. He was beginning to be, like, a part of my family. I had 2 sons and a daughter, so he was part of that too – he became my 3rd son.

Scott

Then, the other person that came into your life was Lulu. What’s her actual name?

Ramon

Her real name is Maria DeLourdes Durantes – that’s her main name – and she goes by ‘Lulu.’ I met her in 2007. Back then, I was divorced for about 7-8 years. I went out. I wanted to go have some drinks and hang out for a little while, so I went to a Mexican restaurant that turns into, basically, a club after 10 or 11 in Woodlands, Texas – I think it was. So, I went there just to hang out. Salsa music – that’s the stuff that I like. That’s where I met her. She was there. We met, we were visually attracted to each other, and then we danced the night away.

Scott

That was a pretty quick romance. How long before you got married?

Ramon

We got married about a year and a half later – we dated for about a year and a half. We got to meet each other’s families. She came from Mexico City. I think her son, Louise, was maybe 12-13 years old. Her daughter, Carla, was maybe 6-8 years old. So, she had 2 kids and I had 3 kids from previous marriages. So, we dated for about a year and a half before we decided to get married.

Scott

So it suddenly became a pretty big family…

Ramon

Yeah, it did. In the beginning, it was a little bit rough trying to merge our families together because, at that age, kids seem to be jealous of their parents and stuff like that. My kids were a little older than hers, so they were okay – they understood. Getting along with her son was a little tough, sometimes, because that’s his mother and he was a little bit jealous of another man coming around.

Scott

Yeah, that’s understandable. How long before things started to go south with the marriage?

Ramon

We were doing well at the beginning of the marriage – the first 3 years were, like, what they call the honeymoon years. It was excellent. She treated me like a king. We talked about massages – foot massages. She got up early in the morning before I even got out of bed and I had breakfast already made for me. She was just a wonderful person who treated me like a king. I was so grateful for marrying this person. I was in love – I thought it was love.

Scott

And the gym was doing pretty well too, right? You’re making pretty good money?

Ramon

Yeah, we decided to open a gym around about 2009 or 2010. We opened up a big gym and it was doing very, very well with me and my boxing background. Lulu was very, very savvy with business. She basically took care of the business side of it and took care of the training. Later on, she decided to start training people too. In the beginning, it worked out and it was doing very, very well, and it did well for a long time.

Scott

Yeah, that sounds like a perfect partnership with each of your skills combined together

Ramon

Exactly. That’s what I thought I had. The money was coming in. We were doing very well and the gym was doing very well. So, I thought everything was great for a while.

Scott

But then, it wasn’t so great.

Ramon

We had our differences sometimes and, I think, it all started with the kids – especially with her son. The young man actually thought that he was the man of the house. I tried to sit there and talk to him. I explained to him that there can only be one man in this house and that I’m the one who pays the bills, puts clothes on his back, and food in his stomach. It was just tough. I think it all started from having problems with the kids. Then, he started getting jealous of my kids because my kids are educated and they do well for themselves. There was jealousy between her kids and my kids – I think it started with that. That was our biggest problem at the beginning.

Scott

Sounds like a lot of different dynamics happening at the same time.

Ramon

Yeah, it was.

Scott

And then, at some point, there were accusations of abuse. How did that come about?

Ramon

Yeah. Well, this is a little background on her… When Lulu came to this country – she was here on an American visa – she got married to me. Then, she automatically got a residency. She applied for US citizenship. About 3 years later, she, her kids, & her mother became American citizens. So, they all became American citizens illegally in this country because of me. Then, right after she got all that, I noticed that she started showing her temper – I know she had a little temper all the time, but she started changing a little more – and we started having more and more arguments. We went on a vacation to Puerto Rico one time. We had a disagreement in Puerto Rico at the hotel to the point where we had to get separated. That night, she slept in one room while I slept in separate rooms. I had no idea that she had filed a report – not a police report – at the hotel. She put on there that I had scratched her – that was the first. I would never put a hand on her ever, EVER. She had scratches on her fingers, and I was thinking, “What?!” That’s when I figured that something was going on, but we were able to resolve that problem and talk through it. One thing about Lulu is she knows how to manipulate people – she is a good manipulator. She knows how to use her beauty and charm to get whatever she wants, kind of, like a psychopath – that’s what I felt, like, she was trying to do to me.

Scott

When you saw that report where she was making these accusations that obviously weren’t true, you must have thought, “Man, do I really know who this person is?”

Ramon

Yeah. Until this day, she still claims and swears that I did that to her, and it was investigated. Then, she tried to tell me that she didn’t call the police in Puerto Rico although the hotel security came up to the room and talked to me. We told them what had happened – we just had a disagreement. She knew how to push buttons. She knew exactly what buttons to push to get me involved in a disagreement. It always started with her talking crazy stuff about my kids. So I’m like, “Look, just be respectful.” That’s all I asked. When the hotel security came up, they talked to her outside. Then, some came inside and talked to me, and not one of them. If you have scratches or bleeding, they would say, “Look, she has scratches or she’s bleeding.” None of them mentioned that to me because they knew that it wasn’t true. But then, when I saw that on the report, I’m like, “Whoa, what are you talking about?! She’s up to something.”

Scott

Yeah. So, it ended up that you guys finally decided you were going to get a divorce…

Ramon

Yeah, it got to that point. In 2015, she filed for divorce – I was okay with that. We tried to go to counseling before that and do different things but she just didn’t want to do it. She said, “This is not gonna work out.” But in the divorce, she wanted everything – she wanted the house, she wanted the business, she wanted the car, she wanted everything… I know, sometimes, a lot of men walk away, leave everything, and just start over again, but I feel like I worked too hard for everything I have – the gym, the business, and everything was just too much work. So, I said, “Let’s go half” and she tried to fight it. When it got to the point where we couldn’t live together – we had a two-story home – she was living upstairs with her mother and her two kids, and I was living downstairs by myself. There was so much tension – it was just a bad and horrible thing.

Scott

Now, how does that work in terms of citizenship? Even if you guys get divorced, she’d still remain a US citizen, right?

Ramon

Oh, yeah. She is an American citizen. She has all the rights just like you and me – along with her kids and her mother – and until this day, I have not gotten one “Thank you.”

Scott

I don’t think you’ll get that.

Ramon

No, I don’t think so. I don’t expect it as it is. They’re lucky to be here because of me. It’s even more incredible that they try to kill me afterward.

Scott

Alright. One day, there was a conversation in the gym, I think, was with Lulu, her daughter, your protege, or your son, Mundo. What was that about?

Ramon

Yeah, it was crazy. Mundo would take care of the gym for me, especially on the weekends – we take breaks on Saturday. He had the key to open and close the gym. So, other than Lulu and me, he could come in and go whenever he feels like it – that’s how much trust I have in him. Mundo already knew that we were going through a divorce – I talked to him and he knew what was going on. On one particular night, I was there at the gym. What he told me is that he walked into a conversation between Lulu and her daughter, Carla. In that conversation, Carla told Lulu that there was a kid in the gym from Mexico. That kid told Carla that he has an uncle in Mexico who kills and chops up people for a living. That’s when Mundo walked into the conversation and told them, “Hey, watch what you’re talking about. You never know who’s listening.” They kind of laughed it off like it was nothing and not a big deal. Then, later that evening. he said that he kind of pulled Lulu to the side, one-on-one, when there was hardly anybody in the gym and they were about to close. Mundo was a young man and I helped him when he was going through a lot of problems. We just mentor him, basically, with a lot of stuff. And she knew his background.

Scott

His background meant that he knew people that could do stuff.

Ramon

Yeah. When he was younger, he was involved in gangs and stuff like that. But he was a young man who became a great person. So, I guess that’s why she trusted him when Mundo came up to her and said, “This is about Ramon?” She said, “Yeah, it is about him. I wish they would take him. I wish he would just go away. He should just disappear.” Then, he made the pistol sign over his shoulder and said, “Disappear like this?” He put the pistol on his shoulder.

Scott

You mean with his fingers?

Ramon

Yeah. He just put up two fingers and a thumb, like, the sign of a pistol. Then, she said, “Yeah. Like that.” That’s when this young man made a decision – that is the reason I’m talking to you right now. Right there, he said, “Well, I got people who can do the job for you.” She believed him. Then, Mundo called me the next day – I remember that I was driving. Mundo likes to joke around sometimes – we joked around and stuff like that. When he called me and told me that, I told him, “Mundo, quit joking around, quit messing around. I don’t believe that kind of stuff.” He went, “Look. I’ve seen the look on people’s faces when they want to kill somebody. She’s for real.” Then, he said that he was gonna meet her later that evening, have a conversation, and record the conversation on his phone – she had no idea what was going on. That’s when it all started.

Scott

I just can’t imagine. I mean, she knew about your relationship with Mundo – you are like a father to him. How could she have such a bad misjudgment of his character to think that he would be involved in this?

Ramon

Yeah, it was just the worst situation. There were so many thoughts that went through my head, like, “Why did she believe him? Why did she think that he would do something like that?” When Mundo reacted the way he reacted by telling her, “I got the people that can do the job.” I guess that she was so desperate to, like, get it done. So, that’s where it all started.

Scott

It must have taken you a little bit of time just to process the thought of, “Wow, she really wants to do this.”

Ramon

Yeah, not only that. After hearing that, I had to go home, see her face, and act like I didn’t know what was going on – that was the weirdest feeling. She was sleeping upstairs and I was downstairs. So, basically, I was sleeping with the enemy in my own house – I was sleeping with one eye open after I found out what was going on.

Scott

So, what was the plan that you came up with?

Ramon

Actually, Mundo is the one who came up with a plan. He said, “Some of us will have conversations with her. So I’m gonna go out there, talk to her, and record everything until we have enough evidence. We got to the point where Mundo asked for money for a dirty gun – they call it a street gun or whatever. He said that it was going to be $200, and she gave him the money. Once Mundo had the money, we felt like we had enough evidence. So, we went to the police. In the beginning, they didn’t believe us. I mean, they believed but, in the precinct where I lived, they had never dealt with anything like this. So, they talked to Mundo and me together. Then, they separated us to make sure both of our stories were the same. Shortly after that, they called in the state police, the FBI, the rangers, and they put a plan together – that’s where it all started with them – then, they took over. They brought in undercover police officers to start meeting with Lulu, and this undercover officer was one of the hitmen that Mundo had told Lulu about who was going to do the job. So, she thought that this man whom she was talking to was the guy that Mundo got for her. She had no idea that he was an undercover officer.

Scott

He was a policeman. Can you talk a little bit about why was it difficult for Mundo to go through with this plan?

Ramon

Like I said earlier, Mundo was a young man who was involved with gangs. Once he joins a gang and tries to leave it, you’re in the game for life. In the gang life, you don’t snitch on anybody, you don’t talk about that kind of stuff, and they take that at heart – that was the biggest problem that he had. He told me straight up that this is something that he did for me because, in his life, that’s the kind of stuff they don’t do – he felt like that was something that he had to do to save my life. So, he said he felt like if he didn’t take that chance of doing what he did, maybe she would have asked somebody else – I didn’t know if she had a plan B. So, even though we were doing this, I didn’t know if it was just Mundo and his plan or if she had talked to somebody else just in case that didn’t work – it was very hectic.

Scott

Yeah, if it didn’t work out with him, obviously, she would have tried finding somebody else like this other kid whose uncle–

Ramon

Yeah, exactly.

Scott

So how did that play out? She paid money. What happened after that?

Ramon

There were 2 hitmen that Mundo had told her about. They met with her and Mundo. I told the officers, “Look, you need to keep Mundo in the loop because as soon as she finds out that Mundo’s out, she’s gonna start noticing something.” So, Mundo would always meet with them also at the same time. They met the undercover officers with the car, lights, and audio, so they think they had everything. On this particular evening, they told her, “Look, we’re ready to do the hit, and it’s gonna cost you $12,000.” She said, “Well, I don’t have all the money right now, but I will give you some money and some jewelry.” I came to find out that the jewelry that she gave them was my jewelry – wedding rings, watches, my own stuff. She gave them as a down payment to have me killed. Then, she went to the bank, got some money out, and gave him some cash. Then, she said, “I’ll tell you what. He likes wearing really nice watches – he’s always wearing it. So, when you kill him, you can keep that watch too because it’s worth a lot of money.” Then, another thing that she said was, “As soon as he dies, I’m going to get his pension, I’m going to get all his retirement, and I’m gonna get all his money. With that money, I can pay you the rest.” So, she had it all planned out.

Scott

Yeah, she had obviously put a lot of thought into how everything is going to work out.

Ramon

Yeah. She knew exactly how much I was worth. At one point, they even asked her to see if she really, really wanted to go through it and to give her one last chance to get out of it. They asked her, “Do you want us to beat him up? We can beat him up.” She said, “No, he’s better to me dead. I want him dead.”

Scott

Yeah, beating you up really wouldn’t do anything.

Ramon

No. We were still going through a divorce. So, she wanted to make sure that they kill me before – I think it was August or September – we finalize our divorce. This was at, like, the end of July. She told them, “Look, you need to finish this before the divorce is finalized because if he dies after the divorce is finalized, I don’t get anything – he’ll give it to his kids and I won’t get anything.” She was worried about my kids getting all the money and she not getting anything.

Scott

This sounds like a woman without any feeling or empathy.

Ramon

No. She was thinking about nobody but herself – she didn’t think about her family, her kids, anything. All she wanted was, “I want to get this divorce.” She felt that things were going her way. Her attorney thought they were going her way. Apparently, she didn’t think that things were going her way, so I guess that’s what made her go, “What do I have to do to take this man out? The only way that it’s gonna happen is like this.”

Scott

So, after she paid that and gave the final order, that’s when you and the cops went into Hollywood mode.

Ramon

Yeah. After she gave the money and all the jewelry to them, they had enough evidence to have her arrested and I thought that was gonna be it. Then, they called me in. They said, “Ramon, we need to talk to you.” I said, “Okay.” I was used to going in there and talking to them about this whole process. When they took me in there – I remember it was, kind of, scary because they brought me in there at night like this – the officers from the FBI and the local constables were all there in, like, a meeting room. They explained to us and said, “Look, we have enough evidence to arrest Lulu right now, but we just don’t want to take any chances. If we go to a jury trial, some of these jurors may have sympathy for her because she’s a single mother, she’s never been in problems, and a lot of people in the community know her – from the boxing gym and stuff like that. So, they might feel sorry for her. So, what they wanted to do was to make it a slam dunk case – this thing is gonna be 100%. So, what they wanted to do was take a picture of me dead and show it to her. I was like, “What did you say?! Dead?!” He said, “Yeah, we’re going to have a picture of you dead, we’re going to put you in a grave, and we’re going to show you the picture to prove that the job was done.” So, they pulled out real pictures – I’ll never forget that. The DA and Assistant DA were there. They pulled out pictures of real dead people with bullet wounds to the head and they said, “Okay, we’re going to pick this one right here. This is what we’re gonna do.” The next day, they said, “Well, this is going to happen. We’re going to disappear you for 3 days.” So, nobody knew where I was – Mundo and my family had no idea what was going on.

Scott

Where were you for those 3 days?

Ramon

They took me out of town to a hotel – it wasn’t that far from the south of Houston.

Scott

Where nobody would see you or anything…

Ramon

Nobody knew. Nobody had any idea. They took me out. I had to meet this officer in the middle of the night and they had everything set up. I have no idea what was going on. They said, “Now, we’re gonna put this makeup on you.” Before that, they took a picture. Then, they took me to this gravesite. At the gravesite, they had already dug up the hole. I swear it looked like something you see in one of these movies from, like, Scarface or something – it was just a horrible-looking thing. It was like a scene from a movie. All these cameras and all these people were there. Then, they said, “Okay, we’re gonna get you down to your underwear, finish up the makeup, and put you in a position like this. Close your eyes. We’re gonna put some dirt on you.” Then, they took what seemed like a thousand pictures.

Scott

How did they do the makeup?

Ramon

Oh, my goodness, that’s another thing. I thought these guys knew what they were doing. There were these 2 officers/constables. They went in there and – they had this little kit – they started putting some stuff on – it looked like something that some kids do for Halloween. So I said, “Man, this is not gonna work.” I came to find out that they had learned on Youtube about how to put bullet wounds on their head for whatever reasons – for Halloween or whatever. When it came out, I said, “Man, let me tell you something. She’s not going to go for this, man. I know Lulu. She knows how to do Photoshop – she likes that kind of stuff – and messing with pictures. She’s not going to go for this. Here’s what we have to do.” Sure enough, they did it. This is where it gets crazy – the undercover officers took the pictures to her, told her that they have finished the job, and showed her the picture of me, supposedly, dead with a bullet wound at the side of my forehead. The first question that she asked the officer was, “He’s not getting up, right?” And they started laughing – that hurts so much. I mean, when I saw that video, I was like, “Did she just say ‘he’s not getting up’ and started laughing?” She thought that, literally, she had just hit the lotto when she saw that picture.

Scott

Of course, she had no reason to believe that it was fake – she didn’t have any reason to suspect it. Obviously, she really wanted badly to believe that it was true.

Ramon

She had so many people manipulated by telling lies about me that I was a drunk, that I was abusive, and that I had hit her kids – they had filed false police reports on me. I mean, I was just the worst man that there could be. So, she already had made people believe, “He’s not what people think.” So, when I ‘died’, they’re like, “Oh, he deserved it.” That’s the type of person that she was. She had a lot of people believing bad things about me, but it was all a lie. The whole time, I had to be quiet, I had to bite my tongue, I couldn’t say anything, although I already knew what was going on with the murder-for-hire.

Scott

So, they showed her that picture. In her mind, she finalized the deal and it was all done. Then, from that point, you were missing for three days?

Ramon

I had been missing after that. After they took a picture of me, they took me to the hotel, so I had been missing for three days. Nobody knew where I was at. My family, my kids, and everybody was looking for me. Then, they went and arrested her – this was the next day after they showed her the picture. Two officers went to my gym – she was at the office with her daughter – and talked to her. They said that they were doing a missing person report on me because I’d been gone for three days. She had this look like she was surprised, like, “I don’t know. I’ve been calling. I called a sister and they don’t know where he’s at. I call his friends and they don’t know where he’s at.” Then, she called and talked to her mother there. She said, “Mom, when was the last time we saw Ramon?” She said something like, “I think I saw him on Wednesday somewhere,” while knowing that she was just laughing the night before when she saw a picture of me dead.

Scott

And this is the audio of the day that the officers went to the gym, supposedly, to ask Lulu about the fact that Ramon was missing and to see if she knew where he might be. Of course, they knew he was in hiding and she thought he was dead, so she just played dumb. Then, they arrested her.

Detective Martinez

I’m Detective Martinez. I have a few questions for you. Is there somewhere we can talk in private?

Lulu

Yes, sure. Please come this way.

Detective Martinez

Okay. I never knew there is a boxing gym here.

Lulu

Yes. We have been here for five years now.

Detective Martinez

Okay.

Lulu

This is my daughter and my mother.

Detective Martinez

Okay. I got a call today that, apparently, your husband hasn’t been to work today.

Lulu

That’s what I think. I received a call today from a friend at work. He called me today and asked me for some information. I said, “Well, I haven’t seen him. We’re going through a divorce.”

Detective Martinez

When was the last time you saw him?

Lulu

Wednesday was the last time I saw him with my mom and my daughter. I was here from 4 AM to 12.30. Then I go home, take a shower, and then come back. That’s when we, sometimes, see him.

Detective Martinez

So he hasn’t contacted you in the last 24 hours?

Lulu

No.

Detective Martinez

When was the last time you checked your phone to make sure that you don’t have a missed call? Are you like most people? Do you check your phone a lot?

Lulu

Yeah, I have my phone with me all the time.

Detective Martinez

Okay, Miss Sosa. You’re under arrest.

Lulu

Why?!?!

Detective Martinez

It’s okay. Stay back. We have a warrant.

Ramon

So the officers were right there and said, “We have an arrest warrant.” They arrested her in front of her mother and her daughter – there were still clients in the gym. So, they took her in from there and that was it – she just got locked up.

Scott

She had to know right at that time.

Ramon

Oh, yeah. She knew exactly what was going on. She told her mother to call her attorney because she knew what she had done – there was no doubt. Then, my family didn’t know what was going on. The next thing I knew was there was a press conference. My news came out on every network around the nation. They showed what happened about me being a murder-for-hire or that she had been arrested for murder-for-hire – so, how my family found out was through the news.

Scott

So you didn’t even tell them? Did they find out by watching the news?

Ramon

Yeah. I didn’t have a chance because they had a press conference. By the time I could call them, it was too late and it was just mad crazy. People were crying and calling me. They had no idea that this was even going on, and it was crazy. Crazy.

Scott

Of course. You’ve been missing for three days and your kids didn’t even know where you were.

Ramon

Exactly.

Scott

How did you reunite with them? When did you meet up?

Ramon

Well, back then, my oldest son, Mitchell, was in San Antonio. He graduated from college and started working in San Antonio. Then, I have another son in LA, Cris. He’s in the acting and comedy business. My daughter was out there in LA too – she was modeling back then too. Two of them were in LA, so I called the one in San Antonio, Mitchell, and told him what was going on. The first thing that came out of his mouth was, like, “What the hell’s going on?” So, I explained to him. It was tougher talking to my daughter because she’s the youngest. Let me tell you… I’ve never heard that cry in my life when she heard my voice – she cried and cried and cried and it was horrible. To this day, it still bothers me.

Scott

They realize that they could have lost their dad.

Ramon

Yeah, exactly. I was close to being dead but, thank God, it worked out for me.

Scott

The visit to the gym where Lulu got arrested is on video. I’ll have that video on the website for this episode, so people can watch that if they want to.

Ramon

Yeah. It’s kind of crazy to know that, the day before, she was laughing and asking the undercover officer – whom she thought was the hitmen – if I was gonna go to get up and, the next day, she’s all worried about me. Cool. That’s what a psychopath does – that kind of stuff.

Scott

So, she got arrested. I think, a year later, she took a plea deal?

Ramon

Yeah. She was arrested for first-degree solicitation of capital murder and they gave her a million-dollar bond. A year and a half later, there was so much evidence stacked up against her that she had, like, 3 different attorneys trying to work with her – they finally gave up and said, “We’re just gonna plead.” She pleaded down to a second-degree capital murder solicitation of capital murder and got 20 years. When she got a sentence, I went to the hearing and they let me talk, they asked me if I wanted to say something, and I did. When I got up there, she never looked at me, she was standing in front of the judge and looking towards the judge with her attorney. I told her that I forgave her because I was living with this rage and this anger. I cannot go day-to-day. I wasn’t sleeping. I was so stressed out. I feel like the only way I can release all that stress and anger was by telling her that. Unless you are in a position like I was, you don’t understand the situation that goes through your mind and the anger that I have for her, her family, and everybody who was involved in trying to kill me. I forgave her. I said, “Everybody in this courtroom has made mistakes in their life. We’re not perfect, but for the mistakes that you’ve made, you’re gonna pay the consequences for, and God is gonna take care of it.” She never looked at me. She had no remorse – not once. All the times that we were in court for all the hearings, there was not one time that she had any remorse. I guessed that she felt like she was right for what she did. So, that’s the last thing I remember about her. Lulu loved wearing nice expensive clothes and shoes. We did well with the gym. Then, seeing her in a jumpsuit of pink and white stripes, chained up, wearing those $1 state shoes was the last thing I saw her when they took her away.

Scott

The night that she saw the picture of you dead and laughed may have been the last night she laughed since then.

Ramon

Yeah. The way she was laughing – she was very happy. I keep telling people that it looked like she had just hit the lotto, literally, because she said, “He’s not getting up, so it’s time for me to get paid now, basically.”

Scott

So she was sentenced to 20 years. When did she actually start serving that time? How much time has she served now?

Ramon

I believe since 2015. I guess they started with the time she got arrested in June 2015. So, it’s been 4 years and she’s at a state penitentiary in Texas.

Scott

Is there a chance that she would get out early?

Ramon

I’m pretty sure there is – with good behavior. I think she’s been out for parole a couple of times – believe it or not. I had to write letters and have people write letters. She has been denied.

Scott

That seems so soon for a 20-years-sentence to be out for parole after a couple of years.

Ramon

Yeah. I don’t know how that works in the state of Texas, but they have denied her both times. So, I don’t know what’s going to happen.

Scott

Have you thought about when she gets out of prison?

Ramon

Oh, yeah. Trust me. I still live with this. There’s not a day that goes by – not being scared – without me being very, very cautious of everything that’s around me. That’s one thing that she did to me – I still have a lot of problems trusting people. I’ve been staying away from, sometimes, even my family and even Mundo – the young man who I owe my life to. I have, kind of, separated myself from a lot of people that helped me and it’s not because I wanted to. It’s just because I just need time to recoup. Every day, I felt a pistol get close to my head. There was a time when I was sleeping on my own bed with a loaded shotgun. I also had a 40-millimeter gun in my kitchen and a 9-millimeter in the car loaded at all times – that’s how I lived for a while but is that a way to live?

Lulu comes from a family in Mexico. Her family – her sister, brother-in-law – does well for themselves. They do well in the business that they own, and I think that they can just pay anyone from Mexico to come over here and take me out for nothing, basically, for revenge, but I live in God’s hands. I pray and I let him take care of it. I have people that still watch me. Until this day, I still watch myself and watch my back because I still don’t know if there’s a plan B or C. Like I said, the separation that I created with my family, Mundo, and the people who love me is not because I’m trying to be mean, it’s because I need time. I’m going through counseling too because this has not been easy in my life.

Scott

It’s not like you can find a group therapy with other people who have been targeted for murder. I mean, the situation that you were in is unique.

Ramon

Yeah. It’s been very tough.

Scott

I understand Mundo is trying to keep a low profile as well, fearing retribution from his past – gang activities and that kind of thing.

Ramon

Yeah. Unfortunately, he also has to live like that, but he did it for me, and I owe my life to Mundo. I’ve told people – whoever it is who interviewed me – that God puts people in your path for a reason. He put the young man, Mundo, in my path for a reason – he was that angel who saved my life. If it wasn’t for him, I would not be here right now.

Scott

And he has written a book based on his perspective about the part he has played in this.

Ramon

Yeah. Mundo said that he wrote a book called, “My Son Mundo.” I wish him the best. I mean, to people out there listening, go out there and get his book.

Scott

Yeah, I’ll have a link to where you can buy that book on the website as well for anyone who wants to read that.

Ramon

Yeah. I wish him the best and I hope people out there go get his book.

Scott

What’s your day-to-day like now? Do you still train young kids to fight?

Ramon

No. I sold my gym. It was just too much for me at that time when all this stuff happened. I tried to keep up with it for almost a few months but there were too many memories and too much work for just me. We lost a lot of members because of what happened and I was, eventually, building it up again. So, I ended up selling it. I also rented my house out – the house where Lulu and I lived. There were just too many memories. I moved out into Houston. I was living in the wilderness area, like, north of Houston. I’ve been writing a book and it’ll be out as soon as the summer approaches.

Scott

What’s the title of your book?

Ramon

The name of the book is called, “I Walked on My Own Grave.” It talks about everything that happened – about me growing up, my family, and my kids. There are stories in there that have not been mentioned in any of my interviews around the world – I have not mentioned a lot of stuff that are in the book that are, like, jaw-dropping – things that will make you be like, “Wow! How could I live through this? How did he live through that?” What I want is for couples to learn from this book because, a lot of times, we live in a time where men keep their mouths shut. Men don’t talk. Men are afraid to call the police because of the stigma of machismo – like, “Why do you call the police on a woman and that kind of stuff?” So, this is for them – they cannot keep their mouth shut because a lot of women use sexual assault and abuse… When it does happen and is legitimate, man, they need to throw the book. I mean, I have a mother, a sister and, most importantly, a daughter. If any man does that to one of them, I hope they throw the book at them and get put away forever. But when you turn it around and a woman does this to a man, although it is a lie, I could have been in prison for the rest of my life because of this woman, I could have been dead because of this woman.

Scott

There are men who are still currently in prison because of accusations that could never be proven.

Ramon

Exactly, exactly. The statistics show that it very seldom happens – if that happens to your father, your brother, or a man in your life – how would you like it if they call you and say, “Look, your father’s locked up for abusing a lady,” although he had nothing to do with that? When that happens, the book needs to be thrown at her.

Scott

That’s a good cause. This sounds like it has all the elements of a movie. Is there any possibility of that? Have you thought about that?

Ramon

Some people have called me about a movie deal and I said, “No,” because I don’t know about that kind of business and I haven’t made any decisions yet. So, when the time comes and is right, I just want to let the book speak for itself. If everything goes well, we’ll see. I’ve been asked for some independent stuff, but I decided not to yet. I might just let the book go out there and see how it does. Again, it’s something that I believe is going to help out people who read about what happened to me – I hope they learn from it so that it doesn’t happen to them. If I can save one person or family or couple from going through what I went through, I think I’ve done my job.

Scott

Ramon, we are happy to help you share that message. Boy, what an amazing story! We really appreciate you coming on here and telling them.

Ramon

It’s been a pleasure, Scott. I definitely look forward to listening to your podcast. I hope that everybody out there enjoys this podcast and can learn something from it. If you know somebody who’s going through this, get them help. If you read my book or if you read Mundo’s book, I hope you learned something from it. We’re not perfect, but we can surely work at it with each other. If it doesn’t work out, you just get divorced and make things work that way. You don’t have to go to that extreme.

Scott

Ramon, welcome back to the podcast.

Ramon

Thank you for having me back. First of all, congratulations on your podcast. I think you reminded me that was what 21st interview you had.

Scott

Yeah, I think it was the 21st episode. It’s been five years. At that time, Lulu had been in prison for about four years. Is she still locked up?

Ramon

Is she still locked up? She has actually been released on parole – a very strict parole – in November of 2023 and she’s going to be serving the rest of her time, which is 12 more years on the parole. So, she has very strict restrictions. Of course, she can’t be around me and my family, and she’s about 11 hours from where I’m at.

Scott

Oh, so you know where she’s living then?

Ramon

Yeah. The parole board– I have all access and they keep me updated with everything that’s going on with her at all times.

Scott

Do you feel like you’re in any danger from her – or not necessarily her, but her family?

Ramon

I’m not going to say that I don’t because I still watch my back and I still do that– I’m a different man. My life will never be the same ever again ever since what she did to me and my family, to be honest with you, because when my family found out that she was out on parole, they started panicking and I tried to tell them, “Look, she’s going to get out sooner or later. It’s going to happen sooner or later. It is what it is. I will just have to be careful.”

I don’t live my life lacking fear where I go but I do watch my back and I try not to go to places where there are a lot of people. That’s how my life is now. I don’t do a lot of things that I used to do before. I’m very careful with the people I speak to on the phone and numbers I don’t recognize or people who try to reach out to me on social media. I don’t answer that kind of stuff.

Scott

It seems, obviously, if anything happened to you, she would be the obvious suspect – or someone in her family. Before, when she was trying to have you taken out, it was a financial thing. She wouldn’t have that incentive now, right? She’s not going to get anything.

Ramon

Oh, no. The only way that I believe that she would try to do anything or have anybody do anything to me is just out of rage and anger or payback or anything like that. Financially, she’s not like getting anything out of it. I mean, honestly, I don’t think she would do anything knowing that she spent eight years locked up and she would be definitely the first person that would go after her and her family. I just leave it in God’s hands and I pray for my family and myself. I got to move on. I got to move on with my life.

Scott

And from her standpoint, she’s on parole. If she messes up, not just in relation to you, but if she does anything and screws it up, she’s going back.

Ramon

Oh yeah. The parole board gave me all the rules and she has to go bye bye. They’re very strict. They’re very strict, especially for the first year. She’s right now has a monitor on her ankle and she has to do some anger management classes. She has to find a job. I don’t know where she lives exactly – halfway house or whatever – but they’re keeping up with her and I have access to her parole officer at any time I have any questions. So yeah, I’m updated with whatever it is she’s doing if I see anything funny around me or something.

Scott

What’s happened since then? Or what are you doing for work now?

Ramon

My life has been great. I’m very happy to say that I’m now engaged to a wonderful lady.

Scott

Oh, congratulations. That’s awesome.

Ramon

Thank you. I’m very happy about that. She’s wonderful. She’s been great to me and my family, and I’m just happy that I found somebody. How God puts people in your path for a reason – that’s what happened with her. She’s been great.

As far as my job, I sold my business, my boxing gym, and I’ve sold my home that we had together, and I got rid of all them – too many memories – and it was just a mess. I also have my book. I take care of myself. I’m working out and I have three beautiful grandkids now, and I spend a lot of time with them whenever I can. I do have a 9-5, I’m an instructor. I’m just happy to– I tell people all the time that have known me for years and they start laughing every time I meet them. I see them out there and I tell them every time they say hello to me, “Man, it’s great to be alive, and every day for me above ground is a good day.”

Scott

Because you have literally been below ground in that grave. It’s a unique perspective that you’ve had.

Ramon

Yeah, I tell people all the time too, I say, “Look, man. I’ve literally walked to my own grave.” I’ve never met anybody or heard anybody that’s ever done it or had that done to them.

Scott

Isn’t it amazing– I mean, if you look back just 10 years – the life that you had then and the life that you have now – it’s almost like you’re a different person.

Ramon

Oh, totally. In my heart, I’m happier now, I’ll be honest with you, with the person that I’m with now and the relationship that I have with my kids now too because that was another thing that she did and I can’t blame nobody but myself for letting her put a wedge between me and my kids. I have become a better father than I was back then because Lulu was a person that was very manipulative and she got to me and she put a wedge between my kids and I. Again, I can’t blame anybody but myself. I have a great relationship with my kids. Now, my daughter, Mia, and my sons, Mitchell and Cris, they’re my life. Yeah, my life back then was– I lived very well back then. Financially, I did a lot of things, but the way I live life now, I love it. I love being around my kids, my family, my grandkids, and of course, my future wife also.

Scott

And that’s the important stuff right there. It’s too bad more people don’t figure that out.

Ramon

Oh yeah. Family is everything. I mean, you can have everything and travel the world. Money is not everything. Money can’t buy you happiness. I’ll be the first one to tell you that it doesn’t buy you happiness and less headaches. I mean, of course you need it. Financially, you got to pay your bills and everything, but just being around my family and my kids and grandkids–

I work out a lot more now. I’m physically in better shape than I think I was back when I was competing. I looked at myself in those pictures from back then and said, “Wow.” But that had to do a lot of it with a lot of stress mentally and physically, and that’s what happens. Now, oh my God, I’ve developed different bodies. I’m about to be 57 in June and I look totally different. I worked out. We all try to work out every day and run and stay in excellent shape.

Scott

That’s important. And I’ve looked at your Instagram. You do look great.

Ramon

Oh, thank you.

Scott

And when we last spoke, you were in the process of writing your book. That book is out now. Tell us about that book. It just outlines the details of the whole story?

Ramon

Yeah. My book is, “I Walked on My Own Grave.” It’s my memoir about everything that happened in detail and it’s done very well. I mean, I received great reviews from people that have read it. Well, actually I didn’t write it, to be honest with you. I had a ghostwriter. I’m not a professional writer, but this is my story. I wrote my story and then my ghostwriter helped me put it together. Yeah. She did an excellent job in it.

As far as the book, I tell people it’s kind of like you’re watching these stories in Spanish or these novellas where you have to get to the end, you got to get to the next chapter because you can’t put it down. I’ve had people tell me this, “I could not– I mean, I started reading your book and I stayed up to three, four o’clock in the morning reading your book because, right after your chapter, I got to see what happens. I need to know what’s going on.” And that’s what it was.

It’s a lot of ups and downs. People tell me the same thing, “Man, there’s so many different emotions that went through me from being so happy. I’m so upset at this lady about what she did to you. And then, at the end, she got what she deserved and I’m happy for you.” And that’s what it’s all about – somebody that went through a very difficult situation in a relationship. My hope is that whoever reads my book or even listens to my story gets something or learns something from what happened to me so it doesn’t happen to them. Or if they know somebody that is going through a difficult situation, they can learn from what happened to me.

Scott

It’s so great to have a true story like this, and yet it has a happy ending.

Ramon

Yeah.

Scott

Not so happy for Lulu, but for everybody else.

Ramon

And what’s so crazy, Scott, is that I’m still doing documentaries. This thing happened in 2015 and I still get asked all the time to do different documentaries from around the world. Different companies call me to do that. But what I’m planning on doing now is telling my story myself on stage like a one-man show. I think I’ve came across some people that I brought it up to and they were like, “Oh man, that would be awesome because it’s nothing like having the person that it happened to right there in front of you telling their story, a true crime story of what happened to me on stage.” I’ve spoken in interviews so many times that I’ve gotten pretty good at it and I think that I would be pretty good at telling my story on stage.

Scott

Yeah. You’ve had a lot of practice and first-hand true stories. That’s the whole premise of my podcast. That’s why your story was really perfect to come on here. Of course, since then, we’ve done lots and lots of other ones, but you definitely have a unique story. So we’ll have links to some of your YouTube appearances, your interviews, stuff like that, as well as, of course, the link to where to get your book. Where’s the best place to get the book? Just Amazon or is there someplace else you would prefer?

Ramon

Yeah. Amazon is probably the best place right now to get the book. If they don’t have it, they’re sold at different locations. Any major bookstore has it. If they don’t have it, they can order it.

Scott

And the title again is, “I Walked on My Own Grave.” What a crazy story. Thanks for coming back on. It’s great to hear from you again.

Ramon

Thank you so much, Scott, for having me on. Again, congratulations on your podcast. And man, many best wishes for you and your family.

Scott

You can see a recent picture of Ramon, and get a full transcript of this episode, at the episode notes page for this episode, which is at WhatWasThatLike.com/180.

Here’s a question – did you know that I send out a short email every time I release a new episode of What Was That Like? It’s true. But it’s not some boring email that just says “Hey listen to my show” or “Hey buy my merch” (actually I hardly ever promote my merch).

No, with my emails I try to make it entertaining and fun to read. I mention what the new episode is about, then I also link to something interesting I just discovered, such as an article about the one drink to never order at McDonalds, or the first thing you should check when you get to your hotel room.

And I also always include a recent picture from my phone – I often snap a picture when I see something interesting and I love sharing these things with you.

And honestly, one of the reasons I have the email list is because I don’t trust Facebook. Facebook is weird sometimes. Right now there are over 7000 people in the podcast listener Facebook group, but Facebook has been known sometimes to just say “Hey, we decided to shut down your group!” and it just suddenly vanishes. And then how do I communicate with you? Well, at least I can send out a message to you if you’re on my email list, saying “Hey, guess what – the FB group got shut down” and you wouldn’t be wondering what happened.

So if you’re not already getting my emails, you can sign up for free at WhatWasThatLike.com/email. And of course you can unsubscribe any time if you want.

Okay, enough about email, let’s get to the Listener Story!

Every episode we close out with an audio story that was sent in by a listener. Just something interesting, or scary, or funny, or sad, or amazing, or anything that you think people might enjoy hearing. So what’s YOUR story. If you can tell it in like 5-10 minutes, record it on your phone and email it to me at Scott@WhatWasThatLike.com.

This week’s story is from someone who witnessed a car accident that involved a friend.

Stay safe – and I’ll see you next week with a Tuesday Question episode, and a brand new episode on Friday.

(Listener Story)

It was about 6.30 in the evening in Kansas City, Missouri. We were at our friend’s apartment complex. We were leaving, walking out to our car, and our friend Logan was following us out, and he mentioned something about his 4-wheeler and how he wanted to show us something. So we’re like, “All right.” We got in the car. We were following him out. When we got to the stop sign, we put our blinker on to go left. We watched Logan make a big hook to the right. So he made a big arc like he’s going to head left, but just kind of swings it around.

As we were watching him, I looked at my boyfriend and I was like, “What is he doing? I have no clue what’s going on right now.” My boyfriend was like, “I have no clue what this guy’s doing.” As we’re watching a car comes from the left side and slams into him going at least 40 miles per hour – maybe more – and Logan went flying like a ragdoll so far up into the air, just straight up, and he just slammed down. All I was saying at that point was, “Oh god.” And when he landed, my instant thought was, “He’s dead. He has to be dead.” I pulled up into the lane where he was – they were kind of in the turn lane – and I got out of my car really quick.

I saw that the four-wheeler was jammed underneath the car that hit him. There were liquids pouring out of the car. The bumper was ruined. The four-wheeler is absolutely totaled. Our friend was lying there and, then, the absolute craziest thing happened. He jumped up and he sprinted away. I have absolutely no clue how he did this but we later figured out that it was probably a concussion mixed with adrenaline that just made him sprint away. So, I went and sprinted after him.

As I was doing that, my boyfriend was talking to these two gentlemen who were in the car. I did not hear their conversation but I do know that one of the first things they said when they got out of the car was they didn’t have insurance. We understand our friend also did not have insurance which meant that our friend did not want to call an ambulance, and the closest public hospital was 20 minutes away. So I asked him, “Please let me call 911, get you an ambulance. I don’t know what’s wrong with you, but I know it has to be something bad. It has to be.” He said, “No, just take me to the hospital. Just take me to the hospital.”

So we got into the car. My boyfriend grabbed these guys’ information, their phone number, and their names, and we went to the hospital. On the way, he was asking me questions like, “Am I going to die?” That just scared me so badly. I was like, “I have no clue. You could have internal injuries. I don’t know.” He also thought that his face was caved in because he just had a huge gash on his forehead with blood, pretty much making him blind in one eye, and he’s like, “Am I going to be able to see again?” I’m like, “I don’t know.” And my boyfriend gave him a shirt to put on his head.

We finally got to the hospital. We walked into a sea of absolutely horrified faces because I don’t think most people who get hit by a car just walk into the emergency room, but he did. He’s a trooper. They took him instantly back to triage. As he was back there, I was calling his girlfriend, trying to get her to come up to the hospital. She was completely out of the loop. When she saw the scene, there were cops there but nobody knew what happened. The other guys left the scene because they didn’t want to get in trouble for having no insurance.

So she got up there and they transferred him to a trauma hospital. They get MRIs and X-rays, and he is so lucky he only came out with a fractured vertebra, a pretty mangled-up thumb, some pretty big gashes on his head that needed stitches and staples, and a concussion, and that’s it. He got out of the hospital that night with just some pain pills and a recommendation to go to physical therapy.

I saw him a week later. He looked like he was healing up fine. He could walk fine. He showed us that he could bend his back. It’s just honestly a miracle. I asked him if he felt like a superhero because I was like, “You just got hit by a car and you’re alive.” And his response was, no, he doesn’t feel like a superhero. He is just mad that his weekend was ruined.

View Details

We have a different type of episode today.

Three storiesShow Podcast InformationNormally, we’d be hearing from someone who survived an animal attack, or was in a plane crash, or won lots of money on a TV game show. At the moment we have more than 170 episodes like that.

But sometimes I end up with stories that are not quite long enough for a full episode. But they’re just too good not to use.

So today, you’re about to hear three stories. The first one and the last one are just the storyteller talking. The story in between is a conversation I had with the guest, and he talks about what happened.

And of course to end the episode we’ll have our Listener Story.

So I hope you enjoy this 3-story episode.

Matt’s house after the fireEmmett’s roomFull show notes and pictures for this episode are here:

https://WhatWasThatLike.com/179

Graphics for this episode were created by Bob Bretz. Full transcription was done by James Lai.

Want to discuss this episode and other things with thousands of other WWTL listeners? Join our podcast Facebook group at WhatWasThatLike.com/facebook (many of the podcast guests are there as well)

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Episode transcript (download transcript PDF)

We have a different type of episode today.

Normally, we’d be hearing from someone who survived an animal attack, or was in a plane crash, or won lots of money on a TV game show. At the moment we have more than 170 episodes like that.

But sometimes I end up with stories that are not quite long enough for a full episode. But they’re just too good not to use.

And of course to end the episode we’ll have our Listener Story.

So I hope you enjoy this 3-story episode.

Scott

Our first story is from a young woman who meets an unusual stranger.

Female 2

Back in March of 2021, I found myself living alone on the edge of a cliff in Big Sur over the Pacific Ocean with my two little dogs in a fully converted schoolie – or school bus – without any hot water, electricity, or internet service. I was 30 at the time and I had been living out there on the bus for about, I don’t know, a couple of months at this point. I lived, in total, 6 months in Big Sur on the bus but, at this point, I think it was more around three or four months.

I would have to drive about 45 minutes to an hour to Monterey to do any simple errands such as grocery shopping, laundry, refueling my car, or even getting internet access. I created a weekly ritual to do all these things where I would go into Monterey or Carmel each Sunday and get everything done. While I waited for my laundry, I would go get lunch at a nearby restaurant and it was the same spot every week. I had the same ritual before I would return back to Big Sur. I was living there and working a little gallery job at the time. For anyone who has not either traveled Route 1 or traveled to Big Sur, it is a much different lifestyle than being a tourist there. You really have to adapt to the lifestyle overall and you have to work to live there, that’s for sure. I mean work at living there.

One of these Sundays, as I was waiting for my laundry, I went to my usual spot for lunch. As I walked in, I immediately noticed someone making clear and intentional eye contact with me and I just kind of knew this person would end up approaching me. Just the way our eyes met, the way that he looked at me, I kind of felt as though he wanted to say something. It was kind of an underlying dread like, “Here we go. I’m going to have to interact with this person.” I would consider myself more of an introvert, so I don’t typically– I mean, I do go out to eat alone often and I do a lot of things alone which I don’t mind but, sometimes, I feel like I’m a little more shut off from socializing. But I got the feeling he wanted to talk to me and I figured, “I’m going to come here and get lunch anyway. We’ll see what happens.”

I sat down at the only available booth, which was actually right nearby him, and I pulled out my laptop at the time. Although I was working at a gallery in Big Sur, I was also working on applications to a couple of jobs – the plan to relocate from Big Sur – because, again, it was super isolating and challenging. I had a great time. I learned so much living there, but I’m an art teacher and I wanted to get back into that. I missed it a lot. Anyway, I started working on those things.

I placed my order and I started working on my applications and this man turned and asked me what I was working on, which I kind of anticipated he would. I gave him a brief answer, just saying, “Oh, just a couple of job applications.” I was hoping not to really engage his attention but, instead, it kind of piqued his interest. He asked if he could join me. I’m kind of a people pleaser. I would consider myself pretty friendly. Even though I just wanted to work on these applications and have my lunch in solitude, I said, “Yeah, of course, you can join me. Come on over.” So he did.

He began asking me questions right off the bat and they were kind of deep for sort of just meeting. He introduced himself with deeper questions than you would expect from a sort of stranger. They’re more personal and that intrigued me. In fact, I wasn’t put off. I wasn’t shocked or offended. I was intrigued. I thought, “Okay, this is different.” Typically, when you just meet somebody, it’s more surface level stuff. A conversation with strangers is more interesting when we get down to some deeper things. I don’t love small talk but I am a sucker for those deeper, more meaningful conversations. So it was kind of off to a good start.

I answered his questions with honesty. There were questions like, “Did you follow a man out here?” I hadn’t even told him that I was from the East Coast and had relocated somewhat recently within the past year. I moved to California in October of 2020 and this, again, was in March 2021. He asked me if I followed a man out here, which was right. I was kind of shocked, I suppose, at first and I thought, “Well, that’s kind of a typical story. People follow their partner.”

It was then he asked me, “Are you applying for these jobs seeking validation from others?” And that took me back because I felt like it’s one thing to ask, “Why are you applying for these jobs or what are you applying for?”, but it was like a two-parter. “Are you applying for these jobs to seek validation from others?” I was answering his questions. I told him why I thought I was applying for these jobs and that it was time for a change, and he asked me if it was what I really wanted to do. He could tell certain things about me that I hadn’t shared – things that you might not know just based on looking at someone.

I was wearing these giant, what he called, Elton John sunglasses. I was wearing a bucket hat. I feel that, when I go out in public, I kind of put on this sort of half disguise in order to not be approached but it didn’t work. It kind of drew him to me. So I answered those questions and he was bold enough to continue asking other questions. He shared things with me about myself, which I suppose anyone would like to hear. He said that I was capable of doing anything I wanted to but I just wasn’t aware of that yet. I just needed to wield my power.

He just seemed to be able to almost read my mind and my energy. He knew most of the answers to his questions already. It was almost like he was asking just to confirm what he seemed to already know. He did not allow me to break eye contact which I thought was interesting. He constantly seemed to be scanning my face and watching my body language with intention, looking for cues about me. He would react to the slightest shift in my posture, realizing if he asked about certain things that would create discomfort, he would back off if that’s what I wanted. He was just constantly scanning me up and down and it wasn’t in maybe a violating way, it wasn’t in a way where I felt uncomfortable. It seemed like he was really in tune or really trying to read me.

He himself was a very tall and broad man. He had long hair that he kept in a bun, long dark hair, and he had a really thick accent. He was Israelian and he was probably in his 50s. Again, at the time, I was just a newly thirty. Originally, I wanted him not to bother me but then I unexpectedly started to become somewhat attracted to him – maybe not attracted to his overall appearance physically – but it wasn’t about that. It was more about his presence, his intrigue, his interest, and the way he kept the conversation moving. It wasn’t dull and it was exciting. It was unlike anyone I had spoken to at this point. I had spent quite a bit of time by myself at the end of one long-term relationship and I was sort of still grieving that and finding my way, and then here’s this person who seems to be interested in my life for some reason.

Originally, again, I didn’t really want him to bother me, but then I kind of wanted him to stay. He seems so genuinely interested in knowing me and communicating with me about my energy. He said that when I walked into the restroom, I had filled the space with brightness but he would also feel about me that I had a clear underlying sadness, which was true. I thought, “Yeah, that’s something you could say to most people” and it probably is true. It was that among other things that just got me interested.

For anyone who might not know much about living in Big Sur, it is extremely remote and there’s a very low population – 1,000 people or less – but it’s dispersed throughout the entire town, you might say, along Route 1. It’s pretty random and far apart. If you have neighbors, they are a ways away from you. Many of the housing situations are pretty unique and hard to reach. People live in yurts. They live in parts of homes. A lot of people who maybe work doing landscaping live in a part of another person’s home. People live in buses like I did or shipping containers or RVs or tents or whatever they can find, really. They even have, like, human-sized nests out there. So it’s a very small town and a very popular tourist attraction. But again, living there is so much different than actually being a visitor on vacation there. So I learned that the hard way.

I commuted to work every day on my bicycle because it was easier than driving. My driveway was about a 15-minute long drive but I wanted the exercise and it was so beautiful out there that riding my bike an hour to and from work seemed like a lot of fun. It would be a missed opportunity if I didn’t. So everyone’s house is in the middle of nowhere and every driveway is a seemingly inaccessible dirt road off another road that connects to Route 1. I mention this because, as I was following this total stranger that we spoke for maybe 20, 30 minutes, I was following him back to his studio and I had no clue who he is, where his studio was, if this is even legitimate and how far off route this is, and if I’m going to be taken without any service at all.

So it’s probably important for me to tell you why I’m on my way out to this stranger’s place. He did end up paying for my lunch and finally shared a little bit about himself, stating that he practiced massage and energy work in Monterey, Carmel, and Big Sur, among other territories. He told me that he believed he could really help me through some things with massage and he invited me to his studio for a massage and energy work session. I’ve had energy work before, I’ve had massage before, and I was like, “Yeah, that sounds really awesome, that sounds nice. I would totally be down for that.” I entertained the idea and I expressed interest to him for booking a session, and I was like, “Oh, well, maybe give me your contact information.” And I asked him for a time that might work in his schedule, and he said, “How about right now?” And being put on the spot again – I’m kind of a people pleaser – I said, “Okay, yeah, I have time right now.” Even though all of me thought, “Oh no, I’m not ready for this,” I said, “Yes. I’d go get a massage.”

I let him know that I need to still wait for and collect my laundry and asked him if I could just have an address, and part of me was already thinking like, “Oh, I just want to build in some time to change my mind by maybe getting his number and telling him like, ‘Not today. Maybe another day,” just to think about it. As the sort of introvert I am, I was just looking for an out. I was hoping to build in some time to change my mind but he was pretty charming and pretty relentless. He told me he would wait for me to get my laundry and I could just follow him to his massage studio in my car over to where he did his work.

So I drove the 40 minutes down long windy roads following him and finally arrived at a large house in the middle of nowhere. Of course, it’s Big Sur and it was along a string of seemingly other empty houses. Maybe they were vacation rentals for families, I’m not sure, but they all seemed kind of abandoned. As we arrived, it sort of set in that I was joining this man who was essentially a stranger to his personal home. This was his house. This wasn’t a massage studio or spa or office like I had originally pictured. Part of me felt like I should have known better because of the nature of Big Sur. There’s a lot of community, which is great. And a lot of free love and a lot of things are done privately from homes.

I was nervous for sure to get out of my car and follow this person into what was unknown to me, but it looked like a very nice house. I thought to myself, “What am I doing? I’m just following this random person to his house. I barely know him. I had no proof or evidence that anything he had said to me was true, or if he was even a real massage therapist.” So I know what you’re all thinking. “Why would you do that? Why would you follow the total stranger into his house? At any point, you could have bailed. You could have just kept driving. You could have seen the house and left.” I understand that and I don’t encourage anybody to follow strangers to their houses. Certainly, listen to your own little voice or gut feeling or intuition or whatever it is that you make decisions based off of. For me, I did get the feeling I was safe.

I was a little bit nervous just because I hadn’t met this person and I tend to be somewhat socially awkward anyway. I did let several people know where I was going because, at that point, I did have the address. Even though I had no service volumes out there, I did feel like I somewhat trusted this person or I at least felt comfortable enough where I was like, “Let’s see where this goes.” My curiosity sort of was overriding any nervousness or fear. He seemed super genuine and kind, and I know a lot of people can– maybe some people will say, “Well, that’s grooving.” But I can say, here I am today telling the story, so nothing bad came of it. But again, I don’t encourage anyone to follow strangers to homes. I just went with my own intuition and felt like this was something that I should be doing.

I blindly followed him up the steps into his home and he told me the studio was in the guest house which was another outdoor staircase away outside. So, we had to exit the house once again and go up the steps into this little guest suite and it was, like, an in-law apartment. I followed him up there and inside was a bed, a massage table, some couches, a bathroom, a kitchen. It was truly like a fully furnished and equipped guest suite and I was relieved to see some massage accessories in there to sort of confirm, “Okay, I am where I should be.” This includes the massage oils, the sheets, the massage table bed, the right music, the scents, and everything that I felt a massage space would have.

He gave me a short list of instructions which included taking my clothes off, which I had no clue that’s where we were going. I’ve had massages but never fully naked. He told me that I’d be carrying out a chakra stone ritual before we started which was just basically holding each stone of each chakra point in your hand with some intention. He walked me through this and he told me to complete the ritual before we started and then told me to lay down and drape a sheet over my body when I was ready. My heart kind of sank at this point because I did not realize I was going to be doing this completely nude. Again, I don’t encourage anyone– if they’re not comfortable getting completely nude, don’t do it. Just say to this person, “Well, I’m going to stay clothed.” That’s your boundary and they have to respect that.

I’ve never done this before at this point where I got completely nude. Again, my curiosity just totally overwhelmed me and I thought, “You know what? I’m already here. I made it this far. I met this person. I’m going to go all the way and see what this is about.” I didn’t feel unsafe. I didn’t feel threatened. I felt, “Okay, I’m going to try it.” Even though I was very nervous, I did have half a mind to get out of there but had already committed. I’ll admit, curiosity, again, was the driving force here.

He told me I could undress in the bathroom in the space and he would step out regardless. He told me once I reentered the space that he had set up to put the chakra stones outside the door in this giant seashell and that would let him know I was ready. So I came back out from undressing and I put the sheet over my body and he had left me a really sweet letter that he was so grateful I was there. He called me a beautiful goddess. I’m still getting some mixed messages. I wasn’t sure what was happening but I thought it was nice.

He had set the mood with the candles and the scents and he said again to let him know once I was ready so he would start. So I laid myself down. I put the shell and the stones outside the door. I wrapped myself in the sheet. I got on the table and he came in. He dimmed the lighting and he played soft, relaxing music. He came back in and didn’t say a word and when he did come back, I had no clue what to expect. I just laid there for a little bit. He jumped right in with the hot massage oil and his hands all over my body and he said nothing.

He began massaging my body every square inch. It was really unlike anything I’d ever felt before, including the uneasiness of having a stranger’s hands all over you in some of the most intimate ways. I couldn’t get a sense of if this was sexual in nature or not. I thought maybe I’d never had a massage this in-depth before, but he wasn’t missing any areas of my body. It certainly felt very good. Whatever he was doing, it was working.

He started narrating some of the responsive areas of my body and sharing where you could tell I had some sort of stress or trauma. He would tell me my back is really responsive but my thighs were really reluctant and that resonated with me. He wasn’t asking for any information or looking for a response from me. He wasn’t asking why this was happening or if I felt anything. He was just talking calmly and relaxing. He was simply stating what he felt beneath his hands in each portion of my body, including my skin, my muscles, and even areas. I would typically only ever let someone I was very close with and romantically involved with and comfortable enough emotionally to allow them to touch me. So it was interesting to know what somebody believes they could feel about my body. I was still very interested and I was getting a really amazing massage. He wasn’t wrong with a lot of the descriptions he would share.

I didn’t like it when he went beneath the waist or closer to my chest. He could tell I’d get nervous and tense and he would tread a little more lightly and slow down and then he started asking permission as he went along when he reapproached those areas that maybe I was less comfortable with. I was relieved to be giving some sort of consent as it seemed I was in a trance up to this point, just doing what he said without question. But again, all along the while, I did feel safe. I felt like for whatever reason I could trust him. I didn’t feel like I was in any danger. I don’t know why I blindly trusted him. It was his energy, his presence. The things he was saying just felt legitimate. I suppose part of me felt like I would probably know or feel if I was in danger.

This massage lasted for over two hours, even though it only felt like 20 or 30 minutes. By the end of it, I realized I wasn’t sure how I was going to pay him. I was again living in my schoolie on a cliff in Big Sur working at a little gallery job and was not necessarily rolling in it at that point. I was curious enough that I sort of forgot about that part. Realized I had just had a two-hour deep tissue professional massage, the best massage of my life and I wasn’t sure how I could pay for it, knowing that type of service is usually a small fortune.

By the end of the massage, he had sat me up. At this point, I wasn’t really shy about being naked anymore. I still had the sheet on, but I wasn’t shy that I was pretty vulnerable. He stared at me for a long while. I wasn’t sure really how we were going to wrap it up or what was next because this experience felt more intimate and less like a business transaction, not something like, “All right, get dressed and then figure out how to pay me and leave.”

He invited me onto the couch and he laid me down right next to him. He was laying down too. I wasn’t sure what was happening and I didn’t question it for some reason. He asked me if he could kiss me and this really caught me off guard because, at this point, I’m thinking this is maybe not a business transaction but a little bit more intimate than that, but I don’t know. I never got the sense it was sexual at all. I told him no and he accepted that. He invited me to come live in his guest suite though and that also caught me off guard. Essentially, we had just met and I couldn’t figure out what he wanted for me. Why would he want me to come live in his massage studio?

So we just laid there for a little while and he asked me if I’d be willing to come back. Of course, I said, yes. I had finally decided I needed to ask the awkward question I had been avoiding about how much I owed him. He said I owed him nothing. He was just grateful. I was there and wanted me to receive the gift of touch and be grateful for that too. So I agreed and I said, “Yeah, I would definitely be back.” I left there feeling like I was on a bit of a high and also shocked at what had just happened. It was an amazing experience, very unexpected, and I did feel great. I left there feeling amazing. I left there feeling like a new person.

I did end up going back twice more for two more very in-depth naked massages and found out he was actually a celebrity masseuse. For some reason, he just took a short but intense interest in me and I don’t know why. Beyond just asking me if he could kiss me, there were never any other advances. We did these massages and we actually began messaging back and forth and it became pretty personal. But it was always difficult for me to get a read on what type of interest this was. It felt, like, not so much as a friend but it didn’t feel like he wanted anything beyond that. Maybe this was just the Big Sur lifestyle. So I continued to see it through.

I consistently ran into him randomly around Big Sur. It always seemed odd. Like, he kind of knew where I’d be and when. He did seem to have these almost magical powers where he could kind of read my mind, my energy, what I was feeling, and where I was, and I really liked that. It was interesting. It was unlike anyone I ever met.

But suddenly things changed one day when I offered to help him with some yard work. I arrived at his house to help him and the dynamics had clearly changed. I remember I got out of the car and I wasn’t dressed up but I was wearing nice casual clothes. And I remember he looked me up and down and he said, “What are you wearing? This isn’t a date.” And I was very taken aback because, up to this point, he had been very sweet and welcoming. I’d approach and he’d tell me I looked beautiful and gorgeous that day. But we were clearly there to do the yard work.

He looked at me differently. The presence wasn’t as warm or comforting. It wasn’t the same. I felt more like I was showing up for work, not as a friend, not as a girlfriend, as someone who had just some sort of connection to him and had agreed to help, and that was fine.

He shared a little bit more about his life and where he was from. He talked to me about tantric sex, about books he had published. He talked to me about his experiences in Israel, his experience with a relationship, and a son that had sadly passed and opened up quite a bit. But he also had no problem directing me and treating me like an everyday person he had just hired to help. He did actually pay me for this even though I really just wanted to exchange some help after all of the gifted massages.

I think I realized during this interaction that the odd bubble of sensual intimate massages with a stranger was either burst or it’s just over. The next day I discovered I was actually covered in poison oak head to toe which was miserable, so I had to cancel the next massage and the next massage and, after that, we kind of just lost contact. I had been suffering with poison oak for quite a while and we just sort of lost touch and I ended up moving. I never ended up seeing him again. Still, to this day, I’m not sure why he offered me such extensive free massages that were in some ways even more intimate than sex – the way he would touch me. I do feel like he has healed a part of me. I had never been touched that way and still haven’t been touched that way since. I had reached out a couple of times but it looked like he had changed his number, or just wasn’t in service at the time.

He made an impact on my life though, and he planted some interesting seeds in my mind. I definitely will never forget him. I ended up moving from Big Sur about one to two months after that. Honestly, I still think about him often.

Scott

Our second story today is from Matt, who was at home with his young son, Emmett, when they heard an explosion.

The house where this happened, how long had you lived there at the time?

Matt

We only lived there for only a few months.

Scott

Oh, so you’d practically just moved in then.

Matt

Yes.

Scott

The house was near an airport. So you were used to hearing and seeing low-flying planes. What’s that like living next to an airport?

Matt

It was fantastic to have the low-flying airplanes right over your house. It was pretty cool. Me and my son would be out there in the backyard, in the front yard, and we’d be just watching the airplanes. Sometimes, you would see the real old-school airplanes flying over, but it was cool.

Scott

They would kind of fly right over your house before they got to the runway.

Matt

Yes. If you stood on top of the house, it seemed like if you held a broomstick up, you’d be able to touch the belly of the plane. That’s how low it seemed at the time.

Scott

Who was home with you when this happened?

Matt

It was me and my son. We were home. My wife was at work and the two other girls were at school.

Scott

And your son is Emmett. How old was he at the time?

Matt

About one, one and a half.

Scott

Can you describe how was your house laid out? Like, where were you when this happened?

Matt

Well, me and my son just came in from outside cause he was hungry for a snack and went into the kitchen. He went and sat on the couch in the living room and that’s when it happened. I was used to hearing the planes fly over, used to hearing them cut their engine off and hearing them stall out to glide the rest of the way in, so none of those noises were strangers to me. I heard the plane putter like it stalled again. I didn’t think anything of it because I would hear that all the time and see the shadow of it, which I’m no stranger to seeing the shadows of the planes as well – because while they’re that low to see a big shadow come over. Just seconds later from seeing the shadow, it was like a massive explosion hitting the house and I knew right then and there that it was a plane.

Scott

And how far away were you in the house from where it hit?

Matt

The distance, oh, you gave me a hard question.

Scott

I know you didn’t have a tape measure that day.

Matt

The plane hit the master bedroom. It was about two rooms away. Emmett’s room was somewhat small. It was the dining room first and then Emmett’s room next to it. So it was the dining room and then Emmett’s room and then the master bedroom. After I heard the explosion and felt the explosion, I knew right away that it was a plane. I don’t know how I knew that it was a plane. I just knew for a fact that it was a plane. I just fell on the floor and then saw Emmett’s face and the fear that he had on his face. I got up and ran to him. At the same time, I was thinking a million miles a second, “Okay, what should I do? What’s going to happen? What’s next? The plane hit the master bedroom or exploded. The flames are coming down the hallway. At the same time, within seconds, flames can travel faster than ever.” I don’t know how I was able to think that fast about what to do.

I just picked him up. One of my thoughts was, “Should I run out the front door? No. Because what if something else decides to explode inside the plane or whatnot.” So I said, “No, don’t run out the front door.” I picked him up and went out the back door. As I was thinking a million miles an hour, I could hear the gases released from the plane. I don’t know what gases but I could hear them being released from the plane – crackles and pops. I could just hear the entire plane and house burning. I took out outside the back door and ran across the street, holding him, telling him that it’s going to be okay. I ran across the street to the neighbor’s house, turning back and looking at the house. At the same time, while trying to dial 911, I was thinking, “Is this a far enough distance away from the house because, again, what if something else explodes – gas line or whatnot?” But I figured that I’m pretty safe across the street just trying to dial 911.

Looking down at the phone, there were hundreds of buttons being pushed because the adrenaline was going and I was trying to comfort him. At the same time, I was making sure that he was not hurt and that I was not hurt. I didn’t get to dial 911 because, before I knew it, the Upland PD came screeching around the corner and an ambulance came right around the corner. So they came pretty darn fast.

Scott

Your neighbors were dialing 911 while you were scooping Emmett up and running out your back door.

Matt

I believe so because when I ran out across the street, a few seconds later, my neighbors came running out of the house across the street – and a few others – so I believe one of them at least did, as I know there were several of them who said that they saw the low flying plane come in.

Medic Engine 164

Comm Center, Medic Engine 164. We have a large column of smoke due east of our station. Are you getting any calls?

911 Operator

164, we’re getting a call for it right now. Stand by.

911 Operator

You’ve been transferred to the fire department and paramedics. What’s the address of your emergency?

Male 1

Across the street from here, a plane fell on a house, and the whole block’s on fire. It’s across the street, hurry.

911 Operator

Okay, we’re on the way.

Male 1

It’s an emergency. The whole block’s on fire.

911 Operator

How big is the plane?

Male 1

I don’t know. There was a helicopter and pieces fell all over the street. It seemed to be a blue light plane.

911 Operator

Okay, do you know if anybody is out of the helicopter?

Male 1

No, I think there were many injuries.

911 Operator

Many injuries?

Male 1

It hit a house. It hit a house. There’s black smoke. You can hear it from the police department.

911 Operator

Okay, we have the fire department on the way, okay?

Male 1

Yes, there’s black smoke, there’s people maybe in the house, and there’s people carrying injuries. God bless America. Jesus Christ.

911 Operator

Okay, sir. Bye bye.

Police

Alpha Police, are you calling about the plane crash?

911 Operator

Yes. Comm Center. Do you guys have something for us?

Police

We’re just getting multiple calls and they were asking for an ETA from you guys because multiple houses are catching on fire.

911 Operator

Okay, do we know how many houses are on fire? We’re going into the area now.

Police

I think there’s three so far.

911 Operator

Okay, I’ll let them know.

Matt

The paramedic that came to look at us said that they were actually on another call and they saw the plane dip down and they called in and said, “No, they’re coming over to this house because they were just right around the corner.” I immediately just called my wife and told her, “You need to come home. A plane just hit the house. Me and Emmett are okay. I have to go. I love you. Bye,” and hung up. And then I immediately called my parents so they could try to come over and help me with getting him so I could handle whatever.

Scott

Has your wife talked about what it’s like to get a phone call like that?

Matt

Well, she said that she thought that I was talking about a luggage or a piece of a plane that came off and hit the house and she didn’t realize it until coming into the neighborhood.

Scott

You drive home and you see a plane in your roof.

Matt

Yeah, I Was able to see the tail of the plane melt into the house.

Scott

How did your daughters find out?

Matt

My wife called her parents and then her parents called the school, and the counselors told them to come to their office immediately, and they were told by them and then they were able to be picked up by my wife’s parents.

Scott

Were you or Emmett injured at all?

Matt

We weren’t touched by anything at all. We were very lucky that we didn’t get any burns, scrapes – nothing. I don’t know how because the explosion, the fire coming around the corner– I mean, I can smell, feel, but we didn’t get touched. The rest of the day after the crash, I was pretty much there for several hours afterward because of the fire department and police department – with the Red Cross giving reports asking what happened and what I heard – trying to bring out a few of our keepsakes that were in the garage, several of our wedding boxes that we had in the garage. We were able to get several of the kids’ keepsakes out of the garage.

Scott

So the Red Cross was there the same day?

Matt

Yes.

Scott

And how did they approach you or how did they interact with you?

Matt

They were friendly and calm. They called us over and they were talking to us, and asking if we needed any kind of help or whatnot.

Scott

It’s a pretty amazing organization. I mean, this is what they do. They’re on scene at any kind of natural disaster or something like this.

Matt

And they are quick. I had no idea that they were that quick on being on site.

Scott

The pilot of the plane was actually the one that owned that plane and he was killed in the crash. Did you ever hear about anything like what caused it or what may have happened?

Matt

No, I didn’t hear any kind of reports of what caused it or what happened, so that is still unclear to me. I’d like to know what happened or what caused it but I haven’t heard any reports about it.

Scott

Once the fire was put out, can you describe how badly damaged was the house?

Matt

It was pretty much total damage except for the garage. The garage was somewhat intact. Other than that, everything else was gone.

Scott

So you lost clothing, furniture…

Matt

Everything. All of it. Jewelry, everything.

Scott

Did you happen to have renter’s insurance?

Matt

No.

Scott

This would be a good episode for an insurance company to be a sponsor of this episode to get renter’s insurance.

Matt

Oh yeah. We do now. So that’s for sure.

Scott

Someone started to go fund me. Who started that?

Matt

That would be my wife’s brother. He started it. It helped us a lot in buying the kids what they needed, buying my wife what she needed, and several things like that. I didn’t really want anything. I wanted them to have everything they needed. That’s pretty much what I wanted them to have.

Scott

Yeah. When the house is destroyed, you lose your clothes and you lose all the furniture. It’s like starting from scratch, sort of.

Matt

Yeah. My dad took us to Target or something that evening and just bought a few things and started from there.

Scott

This happened a couple of years ago. Does Emmett remember anything about it?

Matt

At the time, I didn’t think so. But, when several of the airplanes would pass over the loud noises, he would freak out and try to run inside or run into my arms. So, I think there was a brief moment of him remembering just because when we would sit out in the front yard, he would love to see them and look at them but, after that, he would run away after hearing the planes. But now he’s fine. He doesn’t have any issues with that.

Scott

Would you ever live near an airport again?

Matt

I don’t know. I don’t think so. But I wouldn’t be opposed to going back to the airport and watching the airplanes fly in. I know it would make me nervous but it’s fantastic to see the low-flying planes, the planes landing and taking off. But every time a plane comes in low over this house, I do look up and stare at it and see, “Where it’s going. How’s it flying?” I’ll be in the house and I’ll hear a low, loud plane, and I’ll wonder, “Where is it at? Is it over me or is it over the neighbor’s house? “

Scott

Any part of this that I didn’t ask about that we should talk about?

Matt

Well, before the crash, actually, when we came in for his snack that time, 11 AM was actually his nap time. So it would have been his nap time except he wasn’t tired. He wanted to keep playing.

Scott

I’ve seen the pictures. His room was destroyed.

Matt

Yes. So we would have actually been asleep if he did not want to continue playing after his snack.

Scott

And do you normally nap when he does?

Matt

Yes.

Scott

And you would have been in the master bedroom where the plane came right in.

Matt

Yes. And if my wife and kids were home, the kids were always in their rooms and my wife would have been taking a nap along with us.

Scott

Well, good for him. Emmett had some energy that day that saved everybody.

Matt

Oh, yes. I think so.

Scott

And our final story today is from a mother talking about what happened to her teenage daughter.

Mother

April 2nd, 2002, was one of those really beautiful spring days that make you want to stop and breathe deeply and soak up the sun for a moment. The air felt so clean. It was a symbol of the end of winter and a reminder of new beginnings. Being Texas, it was warm enough to be in short sleeves and still be comfortable. The trees had leafed out enough to form the shaded canopy over the road that added to the peaceful beauty of living in a mostly rural area on the edge of town.

My 16-year-old daughter, Charis, and I had a habit of taking an evening walk together. We had a fairly typical mother-daughter relationship. She was friends with me one minute, laughing and talking, and hated me the next, but mostly we were good. I was bravely forging on in the world of parenting a teen girl who had always had a fairly volatile personality. She was very loud and boisterous, outgoing and outspoken. When she wanted to be sweet, oh, she was such a joy and so much fun. But if she was in a bad mood, everyone knew it and suffered for it.

Walking down our little cul de sac that day, she began to loosen up as she was running ahead and then turning to come back to walk alongside me as she shared her stories. In my memory, it was just a typical walk in the countryside on a spring day in Texas. A mom and daughter walking along, laughing and talking. At the halfway point, as we turned and crossed the road for the trek back, she saw a tree with a low-hanging branch. She ran ahead, grabbed hold of the branch, and swung out on it. I walked past as she gave it a few more tries.

After a bit, I noticed that she had fallen behind. I assumed she was still swinging on that tree. I got perhaps 20 feet ahead of her and turned to see what she was doing. She was standing right in the middle of the road halfway bent over with her hands on her knees like someone who’s winded from a really long, fast run. So, I walked back to her and I said, “What’s wrong?” She told me her chest hurt and I said, “Well, take a few breaths and you’ll be okay.”

Instead of being okay, she sat down and then lay down. I was starting to get a bit irritated and then concerned as I battled the internal question of, “Is she being a dramatic teen or is she genuinely having a problem?” I knelt in front of her and said firmly, Charis, you cannot lay in the middle of the road. Let’s move to the side and I’ll go and get the car.

She had broken out in a fine sweat all over and her skin was even paler than normal. My concern turned to fear at this point and I started shaking all over. She laid there with her eyes rolling up, lids half open, staring at nothing. She was moaning. So I knew she was breathing but she just kept moaning over and over. I knelt down beside her begging her in a quivering voice, “Please stop. Please don’t do this. Please stop. You’re scaring me.” Everything would be just fine if she would only listen to me.

Well, I’m the type of person that is good at compartmentalizing my emotions. I knew that she was relying on me to help and I had literally no choice but to be brave and in control. I could not let her see how terrified and unsure I was in this situation. So, I took a deep breath and put that terrible panicky fear in a mental box. A very kind gentleman stopped and picked us up and took us home where I got her in my car and drove her to the ER myself. As I was driving, my mind was racing, refusing to believe it was serious, trying to keep her calm and help her not to panic while my normally stoic daughter moaned and cried in pain.

At the hospital, I sat in confusion and worry as so many tests were run and the medical team seemed more and more hurried. I still maintained an outwardly strong and in-control attitude. Charis was terrified and in pain and looking to me for assurance. I finally interrupted a nurse and asked her what was wrong with my daughter. She pointed to the doctor on the other side of the nurse’s station and said, “Go ask him.” I can still see it in my mind’s eye 22 years later, almost like a dream sequence, zeroing in on a figure at the end of a long black tunnel, sort of a symbolic crossing over from naively believing things will be fine to enter a terrifying new world.

Walking up to him, I asked, “Doctor, what is wrong with my daughter?” He turned around, put his hand on my upper arm, and said softly, “In all my years, I’ve never seen a 16-year-old like this. She’s had a heart attack. We’ve called a helicopter to fly her to Fort Worth.” My mind is screaming at me, “No way!” But I know I can’t cry or show that I’m so scared and feel so helpless. She’s feet away from me and needs me.

I turned to watch as the doctor intubated her as she was quickly deteriorating and slipping into a coma. To my horror, the medical team was frantically working on her, squeezing in the blue bag to help her breathe as froth bubbled up around the tube in her mouth and throat, spilling down her face and her neck. In the background, I could hear the helicopter landing and the paramedic team coming in. I was so scared, horrified, stunned, shocked, you name it. I tried so hard to control my wild emotions at that moment.

A lady paramedic put her armor on my shoulder and in a soft and comforting voice told me, Go ahead and kiss her and tell her goodbye. She can hear you. I was scared to touch her and didn’t want to let her go. I squeezed her cold, limp hand, kissed her forehead, and urgently whispered, “I love you, baby. Hang on.” Then I watched as they literally ran out the door with my baby. When I got to the hospital that they had flown her to, I was ushered into a private room where several family members and our minister had already gathered. A doctor came in with a grim face, telling us that she wasn’t expected to make it. I was still trying to maintain emotional control. I was afraid if I gave in to it, I would be unable to regain stability, so I kept it as bottled up as I could but was unable to stop tears from welling up and falling anyway.

She had surgery that night, in which her heart stopped numerous times. By this point, I was so numb that all that earned was a head nod and okay from me. When we finally got to see her in the ICU, she looked so tiny and vulnerable. I had never seen so many IV lines and machines in my life. They were all hooked up to her. She was unconscious on a ventilator covered in bandages and so terribly pale. It was horrifying to see my child go from a completely healthy and active 16-year-old to this frail, thin, fragile, and very sick girl in less than 24 hours.

Within 48 hours of the initial surgery, it was evident that the surgery was not going to fix her heart, which was 80% destroyed. Her only option was a transplant. As a parent, there are so many things that you control – some parents more than others. You decide what they eat, what they wear, where they live, who they play with, where they go to school, and on and on. You protect them, teach them, guide them, but you still have control. Suddenly, it was like I had thrown her off a proverbial cliff. The medical community was her parachute and it had a hole in it. All I could do was stand on the cliff with my family. and watch her plummet toward death while the doctors furiously sewed up the parachute hole.

Obviously, doctors included me in her care plan and I had to sign permission but, in reality, I had no choice but to trust they were doing what they could to save her life. Terrified and lost as I was, I still had to control my emotions when I was at her bedside. Another squeeze of a cold hand, another kiss on her pale forehead, another goodbye as she was loaded into another helicopter and transferred to Dallas. Tests and more tests filled the first day at the new hospital and within a day she was on the transplant list.

I settled into the routine of visiting her, visiting family, crying when outside her room, and being cheerful and encouraging when I was with her. She was semi-comatose since she was on life support. She could write notes but she slept most of the time. I remember glancing at her notepad one day to see that she had written a note to a nurse. It read, “Am I going to die?” It took every ounce of internal fortitude to not react to that in front of her. Be positive, cheerful, and encouraging, Robyn. Instantly, I dissolved in tears after leaving her room, knowing that she was as terrified and alone as I was. How do you process that? How do you tell your child, “No, you won’t die?” when that’s a very real possibility?

Every morning, I would pray, “God, please let her live through the day, so I can spend the hours with her.” And I would also pray, “God, please be with the family that will be losing a loved one soon even if that family is us.” I couldn’t pray for a donor for her. That felt too much like praying for a child’s death. So, I just prayed for a family that was going to lose someone special to them. Every night, just before bed, I would pray, “God, please let her live through the night so that I can see her tomorrow.” Every day, the doctors would tell us that she was on the edge and the sickest girl in the CVICU.

On the 10th day at that hospital, I was helping the nurse give her a bath. As we rolled her over, I stared in horror at her back. I could see every single bone and rib. Her pelvic bones protruded. It reminded me of the pictures of anorexic teens. She was a small girl anyway, naturally very thin but healthy. Now she was so gaunt and fragile. She was beginning to get pressure sores that the nurse pointed out to me. She was exhausted. I was exhausted. I felt so beat down by this continual living on the edge, waiting for the hammer to fall, desperately hanging on to my child and to the hope of her coming through this. My brain hurts, my body hurts, my heart hurts.

As I went to bed that night, instead of my usual prayer, I prayed, “God, whatever it is you’re going to do with her, please go ahead and do it.” Knowing that it meant I was turning loose and asking God to take her if that was the eventual outcome. I felt a bit relieved to pray that prayer and to let go of that last semblance of control that I was hanging on to, determined to see it through and be a loving, cheerful presence for her. Then I went to bed.

At two in the morning, the bedside phone rang. God had answered my prayer. He had provided a heart for her. I immediately sank to my knees in thankfulness and prayer for a generous family that tragically lost a dear member. Once again, a squeeze of a cold, limp hand, a kiss on her tired head, and a prayer gathered around her bed as she was wheeled through the doors. This moment of paralyzing fear and horror was the worst yet. I knew they were going to remove her heart. No going back. No room for error. This could be my last glimpse of her alive if anything went wrong.

I sobbed and cried for a very long time, curled in a ball on the floor. She sailed through surgery wonderfully and started getting out of bed and doing physical therapy the next day. Two weeks later, we were home. We settled into the routine of catching up on schoolwork, establishing a routine of meds twice a day, doctor and physical therapy three times a week, and learning how to control germs and exposure to illnesses.

My thoughts often turn to the family. I prayed for them daily. I didn’t know anything. I didn’t know the age, gender, location, or circumstances. Of course, we were very curious. It was probably three months later that we learned that her donor was a 12-year-old boy. When I heard that, it was like I got hit in the chest. I couldn’t breathe for a second. I was stunned and so sad. I wrote the family a letter, and Charis did too. How can you put into words your gratefulness that they gave their child’s organ to you at the worst possible moment in their lives?

Through back-and-forth communication, we learned that he was killed in a tragic four-wheeler accident. His family and ours decided that we wanted to meet, and we set up our meeting at a restaurant in Dallas. I brought flowers for his mom and a stuffed animal for his sister, who was the same age as Charis.

As I hugged his mother, I could see such a mixture of grief and joy on her face. I myself had a weird mix of joy, elation, pride, guilt, and sorrow all at the same time. This beautiful mom standing in front of me was my walking through the fire sister. We had both experienced the worst situation we had ever faced, but I came through with my child and she came through without hers. How do you thank a family for a decision made at such a horrible time? Thank you seemed so inadequate, but it was all I could muster at the moment, through tears on both of our parts. We kept in touch for a long time and, eventually, Charis was the one communicating with them. She still does to this day.

One day, she went to Build A Bear and bought a longhorn, which was the donor’s favorite football team and she put a recording of his heart in it and sent it to them. Moments like that brought those repressed tears to the surface for me. Having a transplant is not the end of a medical journey. It is the beginning of a lifelong one. Charis has faced it with grace and determination. She consciously chose to look on the positive side and rejoice in her life instead of dwelling on her hard times.

She has never been non-compliant with her meds even though that is common among adolescent transplant patients. The meds that suppress rejection of the organ cause other issues with a patient’s body. She has had a very tough round of lymphoma and chemotherapy, had a baby when she wasn’t even supposed to be able to conceive, a few rounds of rejection, and many hospital stays and surgeries over the years. She got married, went to college, worked, and became a mom to a gorgeous son who’s now 15.

Near the tail end of the COVID era, her heart was giving out and her kidneys too. There was discussion of retransplanting. During testing, it was discovered that her liver had also failed. In May of 2021, she received a triple transplant in Houston. Unlike the first time, she has not received any information about this donor other than overhearing a comment about a young woman. She currently lives about three hours away from me, is married, raising her son, and working part time from home. I’m so incredibly proud of the woman that she is and how she looks at this hand that life has dealt her and deliberately chosen the positive outlook.

Scott

I’d be interested to hear what you think of this kind of episode. In the episode notes you can get a full transcription, and you can also see some pictures of Matt’s house after the plane crash and the fire. That’s all at WhatWasThatLike.com/179.

Earlier this week on the Tuesday Question episode, Meredith and I talked about something we lost, that we’d like to get back. For me, it was a letter I wrote when I was young – to myself in 10 years. Really wish I could find that letter now. We do the Tuesday Question episodes every other Tuesday, the same week we have a regular What Was That Like episode.

And if you want to answer a Tuesday question yourself, we do that every single Tuesday morning in the Facebook group. The question that’s live right now is this: What’s something your parents did to you, that you’ll never do to your children? And we’re waiting to hear YOUR answer to that question. It all happens in the private podcast Facebook group where we have over 7000 listeners and new people are joining every day. You can join us at WhatWasThatLike.com/facebook.

Graphics for this episode were created by Bob Bretz. Full episode transcription was created by James Lai.

And now we’re at one of my favorite things about this show – the Listener Story. Every episode, at the end, we hear a short story that was sent in by a listener. If you’ve ever had anything interesting happen to you (and of course you have, lots of things) – we want to hear it! It can happy, sad, funny, whatever – just record it on your phone, like 5-10 minutes roughly, and email it to me – Scott@WhatWasThatLike.com.

This week’s story is from someone who took an unexpected fall.

Stay safe! And I’ll be back here in a week, with a Flashback story!

(Listener Story)

Hi, my name is Lily. I’m from Virginia. I’m 22. This story happened to me, I believe, when I was 6 years old. Me and my family were on a cruise ship. This cruise ship was going to Mexico. Whatever port that we were supposed to go to originally, for some reason, we could not go there. I couldn’t remember why but we ended up having to dock at this port that had no gate and no railing around it at all. I was walking around with my family with lots of people around.

I didn’t know how this event happened with all these people around. I was looking up at the side of the window. We were on the dock. Everyone had left the ship. I was looking up at one of the windows on the ship and I saw that there was a purse in the window but it was on the inside. It was almost to where I could touch the window, so I walked up to the side of the ship and I fell in between the dock and the ship. It was, like, a 10-20 foot drop into the ocean.

I remember being able to tread water. I had taken swimming lessons. That’s probably the only way that I would have been completely alright because I ended up completely unscathed. But I remember treading water for a few minutes. Looking back, under the dock was complete darkness. It was daytime but, underneath the dock, you cannot see anything. I remember just treading water for a few minutes and I remember a rope being tossed down to me. My mom told me later that my dad was screaming, “EL ROPO!” which does not mean rope in Spanish.

Yeah, completely terrified but I don’t remember being terrified. I just knew how to swim. I was calm. I do remember watching my little glittery jello shoe fall off my foot and float down into the ocean. A firefighter was able to come down and get me and they hoisted us up – I don’t remember how long this all took but it was probably under 5-10 minutes – and they took me to the ship’s little clinic I guess they had, and they gave me some M&Ms and a stuffed dolphin. And that’s my story.

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Every Tuesday, we grab a past question from the Facebook group, then Meredith and Scott answer it and read some of the answers given by other listeners.

Show Podcast InformationThe question for this episode:

You’re handed a box containing every item you’ve ever lost. What do you look for first?

Links for this episode:

The Hoarder Within Us: The Psychology of Our Stuff:

https://www.meredithforreal.com/podcast-episodes/episode/79631536/ep-215-or-the-hoarder-within-us-the-psychology-of-our-stuff

Meredith’s podcast is Meredith For Real – the Curious Introvert:

https://MeredithForReal.com

To check out the new Tuesday Question and get in the discussion, join us at WhatWasThatLike.com/facebook.

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On this podcast we’ve covered well over 170 crazy true stories, and several of those have been about animal attacks.

John was attacked by a tigerShow Podcast InformationI’ve had guests on who have been attacked by a rattlesnake, large dogs, an alligator, a monkey, a grizzly bear, an elephant, yellow jackets, and a shark.

But we’ve never talked to a victim of a tiger attack – until today.

Ironically, John was working in Russia as part of a conservation effort to protect tigers and other wild cats when this happened.

And the only thing he had to protect himself from the lunging tiger was a road flare.

John with a sedated tigerInformation about Panthera:

https://panthera.org/who-we-are

Where does Panthera work?

https://panthera.org/where-we-work

Panthera latest news:

https://panthera.org/newsroom

Donate to Panthera:

https://panthera.org/support/protect-wild-cats

If you’d like to contact Dr John Goodrich, you can send email to: info@panthera.org or through the Panthera website:

https://panthera.org/contact

Full show notes and pictures for this episode are here:

https://WhatWasThatLike.com/178

Graphics for this episode by Bob Bretz. Transcription was done by James Lai.

Want to discuss this episode and other things with thousands of other WWTL listeners? Join our podcast Facebook group at WhatWasThatLike.com/facebook (many of the podcast guests are there as well)

Sponsor deals:

To listen to THE 82% series, follow THIS IS ACTUALLY HAPPENING on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts!

Go to cookunity.com/What or enter code What before checkout for 50% off your first week.

Go to Seed.com/what and use code 25WHAT to get 25% off your first month.

Go to storyworth.com/what to save $10 on your first purchase!

Get 15% off OneSkin with the code WHATWAS at https://www.oneskin.co/ #oneskinpod

Cancel your unwanted subscriptions by going to RocketMoney.com/whatwas.

This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at BetterHelp.com/whatwas and get on your way to being your best self.

Episode transcript (download transcript PDF):

On this podcast we’ve covered well over 170 crazy true stories, and several of those have been about animal attacks.

I’ve had guests on who have been attacked by a rattlesnake, large dogs, an alligator, a monkey, a grizzly bear, an elephant, yellow jackets, and a shark.

But we’ve never talked to a victim of a tiger attack – until today.

Ironically, John was working in Russia as part of a conservation effort to protect tigers and other wild cats when this happened.

And the only thing he had to protect himself from the lunging tiger was a road flare.

Scott

When this happened, you were the director of something called the Siberian Tiger Project. What was that?

John

Yeah. The Siberian Tiger Project was a project capturing and radio-tracking Siberian tigers for the purpose of collecting ecological and population data on tigers that we could use to help develop or help the Russian government develop conservation plans for tigers.

Scott

All right. This happened in 2009. How old were you at that time?

John

I was 43 years old and I’d been living in Russia since 1995.

Scott

Let’s set the scene for where this happened. You were camping. How remote was this area and where was it?

John

It was a pretty remote area in far southeastern Russia, so near the border with North Korea and China. In fact, we could walk to the Chinese border from our camp and it was at the end of a– I don’t even know if you could call it a road, but a really long rough dirt road that took about five hours to drive there. We had a four-wheel drive vehicle with winches and sometimes a Russian military-style vehicle, just to get in there.

Scott

What was a typical day?

John

So we were capturing tigers and leopards in order to fit them with radio collars. We’d set up a remote camp – a fairly large camp with a cook tent, a shower tent, and all that. We’re going to be there for about two months. So, from our campsite, we had three different trap lines going out that we would check every day. The way we captured tigers was in these cable foot snares – a piece of aircraft-grade cable that’s attached to a tree at one end has a loop at the other end that sits over a spring so that when the tiger steps through the loop onto the spring would pull the snare up and tight around the tiger’s leg. On every snare, we had a radio transmitter and we would monitor for the signals from those transmitters 24/7. So if we got a signal in the middle of the night, we’d go hike into the woods to check the snare and see if we caught something.

Scott

Okay, so the idea was to immobilize the tiger– or maybe not immobilize – that might not be the right word, but to trap the tiger or the leopard to put a radio collar.

John

Yes, that’s correct. So when we got an animal in a snare, we’d have to go in and use a dart gun to shoot it with an anesthesia dart – that’s the immobilized part. Well, immobilized is correct too. We usually say anesthetized or immobilized.

Scott

You were the leader of this group. How many were on your team?

John

Correct, yeah. Including myself, there were six of us normally in camp, and the reason for that was– we needed at least six people because even though we had radio transmitters on the snares, every day in the morning, we would go out and check our snare lines just to be sure in case something went wrong and we had an animal and the transmitter didn’t work. So, we always did that in pairs just for safety reasons.

Scott

Yeah, because you don’t want an animal that’s trapped and no one attending to it or you not knowing about it.

John

Correct.

Scott

Okay. That day, you started out at a disadvantage because you were shorthanded. What was going on there?

John

Correct. One of my students had to go to Vladivostok to take exams. She had left the day before, took her exams that morning, and came back that evening, so we were short one person. That meant that one of us had to go alone to check the snares or to check one snare line. Me being the most experienced person on the team, I chose to go by myself to check my snare line.

Scott

Yeah, that’s logical. You wouldn’t have changed that decision looking back on it, right?

John

Oh, not at all. In fact, that morning when I got up and stumbled into the cook tent bright and early before my coffee, one of my other students asked me, “Hey, John, can I go check the–” we called it the road line because it went down an old logging road. “Can I check the road line today?” And I said, “Sure, Dina, whatever.” A few minutes later, I remembered, no, we’re short a person and the road line was the easiest line, so that was the one that would be checked by me alone. So I said, “No, you can’t go alone to check a snare line. You don’t have enough experience yet.” And she got kind of upset about that but, later, was very happy that I had made that decision.

Scott

So that was a critical decision on your part. I mean, you understood the safety aspect of it but didn’t know what would happen. What was the weather like that morning?

John

Oh, it’s a beautiful day. Autumn in the Russian Far East is kind of like autumn in New England here in the US – just beautiful. You get those really nice, crisp, clear fall days. Temperature’s just below freezing, so we had the leaves changing, beautiful reds and golds. I remember the maple leaves – the beautiful Japanese maples – just got really fiery red and their leaves were edged with a nice frost. Just a wonderful day. Not a breath of wind.

Scott

And there was another factor in this equation. There were some visitors in the camp.

John

Yes. My wife and my one-and-a-half-year-old daughter. Irina, my wife, and Nina, my daughter, were in camp visiting. I obviously didn’t take them to check snares. They stayed back in camp while we were out checking snares.

Scott

And that’s one of the unusual aspects of this because each team going out to check a snare had a radio. You couldn’t communicate with the other teams. Is that right?

John

That’s correct. In some cases, we could. But with walkie-talkie communication, it has to be within line of sight. So if somebody’s over a ridge or something like that, you may not hear them, but all teams could communicate back to camp. So Irina had a radio in camp and she would coordinate among teams in case any calls came in.

Scott

Okay. So she could relay messages between if you needed and that kind of thing. So you got your coffee. You started walking down the road. Can you just take us through what happened?

John

Yeah. So it’s, like I said, a beautiful morning. I’ve got my coffee in my hand and you’re not expecting to catch anything in this situation. There were no signals from the transmitters. In a two-month session, we’re happy if we catch one tiger. So the chances of having anything in a snare is really slim. So I was just kind of wandering down the trail, enjoying a nice beautiful morning.

Scott

How far away was it?

John

It was about two kilometers, so maybe a half-hour walk one way. I was kind of wandering along with my coffee enjoying the day. Such a lovely way to start the day – taking your coffee on a short walk in a beautiful forest.

Scott

I almost feel silly asking this, but do you have any sense of doom or something not quite right? Anything like that?

John

Nope, absolutely not. Just a typical day like any other day going out to check the snares. You go out, check the snares, and there’s nothing there. You come back, meet with the team, and have breakfast.

Scott

So checking was– you almost look at it kind of like a formality.

John

Yeah. It was a box-ticking exercise, really. So I was walking down the trail. As I approached the last snare, before I could see it, I heard a growl. I knew immediately that we had a tiger. I thought, “Wow, great. We’ve got a tiger!” So I stopped and put my coffee down. I needed to approach that tiger, get a look at it, and see what we had, so that I could go back to camp, meet with the team, and we would go and anesthetize the animal. But I needed to know, was it a male, was it a female, and how big was it so that we could calculate the drug dosage. So I put my coffee down.

I carried a flare with me for safety. It’s a marine signal flare that you pull a string and it lights, but it doesn’t shoot a flare into the air – it just burns in your hand. So, if an animal is attacking you, you can hopefully hold it out and divert the charge. So I got my flare ready and started to approach the snare. When I was about 40 yards away, maybe, the tiger did what pretty much all tigers do in a snare. When you approached it, he jumped up and tried to run away. Immediately, I thought, “Oh wow, it’s a nice male tiger. Great.” I was already starting to back away. I didn’t want to stress the animal out any more than needed. Of course, when he tried to run away, he hit the end of the snare and he came up short, kind of like a dog hitting the end of his chain.

Scott

Let me ask you just for a second. You said that you had this flare and that was for your defense, but how could a trapped tiger be a threat to you? I mean, was there a chance it could escape the trap? Were you considering that possibility?

John

Yeah, there’s always a chance they can escape the trap. There’s always the chance that maybe you’ve got a cub in the trap and its mom was the one that was growling at me. There’s all kinds of things that can happen. And then, there are bears and leopards out there, so you never really know what you’re going to meet. But, really, our biggest concern is the tiger popping out of the trap and coming after us.

Scott

So you could see that it was an adult male tiger. How big? What would you estimate the weight?

John

Adult males would run 375 up to– the biggest we ever caught was 450 pounds. So probably around 400 pounds.

Scott

That is huge.

John

Yeah. They’re big animals.

Scott

Wow. He tried to run away, then what?

John

Then he did what all tigers do and they can’t run away, so he turned around and he charged. And that was expected. I expected to see him hit the end of the cable and come up short, but he didn’t. I recognized immediately that he didn’t hit the end of the cable and he was coming for me. I popped my flare and they burned quite quickly but, for me, time really just slowed down. Here’s the situation I’ve been dreading for the past more than 10 years. It’s happening now and it was happening while I was alone in the woods. So I popped my flare and was holding it out in front of me fizzling and sparking.

Well, here comes this tiger just coming for me with all his might. Huge platter-sized paws just reach out for me with every lunge. Claws extended, popping his jaws and making this kind of roar, roar, roar sound. And three-inch-long canines. He’s trying to look as fierce as he can and displaying all his weaponry as he’s coming at me, and my only thought was. “He’s not stopping.” I had been charged by Tigers a number of times before and I knew this was the real thing. This was no bluff. He was not going to stop. I didn’t think my flair was going to deter him. So he was just lunging towards me and my flare finally got going, and I was holding it out in front of me.

Very briefly, he finally just kind of disappeared behind the flame of the flare but, just as quickly, reappeared through the flame of the flare, kind of like a circus tiger jumping through a flaming hoop and then bam, 400 pounds of tigers probably moving 35 miles an hour just slammed right into my chest. He carried me about 10 yards back and just slammed me into the ground and then I was lying on my back. He was literally standing on my shoulders. I have a scratch on my left shoulder from that and roaring right into my face, so I put my left hand up kind of defensively and he just started biting it just like a stapler, just bite. I feel bones crunching. I don’t remember feeling pain at the time, but it was pretty nasty. But I realized I still had my flare on my right hand. So I took my flare and I kind of jammed it up under his chin. I didn’t want to hit him in the eye and risk blinding him or something or really injuring him. I just jammed that flare up under his chin, the side of his face.

Scott

I got to ask you about that part because a 400-pound tiger is on top of you biting your hand and you’re thinking, “Where should I put the flare? I don’t want to blind him.” It seems like such a sense of awareness that I wouldn’t imagine that anyone would have in that adrenaline-filled situation.

John

Yeah, well, it came from two things and, really, I wouldn’t even say I was thinking. I don’t remember conscious thoughts going through my mind as that was happening. It was just instinct. Having thought about this situation over and over again for the past– I’ve been doing this for the past 14 years. So it was just instinct and two things. 1) I have a passion for protecting wildlife. I don’t want to hurt them. 2) The only thing worse than being attacked by a tiger is being attacked by a wounded tiger. So if I jammed it into one of his eyes, I’ve got a half-blind tiger. That’s probably not going to be a better situation for me. It’s probably going to be worse. So. That’s where I was coming from.

Scott

So you got the flare and you were, how did you use it?

John

I just jammed it up under the side of his chin and, as soon as that flare hit him, he just took off running just as quickly as he came and he was gone. It was equally as impressive watching him run away. He ran up an almost vertical slope and just the power and speed with which he did that was mind-blowing. But then the tiger’s gone. So I stood up to assess my injuries – of course, my hand was most immediate. I looked at that and I kind of thought, “Well, that looks pretty bad, but it’s not life-threatening. It’s not really bleeding very much.”

I felt a sting on the inside of my left thigh and I thought, “My gosh, femoral artery.” I looked down. There was a rip in my pants but no blood, so I didn’t even bother trying to look any further at that. I thought, “My gosh, I’m okay. I didn’t really expect to survive this.” I was just pumping with adrenaline and adrenaline makes you fight or flight. Well, I started with fight but the tiger’s gone, so the fight turned to flight and I just turned around and ran. Again, I was not really even thinking much. What if he comes back? What if there’s another tiger around? What if I was wrong and it’s really a female, and she’s got cubs that she’s trying to protect? Something like that. So I just took off running down the trail.

Scott

Do you think you were in shock at that time?

John

Not really. By that time, I think when the tiger was charging me, nothing was going on in my mind which contrasted with other times I’d been charged where a lot was going through my mind. The only thought I really had was “He’s not stopping.” But by that point, a lot was going through my mind.

I was thinking about all these things but, as I was running down the trail and I started to get outta breath, I did start to become shocked and I started to get lightheaded and the world was starting to kind of– the periphery of my vision was kind of graying in and closing in around me. I thought, “Oh my gosh, I just survived a tiger attack and now I’m going to go into shock and die out here in the woods alone after surviving a tiger attack. This can’t happen.” So I stopped and I put my head down between my legs to try to increase blood flow to my brain and I just started yelling just to try to bring myself around, which worked pretty quickly. Within probably 15 seconds or 30 seconds, I was okay again.

So, I stood up and just started walking down the trail quickly. Irina was back in camp and she’s waking up in the tent, changing Nina’s diapers, and hears all this yelling, so she immediately jumped on the radio and said, “What’s all the yelling in the forest?” The other two teams immediately responded, “What do you mean yelling? We don’t hear anything.” But I’d lost my radio in the fight for the tiger so, of course, I didn’t respond. So, she just panicked, got Nina’s diaper on, and went running out of camp. So I was about 200 yards from camp coming down the trail and here came Irina and Nina or Nina bouncing on her shoulders running down the trail towards me and I was like, “It’s okay.”

Scott

Man. But what if you were being chased by the tiger at the time?

John

Right. It’s definitely not the situation that you want. Fortunately, I wasn’t, so it was all good. And we walked back to camp.

Scott

So what’s the first step? Obviously, you need medical attention and the other teams still weren’t at camp, right?

John

They got back to camp pretty quickly. We had a veterinarian on the team. We always had a veterinarian with us when doing capture work and he was a good friend, John Lewis. He immediately took care of my hand, did the basic first aid that he could on my hand, and then got in the vehicle and drove into the hospital in Vladivostok to get properly cared for.

Scott

How far away is the hospital?

John

It took us five or six hours probably to get there mostly because the road was so bad. Distance-wise, it was probably, I don’t know, less than 100 miles.

Scott

That’s still a long way to go when you’re in pain. Or how much pain were you in at that time?

John

I was in a lot of pain and John Lewis later made fun of me. He’s like, “Yeah, Goodrich, you weren’t very stoic” because, when he was doing the bandaging up my hand, I was yelling. That pain kind of subsided but I was still in a lot of pain the whole trip but, by that point, it wasn’t that big of a deal.

Scott

I’m trying to picture if your injuries were different, if you had a broken leg and went 100 miles over bumpy roads, that would have been 10 times worse probably.

John

Yeah, and if that were the situation, we might have considered calling in a helicopter, which would have been an option for us.

Scott

You’re going to a Russian hospital. I have no idea– what would you expect there? Or did you know what to expect?

John

I knew more or less what to expect because my wife had suffered a really bad bus accident actually in the run-up to our first date and she spent a couple of–

Scott

Sounds like a whole other story there.

John

Oh my gosh. Yeah, it is a whole nother story. She spent a couple of months in the hospital with a broken neck, so I was intimately familiar with the medical system in that hospital in Vladivostok. I knew the hospital would be dirty, I knew it would be disorganized, but I also knew that they had some pretty good doctors. I could have flown back to the US to get medical attention but, after the initial assessment at the hospital and a proposal from a doctor to how he wanted to deal with my hand, I was okay with staying in Russia to have the work done.

Scott

What was the actual assessment of your hand? Obviously, broken bones. I mean, were they able to make it functional again?

John

Yeah, well, the way things worked at the hospital, I started out with going to essentially the emergency room where I was assessed by a young doctor who was just doing the quick assessment. What do we need to do with you? Triage. Yeah, kind of the triage, which was pretty amusing. I stood in a long line, waited my turn, and went in.

“What happened to you?”

“I was attacked by a tiger.”

So he looked over my hand and said, “Do you have any other injuries?” And we’re just sitting in chairs, so I said, “Yes, it’s got something on the inside of my thigh.”

“So, okay, let’s see.”

So I pulled my pants down and the first thing he said was, “Wow. I’m impressed. Your underwear is clean.

Scott

He didn’t expect to see that after the attack, huh?

John

Yeah. He was a bit of a comedian, but it really broke the ice and made me feel at ease. But yeah, there was just a small laceration on the inside of my thigh, so he sent me off to be treated. So then I had to go into an initial surgery where I guess they first x-rayed my hand, but then they got in there and did some initial cleaning up. For that, they actually anesthetized me with ketamine, which was a drug that I was very familiar with using on tigers and, before that, in different research projects badgers and bears. I’d literally anesthetized hundreds of animals with ketamine so I was very familiar with it and knew how safe it was. Of course, going under anesthesia in a foreign hospital is a little bit scary but that really helped put me at ease because I knew what I was up against and that it’s really hard to kill somebody with ketamine.

Scott

You had some interaction with the nurses there.

John

As I was lying on the table and they were preparing to do the initial work on my hand, the nurses were flirting with me and all, “Oh, an American, he was attacked by a tiger. How exciting.” This is so typical of my previous experiences in Russia. It just kind of made me laugh and I just kind of went along with it and had fun with it. There’s nothing more to it than that, but it made it kind of fun. Then, I was able to talk with the anesthesiologist about the ketamine and ask him if there was anything else in there or anything like that and told him of my experiences, so that was kind of nice. And then they put me under and did the initial cleanup of my hand. There were some bone fragments missing but they just did the best they could. But before they did surgery to really repair my hand, they wanted to wait for a couple of weeks to ensure that there was no infection, so they put me on heavy antibiotics and really made sure that we were past any danger of infection before they went in there and ultimately did another surgery. They had to take some bone from my hip and transplant it into my hand and then I ended up with a titanium splint. The tiger had bitten clean through my hand five or six times, so it was pretty messed up.

Scott

So you had to leave and then you went back to camp two weeks later?

John

Yeah, I actually spent several days in the hospital – I don’t remember how many – and then left the hospital and went back out to camp. They had brought in another person in my place to help keep running the snare lines. I went back out and worked for another week or so and then went back in and had the surgery on my hand.

Scott

Was the surgery successful?

John

Yeah, not 100%. Like I said, the doctor– I felt I was confident with him, I felt like he was really good, and I felt like he knew what he was doing and would do a good job with it, and he did. I’ve since had it examined by a doctor in the US who said, “Yeah, he did a bang-up job.” But where things fell apart was the follow-up. What I really needed was some fairly rigorous physical therapy to get my hand working 100% again and it could have happened that way, but it didn’t. He didn’t follow up. He gave me some kind of vague instructions. But what happened was that the knuckle in my ring finger ended up freezing because I didn’t go through physical therapy to get it bending again. So that knuckle is frozen but I kind of figure that – getting attacked by a 400-pound tiger – if that’s all I have to live with, that’s fine.

Scott

Is it the knuckle at the base of your finger or?

John

Yep.

Scott

Okay. So is your finger just locked in the open position or is it locked down?

John

Well, that knuckle is locked in the open position because I’ve had a splint on it for several weeks holding that finger out straight.

Scott

Okay. So you just can’t bend that finger.

John

Yeah.

Scott

It sounds to me like if you didn’t have that flare in your right hand, you probably wouldn’t be here today.

John

I would probably be dead almost certainly, absolutely.

Scott

That’s amazing. And I wouldn’t think of that as being the primary defense against a huge tiger. You don’t want to use a gun, obviously. You don’t want to kill the animal. But yet, using a flare like that, since it doesn’t shoot anything, you’ve got to be within arm’s length of the attacker for it to be effective, but you were aware of that though.

John

Yeah, normally I would carry both a can of bear spray and a flare. I didn’t have my bear spray because Irina and Nina were alone back in camp, so I’d left my bear spray with her, just in case. So all I had was my flare, but that was my normal setup – to have a bear spray and a flare – every time I was going out into the field regardless of whether we were trapping or whatever because there’s always a chance– there are tigers there, there are brown bears, there are Asiatic black bears, there are leopards and wild boar, so a lot could go wrong.

I always thought that pepper spray would be good at deterring a charge. It sprays about seven yards out in front of you and, hopefully, that would turn a tiger. Actually, I used it on tigers twice successfully prior to that, so I knew that it worked. I always thought the flare might not be as good of a deterrent but it would be a good weapon if you’ve got an animal on top of you and you’re having a fight and you need to defend yourself and, indeed, it turned out that it was superb for that.

There were times during the project when the Russian government actually required us to carry a gun with us for protection. I didn’t like the guns, not only because I didn’t want to have to kill an animal, but because I wasn’t confident in my or anyone else’s ability to make that shot because if you got an animal charging you, you need to kill it because, like I said before, the only thing worse than being attacked by a healthy animal is being attacked by a wounded animal. Making that kill shot, which requires you to put a bullet in the head of an animal that’s coming at you at 30 miles an hour, takes good marksmanship, a bit of luck, and nerves of steel. So I was much more comfortable with a flare and a pepper spray.

Scott

With a firearm– the adrenaline factor seems like that would reduce accuracy substantially.

John

I’d imagine, yeah. You’d need someone really solid in that situation.

Scott

Your work today is with an organization, Panthera. What is that?

John

Yeah. Panthera is a medium-sized NGO and the only organization in the world that is entirely dedicated to protecting the world’s 40 wildcat species.

Scott

So what’s a typical day like for you now?

John

Lots of meetings. I started with Panthera as their Tiger program director. When I was doing that, it was lots of travel to different tiger range states, helping to set up projects to do, helping to implement and run projects for tiger conservation to help protect tigers. More recently, I’ve become chief scientist for Panthera, so I do quite a bit of travel traveling around the world to different countries where we have projects, and lots of time in meetings, both online and in-person.

Scott

This is just from my own curiosity but I saw something that you wrote– you mentioned a connection between wildcats and climate change. What is that connection?

John

The connection between wildcats and climate change and how we can use wildcats to help us mitigate climate change is that wildcats are a great indicator species and they’re great ambassadors for conservation. What do I mean by indicator species? Cats require very large areas. For example, to contain a viable population of tigers in Southeast Asia, you’re looking at thousands of square miles of habitat needed – contiguous, healthy habitat – to protect a tiger population. So if you’ve got thousands of square kilometers of rainforest, with a healthy tiger population, you know that most of the other species in that rainforest are also doing well. You have a really nice big chunk of forest, so you’re protecting biodiversity, and you’re protecting those carbon stocks that are held in that forest, and the value of the forest in pulling carbon out of the atmosphere.

Beyond that, tigers and wild cats in general are also good, what we call, flagship species. People love cats. People love tigers. Tigers, indeed, were voted by– it was a survey run, I think, by the BBC probably 20 years ago now. In lots of different countries, tigers were voted the most favored animal in that survey above and beyond domestic dogs and domestic horses. So here you have an animal that the public can really get behind. It’s hard for the public, it’s hard for governments to really get behind complex issues like climate change and biodiversity and to really understand how to address those issues. If we can package all that into tiger conservation, for example, then you’re really simplifying the equation, especially for governments that have to implement the measures. But if you can go to them and say, “Listen, if you have healthy tiger populations throughout all the existing habitats in your country, you’re doing it. It means you’ve got the climate protection you need, you’ve got the biodiversity protection that you need in place, and it’s working.”

And then, for all the signatories to climate treaties to biodiversity treaties, they have to monitor that and show that they are making progress towards those climate goals or towards those biodiversity goals. Well, if you’re talking about biodiversity, are they going to go out and count every species of plant and animal out there to show that their populations aren’t declining? No. If they can go out and count tigers, which we’re very good at and know how to do, that can be a good proxy to show that other species are healthy and doing well in the forest. It’s healthy.

Scott

So that’s the indicator factor that goes right into it. Okay. Yeah. I read that over the last hundred years, tigers have decreased globally from around 100,000 to about 4,500. Just seems drastic and alarming. Is that starting to turn around now or is it still going down?

John

It is starting to turn around and it is drastic and alarming. Tigers are an endangered species. They were really on the brink of extinction. Thanks to really two decades of strong efforts by governments and nongovernmental organizations like Panthera, we seem to have turned the tide, at least for parts of tiger range. So tigers are doing pretty well in South Asia – India, Nepal, Bhutan, and Bangladesh. Not doing as well is Southeast Asia – that’s the area where we’re still most concerned. Since the turn of the century, tigers have gone extinct in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, but we still have tigers in Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia on the island of Sumatra. We still have tigers in those countries, and it seems like we’re turning the tide in those countries and tiger numbers are more or less stable, at least in Malaysia and Thailand.

Tiger numbers are still very low in Southeast Asia, and we’re very concerned, and the reason for that is habitat loss and poaching. The most urgent threat right now is poaching of tigers largely for the traditional Chinese medicine market. Poaching is so bad, it is the reason that we lost tigers from Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam in the first decade of this century, and it is the reason that we have over a million square kilometers of vacant tiger habitat out there. That is to say, we have good habitats but no tigers in them because the tigers and their prey have been poached out of those habitats. Southeast Asia has some of the highest deforestation rates in the world, which means tiger habitat is disappearing very rapidly. But despite that huge threat, poaching is still by far and away the most urgent threat there.

Scott

Well, for someone like you who loves these big cats, this has to be some of the most gratifying work. This is your life mission.

John

It is gratifying because we are making progress. So in 2015, when tigers were assessed by the IUCN, I led the assessment for the IUCN Red List, which then classifies them as critically endangered, vulnerable, and so on. Tigers were classified as endangered in that 2015 assessment and we estimated there were about 3,200 tigers in the wild. In 2022, we again assessed tigers and, again, I led that assessment and we estimated that there were about 4,500 tigers in the wild. Now, that increase may be real or it may be not. It may just be because we’ve gotten really good at counting tigers and, over the past 10 or 20 years, gotten much better.

As time goes on, we might be better at counting tigers and covering more area, but we are confident that at least range-wide tiger populations haven’t declined in the past seven years since 2015 and, indeed, in some areas, we know for sure that they are increasing. Some protected areas in India and some protected areas in Nepal have shown very marked increases in tiger numbers.

Scott

Well, that’s good. We appreciate your work.

John

Oh, thank you.

Scott

For people listening to this, is there anything the average listener can do to help you in this mission?

John

Absolutely. The easiest answer is to donate. Panthera needs donations. All the organizations working on tiger conservation or wildcat conservation, in general, need public support and donations to continue. A lot of that money ends up going through range state governments to support their conservation activities. But beyond just donating, engage with policy and the government to support legislation that promotes international conservation, promotes biodiversity conservation, and promotes climate conservation. In our case, for Panthera that promotes cat conservation.

Scott

It’s the old phrase, “Think globally, act locally.”

John

Absolutely, yes.

Scott

All right. And so the website is Panthera.org. We’ll have a link to that in the episode notes. And should people want to contact you, how would they do that? Through the website?

John

Yes, there’s a info@panthera.org email address that would end up in my hands eventually, if it was written specifically to me.

Scott

Thanks for sharing your story. I’m glad you had that flare with you.

John

Thank you, Scott. I really enjoyed it.

Scott

In the episode notes, you can see a picture of John with one of his tigers while it was sedated. It’s a really beautiful animal – and it’s HUGE. And I have links to Panthera if you’d like to get more information. That’s all at WhatWasThatLike.com/178.

Got a voice mail about a recent episode – this listener heard episode 175, titled “Mike wears an ostomy pouch” and called in to say this –

Hannah

Hey Scott, my name’s Hannah. I’m calling from Indiana. I’m calling in regards to episode 175 about the guy with the ostomy bag. I just wanted to say thank you for the episode. It was a wonderful lesson and I wanted to call and show my support for more episodes like this. There are a lot of health issues and disabilities that I have questions about, but I don’t have anyone in my life that I really feel comfortable directly asking. So, I wanted to ask you to please continue to share stories of people with altered bodies. I wanted to say that I do find them as compelling as stories from people who survived traumas or accidents or even have personal triumphs. So yeah, thank you so much for all of your work.

Scott

And guess what – Raw Audio episode 41 has just been released. 41 episodes available to binge now!

In this episode –

A husband shoots some family members in an argument over leaving the lights on –

911 Operator

You shot him?

Male 1

Yes, I shot him and his mother. He’s still alive right now, but his mother’s not. I don’t know. She could be alive. I don’t know.

Scott

An animal trainer is attacked by a whale

Female 1

We actually have a trainer in the water with one of our whales – the whale that they’re not supposed to be in the water with. So, we don’t know what’s going on.

Scott

And some teens butt-dial 911 – while burglarizing a car.

Teen

You got to break the SIM card. Take that SIM card out. They can trace it.

Scott

By supporting the show, you get access to ALL 41 of the Raw Audio episodes, and you get every regular episode of the podcast ad-free. On an iPhone, just go to What Was That Like and click on Try Free. On Android, go to WhatWasThatLike.com/PLUS to try it out at no cost.

Graphics for this episode were created by Bob Bretz. Full episode transcription was created by James Lai.

And now we have this week’s Listener Story, and it’s in keeping with the theme of today’s episode. And I didn’t even plan that! Do you have a story of something interesting or unusual, that you can tell in about 5-10 minutes? We all want to hear it! Just record it on your phone and email it to me – Scott@WhatWasThatLike.com.

This one is another story about an encounter with a large animal.

Stay safe, and I’ll see you next time.

(Listener Story)

I’m an avid outdoorsman, and I enjoy hiking, fishing, mountain biking, camping, and backpacking. This story takes place on a solo backpack trip in Montana on the 1st of June. Winters around here can feel long when anticipating adventures in the high country. Snow collects and blocks easy access to the back roads that don’t get plowed or maintained during the winter months. Camping for me is a year-round occurrence. However, this lack of access to the high country limits my backpack trips in these areas. So, once the snow melts and the roads begin to open, I’m ready to go with many adventurous plans.

This year, my first backpack trip in June was to a high mountain lake near the border between Idaho and Montana. Sunday morning came and I got onto the road early and arrived at the trailhead without a vent. This trip was just myself and my 40-pound rescue dog, Cedar. The hike into the lake was short – around 3 miles. However, nobody had been to this lake since the previous year. Wind-blown trees crossed the trail every 50 feet or so and progress was slow. Over, under, and around these trees was slow going, as was traversing over the top of large snow drifts blocking the trail.

After two hours or so fighting through these obstacles uphill, I finally came to a clearing of the lakeshore and was amazed at the beauty in front of me. The lake sat in a basin with mountains on all sides except for where the stream outlet left the lakeshore and flowed downhill in the direction from where I came. All around me, large snow patches remained and the melting snowpack caused numerous waterfalls to cascade into the lake. These waterfalls were almost on all sides of me and the beauty and sound was mesmerizing. This is what I’d come for – beauty, solace, and personal reflection.

Excited to spend time relaxing in this beautiful arena, I hurried to get chores done first. I set up my tent, rolled my sleeping bag, collected firewood, made and ate lunch, and pumped water to refill my canteens. Now, I was really ready to take in nature’s beauty and observe the wonderful landscape until the sun went down behind the mountains. I took my backpack chair down to the lake, along with binoculars and a beer. I had carried that one beer as a personal reward to enjoy after the camp was set up. So, beer cracked and pressed on my lips. I looked out across the lake to the mountains on the far side – so relaxing. How blessed I felt to be at this location.

My eyes followed along the top of the largest waterfall and came to rest on a dark object way up on the mountainside. Setting down my beer, binoculars in hand, I focused and saw a black bear slowly emerging from a cave. It was absolutely beautiful to see this creature on top of what I had already witnessed earlier. As I watched, the bear slowly made his way downhill in my direction toward the tree line and finally disappeared out of sight. “No worry though”, I thought. I was carrying both bear spray and a 44 and I felt prepared.

I sat there for another 15 minutes or so until I started to really focus on wondering where the bear had gone. As I pondered what the bear was doing, I started to think about how the bear had likely come out of hibernation very recently, if not when I saw him. My mind started to replay stories I’d heard of people being harassed by skinny hungry bears that had come out of hibernation recently and motivated to regain weight. Although prepared for our worst, a conflict with a bear was the last on my to-do list that day.

Not being able to fully relax and camp, I made a decision. I reluctantly rested on the decision to pack up and car camp at the trailhead. Besides, the other five beers in my six-pack were in my car. So, I shoved my gear back into my backpack and started the descent with Cedar out in front, running back and forth loving life and exploring and smelling everything she could. Progress downhill was slow, and I took careful attention to watch every footfall as they picked through the trees and the snow.

Snowfall was melting and falling onto the trail ahead of me and, as it hit some rocks around a corner from me, the sound muffled any other noises within my immediate vicinity. As I neared this water, my head was down focusing on the trail when I heard a THUD THUD THUD. I looked up in time to see a full-grown bear running directly toward me down the trail at full speed. Each time I hear a THUD! The bear’s feet are landing as he’s breathing hard and hauling ass directly towards me.

Because of the water noise and my focus on my feet, by the time I had heard the bear and looked up, he was probably 20 feet or so away from me and closing the gap alarmingly fast. There was simply no time to reach for the bear spray on my hip or the 44 in my chest. In fact, he was moving so fast that I didn’t even have time to drop the beer I was still holding and grab a defense item. All I had time to do was yell, “HEY!” at the top of my lungs. I guess this yelling startled the bear and he brushed past me downhill, off the trail, and into the bushes as fast as he could go. When he left the trail, he was about five feet from me, still, at an all-out sprint, and I could feel the wind on my face as he careened by. A couple or more bounds, and he was gone, and I just thought to myself, “Well, I guess that just happened.”

It happened so fast and was over so quickly. My heart rate did not have time to rise. I stood there, heartbeat steady, hands calm, surprised by what I saw. When my rescue dog came trotting down the trail towards me with that same demeanor of, “Hey, you still coming?” I still wonder how that bear got around my dog. If he was running from Cedar, you would think he would have continued downhill in the opposite direction of my dog. Was the bear after me until my loud yell changed his mind? I guess I will never fully know. But I will say that if you are in bear country, you better see them first because they can close the gap surprisingly quickly, considering how big they are.

Take care.

View Details

Every Tuesday, we grab a past question from the Facebook group, then Meredith and Scott answer it and read some of the answers given by other listeners.

What are you currently binging?Show Podcast InformationThe question for this episode:

What are you currently binging?

Links for this episode:

The Alone series on Hulu:

https://www.history.com/shows/alone

Woniya’s WWTL episode:

https://WhatWasThatLike.com/75

Shogun:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2788316/

The Bear on Hulu:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14452776/

Breaking Bad:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0903747/

El Camino:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Camino:_A_Breaking_Bad_Movie

Better Call Saul:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3032476/

Queen of the South:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1064899/

Murder Mile podcast:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/murder-mile-uk-true-crime/id1278924392

From:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9813792/

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0472954/

The Implication:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgUvwcU6P7I

Meredith’s Facebook group:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/mfrcuriousinsiders

Meredith’s podcast is Meredith For Real – the Curious Introvert:

https://MeredithForReal.com

To check out the new Tuesday Question and get in the discussion, join us at WhatWasThatLike.com/facebook.

Sponsor deals:

To listen to THE 82% series, follow THIS IS ACTUALLY HAPPENING on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts!

Go to cookunity.com/What or enter code What before checkout for 50% off your first week.

Go to Seed.com/what and use code 25WHAT to get 25% off your first month.

Go to storyworth.com/what to save $10 on your first purchase!

Get 15% off OneSkin with the code WHATWAS at https://www.oneskin.co/ #oneskinpod

Cancel your unwanted subscriptions by going to RocketMoney.com/whatwas.

This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at BetterHelp.com/whatwas and get on your way to being your best self.

View Details

Our story today has to do with making decisions.

Laura was pregnant with twinsShow Podcast InformationAs a child, most of the time, life is pretty easy because you don’t have to make any decisions. Everything in your life is decided for you – what clothes you wear each day, where you sleep, what you eat, everything.

But as an adult, all of that changes. You take on responsibilities, and you have to make decisions. What to do for work, who you want to spend the rest of your life with (if anyone), which house to buy – it seems like we spend much of our life trying to make the right choices. And sometimes, that can be really difficult.

My guest today is Laura. She and her husband, Dan, were parents to their little boy, Louie. Then, they found out they were pregnant again – this time, with twins.

And Laura was soon faced with making a decision that she never would have imagined having to make.

Content warning: this episode includes discussion of pregnancy and loss. Listener discretion is advised.

Laura, younger son Milo, and older son LouieResources:

Laura has a friend who creates the Good Grief Podcast – hosted by Kristen Carrier and Sarah Holveck
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/good-grief-podcast/id1707022810

Miscarriage and Pregnancy Loss Support Facebook group:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/427172118636668/

Vanishing Twin Syndrome Facebook group:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1520655841487780/

Full show notes and pictures for this episode are here:

https://WhatWasThatLike.com/177

Graphics for this episode by Bob Bretz. Transcription was done by James Lai.

Want to discuss this episode and other things with thousands of other WWTL listeners? Join our podcast Facebook group at WhatWasThatLike.com/facebook (many of the podcast guests are there as well)

Sponsor deals:

To listen to THE 82% series, follow THIS IS ACTUALLY HAPPENING on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts!

Go to cookunity.com/What or enter code What before checkout for 50% off your first week.

Go to Seed.com/what and use code 25WHAT to get 25% off your first month.

Go to storyworth.com/what to save $10 on your first purchase!

Get 15% off OneSkin with the code WHATWAS at https://www.oneskin.co/ #oneskinpod

Cancel your unwanted subscriptions by going to RocketMoney.com/whatwas.

This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at BetterHelp.com/whatwas and get on your way to being your best self.

Episode transcript (download transcript PDF):

Our story today has to do with making decisions.

As a child, most of the time, life is pretty easy because you don’t have to make any decisions. Everything in your life is decided for you – what clothes you wear each day, where you sleep, what you eat, everything.

My guest today is Laura. She and her husband, Dan, were parents to their little boy, Louie. Then, they found out they were pregnant again – this time, with twins.

And Laura was soon faced with making a decision that she never would have imagined having to make.

This episode discusses topics that may be upsetting for some listeners. Please consult the episode notes for content warnings.

Scott

Was there anything complicated about your first pregnancy?

Laura

Probably. Well, about a month before I became pregnant with my first son, Louie, I did have a chemical pregnancy where it’s just like a really early miscarriage. But other than that, a month later, I became pregnant with my son, Louie.

Scott

And for what we’re talking about today, that happened about a year and a half ago. Who was your family at the time?

Laura

So I have my husband, Dan, and then our first son, Louie. He was about 18 months old at the time.

Scott

And so you decided to have another baby. What did you expect when you made that decision? Did you think it was going to take a while? What did you think?

Laura

Yeah, it had taken a while for me with my first. I had some sort of hormonal issues in the past, so I just thought it was going to take several months or six months. So I was surprised when I got pregnant, like, right away.

Scott

Were you happy about that?

Laura

Oh yeah. I mean, I was super excited. I think it was just sort of a strange time to find out you’re pregnant. So I actually found out I was pregnant the day before the country shut down in March of 2020. So it was kind of an unusual time, obviously, just feeling very excited and, then, the next day being, like, “Oh my God, what’s happening? What is this going to look like?”

Scott

What’s going on in the world? Now you’re going to have a baby.

Laura

Mmhmm.

Scott

Your first appointment was in April and you had to go alone.

Laura

Yeah. I went to that first appointment around six weeks pregnant, obviously in a mask, by myself. They were going to send me somewhere else to have that first ultrasound but my doctor, I guess, had a bunch of cancellations that day. I think people who didn’t have to be seen weren’t coming in. So she was kind of like, “Let’s go for a walk down the hallway.” It was, like, in a hospital. She said, “Let’s just take a look at this baby.” So I was kind of excited. “Oh, I didn’t think I was going to get to see anything today.”

So we went and did the ultrasound, and she immediately said something like, “Oh girl.” And I was like, “Oh my God, it’s a girl.” And she said, “No.” She spun the screen around and she said, “There’s two.” I just remember being in, like, complete shock. I was so surprised. I don’t think I’ve been more surprised in my entire life. We hadn’t done any kind of fertility treatments and twins don’t run in our families. So I was just like, “What?” And very emotional. Like I started sobbing right away, and just immediately feeling overwhelmed, panicked, and scared.

Scott

I got to ask you about that. What were you scared of with having twins?

Laura

I mean, I think you’d always kind of joke with your first, “Oh my God, wouldn’t that be cool to have twins?” and then you sort of forget about it. So we had our first and then you just don’t really think of that scenario happening with your second baby. So, I was just like, “Oh my God.”

There was sort of stuff going on with my work at the time and I was, like, losing some of my hours. So, I think I just went into an immediate panic. We lived in a townhouse at the time. So I was like, “Oh my God, how are we going to have three babies? I’m going to have to quit my job and we’re going to have to move and we’re going to have to buy a minivan.” I just immediately started thinking of everything and panicking.

I was supposed to go to work that day because I work in home health care – we were all still working through COVID and everything – but I couldn’t pull myself together, so I texted my husband – he was working from home – and I said, “I need you to take a break from work. I’m coming home.” So I’m sure he was like, “Oh my God, what’s going on?”

So when I burst in the door and I just was, like, sobbing, he just immediately hugged me and was saying, “I’m so sorry.” And then I was like, “Oh my God, he thinks I lost this pregnancy.” So I was like, “Oh no, everything’s fine.” And he’s looking at me like, “Well, why are you crying?”

And I’m like, “It’s twins. We’re having twins.” And he was just, like, dumbfounded. But then, he was immediately so happy and excited and, like, almost giddy and, “This is amazing.” But I was, like, not having that reaction at the time. I think it kind of helped a little bit because I’m like, “Oh my God, he’s excited.” I thought he was going to freak out as much as I was freaking out.

Scott

It’s funny. His reaction was like the opposite of yours. He’s excited and you’re like, “Oh man, we have to buy a minivan.” I thought that was the funniest thing when you wrote that.

Laura

That’s just like me. I like overthinking everything. And yeah, I’m immediately like, “Oh my God, we have to tell our parents.” I’m a horrible secret keeper.

Scott

What did they think?

Laura

They were just like, “That’s crazy.” And yeah, I’m very much like my mom. My mom was sort of spiraling like I was, and my husband’s family is just, “That’s so cool.” But then I think my attitude started to change. Like, even just that first week or two, I think I started to just sort of embrace it and get excited. I told a couple of best friends about it and they sort of just made me get more excited.

Scott

So let’s talk about the pregnancy. I know you told me that around the 10-week mark, you started telling people, even some of your neighbors. How did that go?

Laura

Yeah. So we told our close friends, I think with it being, like, our second child – well, children – I think I was just like– normally, I would have waited a little longer but I think I can’t keep this to myself. So we told our closest friends – we went to a little neighborhood barbecue actually – and everyone’s excited. Then, I remember kind of at the end of the barbecue, one of our neighbors was like, “Oh yeah, my first child actually were twins and one of them vanished.” And I’m like, “What?” And he’s like, “Yeah, it’s called vanishing twin syndrome.” And I’m like, “I had never heard of this before.”

So my heart kind of sank and then I was, like, Googling on my phone, “What’s Vanishing Twin Syndrome?” And it’s a real thing and that just made me so nervous and anxious. I was like, “What if we made a mistake? Maybe we shouldn’t have told people before my 12-week appointment.” So that was a little nerve-wracking.

Scott

You mentioned earlier that you’re kind of an overthinker on some things. It seems like that was the worst thing to even bring up.

Laura

Yeah, definitely the wrong thing to say for anyone. If they’re ever in that situation, don’t say that. So 12 weeks came. Like, lots of anxiety building up. They were sending me to see a maternal fetal medicine specialist. They started the ultrasound and I was so relieved when I saw two babies on the screen. They’re moving around. I immediately texted my mom and said, “They’re here. They’re both there. They’re both okay.” But I didn’t realize that I was speaking too soon. The ultrasound tech wasn’t saying anything. Then, the doctor came in and said, “I’m a little concerned. I’m very confused. One twin is two weeks behind in growth.” To me, on the screen, they didn’t look that much different and I didn’t think that sounded like a lot. She explained that that was a pretty big difference.

Scott

A two-week difference at the 12-week point does seem pretty substantial.

Laura

Yeah. I just don’t think it really hit me. Again, I was alone at this appointment and she said, “We’re going to need to do some tests and I want to send you down to Philadelphia.” We live in the suburbs and she wanted to have me go for this special test. It was called a CVS where they take, like, a placenta biopsy and see what’s going on. She basically kind of said, “It could be nothing, but I think it’s something.” So I was already kind of nervous about what was to come. That was probably, like, maybe 14 weeks actually. So I had to go down to the city for that.

My father-in-law– my mom actually wanted to drive me cause nobody could come in with me and my husband was really busy with work and they weren’t going to let me bring him anyway. So again, I went to that alone. They had me meet with this genetic counselor and I think I sort of still had some hope that maybe it was something like dwarfism in my family. So I thought maybe one baby is a dwarf or something. She explained that that was highly unlikely just from a genetic standpoint.

Then, they had me see a new male doctor whom I’d never met before and he was going to do the CVS. He was just very cold and he didn’t have a good bedside manner at all. He attempted to do this placenta biopsy on the smaller twin but he couldn’t get a good sample because the placenta was so small. He said, “If I do it, I might cause harm,” But he did explain that he saw the baby had a large head and a smaller body. So, he suspected that the baby had what’s called triploidy, which is where the baby has three sets of chromosomes and it’s very rare and they don’t typically make it past the first trimester. If the baby does survive till delivery, which is rare, it only lives for minutes or hours.

So he said all this and then he immediately was just like, “Do you want me to reduce the pregnancy today?” And I was like, “What is this man talking about? I don’t even know what that means or why is he saying it so nonchalantly.”

Scott

Yeah, you just got news that just rocked your whole world.

Laura

Yeah. I was just taken back and I was immediately like, “Absolutely not. We don’t even know what’s wrong. I mean, this is your suspicion, but we don’t know that for sure.” He didn’t really do a very good job explaining it anyway. So I immediately just felt uncomfortable with him as a doctor.

Scott

Did you tell any of your friends or family about this situation at the time after you left that appointment?

Laura

I think it was right after that, that I did share my pregnancy on, like, my social media because I had started showing when I was 11 weeks. I was very much clearly pregnant and I think I felt so isolated at the time that I just sort of was like, “Okay, I’m going to share that I’m pregnant and kind of what’s going on,” and that I really don’t know what’s going to happen. But I think it actually felt kind of good to sort of have that little support network and people praying for me and thinking about me and it was rough.

Scott

Was the overall pregnancy itself– were you having any difficulties during that period?

Laura

Oh yeah, I think.

Scott

Commonly nausea, fatigue, and things like that, right?

Laura

Oh yeah, I think just the whole thing was a difficult pregnancy physically and emotionally. I mean, I had nausea. I was working kind of, like, half days at the time because my hours were reduced with COVID. So I was, like, seeing some patients in the morning and then coming home just taking a nap. I had this, like, ligament pain and I was seeing a chiropractor at the time and she was just so wonderful to me. I just remember her, like, giving me these belly rubs and it was three free therapies. I was sort of, like, trauma dumping on her and crying and she would give me these long hugs – nobody was hugging each other at the time – and I just remember that really being a big help to me there at that time.

So, at 16 weeks, they sent me for an early anatomy scan and an amniocentesis, which is where they take a biopsy or a sample of the amniotic fluid and test the genetics of the baby. So, I had to wait a few weeks for that. They attempted that procedure as well but there wasn’t enough amniotic fluid to take a sample and, again, not do any harm. So, that was disappointing because I just really wanted to know what was going on. This was a different doctor who I was pretty comfortable with, and she actually suspected the same disorder – triploidy – as the other doctor.

But then, because of the way the baby– like, I could see the baby on the screen and it was just facing the back of me and you could see that larger head size, smaller body, and it hardly had any fluid around it. I mean, seeing that– up until that point, I hadn’t really been able to see just how different that it looked from the other baby and we didn’t know if it was a boy or girl either because it was two to three weeks behind where we were able to confirm that the other twin was genetically normal and a boy. And yeah, that was just hard not really like having any answers.

Then, that’s when they presented me with some options and my doctor at the time said, “At this point, it’s very clear that this baby is not normal. It’s not going to make it to delivery. It’s got such little amniotic fluid that there’s just no way that it will survive,” but we don’t know how long it could hang on for. You can do nothing and your risks go up for having a preterm labor and, I guess, around that 18-week mark is when your risk factors really go up in this kind of scenario. So she said, “Do nothing,” or I could go in for what’s called a selective reduction, which is basically a different word for aborting one baby, where they inject a chemical into the heart. They stop the heart and, in this situation, I wouldn’t miscarry because I’m still pregnant. So you just remain with both fetuses there. So that was just a lot to take in.

Scott

Yeah, man. It just seems almost overwhelming because – you referred to them as twin A and twin B – twin A completely healthy and normal, but twin B is the one with all the complications.

Laura

Yeah. So it just felt like an impossible decision. I mean, my husband’s on FaceTime with me and he’s just sort of like, “Do whatever you want to do.” And I felt like I wasn’t ready to for sure make that decision that day, so I asked, “Can I wait another week and see if this twin B passes on its own? Then, I don’t have to make the choice because I just really didn’t want it to come down to me.”

Scott

And were they okay with you waiting another week?

Laura

Yeah. We just didn’t really know what was going to happen. She really couldn’t say how long that twin could survive, but I think also it was just such a rare thing to occur. I mean, I think it’s less than 1% chance that a baby with triploidy lives into the second trimester, and then to have it be part of a twin pregnancy. I even did my own research and I found, like, an article that was based on three cases total and, obviously, the abnormal twin didn’t survive, but some of the women did have selective reductions and their other twin did survive. So I asked my doctor, “If it was you, what would you do?” And she said, “I would reduce the pregnancy to give the healthy, genetically normal twin the best outcomes of having a full-term birth.”

Scott

And also it would be safer for you.

Laura

Yeah. I also said it was a risk for me as well. There are different things that can happen that just put the mother more at risk as well.

Scott

So had you made that decision at that point or you wanted to wait a little bit?

Laura

I just said I wanted to wait a week and come back for a heartbeat check. They said that was fine. So I did that and, at 17 weeks, there were still two heartbeats. I have a hard time talking about that appointment just because it was a weird feeling to almost be disappointed because there were still two heartbeats. I think I wanted to know if the other twin passed on its own and it didn’t come down to my choice.

Scott

Yeah, such an odd situation to hear two heartbeats and have that feeling of disappointment because now you do have to make that decision.

Laura

Yeah. So we decided to have that selective reduction.

Scott

So you had to go to Philadelphia for this procedure, but you were on a video call before that.

Laura

Yeah. In Pennsylvania, 24 hours before any type of abortion, you have to have some counseling with your doctor where, basically, they go through what’s going to happen, and that was over video with this doctor. They have to read you this paragraph by law and it’s all about things like you can give your baby up for adoption and things like that. Before the doctor read it to me, she said, “This doesn’t apply to you. I have to read this to you by law but just please know that this does not apply to your situation.” She read this paragraph to me and I just sobbed the whole time because I felt like just a horrible person for doing this, and I knew that it didn’t apply to me, but it was still like, “Why do I have to sit here and listen to this?”

Scott

Yeah, it’s just simply nothing more than a legal requirement.

Laura

Yeah. It seems so traumatic. You can know consciously that it doesn’t apply to you but, still, you’re hearing those words. How far along were you when you went in for the procedure?

Laura

It was right before I hit that 18-week mark – I guess probably, like, 17.5. I kind of ended up falling nicely right before I was to go on this family vacation to the beach with my side of the family and my husband, and I sort of felt, “Okay, I’m going to do this and then I can have some time off of work and be with my family.” So I went down to Philadelphia and my doctor was so good to us. She actually called me on her cell phone and was like, “I’m going to come meet you down at the security desk because they’re going to give your husband some problems.”

Scott

Right. Because during COVID, they weren’t allowing people in, right?

Laura

Yeah. So we’re at security and they’re saying he can’t come. She quickly showed up and just looked them right in the face and was like, “I’m their doctor. He’s coming. This is a life or death procedure and he’s coming.” And then that was kind of it. They were like, “Oh, okay. It’s the doctor. She’s here.” So they let us go. So that was amazing. I can’t thank her enough for that. Then, she kind of just snuck us up this back hallway so no one else would see him in the waiting room and kind of be like, “Why is this person allowed to bring their spouse?”

Scott

It seems like that would make all the difference in the world to have a doctor like that who is so caring.

Laura

Yeah, she really was probably the best one that I interacted with. She was just so kind, gentle, and nurturing with me. She obviously explained what was going to happen and she was kind enough to, like, turn off the monitor when she actually went to do the procedure, and it’s not a pleasant experience at all. It was very painful – just like a large needle going into your belly and it actually hurts more coming out than it did going in. That was just an awful experience, I mean, she gave us a little time together alone right before she did it and we just kind of said goodbye, and it was hard. I wanted to give the baby a name because I didn’t want to refer to it as an it because we didn’t know if it was a boy or girl. We didn’t know if it was a boy or a girl. My husband was okay with that. So I was like, “Can we call the baby Charlie?” So we called the baby Charlie and just said, “We wish we could have met you and we’re sorry.” And that was it.

Afterward, she just kind of checks to make sure that twin still has a heartbeat, and she kind of said to me– I remember. I’ll never forget. She said something like, “Our short-term goal at this point is to get to 27 weeks.” And I was like, “27 weeks?” And she’s like, “That’s our short-term goal. We just want to get this baby to 27 weeks, which is one of the earliest times that you can deliver a baby and they have a better chance at survival.” And so I think her saying that just scared me to death. “Are you saying that there’s still this risk?” And I think just because it’s such a rare situation, they just really don’t know what can happen.

I mean, I had to be monitored pretty closely for the rest of the pregnancy, do stress tests, and go back to maternal fetal medicine a lot. They would check and see where the other fetus was, and that was really hard. I just would always look away when they were doing that. They really don’t know in these kinds of situations. There’s not a lot of research. So they just had to keep monitoring things and everything was looking great. I mean, they even say that, as you go on, that other fetus almost starts to become absorbed in some ways. Like, the placenta will be absorbed by the other placenta and that was just weird to think about.

It was just an uncomfortable pregnancy. I think I always just felt horrible physically and I felt horrible emotionally and was trying to feel some sort of excitement about the other baby and just, like, trying my best to sort of move forward but it was just so weird when people would ask questions like, “How are you feeling? What are you having?” And I would change my responses depending on who it was.

Scott

Really? That’s interesting. So you went into the details with some people and, for others, it’s like, “Well, everything’s good.” How did you decide that?

Laura

I would kind of just decide it right on the spot because I think, like, before I had the procedure and people would ask, if it’s someone I felt comfortable with, I’d be like, “Well, I’m pregnant with twins, but I don’t think one’s going to make it.” Then, other times, before the procedure, I would just say, “Oh, I think I’m having a boy because that was the truth.” I mean, I knew I was having one boy but I didn’t know what was going to happen. Then, after their procedure, I just started saying, “Oh, I’m having a boy” but it felt really weird to know that here I was with one living twin and one deceased twin in my belly and I knew that. I would have to see it all the time.

Scott

Can you talk about the process that you guys decided on to say goodbye to Charlie?

Laura

We ended up going on my family vacation the next day after my procedure, which actually was just like a godsend that I could just go and relax and try to forget and just enjoy my family. It was really nice to get away. Before we left for that vacation, I kind of just felt like I needed to almost just kind of memorialize what was. I found, like, a shell and I told my husband, “I would love to just write on the shell and maybe we’ll throw it in the bay or something.” So I think we wrote something like, “Little baby Charlie, 2020.” And on the back, we just said, “We wish we could have met you – love, Mom and Dad.” And we threw it in the bay.

I feel like those moments really did bring us closer together. I think we were both sort of grieving it in different ways. Of course, I was going through it more just as a woman and actually having both those babies inside of me. Even a few years after that, we would go back to that same vacation spot and I almost kind of felt like that’s where Charlie was buried, so I sort of saw it in that way and it was kind of a pretty view and just a nice place to come back to.

Scott

Yeah, it’s good to have a place like that where you can go and it holds that memory for you. As you were going through this, obviously you’re the one that is dealing with it directly, but I’m sure Dan was empathetic and trying to be supportive. But did you ever have thoughts like, “Man, he has no idea”?

Laura

A little bit. I mean, I could definitely tell it was like an emotional roller coaster for him too, and probably more just emotional for him watching me go through it. But obviously, I don’t think he had those same attachments and retraumatization that I was having, like, every two weeks. I think it was just a hard thing to explain, to also be having that physical pain as part of it as well.

Scott

The rest of the pregnancy– how did that go?

Laura

I feel like it started to get a little easier, but I was just so anxious the whole time that something was going to happen, but I really had a strong support system. A lot of friends were just, like, so thoughtful and kind to us, checking in on us, and sending flowers or little gifts and things. That was really sweet because we didn’t get to see friends and family a lot during that time. So that was super helpful.

Scott

Was it maybe kind of a blessing in disguise that everyone was staying away from each other? Does that mean you had less explaining to do because you just weren’t seeing people?

Laura

Yeah, I guess, in a way. I think it was also that I was, like, half as busy with my job. So I had the time to just be sad, take naps, and go to all these appointments. So I think that all sort of worked out the way it was supposed to, in a sense. They actually were going to induce the pregnancy at 39 weeks. They always just kind of say that, when you have an abnormal pregnancy, nothing good ever happens after 39 weeks. So, I had that scheduled but I was dilated for a while and I had seen my doctor the day before and they were like, “This baby’s coming early.” I wasn’t even really in active labor the next day but I just knew, like, something was up. I think as women, we just have this intuition that I’m like, “This baby is coming.” So I had my parents come and I called the doctor and I was like, “I’m not in active labor, but some things don’t feel right.

Scott

That’s just fascinating to me. So you didn’t have any physical symptoms. You just felt this in some way but it was strong enough that you had your parents come and you started making plans.

Laura

Yeah. I mean, I knew they were either going to take me the following day if it was nothing, but I was like– I don’t know, I just knew. So they said, “Well, I don’t want you to have a parking lot baby, so just come in.”

Scott

We have covered stories like that here too. No, we don’t want that.

Laura

So I went in and it was so bizarre. They hooked me up to the monitor. As soon as they have me hooked up, we just hear, like, a pop. I looked at my husband and I was like, “Oh my God, my water just broke on its own.” So I was like, “How bizarre is that? I just knew this was coming.” It was just like a very fast delivery. My first was not like that at all. It was very slow and agonizing. This one was– I got that epidural right away and my doctor actually was delivering. I think he delivered three babies that night in 45 minutes and I was the second. So he delivered one baby and I had to wait for him to deliver that baby, but I was doing fine. I was texting friends. Even when I left the house that night, our neighbors were having a friends-giving and they all came outside and they were cheering me on as I was leaving the house. So, that was really cool.

Then, he came in and I delivered my baby. We had two names picked out ahead of time. I said, “If he’s blonde, we’ll name him this. If he has brown hair, we’ll name him Milo.” So we named him Milo and he was a big baby, so I was surprised. It was a weird feeling and I didn’t really see what happened after Milo came out, but my husband later told me that he did. And he’s like, “You don’t want to know what the other baby looked like.” So he never really shared anything with me, but he did see what twin B looked like. I was just trying to focus on Milo and just loving him.

But when he came out, I was scared to death for a second. He came out completely, like, blue and purple and his cord was wrapped around his neck twice and he wasn’t making any noise. The doctor looked panicked and, like, trying to unwrap the cord, and my immediate reaction was just, like, fear, but also I was so angry for those 30 seconds. That was, like, the longest 30 seconds of my life and I was like mad at the world. I was like, “Did you really just put me through all this for nothing?!” Cause I thought that he was gone. So that was awful. And then he cried and I was like, “Oh my God, thank the Lord.” And he was okay.

Scott

That’s got to be the best sound you could have heard.

Laura

Yeah.

Scott

How old are your kids now?

Laura

Milo is three and a half and Louie is five and a half.

Scott

Both healthy and happy little boys?

Laura

Yeah, they’re both very happy and healthy and they’re best buddies, but they couldn’t look or act differently. So they’re very different but they get along great.

Scott

Thinking back on this, a couple of things that you wrote when we were speaking, it seems like you would have such conflicting emotions since you were aware you’re carrying life and you’re carrying death at the same time and you really couldn’t do anything. You just had to wait. How do you get through that?

Laura

I think that was the hardest part because I was grieving and I was also trying to be hopeful and excited. I almost felt guilty at times. Do you know how many women out there have miscarriages and then they have nothing? And here you are. You have this baby to look forward to and almost, like, telling myself to stop it. “Get it together. It could be worse.” So I think what was hard too was sort of trying to ignore the pain I was feeling and focus on Milo. At times, I would be like, “What did I do to deserve this?” And then I was kind of beating myself up a little bit.

Scott

You didn’t do anything. I mean, there’s nothing you could have done from the start to avoid this situation.

Laura

And that’s what a lot of the doctors that were kind reassured me of. I wasn’t really making the choice to end a life. They were just saying that this baby wasn’t going to make it and I had to focus on my health and the health of the other baby, and the choice was already kind of made for me and not to feel like I was doing something wrong. So I really tried to lean into what they were saying and view it in that way, but it was tough.

Scott

And then the other interesting aspect of this is saying goodbye to something you never had. That’s really unusual.

Laura

Yeah, it was. Cause I even have friends now who have lost their newborn babies that they got to hold, and it’s just a different type of grief because I never got to hold or know that baby. It’s just a bizarre type of grief and it’s hard to explain unless it happened to you. While my situation might have been a little unique, I think a lot of women who have had miscarriages probably understand what it feels like to have this vision of what your life’s going to look like and just have it be ripped away from you.

Scott

Was therapy ever brought up either during the pregnancy or after?

Laura

No. I actually found it kind of disappointing that while I had some good doctors, no one ever really– I mean, they would say, “How are you doing and how are you coping?” But no one ever really said much about that or offered up any resources. Looking back, I’m sort of like, “That’s odd because you see me obviously struggling during a really awful time in the world in general.” And no, I never did anything like that but I almost kind of feel like the little bit that I did kind of share on my social media about what was going on and kind of what I’m doing now is like a little therapeutic.

Scott

Yeah, it does help just to talk about it even though it’s not like you’re looking for a solution to fix it. You just got to, you just got to get it out. Have you considered having another baby?

Laura

No. I decided very quickly after Milo was born that it was time to be done. Oddly enough, we kind of went through some other things as a couple, me and my husband, that sort of helped make that decision a little bit easier. I don’t know if I shared this but, when Milo was about to turn one, my husband actually was diagnosed with testicular cancer and he had surgery and we just kind of decided to call it. I said, “Can you get a vasectomy while you’re there?”

Scott

So no more babies for you.

Laura

No. When you know you’re done, you know. So I think it was traumatizing and I’d never want to do it again. People ask that all the time, “Oh, are you going to try for a girl?” And I’m just like, “No. What makes you think that’s a good question to ask?”

Scott

And that’s what I want to talk to you about too. I want to ask you about this, just the nature of your pregnancy and how everything went. It seems like you would be continually bombarded with awkward questions and situations. If someone has a friend who they know just got pregnant or is pregnant, how can you avoid those awkward situations?

Laura

Oh, I do feel like that’s a tough topic because I think there are a lot of people out there and they might be just asking very harmless questions, but you really don’t know what someone’s going through. So it is really hard to ask too much to pregnant women. I think I even shared that a simple question like “What are you having?” was tough for me to answer. Whereas most times, you wouldn’t think that is at all a question you shouldn’t ask but I don’t know. I don’t really know what advice to give other than just, if you’re not a good friend of the person, you’re better off just not to ask too many questions.

Scott

Yeah, because you really have no idea. And maybe three times out of four, it’s fine. People just answer and everything’s good, but just don’t know. What message do you want to put out there by telling your story?

Laura

I’ve thought about that a lot and I think– I mean, I obviously went through kind of a rare unique pregnancy but I think a lot of women can probably just relate to the feelings and emotions of loss, whether that’s a miscarriage or a stillbirth or whatever the situation might be, and I think it’s okay to share that. I think women of the past held it very close to them and held it to themselves and maybe that wasn’t the best thing. Sometimes, sharing can be therapeutic and I think there’s some things in life that change you and make you who you are. I think that this was definitely one for me that just changed my perspective a lot.

I think I mentioned to you before, not to get too political but I was always pro-choice before, but it even made me more so now. I think everyone has their opinions about abortions, especially with what’s been going on lately in the past couple of years with abortion laws and whatnot. I think everyone who has ever experienced one has such a different story – and this was mine – it’s not so black and white and I was lucky to be able to make a decision with my doctor in the state that I live in. I think that most people in my situation probably would have made the same choice, but I just think that abortion isn’t such a narrow thing that you can really look at when there are so many different possibilities of why someone might have one.

Scott

Yeah, every story is different. In the episode notes, we’ll have some resources. There are some Facebook groups that talk about vanishing twin syndrome. People have lost babies. There may not be a group that’s specific to your situation, but people can check that and see if there’s something there that they can find helpful.

Laura

One more thing I just wanted to add is, in a tough time, I think I’ll never forget the family, the friends, the neighbors, the doctors, and even just strangers who were just very supportive of me and just being there for your loved ones. That really changed everything for me.

Scott

That’s a good rule to live by. Pregnancy or not, just treat people nicely.

Laura

Yeah.

Scott

In the episode notes, you can see a picture of Laura with her two sons, Louie and Milo. And on that same page, you can see some resources that might be of help. There’s a link to a podcast about grief, which is hosted by one of Laura’s friends. And there are some Facebook groups related to what we talked about today. All of that is at WhatWasThatLike.com/177.

Graphics for this episode were created by Bob Bretz. Full episode transcription was created by James Lai.

And if you’re a regular listener to this show, you know this is where we usually have the Listener Story. And that’s kind of what we’re doing, but this one is a little different.

One of the podcasts I listen to regularly is called Big Lash Energy. It’s hosted by my friend Jayna. She was actually a guest here on What Was That Like back on episode 128, which is titled “Jayna’s hotel was a crime scene”. My audience heard that story and just fell in love with Jayna because she’s just so happy and fun to listen to.

Well, she put out an episode of her podcast not too long ago, and it’s like nothing I’ve heard her do before. Jayna got very vulnerable with her listeners as she told a recent personal story. And as I was hearing her tell that incredible story, I was thinking, “My listeners have to hear this”. So I contacted Jayna and asked if I could play this story for you, and of course she said yes because she’s just an amazing person.

So you’re about to hear that episode of her show – and it’s just 18 minutes long. If you’ve ever struggled with self-esteem or self-acceptance, I hope you find this valuable. Again, her show is called Big Lash Energy and it’s available anywhere, or you can check out her website at HelloJayna.com – and Jayna is J A Y N A – hellojayna.com.

Stay safe, and I’ll see you next time.

Jayna

Do you ever feel ugly? Cause some days I do, and I’m not just talking “not cute”, but I feel ugly. It’s like I’m looking into a fun-house mirror thinking I should stay inside or I might scare small children. Can you relate? A recent study by the Board of Mental Health found that 29 percent of women felt disgusting at least once in the past year, and that’s what we’re talking about in today’s episode – those ugly days.

Hello and welcome to Big Lash Energy. I’m your host, Jayna Marie. Before we get started, I just wanted to take a second to share some exciting news. You, my friend, are officially listening to an Ambie-nominated podcast.

Oh my God, no way. I love this for you. What are the Ambies?

The Ambies are basically the Academy Awards of podcasting. They include shows from all over the world. And this year, your girl was nominated as one of the seven best relationship and wellness podcasts. What’s really cool about it is that we were the only Canadian show in our category as well as the only independent show, meaning all of the other nominated podcasts are made by production companies, including one by CNN. So considering everything here at Big Lush Energy is done by just me and Tim, it really is an honor just to be nominated. In two weeks, I’m going to be making my way to Los Angeles for the awards ceremony, and I’d be lying if I said that my competitive ass didn’t care if I won. But either way, it’s something to celebrate. So if you could do me a huge favor and cross all your fingers and toes for me for the next two weeks, I’d really appreciate it.

Thanks.

Are they still crossed?

Perfect.

Anyways, back to being ugly. I actually had a completely different episode planned for this week, but something happened to me a couple of days ago that made me feel like this was a message that somebody had to hear. I’m a little nervous about this one because it’s really personal. As somebody who prides myself on being a really confident person, I really don’t love talking about my insecurities, but it’s all in the name of BLE and, here, I’m all about sharing my most vulnerable parts so that, maybe, if you’re going through the same thing, you won’t feel alone.

Like I said, I have a feeling that what I went through last week might help someone, and who knows? Maybe it’s you. Maybe it’s you. So if you’re feeling like your self-esteem is at an all-time low, then listen up because today’s episode is all about those times when we look in the mirror and say, “Ugh, gross. Let’s go.”

(Music)

Narrator

Welcome to Big Lash Energy, dedicated to helping you navigate life’s hurdles with your head held high. We’re celebrating wins, learning from our losses, and laughing at ourselves along the way. Now here’s your favorite hype woman, Jayna Marie.

Jayna

First of all, let me start off by saying that there is a difference between being confident in who we are versus how we look. I can say that, personally, I’m almost always confident in who I am, but that hasn’t always been the case. I guess that, through the years, I’ve been through enough to know that, at this point, I could probably get through anything when it comes to how I look, I’m confident most of the time. I contribute the confidence that I do have to growing up, being taught that God doesn’t make mistakes, that he’s the perfect artist and I’m one of his creations. So who am I to criticize his work?

Sometimes, I’ve even wished I could dislike myself enough to be motivated to make the changes necessary to look better, if that makes sense. Like, I know of women going through extreme measures to try and look even marginally better and I’m over here. I mean, sure, I’d love to be a little bit smaller, but God loves me the way I am. So, can you pass me another Oreo?

Of course, there were also those times when I squeezed my fluffy belly into a super flattering pair of 200 yoga pants, caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror, and thought, “Damn, I look good as long as I stay wearing these pants. I don’t really need to spend the afternoon on a stair climber.” The majority of the time I’m sure of myself and I embrace my own unique beauty, and I know not to compare myself with anyone, but there are still some days when I wake up feeling like a stumpy ass, fat-faced, puffy-eyed, scraggly haired garden gnome. There have even been moments when I’ve avoided looking at myself in the mirror, times when it’s gotten so bad that I’ve even resorted to doing my makeup in the dark. I’ve worked with women long enough to know that some of us feel this way most of the time and that breaks my heart.

In my case, I’ve noticed that those icky feelings tend to be triggered when someone takes a really unflattering photo of me or I catch myself in the mirror in some awkward position. But I’ve noticed that the times I feel the most despicable are the times when I’m unable to do the things that I need to for myself – the times when I put my needs on the back burner. In those times, seeing greasy hair or the few pounds I’ve put on is a reminder of how I’ve neglected me – the work that I’m not doing – and, most importantly, the time that I don’t have for myself.

Even if you can’t relate, Rihanna can. She told Star Magazine, “I have an ugly day once a month, pimples on my face, I’m fat and in a bad mood. It’s more like an ugly week.”

Have you ever had one of those ugly weeks? My guess is it was most likely hormonal, or maybe it was one of those times where everything else took precedence over your you time. Washing your hair was a luxury you just didn’t have time for, and the thought of making it into a gym was laughable. I mean, even if you had the time, you didn’t have the energy. All of your meals were eaten on the go, in the car, or whatever you could find, and that’s exactly how I found myself just a couple of days ago, as I talked about in last week’s episode.

I was just recently in Atlanta, but my flight going home got moved to the next day. So that meant that I was only going to be home for two days before leaving again for Cancun to work. The to-do list was super long and I only had 48 hours to get it all done. In the time I was home, I needed to unpack the professional/cold-weather clothes from Atlanta, do laundry, repack beachy options for Mexico, buy some of the supplies that I’d run out of, wash brushes, pack my professional makeup kit, and clean my house. So it was ready for the woman who was going to be watching Arzo, then take Arzo shopping to get groceries and snacks for school, catch up on emails and so much more. Washing my hair had been on the agenda, but the other things just didn’t.

Then I stayed up all night packing, threw on a hat, drove to the airport at 5 AM, landed in Cancun in the early evening, made my way to my room to set up for the hair and makeup appointment I had the next day, and passed out early because I knew that my bride was going to be in my room at 6 o’clock in the morning. It was 3 AM my time. Over the course of the next 24 hours, I did three full glam hair and makeup looks for her and, in between, whenever I wasn’t doing hair and makeup, I was washing my brushes, resetting for the next glam session, and trying to pull that week’s episode together. I recorded until two o’clock in the morning one night and then I had to pack up all the makeup and hair gear and make my way to the bride’s room for 4 AM.

At around 8.30 in the morning, I was finally done with the majority of the hair and makeup work. Once I knew that my client was happy with everything, I went back to my room feeling accomplished. She loved all of her looks. The podcast audio was finally done being recorded. I’d helped Arzo with her homework over FaceTime, all of my responsibilities had been taken care of. Check, check, and check.

However In the process, I hadn’t had time to eat properly, wash my hair, shave my legs, or do any of the other things that helped me to feel like my best self. It was finally time I stepped out of the clothes that had been hiding my body and suddenly caught a glimpse of myself in the hotel room mirror. Maybe it was the bad lighting. Maybe it was the exhaustion, but I took one look at myself and was immediately disgusted.

Sure, I’d already felt gross, but now that I was looking in the mirror, I realized I looked even worse. The bags under my eyes were bagging, the overhead light had everything else looking like it was either bloated or sagging, and that’s when a voice inside – likely myself saboteur – said, “Ugh, look at you. You’re disgusting. You’ve put on weight. Your hair’s a mess. Your ass is deflated. Do you remember when it used to look great? Your face only looks decent from one angle and only in good lighting. Ugh. Do you see the fat collecting around your knees? You used to be pretty. Now, who would ever love that?” I fought tears as that horrible voice continued, “You’re getting older. It’s only going to get worse.” And with that, I took a one way ticket to a dark place.

I think I felt so defeated for two reasons. One, I felt hopeless. I knew what I had to do to take care of myself, but I didn’t have the time. And I felt unlovable. If people knew how I really looked naked like this, they wouldn’t love me. On top of that, everything’s going to keep going downhill. So it’s only going to get worse. Who’s going to listen to me, respect me, or love me if I stay looking like this or when it inevitably gets worse? As women, so much of our power and relevance comes from being attractive. We learn it as soon as we see the difference between getting an oil change and no makeup and sweats versus getting an oil change. When you’re looking cute, you get better service. Men are more polite and kinder. So the thought of our look slowly fading away with age can be terrifying.

Anyways, I finally stepped inside the shower. It was so needed that it almost felt like therapy. I washed my hair, put in some deep conditioner, let it sit while I shaved my legs, exfoliated everything, rinsed the conditioner, and then just stood there, letting the water run over me. I took a deep breath. Wow, I needed this. Something as simple as a shower. A moment to myself for myself. I stepped out of the running water, feeling refreshed, but still chunky.

The hotel bathroom had an obscene amount of mirrors. I tried my best to avoid looking into them, but there I was, face to face with my naked body. In my shame, I tried to look away but, of course, there was a mirror or some kind of reflection anywhere I turned. So of course, as I dried myself off, I ended up making eye contact with myself. This time, a different voice spoke up and said, “Stop criticizing yourself. Beautiful flowers don’t come from ugly trees.” I know it sounds a little bit cheesy, but it hit me right in the feels. Then the voice said, “Stand tall and proud.” So I did.

I stood taller in the mirror, completely naked. It said “Taller, like the confident woman that you are.” So I stretched my arms straight up above my head. Suddenly, in my mind’s eye, my feet had become roots planted firmly into the ground. My legs, my stomach, my back, my chest, and my neck all formed the trunk of a strong and powerful tree. My outstretched arms were now branches that extended all the way to my fingertips. I spread my fingers all the way out.

As I slowly lowered my arms, I imagined leaves and flowers all around me, like a tree covered in cherry blossoms. Each delicate flower represents something beautiful I’ve created in this world. One for each of the smiles I’d put on my clients’ faces, the pride I’d put in my parents’ eyes, the safe and loving home I’d created for Arzo, almost 100 episodes of a podcast focused on self-love and encouragement, the beautiful hairstyles, the makeups, the way that I’ve decorated my condo, how I show love to the people around me– every act of love, every beautiful thing I’d created resulted in a flower. And in my imagination, the flowers were all around me.

I was no longer focused on the little things I perceived as imperfections in my body. Now my focus was on all the beauty that surrounded me, what I’d created with my own hands, manifestations of the love and beauty that I had in my heart, and I stood even taller. If what I’m creating is love and beauty, then I must be lovable and beautiful too.

Strangely enough, as corny as it might have sounded, it worked. I took a deep breath. It was a powerful and wonderful reminder that I’m so much more than flesh on bones, so much more than how photogenic I am. I represent so much more than fat on my knees. If anyone saw my leaves, the flowers, the beauty I’ve created, they’d think I was beautiful too.

I wrapped myself in a robe and took a seat on one of the beds. As I considered this shift in perspective, I suddenly thought of you. On the days when you’re not feeling your best, the times when you’re feeling neglected, when you don’t have the time to show yourself the love that you need and deserve, I thought maybe I should tell my BLE bestie about the trees. Think about the love and light you bring into this world, whether it be as simple as the loving gesture of packing a lunch for your kids, the smiles you put on your friend’s faces, the way you show love to the people around you, the care and attention you put into your work, the way you set the table at night, the thoughtful touches you put into the gifts that you give. Maybe, if you thought of all of these things, you’d show yourself some grace too.

Today, Arzo asked me what I was working on for this week’s episode and I told her, “I’m talking about the days when we feel ugly.” I happen to think she’s one of the most beautiful humans I’ve ever seen, so I asked her, “Do you ever feel ugly?” She said, “Yes, whenever I haven’t had a shower.” So maybe there’s power in that too. Try to remember that everyone – even the women you think are the most beautiful – have ugly days, days where they criticize themselves.

Scarlett Johansson said, “I don’t walk around feeling sensual. I’m a girl. Aren’t we all like that? When we wake up in the morning and go, ‘Oh God, what changed as I slept?’”

Megan Fox has been quoted as saying, “I don’t ever see myself the way other people see me. There’s never been a point in my life where I loved my body. Never, ever.”

Isn’t that sad?

So in times when you’re feeling ugly, stand tall, think of all the beauty you create, take a shower, and remember, just because you think something doesn’t mean it’s true. You’ve been wrong before. I mean, chances are you used to believe that having a tan was good for you, that tweezed eyebrows were goals, and layering tank tops was cute. One thing you’re not going to do is go through life seeing beauty in everyone else but you.

I appreciate you pressing play today. I really needed to get this off my chest because I’ve got an award show to go to in two weeks and I can’t be over here feeling gross. Oh, hell no. If you know someone who could use this little reminder or someone who could use a little BLE in their life, could you pretty please share this show with them? I hear. Every time you do, someone hearing that voice saying that they’re ugly stands taller and says, “Fuck you.” It’s true.

Thanks again for listening. Until next week, please go be your most fabulous self and don’t forget to spread that bad-ass Big Lash Energy everywhere you go. Thanks, Beautiful.

Goodbye.

View Details

Every Tuesday, we grab a past question from the Facebook group, then Meredith and Scott answer it and read some of the answers given by other listeners.

Have you ever been involved with foster care? What was that experience like?Show Podcast InformationThe question for this episode:

Have you ever been involved with foster care? What was that experience like?

Discussed in this episode:

Walk A Mile In Their Shoes:

https://WalkAMileMaine.org

Fidget spinners:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fidget_spinner

WWTL episode 82 “Michael was abused with a sewing machine” –

https://WhatWasThatLike.com/82

Meredith’s podcast is Meredith For Real – the Curious Introvert:

https://MeredithForReal.com

To check out the new Tuesday Question and get in the discussion, join us at WhatWasThatLike.com/facebook.

Sponsor deals:

To listen to THE 82% series, follow THIS IS ACTUALLY HAPPENING on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts!

Go to cookunity.com/What or enter code What before checkout for 50% off your first week.

Go to Seed.com/what and use code 25WHAT to get 25% off your first month.

Go to storyworth.com/what to save $10 on your first purchase!

Get 15% off OneSkin with the code WHATWAS at https://www.oneskin.co/ #oneskinpod

Cancel your unwanted subscriptions by going to RocketMoney.com/whatwas.

This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at BetterHelp.com/whatwas and get on your way to being your best self.

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Not too long ago, I went on Hulu, and I found the TV show Shark Tank, and I went all the way back and watched every episode starting at Season 1.

Max partnered with Mark CubanShow Podcast InformationI’ve always had that entrepreneurial spirit, wanting to start businesses and make money by working for myself. And that’s what I’ve pretty much done – I’ve been self-employed for more than 20 years. And now, I’m self-employed as a podcaster.

But one thing I’ve never done – I’ve never been on Shark Tank. But Max has – and he did it as a teenager.

Max told me the whole story of the product he developed, and how he pitched it on TV and ended up getting a deal with Mark Cuban.

This is a Flashback episode. Max originally told this story here on the podcast, back on episode 18. So after he tells about his adventures on Shark Tank, you’ll hear a new conversation I had with Max recently, about what he’s up to today. Surprise – he’s started a new company.

Max todayTo contact Max:

Email: mbfeber@gmail.com

Instagram: @maxbfeber

LinkedIn: Max Feber

Full show notes and pictures for this episode are here:

https://WhatWasThatLike.com/176

Graphics for this episode by Bob Bretz. Transcription was done by James Lai.

Want to discuss this episode and other things with thousands of other WWTL listeners? Join our podcast Facebook group at WhatWasThatLike.com/facebook (many of the podcast guests are there as well)

Sponsor deals:

To listen to THE 82% series, follow THIS IS ACTUALLY HAPPENING on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts!

Go to cookunity.com/What or enter code What before checkout for 50% off your first week.

Go to Seed.com/what and use code 25WHAT to get 25% off your first month.

Go to storyworth.com/what to save $10 on your first purchase!

Get 15% off OneSkin with the code WHATWAS at https://www.oneskin.co/ #oneskinpod

Cancel your unwanted subscriptions by going to RocketMoney.com/whatwas.

This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at BetterHelp.com/whatwas and get on your way to being your best self.

Episode transcript (download transcript PDF):

Not too long ago, I went on Hulu, and I found the TV show Shark Tank, and I went all the way back and watched every episode starting at Season 1.

I’ve always had that entrepreneurial spirit, wanting to start businesses and make money by working for myself. And that’s what I’ve pretty much done – I’ve been self-employed for more than 20 years. And now, I’m self-employed as a podcaster.

But one thing I’ve never done – I’ve never been on Shark Tank. But Max has – and he did it as a teenager.

Max told me the whole story of the product he developed, and how he pitched it on TV and ended up getting a deal with Mark Cuban.

Scott

How long have you been watching Shark Tank?

Max

I’ve been watching Shark Tank since I was probably 8 years old, so for the past 10-11 years. Well, they’re in the 10th season now. I’ve been watching since the first handful of seasons, so I’ve been watching for a very long time.

Scott

Yeah, your episode was in season 10, right?

Max

Yes. We are in the 10th season, which is a great season. They’re doing a lot this season featuring stories of young entrepreneurs because, I think, they’re starting to realize that entrepreneurs are now growing up watching Shark Tank. So, it seems like they’re starting to do a lot more on that end, which is very nice.

Scott

That’s good! That’s great! I like that! When did you first have the idea for this product?

Max

When I was 15 years old, I just fell in love with coffee. I got so inspired by it and I just started loving it. I’m not sure why, but I started making it myself and know using all different types of brewing methods – pour-overs, Aeropress, everything you could think about to make coffee. Eventually, I stumbled across cold-brewed coffee. This was something that I haven’t tried before. It wasn’t sold at Starbucks and it wasn’t sold in any large retailers. I said, “This is something that I really want to try because everything on the internet said it was smoother, sweeter, and tasted better. It was a totally different kind of coffee than I ever had before. So, I went online and typed in, “How to make cold brew coffee” on YouTube. I learned that people use mason jars to make it themselves at home all the time. So, that’s exactly what I tried to do – I took a mason jar, I had ground coffee, added cold water to it, and let that sit in your refrigerator for 24 hours. Then, what happens is you have the sludgy coffee mixture in a jar that you can’t drink because you have to filter it. Everyone online said, “Just take a cheesecloth or a paper towel and filter it.” So, I tried filtering it and made a mess, of course, because it’s not really a good way to filter something. My parents were so mad because I was just a kid making a mess in the kitchen – they were not happy. They said, like, “You’re never allowed to do this again! You need to stop making cold-brew!” I said, “Well, okay. There has to be a better way to do this because if this is going to be the next kind of coffee that everyone’s gonna love, why is everyone using this horrible way to filter it? Like, there must be a better solution.” So, I had this idea for a double-sided mason jar lid with a filter in the center. I thought that this must exist. So, my first instinct was, “Oh, let me go buy this! I’ll find this on Amazon!” So, I typed in double-sided mason jar lid on Google and Amazon, but it does not exist – I couldn’t find it anywhere. So, I said, “I’m going to make it because it’s not in the market.” So, I went into my garage, grabbed a screen door, some mason jar lids, blew together this first prototype, and it worked! After some trial and error, it started working. So, that’s really how BRUW was born. I said, “This is an amazing idea! It’s helping me make better coffee! Why can’t this help everyone make better coffee?” So, it’s something that I’ve been continuing to work on for the past 4.5 – 5 years.

Scott

When you first made that first prototype and got excited about it – obviously, I can tell just by listening to you – were you excited because, “Wow, I can now make cold brew coffee” or were you excited because, “Wow, I’ve got a product here that could potentially make a lot of money because nobody else is doing it”?

Max

I think it was a piece of both. I don’t think that I was only excited, like, “Oh my god, I just struck gold! I’m gonna make a billion dollars!” because we definitely made that much. It’s a good product – people are buying it – but we definitely haven’t made millions and millions and millions of dollars yet. Hopefully, that’s down the road. But my first instinct was, like, “I want to help more people make better coffee.” Going to a very macro level, I think that’s what makes really strong entrepreneurs. When you’re driven by passion and want to help other people make better coffee, and other people understand your passion, I think it can just lead to a lot more success than saying, “Oh, I’m gonna make a million dollars! I’m gonna start a company!” because if that was the case, there’s a lot of different ways we could have grown it. I don’t think that we would have built a community of people that enjoy using the BRUW and enjoy making cold-brew at home.

Scott

Right. And you wouldn’t probably be quite as passionate about it if it was just for money. Now, you said the name of it is “BRUW”. What does that mean?

Max

Truthfully, it’s because brew.com and brew.net were taken and I couldn’t think of another domain name. We’re working on a cool backstory for the name. As of right now, I was just sitting around the kitchen table with my mom – I think my grandma was there – and my siblings. We were, like, “We need a name for this. What should we call it?” Originally, it was “COFFME” – that was the first name. Everyone was like, “No way, that’s horrible!” Then, it was “BRUWD”, which you can’t really say without like–

Scott

You got to spell it for everybody.

Max

Right. Then, there were all these other names. Finally, someone at the table – I don’t remember who it was – said, “What about ‘BRUW’?” I was like, “Oh, that’s a good name – it must be taken.” So I went online and was, like, “Oh, it’s available! So, we bought that domain name.

Scott

It’s pretty incredible that a 4-letter domain name was still even available.

Max

It’s a ‘.net’ – we don’t have bruw.com. We had bruw.net and we also had bruwcoffee.com. So, yeah, I was really lucky.

Scott

Have you talked to the ’.com’ owner at all about getting that?

Max

They are not willing to sell it. Trust me. I’ve talked to them.

Scott

Wow, okay. Well, not yet. I mean, anything’s for sale for the right amount of money.

Max

Exactly.

Scott

Okay. Personally, I have only been familiar with hot coffee. My wife drinks iced coffee. I wasn’t really familiar with cold-brew as compared to iced coffee. I’ve done a little research, so I know now, but can you describe for the listeners what the differences are?

Max

Totally. Let me go back to iced coffee. Iced coffee is you make coffee, cool it down, and pour in ice, right? It’s pretty self-explanatory. Everyone can pretty much figure out how to make it – not too challenging – you just get a cold-tasting cup of coffee, so it’s not that special. Cold-brew, on the other hand, you actually brew it with cold water. So, the coffee grounds never touch the heat, never get hot, and you do it over a longer period of time. Because you’re using cold water and because you’re stretching out the process, the chemical reaction between the coffee in the wall and the water is actually different. So, you’re not extracting the same amount of acidity out of the coffee bean and you’re not extracting all the same elements that you would when you have a hot cup of coffee, so it ends up being more caffeinated and tastes smoother and sweeter – it doesn’t taste as bitter and harsh. If you brewed it hot, that same coffee would actually taste completely different, and that’s a big plus to a lot of people that like coffees. They said, “Well, I hate the bitterness of that milk or that cream.” When they drink cold-brew, it’s smoother. And they don’t need to use the most expensive coffee in the world to get something out of it that’s drinkable. It’s something that tastes good, still, if it’s made cold – I think that’s what people like a lot. Then, because of the lower acidity, certain doctors recommended it for patients who have digestion issues because it’s easier on their diet. There’s a whole array of benefits to it, but it is different. The main one is that it tastes different and it tastes better.

Scott

Yeah, I look forward to trying it. I haven’t had cold-brewed coffee yet. I ordered your filter – it just hasn’t arrived yet. I know that you have a little backorder, right?

Max

A little bit. It’s on the way. So, everything shipping out. By the time this is airing, it should probably be shipped out already.

Scott

Yeah, I’m sure.

Max

Yeah, it was crazy. We got all these orders on the night we aired on Shark Tank. I mean, we were expecting an influx of orders but we didn’t really know how much, but then we just got slammed and we said, “This is great!” Then, we also had, like, “Okay, we need to meet this demand. We need to figure it out.” It was definitely challenging to do it, but we’re slowly getting there.

Scott

Let’s go into the show. You decided to be on Shark Tank. To get on the show, you can apply either online or on an open call. How did you do it?

Max

Yeah, you can apply either online or in an open casting call – both of them are pretty similar. In one, you just go and speak in-person in front of the judges, and in the other one, you send a video of yourself. Either way, I believe you get in front of the same casting team, they review you, and they pick. I mean, they pick the best entrepreneurs that they see. I think, this season, they got 44,000 applicants. So, it’s competitive to get on the show. Because of how successful the show is, everyone’s trying to get on it, but there’s definitely a process to apply and get approved. I think the statistics are astounding for this season 10 – what they published is 44,000 people applied to be on the show. 158 of those people made it to LA to actually film the segment, but 88 of those people made it to TV. So, like, 158 films and 88 people made it to TV. So, you can go to LA, go to the stage, pitch to sharks, film your episode, and then just get cut off and not actually ever have it come to fruition, which would be pretty disappointing. Personally, that’s what I was worried about. We filmed in the summer and I said, like, “Oh my god, am I gonna be on TV?” We had no idea what was gonna happen. So, that’s what I was concerned about. When we got the news that we were going to be out in January, it was very relieving.

Scott

That’s one thing I wanted to ask you about – from the time you got accepted to come out to the time when you actually filmed the show, how much time went by?

Max

Right. So, it was a long process. I mean, they’re taking applications now for next season, right? So like, it’s January and they’re already doing casting calls and taking applications for season 11, but they haven’t even finished airing season 10 yet. So, you can imagine that it’s a long road to get there.

Scott

Yeah. So, your show is actually on Episode 9 of Season 10 – that went on the air on January 6, 2019, which was just a few weeks ago. When did you actually record that episode?

Max

That was over the summer. The entire season of Shark Tank was filmed in two segments – a week in June and a week in September. I believe that’s what was been published. So, I mean, it’s crazy.

Scott

So you filmed in June and it went on the air in January, so it’s like six months, roughly. How many times did you practice that pitch?

Max

Oh my gosh, I can’t even tell you. I thought of it a lot – right a lot. I had the pitch written. I decided that this is what I’m going to say to the sharks. I would literally be in front of the mirror, going, “Hi, sharks. My name is Max Feber. I’m 18 years old.” So I just went through it and did it hundreds of times. I mean, there’s a folder on my computer of me doing it. Instead of doing it in front of the mirror, I did it in front of my webcam on my Mac so that I could play it back and say, “I’m going to tweak this. I’m going to say it slower. I could actually evolve that.” So, by the time I got to TV, it was pretty polished.

Scott

Right. Because you want it to be second nature. You don’t have to try to remember your lines, right? How nervous were you when you were walking down that hallway? I mean, what were you thinking?

Max

Oh, my gosh, it was the craziest experience. When the doors opened – the music was playing in my head although they don’t actually play it when you’re recording – I walked down, and I was like, “Oh my gosh, this is finally happening.” Then all of a sudden, I saw 5 sharks sitting in front of me. I was, like, “Wow.” It hit me a little bit that I had finally made it into the room that I had always been watching. I filmed for a lot of TV shows, but not Shark Tank specifically. When you’re there, you’re like, “Oh, I can’t believe this is how it looks on TV.” It feels like you’re on a set and it doesn’t look real, but when you’re on the Shark Tank set, especially when I was there, I just completely felt natural in that room. I was standing on the carpet in front of the shark and I was like, “Oh, I haven’t imagined what this feels like forever. It didn’t feel like I was in a foreign environment. It felt like I was walking into the TV that I’ve been watching forever.”

Scott

Because the set doesn’t really change except the product being shown – it’s pretty much the same.

Max

Also, it didn’t feel like it was fake – it felt like I was truly walking into what I had been watching forever. It was, like, very nostalgic. It was a great experience.

Scott

Did you want a particular shark to give you a deal as you were going in?

Max

I really liked all of them and I really respect all the sharks. I didn’t have anyone, specifically. I mean, I love Mark Cuban, I did want Mark Cuban going in, but if he didn’t give me a deal and Robert had given me a deal, it wouldn’t have been the end of the world because I do respect them all so highly. I like all of them, but I wanted Mark – I had my eyes on Mark. I also had my eye on Lori but she didn’t end up giving me the offer.

Scott

The sharks you presented to were pretty much the standard list. It was Mar, Daymond, Kevin, Lori, and Robert. As you were going in, your proposal was you wanted $50,000 for 25% of your company?

Max

Yes.

Scott

You did the product demo and it looked super smooth. I mean, I could tell that – when I watched it – you had obviously practiced that a lot and, obviously, that paid off. Now, Kevin joked more than once, “Wow, Max is really, kind of, amped up on the product. He’s taken a lot of coffee. Was that actually the case?”

Max

No. That was actually one of the few mornings that I didn’t drink any coffee. I mean, I was just very nervous and excited, and the combination led me to be very just energetic. I mean, I’m normally a very energetic person. So, it made me very articulate and very energetic, and I think they liked it.

Scott

Yeah. I think that came across as very, very positive. I mean, I can tell that just by talking to you – obviously, you talk fast, you think fast, and that’s just the way you are. Was there any question that you were afraid that they were gonna ask?

Max

No. I mean, I was pretty much prepared for anything that they could have thrown at me. I had been reviewing– I mean, I didn’t necessarily review my numbers just because I know the numbers. Like, I had been working in the business so regularly every day that you, kind of, learn and know everything about it, so I didn’t have to prepare too much. So, I just had to recalculate the cost of it and make sure that we had actual numbers of what our product cost and stuff like that, but I wasn’t really nervous about anything. I think, in general, when running a company, I try to maintain a very healthy company that’s morally strong and very financially healthy, so we didn’t have any debt. We didn’t really have anything too crazy that they saw. It’s not like they could have gotten my secrets out of me because we didn’t really have anything to hide. I pretty much left it all on the table with them.

Scott

And you’ve already got your patent just before that?

Max

Yeah, that is true. We really had gotten the patent, like, 3-4 days before filming with them.

Scott

It was great because that’s one of the things that they always ask. Of course, they would always ask, “What does it cost you to make one of these?” And you had all those answers ready to go.

Max

I mean, like, I’m not gonna say, “I don’t know the answer to how much it was gonna cost.” And I think those people who go into the tank and say, “Oh, I don’t know how much it costs to make it.” should not be on Shark Tank – like, they shouldn’t even ask for an investment.

Scott

How did they get past the first screener, right?

Max

I don’t know the process of how they get past them or how they apply, but why should they take an investment when they don’t even know? They might not be able to manage that money properly if they don’t know what their product cost – I wouldn’t trust them with my money – and I can’t imagine how those billionaires in the room would feel about it.

Scott

Right, because it’s not like they would just give their money out to anybody.

Max

They’re billionaires but, at the same time, they’re not, like, throwing their money away. When they give you $50,000 in Shark Tank, they’re investing it in you because they think they’ll make money back. People forget that a lot. They think, “Oh, they’re just giving this kid.” Like, they don’t realize that Mark giving me $50,000 is Mark assuming that I’ll be able to take that $50,000 and turn it into $5 million which, hopefully, we’re gonna be able to do.

Scott

Right off the bat, Kevin offered you $50,000 for a 50% stake. You didn’t seem too excited about that.

Max

I couldn’t believe it. That was just a stupid deal – I didn’t like it. I mean, I respect Kevin O’Leary a lot – I think he’s a nice guy, a good investor, and a good person for the most part, but I felt that was a stupid offer.

Scott

But that seems like it’s, kind of, his shtick where he just comes out sarcastically and doesn’t pull any punches. I don’t remember what he said about your product but, obviously, if he was offering a deal, he must have thought it had potential, right?

Max

I didn’t like the deal because that was too much equity for me. In all honesty, like, he is probably one of the most shrewd investors there and he’s probably one of the fastest to say, “Your idea sucks. Get out of here. You’re the worst company ever.” But he didn’t say that to me. He respected me enough to understand that we were running a healthy company. He believed in the product and I do really appreciate that because, I think, that’s very rare coming out of Mr. Wonderful.

Scott

In another one of the presentations on that same episode, I think the line he used was, “You need to take this product out back behind the barn and shoot it.” I think a lot of that is for ratings because people want to see what Kevin’s gonna say next, right?

Max

I don’t know why he does it. I don’t know if they do it for ratings or not. I just know that getting an offer from Kevin O’Leary – he’s probably one of the hardest sharks to get an offer from – is really rare. So, when he gave me the offer, it made me feel like this product is legitimate and they’re gonna like it. If he likes it, then nobody else would. If he doesn’t have an issue with the financials, then nobody else is gonna have an issue with the financials. If he notices a little bit of a deviation from what’s normal in the industry, he’ll slam you over it.

Scott

So you got that. Then, Lori dropped out. Daymond offered $50,000 for 30%, which is a little bit more equity than what you initially wanted. Robert dropped out. Then, Mark Cuban said, “Okay, I’ll give you $50,000 for 30% and I want an immediate answer.” Did you feel pressured? I mean, obviously, they want to put pressure on you of “We’re gonna give you this, but you need to answer us now.”

Max

I don’t know. Daymond gave me the offer and the offer he gave me was, like, “Look, I’d want to license it.” He didn’t seem to believe in me that much. Meanwhile, Mark was like, “You remind me of me when I was a kid. You’re a mini-me. Like, I love you, I love this.” He gave me the same offer. So, again, I really respect Daymond John and I think he’s a great entrepreneur. He was the Entrepreneur In Residence at my college, Babson, for a little while but Mark just seemed to have a little bit more belief in me than Daymond did. I think he was investing in the business thinking can make some money back, but Mark was investing in me along with the business. So, I really appreciated that. I said that I respected him and I wanted to do a deal with him. In retrospect, I probably could have asked the 2 of them to go in together, but I don’t know if that would have ever materialized.

Scott

Yeah. That makes sense. I mean, since they were both offering the same deal, for you to go with Mark, I guess it makes sense why you did that. Looking back on it now, since the show has now gone live, would you have done anything differently?

Max

That’s a good question. I don’t think so. I think we hit it spot on. I think the way the show made me look was good – I think they made me look really good – and I really appreciated that. I think they really portrayed the company very well. There’s not much I would have done differently. Maybe, I could have asked Mark and Daymond to go in together.

Scott

But that wouldn’t have necessarily been a positive, though.

Max

Right, exactly. I think I would have asked the question – I don’t even know if I would have. I went back and forth thinking about it, Mark wanted me to commit immediately and I did. I think that shows how committed I was to him, to his company, and to his investments. On the other hand, I don’t know what Daymond could add to the company because I haven’t really interacted with him. So I went back and forth there, but I don’t think I would change anything. I think it went really well.

Scott

They definitely reward decisiveness.

Max

Yes, I agree.

Scott

After the show, did the deal actually happen – you got the $50,000?

Max

We did – we’re working with Mark, which is really great.

Scott

How often do you talk with Mark?

Max

Mark is great. He’s a really good and strong advisor – I really appreciate it. I’ll probably email him, like, once a week to ask him questions or give them updates, and he is always responsive, works with me, and gives great advice, which is awesome. He’s really good to work with. He is a really good adviser and a really good mentor.

Scott

Not many many people have direct access to Mark Cuban.

Max

Yeah, seriously. That made me a celebrity in school and everywhere. They’re like, “Oh, can you ask Mark a question for me? Let me talk to Mark! Let me get Mark’s phone number!” I’m like, “I can’t.”

Scott

Oh, yeah. You’re not gonna abuse that privilege.

Max

It’s great. It gets me to all the parties. Anytime I want to go to a party on campus, I’ll be like, “If you don’t let me in, I’m gonna call Mark” and they’d be, like, “Okay, come on.” That’s just a joke – it’s not that I actually will. But it’s been really cool to see people supporting me in, like, the company – it’s been really great.

Scott

You mentioned that your appearance on the show had a pretty positive effect on sales. Can you talk about that a little bit?

Max

Yeah. We did really well. We were on the show. Then, all of a sudden, we had thousands of new customers flooding in. I realized that we were going to sell out – we did better than I expected – and I was, like, “We’re gonna sell out. We’re not gonna be able to fulfill all of our orders immediately.” I said, “Well, if we can’t be operationally excellent going into the industry – like, we can’t get all the orders out immediately and have perfect supply chain – then we have to be on the very top of our customers, we have to be talking to them, interacting with them, and building a community with them.” We said, like, “We have to do something. We can’t just leave these people to fend for themselves.” So, I sent out an email to all of my customers with my personal cell phone number and said, “Look, you’re my customers, you’re supporting me, you’re paying me, why shouldn’t you have access to me? That just didn’t make sense.” Then I said, “Call me or text me. That’s my real number. It’s the same one that my mom has. Ask me your questions. Don’t slam us online. Don’t leave horrible reviews. Just call me and I’m happy to talk to you about it.” That’s what we were doing and it had been working very well for us.

Scott

People love transparency.

Max

It’s really good – they like it a lot, they respect it a lot, it helps build a stronger brand for us, it helps build a community of all the people that are on board and respect us. So, I really like and appreciate that.

Scott

When you get the $50,000, what did you use it for?

Max

We invested a lot in marketing like what Mark had asked for and what he wanted us to do, which we did. We’ve done a lot of everything. We’re just spending a lot of money to grow ourselves as a company.

Scott

So what you’re doing is, kind of, like, bootstrapping, where the money that you get from pre-ordering or from ordering is really paying to have the product created, right?

Max

Right, exactly.

Scott

When Lori dropped out, she said or thought that this is just gonna be one of the many products that you’ll develop. Do you have plans for other products now or are you focusing on just this one?

Max

I don’t have anything definitive in the pipeline, but I do agree with her a lot. I’ve always viewed that this is not something that I’ll necessarily retire on – it’s just the first of many ventures for me. Now that I have a relationship with this community of a few thousand people around me – I gave them my phone number, built a strong belief not only in the product but also in myself – I can say, like, “Hi, thank you so much for believing in BRUW. I’m starting this new thing. Would you support this? Look what I’m doing. You believed in me from when I was a kid.” I think that people would be open to it, I think people would believe in it, and I do really appreciate that.

Scott

Yeah. I mean, the network that you’re building now, if you think about calculating the value of that over your lifetime, that would be a lot more than $50,000, honestly.

Max

Right, exactly. When Mark Cuban gave me the deal, having access to Mark and having a relationship with Mark was so much more valuable to me than anything else. I just said, like, I really appreciate him and I really value him. I know Mark Cuban’s worth a lot more than $50,000. So, I was very flexible in the amount of equity I was willing to give up – don’t tell him that.

Scott

Alright. Well, if he’s listening to this then, of course, he knows.

Max

Now he knows.

Scott

So you’ve got your website. You’re on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. I’m gonna have links to all of these on the show notes for this episode so that people can contact you. What’s the easiest way for someone to actually get the BRUW cold-brew coffee filter?

Max

The best way to buy it is through our website – bruw.net. The best way you know that’s the best way to do it. The coupon code is SAVE10 for 10% off – don’t tell your friends, it’s a secret. That’s the best way that they can get a hold of one. Also, they can follow or contact me on Instagram at @maxbfeber – you can DM and reach out to me personally there – that’s the best way to get in touch with me. I love speaking and I love doing everything. So, please reach out to me, I’m happy to talk.

Scott

Yep. Like I said, I’ll have links to all that on the website for this episode. And Max, I appreciate you coming on. It’s an exciting story and I look forward to seeing where it’s gonna go.

Max

Thank you so much. I really appreciate the time and I really enjoyed the conversation.

Scott

Max, welcome back to the podcast!

Max

Thank you so much. It’s great to be back.

Scott

The listeners have just heard your story from five years ago when you got that deal and you were working with Mark Cuban. I remember, at the time, you were seeing a big influx of customers having gotten all that national publicity of just being on Shark Tank. I assume you were eventually able to catch up on all those orders, right?

Max

Thankfully we were, yes. I mean, it was crazy. It has been five years, which is wild to think about – it’s been so long. It was an unbelievable experience and it was such a– I mean, it was probably one of the most challenging scenarios of my career to date where I have this massive spike in orders, which no amount of inventory management, no amount of order preparation could prepare me for, and it was really challenging. And I think. reflecting on it five years later, while you’re in it, while you’re in the thick of it, you’re really just doing the work, right? You’re working, you’re running, you’re executing, you’re doing what you think you could do, and you don’t necessarily respect the amount of effort you put towards something until you’re looking back at it years later.

I’m very lucky to have been thinking about the scenario regularly and it’s been great. It was really an amazing experience. But yeah, so I’ll give you the update. We filled all those orders, thankfully. I don’t remember exactly where the story left off. I filled all his orders and then I worked with Mark’s team and I continued to run the company for a year and a half. Then, in May of 2020, I was lucky to exit the company through an acquisition to a company called Snarky Tea, who’s also in the Shark Tank Network. They’ve continued to run the brand, they’ve continued to sell the product, and I’ve been able to step back into new roles and take on new opportunities.

Scott

And the exit– was that the plan from the start? I know it is for a lot of startup companies.

Max

Look, I think that an exit is the plan for a lot of companies and they don’t exit, and it’s not the plan for a lot of companies and they do exit. It really doesn’t matter. Whatever your plan is in the beginning, it’s irrelevant. Anyone who runs a company or program or anything understands that it’s really not relevant – your exit strategy day one. I think I didn’t necessarily know what the company was going to become, whether it was going to stay a project, whether it was going to grow, whether it was going to be sold. It was hard for me to understand exactly what was going to happen and I was fortunate to realize that I was at this opportunity where I could really sell the company, make a good amount of money, and walk away with this storybook ending to a great story of running a company through high school and college and selling it.

That’s more of what I was focused on – what’s the natural conclusion to running BRUW? Like, how can I continue to progress in my own career? And it ended up working out very well.

Scott

And you said you took other positions in the company after you left it, after you sold your equity in it. But did you have any other deals or ideas in the works at that point?

Max

So I didn’t take other roles. To be clear, I didn’t take other roles within Snarky Tea. I detached. I was no longer invested in the operation of BRUW, but I took other roles at other venture-backed startups, and other startups and other companies really to spend the time learning about other types of industries and other types of brands and learning about how the venture world works. I knew how to build a company. I knew how to build a product. I knew how to manage a team. I knew how to sell it. Where my weak point was understanding the financial structure of raising money for a company and kind of building a conventional venture backable startup. So that’s where I devoted a lot of my time to learning, took opportunities, and took roles, which really just encouraged me to learn, be exposed to new industries and new work opportunities, and actually was able to leave about a year and a half ago for those opportunities and started a new company, which I cofounded and building now.

Scott

Yeah, that is pretty amazing. You call a storybook ending. I mean, you’re still so young. It’s like the storybook’s beginning, still.

Max

Yeah, right. It’s like the prologue is over,

Scott

But I understand that, after being on the podcast five years ago, you have been in contact with one of the listeners of the podcast. What was that about?

Max

That’s correct. Okay, so I’m going to shout her out. She’s going to appreciate it. Professor Quinn at Clark University, Worcester, Mass, is an avid listener of this podcast. She really likes it. She actually sent me an email saying, “Hey, Max, I’m a professor at Clark University. We have an entrepreneurship program. My students would love it if you would come and speak to us and come and talk about your story of being a student founder, how you balance classes, school, social life, your company, and all of these different things. They’re all running companies. They’re all trying to break into the world of startups and they want some advice.”

Of course, I read this email. I was like, “This is ridiculous. No one’s going to listen to me. What am I? What am I qualified to speak about? What is my story actually? How inspiring could my story be that people actually want to talk about it?” Which, fortunately, is not true. But I think it’s the mindset that a lot of founders have. So I was like, “Yeah, absolutely. Of course, I’ll go. I would love to speak to your kids.” So, I went. I lectured for a day last year. Then, last week, actually, I don’t know when it’s going to air but, as of the day we’re recording it, I was at Clark in Worcester last week spending a couple days lecturing these classes, talking about my story, and also serving as a guest judge on Clark Tank, which is their version of a shark tank, which was really fun to see what some of their students are working on.

Scott

That’s cool.

Max

Yeah, it was great. But I have to tell you– thinking back to what I did, I said this again, hindsight of 2020, reflecting on the company is really clear. Lecturing about it a year later really forces you to deduce all of your thoughts into a very clear structure, a clear outline to know exactly what your takeaway and your analysis is, and talk about it to people, and I was really lucky to be able to do that. I think what I realized is that almost all of my job at running BRUW and at running my current company is that you’re playing this mental game. You are playing this mental game of entrepreneurship where you are balancing your own emotions, your stress, your pressures, and you’re putting out fires every day.

A predictor of success for a founder is not necessarily your ability to sit down and do all your emails and execute. Your predictor as a founder is your ability to just take a deep breath and know that it’s going to be okay and manage all these different pressures and all these different stresses and move the ball forward. That’s what I was able to speak to a lot of their students about, which was a really exciting opportunity.

Scott

And it must be an exciting opportunity for them as well. So shout out to Professor Quinn. Good job.

Max

Yeah, she’s great. Yeah, she’s great. She’s going to love hearing this. I mean, I was so beyond impressed with their entrepreneurship program. I went to Babson, so I shouldn’t be plugging other entrepreneurship programs, but I was really blown away with it. I thought they did a great job.

Scott

And now you have cofounded a new company called Bellwether. What is that?

Max

That’s correct. So we’re building a company called Bellwether, which is designed to help brands leverage their existing social values as marketing engines. So what we figured out is that because of my background in direct consumer marketing, running BRUW for five years, I understood very clearly what it took to market a product. I also understood that, right now, as of 2024 – that’s what year it is– it’s hard to keep track. We’re in what people are calling this cookie pocket. Digital retargeting has become so incredibly challenging. There are a lot of data privacy regulations, social media networks are restricting, and there’s a lot more content out there that’s harder to break through. So brands are trying to look towards new opportunities to market their products.

Tangentially, at the exact same time, we’re living in this era where people are incredibly driven by their social values to the point where 80 percent of Gen Z and Millennial consumers are actually willing to switch from brand A to brand B if brand B more closely aligns with their personally held values, and that’s just an astounding statistic. It’s not surprising to anyone listening, but it’s astounding. Regardless of your politics, it’s something that the market is responding to.

So what we built – I’ll give you the really high-level version of our product – is when you go to a website and you get a pop-up that says, “Enter your email and we’ll give you 10 percent off.” Almost everyone clicks out of it, right? Nobody really goes through that. A couple of people go through it, but that acquisition rate is very low. What we built is a pop-up that says, “Hey, enter your email or enter your phone number, and we’ll help you register to vote. We’ll help you send a letter to your elected representative. We’ll help you sign a petition. We’ll help you take on some sort of social cause.” Again, doesn’t have to be political, right? It can be very generic in the brand.

But what we found – and this is consistent with some other research – is that actually acquires almost 80% more cold leads – like, 70-something percent more leads. The leads that are acquired spend 40% more money over the course of their lifetime with the brand. It’s this win where we have found a way to financially incentivize direct-to-consumer brands to really take their social impact seriously. So, they can cause some form of positive social change while simultaneously increasing the amount of customers they have and the amount of money their customers spend, which is an unbelievable opportunity that we’re building in.

Scott

Yeah. It sounds like the perfect storm. How did you come up with that? Who figured out that it would work?

Max

Oh, I mean, there are a lot of smart people that are much smarter than I am that are researching in this space right now. Thankfully, there are a lot of people who don’t read the same research that I do, who aren’t taking it seriously. That stat 77% or something and the 40%– I think it was Harvard Business Review that put that study out. Don’t cite me on that, but it was either Harvard or McKinsey. Somebody put that research out, which said 70% to 80% more likely to go through a flow if you’re engaging on an existing value. Our product is testing that hypothesis and confirming those numbers.

We’re living in this time where people are really spending a lot of money and a lot of energy researching social responsibility because I don’t have to tell you the world is a little crazy, right? The amount of social engagement and political engagement that’s going on is unlike anything we’ve seen in a really long time, certainly nothing we’ve seen in my memorable lifetime.

We think that where the world is for social responsibility right now is where the world was for sustainability and climate engagement 10 years ago. Nobody was investing in climate tech 10 years ago. No one was building climate companies 10 years ago. The few that broke through and the few that were are now crushing it and they’re killing it. Now, everyone’s writing checks and building these funds around climate tech and sustainability. But we really expect that, in a couple of years, we’re going to be the first to market and are at a really big opportunity, which I shouldn’t be saying on a podcast, Scott, because now everyone’s going to start competing with me. I’d like to have that.

Scott

Yeah, you know the entire world’s going to hear this episode. You’ve kept out of the bag now.

Max

Yeah. Professor Quinn, if you’re listening, don’t steal my idea.

Scott

And how can people hearing this find out more about you and what you have going on?

Max

Look, I’m available. They can find me online. I’m on LinkedIn. I’m on Instagram. I’m all over the internet. I would encourage them to send me an email, shoot me a text, DM me on Instagram or LinkedIn or one of those two. My Instagram is @MaxBFeber name and my LinkedIn is just Max Feber. Just find me and reach out to me. I say this and I mean it.

I really do take almost every call where somebody says, “Hey, I just really want to learn more about what you’re doing.” I was talking to these students the other day and I told them this, “Look, you’re not going to take me up on this. But I want you to reach out to me. I want to be on calls with you. I want to help you. I want to talk to you.” So all it takes is them to reach out and I’m really happy to.” So I would encourage anyone listening to reach out. And if you’re in New York, let’s grab coffee. Otherwise, let’s hop on a call and I’d love to chat about that.

Scott

And that’s an offer that – if anyone has any entrepreneurial leanings – people should absolutely take you up on. When I’m in New York, maybe we can get together because I’ll be up there sometime this summer.

Max

Sounds good.

Scott

And for all of your contact info, we’ll have that in the episode notes – your Instagram, LinkedIn, email, and all that. That’ll be in the episode notes so people can find that. And, Max, I appreciate you coming back on. You’ve already done so much and it looks like there’s a whole lot more in your future.

Max

Thank you so much, Scott. I really appreciate it and I look forward to connecting in another five.

Scott

Max is so genuine and down-to-earth – and when he says he wants you to contact him, he means it. He really enjoys helping other people, especially around the topic of starting or building a business. All of his contact info is in the episode notes at WhatWasThatLike.com/176.

Female 1

Hi, Scott. I love your podcast. Each story is better than the next, and you are such a wonderful host – so kind, empathetic, and wise. So, thank you for that. “Episode 170: Justin found his mother on Facebook” hit me hard as we adopted our son at birth. He is 16 years old now. I just wanted to mention that the adoption agency we worked with changed our way of thinking about what it actually means when a birth mother chooses adoption for her child. Rather than give up her child, she makes an adoption plan for her child. I know it’s just a simple change in a phrase, but I really think it more accurately describes the choice a birth mother is making. No woman wants to give up someone they carry in their body for nine months. Rather, the birth mother realizes there may be someone out there who could give that child a better life, and that is what she chooses. It’s an excruciating decision for her, and one that will forever change the course of the lives of so many individuals. It is also, in my opinion, one of the most selfless acts of love there is, which I know you understand.

There are many people who continue to use the phrase giving up a child, and my stomach turns a bit each time I hear it. So, I try to do my part in letting people know there is a more fitting phrase and, perhaps, someday the standard language will become that a birth mother made an adoption plan for her child. Now doesn’t that sound so much nicer?

Scott

Been getting lots of good feedback about the Tuesday Question episodes with Meredith. This past Tuesday, the question we talked about was “what’s something you wish you could forget?” and I told a personal story that I haven’t shared here on the podcast previously. And of course we always share the answers that come from you, the listeners. I have to tell you, Meredith and I are having a blast putting these together.

I wanted to clear something up about the podcast audio.

I’ve gotten some feedback from a few listeners about a high-pitched screeching noise that can be heard right at the end of the ad break. The ones who heard it have called it jarring, scary, annoying – just not something you want to hear. So I wanted to let you know – that’s not a sound that I include when I’m putting the episode together. It’s something done by mistake by my hosting company. And fortunately, it only showed up in the audio for a very small percentage of listeners. I always listen to my own episodes on the day they go live, and I never heard it myself.

But the good news is, by the time you hear this, hopefully it’s resolved. I want to give a big shout out and thanks to my friend Alex, way down in Cape Town, South Africa. She was kind enough to help me out by actually recording that awful noise and sending it to me so we could investigate it. So thanks very much Alex!

So it should be gone by now – but if you hear it, I’d really appreciate it if you could somehow record it and send it to me.

Graphics for this episode were created by Bob Bretz. Full episode transcription was created by James Lai.

And here we are once again, at the Listener Story segment of the show. Why haven’t you sent in your story yet? Just talk about something interesting that happened to you, just a 5-10 minute story, and email it to me. You could hear your own story right here on the podcast!

This week’s story is from a listener who had a bad feeling about someone – and she was right.

Stay safe – and I’ll see you in a week, with a brand new episode.

(Listener Story)

Gina

Hi, Scott. My name is Gina. I was wanting to tell you kind of a freaky, scary thing that happened to me. It was in February, 2013. The police in Southern California were on a manhunt for a man by the name of Christopher Dorner. You may have heard of him. About a half hour prior to it first being on the news, I had gone to get gas at an Arco gas station in Lake Elsinore, California. As I was standing in line at the register to pay for my gas, a man walked in and I got the most terrible feeling inside of me. He was a tall, good-looking man but, when he looked at me, I knew he wasn’t a good person. I immediately left. I knew in my heart that this guy was bad news. I didn’t get gas. I got in my car and went home. That’s how scared I was.

I told my adult daughter about the feeling I had gotten when I saw that guy. About an hour after I told my daughter the story, we were watching the news and they flashed a picture of that exact man. I had gotten that terrible feeling from at the gas station. I jumped up and said, “Oh my gosh, that’s him. That’s the man that I saw at the gas station!”

Christopher Dorner was a former LAPD police officer, and he was seeking revenge for losing his job. It all started on February 3rd, 2013, and ended on February 12th, 2013, when he killed himself during a standoff with the police in the San Bernardino community of Big Bear. He killed four people and himself. The victims were law enforcement officers and a daughter of one of the LAPD captains. There were four counties involved – Los Angeles County, Orange County, Riverside County, and San Bernardino County. At that time, it was the largest manhunt in Southern California history.

I have an uncanny ability to know if someone is an evil or bad person. I’ve been that way since I was a young girl. It has happened to me several times but never with a person as horrible as Christopher Dorner. Some of my friends say, “Oh my God, doesn’t that bug you that you get those feelings?” And I said, “No, because sometimes that could probably save my life.”

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed my story.

View Details

Every Tuesday, we grab a past question from the Facebook group, then Meredith and Scott answer it and read some of the answers given by other listeners.

Whats something you wish you could forget?Show Podcast InformationThe question for this episode:

What’s something you wish you could forget?

Links for this episode:

The horn I have on my bike:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000ACAMJC/

The Charisma Quotient podcast with Kimmy Seltzer:

https://www.kimmyseltzer.com/podcast/

Meredith for Real episode 226 – From Trafficking Victim to Attorney:

https://www.meredithforreal.com/podcast-episodes/episode/7e18899e/ep-226-or-from-trafficking-victim-to-attorney

Trafficking support:

https://www.dhs.gov/blue-campaign

In the US, who is committing sexual assault on children? The data:

https://www.whoismakingnews.com/#welcome

To check out the new Tuesday Question and get in the discussion, join us at WhatWasThatLike.com/facebook.

Sponsor deals:

Go to Seed.com/what and use code 25WHAT to get 25% off your first month.

Go to storyworth.com/what to save $10 on your first purchase!

Get 15% off OneSkin with the code WHATWAS at https://www.oneskin.co/ #oneskinpod

Cancel your unwanted subscriptions by going to RocketMoney.com/whatwas.

This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at BetterHelp.com/whatwas and get on your way to being your best self.

Go to cookunity.com/What or enter code What before checkout for 50% off your first week.

View Details

How would you handle it if you ended up having a medical condition that suddenly made you different from everyone else, in the most embarrassing way possible?

Mike wears an ostomy pouchShow Podcast InformationThat’s what happened to Mike.

Today you’ll hear about when Mike got the news from his doctor – sorry, you won’t be able to poop the normal way any more. From now on, for the rest of your life, you’ll use a bag, actually called a pouch, and you’re gonna poop directly from your stomach into that.

And when Mike got that news, he was just a kid – not even a teenager yet.

So today, Mike’s gonna tell us what that was like, and how he handled it, and what it’s like today, as an adult with an ostomy. I asked Mike all the questions that normally you’d never be comfortable asking someone in this situation.

This conversation with Mike is so real. That’s what we do here – real life. You’ll hear it all, because Mike is open to talking about everything. And you know what else he is? He’s happy and he loves life. Because he wants people to know – if you get the diagnosis he got, it’s not the end of the world.

If you’d like to contact Mike, his email is mikegmoffat@yahoo.ca

MikeThe pouch is virtually undetectableFull show notes and pictures for this episode are here:

https://WhatWasThatLike.com/175

Resources:

The r/ostomy subreddit – 8000 members – https://www.reddit.com/r/ostomy/

Meet an OstoMate – large ostomy community – https://www.meetanostomate.org/

Facebook groups:

The Real Ostomy Support Group – 23k members – https://www.facebook.com/groups/1160120857334266

Stoma and Ostomy Support Group – 14k members – https://www.facebook.com/groups/1442544766001622

Colostomy and Stoma Support Group – 13k members – https://www.facebook.com/groups/607387186088212

Graphics for this episode by Bob Bretz. Transcription was done by James Lai.

Want to discuss this episode and other things with thousands of other WWTL listeners? Join our podcast Facebook group at WhatWasThatLike.com/facebook (many of the podcast guests are there as well)

Sponsor deals:

Go to Seed.com/what and use code 25WHAT to get 25% off your first month.

Go to storyworth.com/what to save $10 on your first purchase!

Get 15% off OneSkin with the code WHATWAS at https://www.oneskin.co/ #oneskinpod

Cancel your unwanted subscriptions by going to RocketMoney.com/whatwas.

This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at BetterHelp.com/whatwas and get on your way to being your best self.

Go to cookunity.com/What or enter code What before checkout for 50% off your first week.

Episode transcript (download transcript PDF):

How would you handle it if you ended up having a medical condition that suddenly made you different from everyone else, in the most embarrassing way possible?

That’s what happened to Mike.

And when Mike got that news, he was just a kid – not even a teenager yet.

Scott

I have so many questions for you and the funny thing is these are not questions that you would normally ask someone about cause they’re so personal. But you are so great about wanting to kind of get all this information out there. I really appreciate that.

Mike

I really appreciate the opportunity to get it out there because it’s not something that is easy to bring up in conversation, but it’s something that I think needs to be talked about and people in this situation need to hear.

Scott

So what exactly is ulcerative colitis?

Mike

Ulcerative colitis is an autoimmune disorder that when a person’s body thinks it’s under attack, it kind of ramps everything up and your body creates a huge amount of white blood cells in an attempt to combat invaders that aren’t actually there but your body thinks it does, and what that ends out doing is it does a lot of damage to your own organs. So for me, ulcerative colitis is when your colon is affected by this disease. What happened in my case is the disease really got the better of me and it totally decimated my colon back when I was a kid in 1990 and had to have the entire colon removed.

Scott

And how old were you when you got that diagnosis?

Mike

I was 10 years old. Yeah. So I was born in 1979 and my first symptoms started late 1989, early 1990.

Scott

And what were the symptoms? What did you first notice?

Mike

The first thing – and I’m never going to forget this as long as I live – was blood, a lot of blood. I was a very happy, healthy, and normal kid in all respects. Then, one day, I was sitting in the bathroom on the toilet and whenever I stood up, I noticed bright, red dots all over the floor, all over my underpants, all over the toilet seat, and the entire toilet was just bright red. I remember asking my mom to come and have a look and it was actually the look on my mom’s face that was the first thing that made me realize that I was probably in a bit of trouble.

Scott

That has to be the scariest thing, not just for you to see that “obviously, something’s wrong”, but for her to see that.

Mike

You know how easy it is to kind of be tough about something but, as soon as you see that caring look on your mom’s face, it was rough.

Scott

Yeah. Obviously, for something like that, you go to the doctor or maybe you went to the emergency room or something. But how did they try to treat it?

Mike

I got hooked up with a gastroenterologist pretty quickly and it was pretty uncomfortable. There were a lot of glove tests, a lot of smears, and looking in microscopes. I still remember the doctor very kindly letting both my mom and I have a peek in the microscope and you could actually see the white blood cells that were just going bananas. They were really just all over the place. The treatment itself started with, like most things, medication and quite a lot of it. So the immediate medication that I was put on was a steroid called prednisone, which is actually a pretty common drug. But, as a young guy, they put me on maximum amounts of prednisone immediately, along with a few other helper medications, and I can tell you actually that prednisone was maybe a little rougher than the disease at the time. It ballooned my body up. It was really rough on my eyes and my joints. So everything got really rough really fast. Even though the blood issue did lessen quite a bit with that first round of medication, it unfortunately wasn’t able to kind of dam up the breaking river there. So it still required surgery after a couple of months of attempts.

Scott

As you were going through this process, you were still just a young kid. Did you ever have thoughts that you might not live through this?

Mike

Well, honestly, it didn’t take too long in my youth before I really thought I was going to be done.

I still have a very strong memory of the hospital child psychologist coming to sit down with my mother and myself, of course, and she tried to tell my mom that it would be in everyone’s best interest if they started talking about end of life, and my mom– again, you feel like you can kind of fight anything on your own. Even as a kid, you always have this kind of maybe unrealistic but super strong feeling of youth and “I’m going to get through this”, but it was as soon as medical professionals were telling my mom that it’s time to start looking at the possibility that I might not be able to make it through this because – and I should point out too – I was losing up to a pint of blood a day at the worst of times here. It was so severe. I was getting blood transfusions and it still wasn’t holding up. So even as rough as stuff like that was, both my mom and I did have to contemplate the idea that I just might not make it through that.

Scott

What a thing – even for an adult but for a young kid – to already be contemplating mortality. You just don’t think about that as a kid.

Mike

It was hard to explain to my friends.

Scott

So the option was surgery and it was a permanent ileostomy. Can you describe what is that procedure?

Mike

Absolutely. I should say, at first, there was a brief hope that other experimental medications would maybe do some good for me. So for a very brief time, they left in just the tail end of my colon while removing the majority of it. What that meant was I still had a rectum and it still had the same traditional exit point and the other end of it came to the foreground of my abdomen on the left-hand side of my abdomen. So it was just about a one-foot-long piece of intestine that wasn’t really connected to anything, that was just left in the hopes that it would heal on its own.

The opposite end where your large intestine, your colon connects to your small intestine, your ileum– because that had been severed, the ileum, the small intestine was brought to the foreground of my abdomen and they do a gentle little cuffing of the end of the intestine and suture it there. That becomes your stoma and, for lack of a better term, your man-made butthole. It’s just no longer on your butt but it performs the same function. That was my first day with an ileostomy. Even though that one wasn’t permanent at the time, it was not much more than a couple of weeks to maybe a month afterward when the amount of blood that was still coming out of the tail end of the large intestine was still so severe. They decided, “Okay, that’s it. We got to get it all out of there.” And that was when I became a permanent ostomate and here I am now, over three decades later.

Scott

Safe to say you’ve survived.

Mike

I have.

Scott

When you got that permanent surgery, how painful was it when you first woke up?

Mike

Well, hospital drugs are great. Even as a kid, they still give you quite a good dose there. But in spite of the medication, it was movement that was near impossible. I can still picture it. When I opened my eyes for the first time and was not really sure what I was going to see post-surgery, they give you a clear pouch just so doctors and nurses can see exactly what’s going on there. Also, post-surgery, this might be more info than some of your listeners might want but everything that comes out of you is almost pure black and green bile. It’s just not at all pleasant. So when I first saw this long transparent post-surgical pouch of what looked like liquid death attached to me, it was really shocking. It was really hard to see that. And for the actual physical pain, yeah, again, with those hospital drugs, as long as I was just lying there kind of aghast at the sight of it, but not moving, I was okay. It was the very first time that the nurse tried to sit me up and I had to move around a little bit when the reality of the full abdominal surgery was pretty devastating and then it was a lot of pain for a long time. I walked like a little old man for a lot of my youth.

Scott

Did they explain everything to you ahead of time about how your life was going to change because of this?

Mike

They didn’t explain everything. I think when I look back on it, I had a very caring, very professional doctor who worked at our local children’s hospital, and he was really great. But I think it was probably– it was a lot of the nurses, after the fact, who really had a lot more understanding of what life was like with an ostomy, who really armed me with a lot of little survival tips and tricks that have really seen me through these last 30 years. But the doctor himself, I’ll be honest, I was pretty perplexed. I think every time he sat down and tried to explain the science and the mechanics behind it, the practicality of what life was going to be like was kind of out the door. It really just seemed like really strange magic to me that this guy was trying to explain and not even having an actual ostomy pouch to show me.

I’ll be honest. As a kid, your imagination runs a bit wild. So I thought I was going to be waking up with the kind of plastic bags that my parents brought home from the grocery store full of groceries and I was a little horrified at the idea that it was going to be like that. I’m very happy to say that, with the exception of that post-surgery transparent pouch, an ostomy pouch bears very little resemblance to a grocery store bag. It is actually quite a marvel of science.

Scott

I think people are breathing a sigh of relief at that, especially thinking about a plastic grocery bag full of human waste.

Mike

Exactly.

Scott

And your mom was actually in the medical field. Did that make any difference in this?

Mike

Absolutely. And she was absolutely wonderful as not just a very caring, wonderful mom, but as a liaison between myself, the nurses, and the doctors because it felt like everyone was speaking different languages. I know it was all English but when it came to me, the very young patient, I was very fortunate to have a mother who understood a lot of the lingo that was being used and was able to, in turn, explain things a lot easier to me. So yeah, I really lucked out there.

Scott

As a young person, every kid wants to fit in with his peers. How worried were you about how your friends would react to this?

Mike

Oh, that’s a really good one because, even as a little kid – like, this was pre-puberty for me – there was still a fair amount of concern that I had, for sure, on that matter. I was very lucky that my core group of friends– I grew up with four other guys who all came from very different kinds of backgrounds and the one thing we all had in common was not just our location, but we were really solid, really tight guys. We all built tree forts in the local forest and spent a lot of time playing out there. So because we weren’t too worried at that point yet about what the opposite genders might think of our bodies, it was kind of a good time, I guess it could be said, for me for a little bit. I was really much more happy to just be able to be outdoors and playing than really concerned about the difference in my body versus that of my four friends.

But it wasn’t too long after that – a couple of years – when puberty started to kick in and it quickly did become an issue at that point. “Geez, how am I possibly going to get a girl to look at me twice when I have a bag of human waste stuck to my abdomen? This is going to be tough.”

Scott

That’s a bit of a handicap. How long did it take before you were pretty comfortable with living with it?

Mike

It took a while. After speaking with a lot of other ostomates who had their ostomies done much later in life, I think it really was a blessing that I was as young as I was in the sense that– because you’re still forming who you are in your own mind, it just kind of became one more ingredient in the recipe of becoming yourself. It would have been neat to be a teenager and not have to worry about those things but you’re dealt the hand you’re dealt and there’s really not much you can do about those things, so I ran with it as long as I could – still am.

I would say that it probably took a few weeks to a few months before I could move around in a way that I didn’t feel, well, for lack of a better word, crippled in the first couple of weeks as your abdomen is healing from the very invasive surgery. Your whole body feels so crippled by the whole experience and also just the amount of blood loss that I’d gone through and the really rough feelings that I had leading up to the surgery. You’re just kind of spent. Like, it’s hard to kind of get a grasp on what regular life is going to feel like in those early days.

But I would say that as those scars were healing somewhere between the one-month and the six-month mark– and I’m sorry, it’s been three decades. I know that sounds like a large window. If a new ostomy patient can just let those initial scars heal, I can tell you with certainty that your body kind of does get back on track. It’s just getting over that initial shock, both the physical and mental side of having a body that works a little bit differently than the one you were born with.

Scott

When you first got it, did you ever go absentmindedly and sit on the toilet without thinking about it?

Mike

That’s so funny. Maybe not completely absent-mindedly but it was, like, my gut wanted me to. I kept having what I would refer to as ghost poops where, even though my ostomy was working fine, everything that was going in my stomach would eventually come out the pouch, there was just something about waking up in the middle of the night sometimes. I would have this little “What the heck is going on?” feeling. I feel like I have to poop the old-fashioned way and I would sit on the toilet. I don’t know entirely how often this happens but I have heard of amputees who will wake up in the night and scratch an arm that’s no longer there and hasn’t been there for many years. That’s, I guess, the closest I could relate to that because it did take a while before my body stopped doing that where the automatic reaction to a cramped gut was like, “Oh, I have to go sit on the toilet.” Nope.

Scott

Now, this is a question that I’ve been wanting to ask you ever since we first spoke. You said that you’ve been in martial arts. Didn’t you ever worry about getting a kick right in the bag.

Mike

Which did happen several times?

Scott

That sounds like it’s a big mess.

Mike

It could have been shitty. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I had to say it at least once. So again, being pretty young when this happened, I think a lot of teenagers will also overcompensate whenever a trial is placed before them and I don’t think I was any different in that respect. So it wasn’t just martial arts. I also spent some time as an army cadet in our local army corps. I did pretty much everything I could think to do that I felt an ostomate was told they shouldn’t be able to do just because I wanted to see if I could. It turns out that ostomy products are so strong that you really can do the vast majority of things that a person without an ostomy can do quite safely. I can tell you I have taken many kicks to the pouch and had no issues.

Now, I don’t want to imply that issues can’t happen with a pouch, especially when there are some mechanical difficulties that you aren’t aware of, but that isn’t the norm. I really want to stress that it’s not the norm. Also, to anyone else who is an ostomate who might be considering any kind of whatever strenuous physical activity, just be open and honest. If you are about to get into a match with someone, just make sure they know you have one. Chances are, they’re probably not going to repeatedly attack that area of you. If not, then you’re not sparring with the right person. Yeah. But it is such a marvel of science. Today’s ostomy pouches can really take a beating.

Scott

Can you talk about the first time you had an accident with the pouch?

Mike

Yeah, absolutely. As I said, although they can take an awful lot of damage without an issue, accidents can and still will happen. I went through middle school without any real problems and was actually kind of starting to think that maybe accidents couldn’t happen. One day, at the end of a usual day of high school, I was rushing to catch the bus with some of my friends. In my rush, I still remember I had these– I was a tall, skinny kid. As I was running, my very long legs were pumping quite furiously when all of a sudden the clip at the end of my pouch that kind of holds back the nightmare caught on the inside of my boxers and just opened up. Because I was running as fast as I was, just pumping away, it meant that I was kicking all of that horrible material all the way down my pants, leg, right to my socks, right into my shoes, and this was happening just at the end of a school day.

I went to a pretty busy school. We had about 1,800 students at our school. Just as everyone was filling out past me, I looked down and I could see that my right leg was no longer denim blue. Like, my left leg was– it was nightmare brown the whole way down. So that one really caught me by surprise because, again, I never had an issue before and this was so severe, so fast, so public, and it was just all of my early nightmares just kind of came crashing down to me. I could see my friends who were maybe a hundred or 200 feet away from me on the bus who had made it and they’re yelling at me to get there.

I just couldn’t think of what to do for a second. So, I had a quick look around and I could see the bushes on the other side of our football field. So I just ran as fast as I could to those bushes and I hid there until there were no more kids available and all the buses pulled away. I was really not sure how I was going to get home. For me to walk home at that point would have meant about a two-hour walk down a very busy stretch of road.

I knew that right out across the street from our school was a local wave pool and I felt very James Bond. I just kept my eyes peeled to make sure no people were coming in or out. I waited for my opportunity and I sprinted as fast as I could to get into their public washroom, and I chose the handicapped washroom knowing it would be a little more private, locked the door, and waited until I could hear some footsteps. Because, again, this was the very early nineties, there were no cell phones, so I couldn’t call for help at this point beyond trying to get the pool attendants’ attention, which I did ask them politely to call my mom at her work and ask if she would be able to bring me a fresh pair of clothes at the public wave pool. So it took a very long time and I can’t even tell you how long that was. It was one of those. It could have been five minutes, could have been five hours. It just felt like an eternity to me.

Eventually, my mom did show up, she snuck me in the fresh clothes along with a plastic bag for the old ones. I got home and fixed everything up, but things felt pretty dark for a little while after that because your world changes fast with that kind of mess.

Scott

At that point, I’d have a lot of trust issues with that pouch.

Mike

Well put. You’re right. Yeah, I really did. I spent a couple of weeks after that not really taking any chances. I went to school, I finished school, I got off the bus, went home and that was it. But, really Scott, especially at that age, so many awkward, embarrassing things are happening to not just yourself, but your friends at every hour of every day. It’s just teen years. It’s just an awkward time. I can tell you that a lot of my other friends had maybe not the same category of issue but they had a lot of their own self-confidence issues. Again, I’m so fortunate to have had the friends that I’ve had. It just became clear to me that I wasn’t doing myself any favors, staying locked up in my room playing Nintendo, just scared to death that same nightmare incident was going to happen because I knew that I already had, at that point, three or four good years with an ostomy and there was nothing saying that I couldn’t just take a little more care to figure out what happened that one time and just make sure that doesn’t happen again.

I don’t do running in jeans anymore. The heavy fabric is really what caught on to the pouch issue at that time. So yeah, if I’m running, I just make sure I have appropriate running gear on and just make sure that the skin around the stoma. Stoma, by the way, is the name of that little, little piece of intestine that has been brought out of your abdomen – your man-made butthole. So sometimes the skin around a stoma can get a little bit rough and, in those times, it’s a little harder to get sweating exercise in. You can still do a lot of sit-down exercises to keep you busy. But yeah, I still had a great many years of high-intensity activities including martial arts where I had a lot of fun growing up.

Scott

I would say, if you’re at a party, and the question comes up “What was your most embarrassing moment?”, you get to let everybody else go first because yours is going to beat all of theirs.

Mike

Yep. I will take that trophy if it’s available.

Scott

And, again, still thinking about the teen years, and even forward or even past that, just being in this situation kind of makes you different from other people. Of course, we’re all different in various ways. Has this ever led to you having any form of depression or thoughts along those lines?

Mike

Absolutely. I really appreciate the chance to talk about that. It comes in waves, and I think that’s probably pretty true of anybody in any traumatic circumstance where, at first, once you get that ostomy, you have to deal with a lot of the issues of living with a new type of body, but you’re so jazzed that there’s an actual end to the pain and suffering of having a diseased intestine because that was really rough. That was really, really hard to get through. It’s a lot of mixed feelings right out of the gate there. As you get better, you really learn to enjoy every sunny day, and any day that you can get out and about and do your thing is a really good day, and you start to feel really good about that, which is great. You kind of reenter society and just be a normal person. As time goes on, there’s going to be some other hits or misses that’ll hit you that do make days a little more difficult to deal with.

In my youth, I used to do a lot of counseling for new ostomates, especially at the children’s hospital where I went through my ordeal and I felt really good and happy to do so because I was on top of the world again. Sure, my body worked differently than the average person’s, but I wasn’t letting anything stop me. So I had a really good go for a lot of decades. It wasn’t until actually kind of my late thirties or early forties when life got really hard again with stuff that had nothing to do with the ostomy. My marriage broke up. My ex-wife and I were still wonderful friends, but that was a hard time. We lost our family business together.

I have a son who I love dearly. He’s a wonderful young man but he went through a lot of his own health issues too and they weren’t necessarily tied to the same genetic disorder that I had, but it was just a really rough time. He’s healthy now. He’s great. He’s doing wonderful. But it was just a lot of rough things that happened in a very short period and that can happen to anyone – it really can. I felt at that time, even though I lived all this time with an ostomy, I found having the ostomy really made it hard to get back on top of things.

Along with having had ulcerative colitis, now later in life, I’m getting a few more autoimmune disorders. So I now have psoriatic arthritis that comes and goes in a lot of pretty hefty flare-ups. When these hit, it feels like they can hit really hard and I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t have some really down periods. So I think it’s really important to kind of think about the long-run situation of mental health when it comes to these things because it is something that, if left unchecked, you really can do a lot of damage to your own psyche without even really realizing that you’re doing it. So to anyone who is a new ostomate or even an old ostomate, I highly recommend to be open with your doctor.

I think it’s really important that anytime your doctor starts to open up any conversation with you about the mental health side of things, not just, “Hey, Mr. or Mrs. X, I see your ostomy is working fine, but how are you? How are you feeling?” I think it’s really important to talk to your doctor immediately upon feeling more than just a little down. It’s true that we all get a little bit down, but it’s really easy to kind of lock yourself away and think that you’re the only person experiencing these problems. Really, Scott, the truth is, since I’ve been talking about these issues a lot more in my middle-aged years, I’ve spoken with a good deal of people who are just getting into having an ostomy now and they sound devastated – they do. There’s also a lot of hope. I mean, there’s really no greater second chance than being told, “That’s it. You’re on death’s door. Wait a second. Here’s a whole new life. It just means that you’ve got a bag of poop stuck to you.”

Scott

Option A or B. I’d say, yeah, you take the solution.

Mike

Exactly. So it’s just really important to make sure that, while you’re dealing with these things, you’re open to talking about the harder side of stuff too because you might feel alone when you’re in your hospital bed or your situation at home, but you’re really not. There’s an awful lot of people out there who are dealing with this kind of stuff, so you’re not alone.

Scott

You mentioned that a lot of the new people that you talk to are seeing hope. That’s because of you. You are providing hope just because of having gone through this. Again, I think what they want to hear is what it is really going to be like. But let’s talk about some of the day-to-day stuff, just the usage. Can you get it wet, take a shower, or go swimming?

Mike

Yeah, absolutely. That was a good one too because I was really concerned about that as a kid. We had a local pool in our community and that pool meant a lot to me, so I really wanted to get back into it. It turns out, yeah, you really can. You can absolutely get your pouch wet. Pouches have come out quite a long way in the last 30 years. But one thing to keep in mind is you also want it to have a chance to dry out. When you’re having your shower, don’t be afraid. You can get it as wet as you like, scrub everything, get everything all nice and soapy. After your shower, you really want to take extra care to make sure any of the fabric has a chance to dry out completely.

It sounds kind of funny. Once upon a time, I used to use my ex-wife’s hair dryer on the cold setting just on my pouch. It just looks funny the first time but it just becomes part of life. It is okay to get wet. Absolutely.

Scott

How often do you have to empty it? And how does that work? How do you do that?

Mike

There are two kinds of things to keep in mind. Often, when I’m asked how it’s emptied, people aren’t actually aware that it’s a drainable pouch. The pouch that I use– I have a little clip at the end that I open up and I empty into the toilet anywhere from five to ten times a day. I know that sounds like a lot, I recognize that, but I’d also like to stress that if you consider how long it takes to empty an ostomy pouch, it takes about as much time for me to do my business as it takes most people to go for a pee. So yes, I go to the bathroom often but it doesn’t mean you’re spending your day in there.

Scott

When the waste passes through from your stomach into the pouch, do you know it’s happening? Is it involuntary?

Mike

It depends on what kind of foods I’ve been eating, and it is involuntary. There is absolutely no way that I can really control what’s exiting my body and entering the pouch. In fact – and this is something I really want to tell any listeners who might be new to having an ostomy – it’s kind of a pain but the harder you try to flex your stomach and hold it in because maybe it’s not a good time to be making these little gurgly swamp sounds – maybe you’re on a crowded bus – but the fact is the more that you clench your stomach trying to stop it from happening, the funnier those noises are going to sound, the more it’s going to sound like you’re strangling a bird in a swamp. I can tell you your best bet is to relax and take a deep breath. It’s going to happen. There’s noise. You can’t help the little gurgling sounds.

Scott

You mentioned on, like, on a crowded bus. Of course, there’s going to be background noise anyway. People might not even hear it. But even if they do, everybody’s stomach gurgles and growls sometimes. Wouldn’t they just think that’s what it is?

Mike

As long as you are calm and cool about it, that’s exactly what it sounds like. It’s as soon as you start flexing while your body’s trying to get rid of it– if you can picture that noise of– if you’ve got a balloon that you’re pulling on the ends of the balloon as it’s deflating, that’s the noise it makes if you try to stop it. That’s why it’s just really important to let background noise and other people’s natural digestion sounds kind of be the mask for what’s going on down there, if it’s really a concern for you. But by and large, it’s really not much of an issue.

Scott

Do you still fart?

Mike

Great question.

Scott

I got to tell you, that’s the first time I’ve ever asked a guest that on this podcast.

Mike

I’m honored to be the respondee. Yeah, I certainly don’t fart out of the old area. In fact, there’s nothing there anymore. This is also a common question. What happened to the old exit hole? Well, it’s simply sewn up. There’s nothing but a puckered scar to remind me of a previous life that’s down there now. So there’s no action at all from the butt. As far as the pouch goes, it does pass gas. I don’t eat a lot of food during the day just because it doesn’t take long after eating before the pouch fills up and you do spend a lot of your day in the bathroom then.

My own daily routine involves a lot of coffee during the day, a little bit of light snacking, and then a good solid couple of meals later into the evening. So during the day, you’re not going to hear too much at the end of the night after I’ve had all the calories that I need. It’s not even necessarily that you’re going to hear very much because, like I said earlier, I keep my stomach pretty well relaxed, especially after food. But yeah, you might hear a little noise.

The few times that I’ve been around other people who, for whatever reason, have no idea that I have an ostomy, that noise will happen and, of course, it’s hard not to kind of turn ahead when that happens, but I’m always happy to explain to whoever has heard it. “Don’t worry. It’s sealed. You’re not going to smell a thing,” which of course leads to a longer conversation. Yeah.

Scott

What an icebreaker. Does this change how you would normally sleep?

Mike

Yeah, it does. I still remember as a little kid, I was a sleep-on-my-stomach kind of kid and that changed overnight. I have not slept on my stomach since 1991. It’s been a long time. I will sleep on my back and sometimes on my side too. It is just really important to make sure that, if you’ve got anyone in bed with you, you’re just sleeping on the side of the bed that is conducive to sleeping on whatever side your pouch is on. For me, my pouch is on my right-hand side, so I’ll sleep in sort of the fetal position on my right-hand side. That’s okay. When I have company or a guest or if I have someone sleeping on my left side, it just means that I can’t turn to see them.

Scott

Okay. That’s all. Have you ever randomly met someone else in public with an ostomy and it’s, like, your best friends automatically?

Mike

Yes, that has happened. Once upon a time, I was working in a big box home renovation store. I was working in the lumber department and I had been there for quite a while. I was friendly with everyone but there was one dude who was a friendly-enough guy and we would have breaks together and we’d chat a little bit about movies and games and stuff, but it was still kind of a work friend. We didn’t really get into things too much. Then, one day, he got very ill. I won’t get too much into the background of his illness but I will say that he was super despondent on one particular day and informed me that he found out he was going to have an ostomy done, and he had no idea that he was talking to someone who had an ostomy for years and years.

Scott

That is amazing.

Mike

It was pretty cool. I still feel really bad for the guy because, again, he was a lot further along in life than I was whenever this change came to him, but it did my heart good to be able to put my hand on his shoulder and say, “Listen man, I promise you that this is not the end of your life. In fact, you are right now talking to someone who has spent three decades with a pouch. I’ve worked with you for months now and you had no idea that was the case at all.” It was really good to be able to do that with them and, not really a surprise, we got a lot closer after that. We talked about awesome new supplies all the time and shared different experiences.

Scott

You guys had conversations in the lunchroom that others couldn’t really join in on. I imagine very much a lot of people find pooping kind of relaxing. Do you miss that?

Mike

Oh, great question. Yes. And you know what? More than anything. Whenever I’m at someone else’s house and I still see a magazine rack or just an old Archie book that’s sitting up there and I’m like, “Oh yeah, people use this time for relaxation. Man, that’s so cool.” So yeah, unfortunately, I don’t really have a lot of sit-and-ponder moments anymore. I’m going to share something with you. I have not sat on a toilet to poop in over 30 years but I have, at certain jobs, run to the bathroom to sit down for five minutes of peace because I do miss that. I missed having a time and place where you could close the door and the world just respects that and leaves you alone.

I’ve had a couple of different manager positions over the years, and I really love managing. I’ve spent a lot of years managing an art store and that was really my favorite time of life, but it was also very stressful. I felt like I had people knocking on my office door every six seconds and even going out for a break– people would find you out on your break, but there’s just something magical about that stall door. As soon as you sit behind that stall and you close that latch, people leave you alone. That’s an unwritten rule. So that’s what I miss. That’s what I miss more than anything. But because my last few memories of pooping were so awful – Scott, they were so bad – that whenever I’m like, “Geez, I wish I could sit down and read an Archie book,” then when I remember what those last few pooping times were, it really makes the time I have in the bathroom now not seem so bad.

Scott

Since you no longer have a butthole, how would you have a prostate exam?

Mike

Also a great question. That was one that I made probably into my late 20s before it occurred to me that, “Hey, I should probably talk to my doctor about how the heck that’s going to work.” So a prostate exam, for me, it’s primarily done with very expensive tools, an MRI machine or a CAT scan. The usual method that a doctor has of performing a prostate exam is a bit shocking, I think, to most men whenever they see the doctor putting that glove on, but the main reason doctors go that route, as uncomfortable as it is for men, usually is because of how easy it is to do. It is a very easy exam for a doctor to perform that way whereas the cost and time of setting up a CAT scan is pretty excessive. So a lot of other people, I’m sure, would much rather have a CAT scan to have their prostate examined as opposed to the doctor’s finger. But I kind of chalk that up to being one of the sprinkles on the cake of having an ostomy. I just don’t have to go through that terrible glove test.

Scott

And of course, we should mention you’re in Canada. So the Canadian health system is certainly very different from the US healthcare system. But in speaking of expenses, what costs do you still have today as sort of an ongoing thing?

Mike

That is a great question and point and I really thank you for bringing that up. I recognize just how lucky I am to be born into a developed part of the world that has a great healthcare system. I can tell you that one of the first questions that I asked my ostomy nurse when I was 10 or 11 was, “What do kids in third world countries do when they have an ostomy?” Because at that time, I was just so amazed at how good ostomy pouches were. I had just learned about them properly and was so just marveling about them. But yeah, I had to wonder, like, what happened to some poor kid in a country not as lucky as mine. She told me the sad fact that there are kids on this planet who are running around with empty coffee cans and duct tape and that just broke my heart. That was crazy. As rough as everything I’d been through was, at least I’m in a country where I do have a good amount of help.

I live in the province of Ontario. Twice a year, I get a check that does help balance a little bit of the cost of osmium supplies for me. It doesn’t cover it entirely. I do still have to pay out of pocket and it’s also a set amount. What that means is in the years or in the six-month periods where I am going through a lot of ostomy supplies, which does happen, then it does get a little costly. As grateful as I am for the help that I do have and for the quality of the ostomy supplies that I’m using, I can still be out a couple hundred bucks every month – worst-case scenario from this.

I’m right now getting through a rough flare-up of both psoriatic arthritis and psoriasis. So the skin all around my stoma is really rough at this particular point in time. So I’m going through one pouch– even though I empty a pouch 5 to 10 times a day, I keep the same pouch on ideally for five to seven days. That’s wishful thinking. Lately, it’s been every one to three days. So because of that difference, it does mean, at the end of the month, it’s costing me about $200 to $300 a month.

Scott

Since you first got your pouch, has that or the process improved much as far as the technology or the materials used?

Mike

Oh, yes, absolutely. And again, I really appreciate you asking this question because it was one that I failed to ask myself for decades and it cost me a lot of comfort time. Now, when a person first gets an ostomy, there’s going to be an adjustment period of trying to find the pouch that works right for you. There’s quite a lot on the market, so you’re probably going to go through a few different pouches. In that time, you’re probably going to have a few bad experiences that will really put you off looking at other options once you find one that works for you at all.

I was in my early thirties before I finally marched into the ostomy store and I said, “I want one sample of everything. I want to see what’s on the market.” When I did that, my world changed for me. Previous to that, I had been wearing pouches that were just pure plastic from top to bottom and I would get– in the summertime here in Ontario, we get some pretty muggy summers and I was getting all these heat rashes between my leg and the pouch. Well, for quite some time now, what’s been available is this microfiber that covers the entire pouch. That fiber does a wonderful job of acting as a barrier between plastic and my skin. So it just means every summer, I can go the whole summer without that age-old rash that I used to just think was part of ostomy life when it didn’t have to be for any reason. That’s just one of a few different improvements that they’ve made over the years.

Also, the seal that goes around the pouch. For me, I use what’s called a two-part pouch system where there is an adhesive flange that gets cut to size and put around the stoma. And then, there’s the actual plastic pouch that, with a kind of Tupperware-type seal, attaches to the flange. Where that Tupperware seal is has also come a very long way because, when I was much younger, a certain amount of weight in the pouch– as the pouch fills up, it gets a little heavier. Sorry, this might be a little more info than some of your listeners are looking for but I’m just going to share this because it’s practical. What you eat also greatly affects that – eating a lot of high-carb stuff, really dense foods, lots of pasta, lots of oatmeal, stuff that’s easy to eat and easy to pass. However, there’s a lot of weight to that stuff. My first couple of pouches– I did have some issues with the weight of the pouch, anytime I would stand up, as it pulled down, it would put a lot of stress on that Tupperware seal. Today’s Tupperware seal that they have around there is a million times better. I haven’t tested it but I feel like I could hang a cinder block from it. And as long as my skin is in good shape, the pouch holds.

Scott

I don’t know. Maybe I should contact Tupperware to sponsor this episode. I mean, I’m not sure they would be interested in that.

Mike

Well, I don’t know who owns the patent on the pouch that I use, but it’s there. They do a marvelous job.

Scott

But yeah, when painting that mental picture though, everybody knows what the Tupperware seal is like. It’s a good thing to use. Is there anything about this whole experience that you’ve actually liked?

Mike

Oh, well, it’s nice to feel different and unique.

Scott

I love that outlook.

Mike

That I’ve actually liked– well, there are times when things are working well with your ostomy where it actually can seem like a little bit of a blessing at times because when I think of all of the pain and roughness of diseased poop time, it was the worst, obviously. Even just some of my friends and family members who just have to go through some of the regular trials and tribulations of pooping out of your natural butthole, it sounds rough and crazy, maybe, but again, if you can keep in mind that I’ve been pooping this particular way for 30 years now, it is bizarre to me that when I’m shaking someone’s hand, I’m probably shaking the hand of someone who wipes their butt with their hand and little tiny bits of toilet paper. It’s actually quite bizarre to someone when they’ve gone 30-plus years of a no-fuss, no-muss exit system.

Scott

If someone’s listening to this and they happen to know a person, a friend or a relative who has just gotten an ostomy, how should they handle talking about it? Do you just avoid the subject completely or what’s the best way to approach that?

Mike

No, I wouldn’t avoid this subject at all. Now, it does depend on the person. I’m a very open guy. I like talking about it and I like sharing the many hurdles that have been jumped over to live a really full and productive life. But I’ve met a lot of other ostomates who weren’t in that headspace at that time, so it’s not necessarily something that shouldn’t be talked about at all. It’s really important to ask how they’re feeling about a particular subject. I have to say it this way. I can talk shit all day, Scott. To me, it’s nothing.

Scott

It’s your normal.

Mike

Yeah, exactly. But I think to someone who is just getting their heads around the fact that this is their new life, this is the new them, it’s good for them to actually hear it talked about in a normal way. And if you are the friend or loved one of someone who was going through this, the best thing you can do for them is, if you have a little joke to make on the subject and it’s something that person normally – when they’re in good spirits – would joke about, make the joke and go with it. Just let them know that it’s not the end of life at all. In fact, again, after 30 years of this, I feel like I’m living proof that it’s definitely not the end for you. So the faster that you can talk about something, get it out in the open, and if there’s any mercy in the world to have a laugh about it, then the faster that person is going to be feeling more like their regular selves and able to get on with life with an ostomy, which is some pretty amazing shit.

Scott

Okay. I want to ask you this. What’s your message to anyone who might be about to go down this path? They’ve been told they’re going to have an ostomy. What would you say to them?

Mike

It’s not the end. You’re going to be okay. It doesn’t feel like it right now. I’m sure the upcoming change is terrifying. It’s scary. It’s maybe the scariest thing you’ve ever dealt with, but the idea that you have found yourself in a position that you and your doctors are talking about, that means that you have been through some really terrible rough times. There’s no way that your doctor is, “Hey, are you bored? Go get an ostomy.” Nope, that doesn’t happen. Ostomies happen for people who are at death’s door one way or another. It’s going to be different. There’s going to be some adjusting, but I promise you it’s going to be better than whatever you’ve had to deal with to get to where you are today.

Scott

There are resources out there available for people. A few that I know of– there’s a subreddit called ostomy. There’s a website community called ostomates. Is it ostomates or osto-mates for that community?

Mike

So there is ostomates. I believe there is an osto-mates – that’s a dating site for people with ostomies, which I highly encourage giving a try. And then there is ostomates, which is just, people just living with an ostomy and that’s it. And there’s

Scott

And there are lots of Facebook groups as well which you can join.

Mike

Absolutely.

Scott

And a future resource– you’re writing a book about your experience. We’ll look forward to that.

Mike

I very much hope to have that out by next year.

Scott

Awesome. And for anyone who wants to contact you – you have graciously said that it’s okay – we will have your email address in the episode notes. People can find that and contact you if they need to. I contacted you about doing this podcast conversation and you were a hundred percent up for it. You can tell just by talking with you, you love getting this information out there, and I appreciate that, and I’m sure a lot of people do as well.

Mike

Ah, Scott, I can’t thank you enough for reaching out to me because you’re right on. I very much do appreciate the chance to talk about this subject. I think it’s something that a lot of people have a hard time talking about and it shouldn’t be that way. So thank you very much for this opportunity.

Scott

Here’s a fun fact – Mike and I have been trying to record this conversation for the podcast for almost a year. He had some health issues, then we had technical problems, then scheduling conflicts. But he and I are both people who don’t give up very easily, so I’m glad we were finally able to make it happen.

And as I mentioned, we have lots of resources in the episode notes, and you can also see a picture of Mike there – that’s at WhatWasThatLike.com/175.

Okay, are you looking for a new podcast to listen to? Here’s one that I subscribe to – and it’s a voice you may have heard before.

A few months ago I released an episode called Laura’s Pain Became Her Purpose. Laura told the story of losing her little boy, Anderson, to a hot car death. If you haven’t yet heard it, I highly recommend that you listen to that episode, because the summary I just described is not even the whole story.

And now, Laura Beck has launched her own podcast. It’s called Beck’s Backseat to Change, and she is on a mission to get her story and her message out to parents with young children, and anyone who knows those parents. She just has a few episodes out now and she’s doing an amazing job. Part of what she’s including are stories of “near misses” – this is when someone might forget and leave their child in the car, but they remember quickly enough so that the child is unharmed. And it can happen to anyone.

You can find it on any podcast app – just do a search for Beck’s Backseat to Change. Personally, I recommend starting out with episode #2, titled “Empty Boxes and Near Miss #1” – but you’ll want to go and listen from the beginning anyway. Her new episodes go right to the front of my playlist.

Graphics for this episode were created by Bob Bretz. Full episode transcription was created by James Lai.

And now, we’re at this week’s Listener Story. We do this for every episode, and it’s just what you think it is – a story sent in by a listener. These are just 5-10 minute stories, and really they can be about anything interesting that happened to you. If you’re not sure if you have one, here’s a prompt – what was the time when you were more scared than you have ever been? I know you have a story like that. Record it on your phone and email it to me – Scott@WhatWasThatLike.com.

This week’s story actually fits in with the theme of today’s episode – it’s about a gastrointestinal emergency.

Stay safe, and I’ll see you soon.

(Listener Story)

This is a bit embarrassing, but Scott is one of my favorites so I don’t mind sharing it with him and with you. I’m going to take you back to the year 2000. I was getting ready to graduate from college. I went to Ohio University. That’s where I met my future wife, Elizabeth. We were both seniors in the Viscom program. It was the school of visual communications and we were going to school to become photojournalists in our career. The seniors were a few months from graduating and everyone was scrambling to get a job. This was the time we were going to figure out where we were going to go with our careers after we graduated.

We were looking for either newspaper or magazine jobs and, luckily, I was fortunate that I had a leg up over most people. I just won a major award, which gave me an advantage to get a job and be valuable in that field. But almost every one of those jobs had to come from the recommendation of the director of our school. His name was Larry Niswonder and he can really make or break somebody’s career starting out. He literally had that much influence within the industry. So Elizabeth and I got to know the staff very well. Elizabeth worked in the office there. We worked on a lot of projects together, so we got to know them.

One day, they were getting ready to go out to lunch together as a staff. So Larry, his wife, Marcy, and some of the other top professors in our school along with two other seniors went out to lunch together. This was an honor to do because we would get to talk to them more, get to know them a little bit more, get to see what was going on in this world, and what jobs were available. This was a really important lunch to go to. So I really wanted to make a good impression to hopefully get a leg up for one of these jobs coming up.

So the place that they chose to go to was Pizza Hut. Now, in college, that’s a normal place for college students to go to and, apparently, some of the professors and teachers go there as well. So they invited us along, we all hopped into this big van owned by the school, and we drove to Pizza Hut for lunch. So we got there for lunch, and Pizza Hut had a buffet. Now, I’m not sure if they still do, but it was an all-you-can-eat pizza buffet, so I took advantage of that and I ate just about all that I could possibly eat. So after lunch is over, we all head back into this big van and we head back to school which is about 10 minutes away without traffic.

While everyone started talking, I immediately felt discomfort. As soon as the van started moving, I felt my stomach turn upside down. It seemed like, just in a moment, everything I had eaten had just turned on me while I was sitting there. And within not long, a few seconds, I felt like I was going to get sick and it wasn’t sick in a normal way from up top. It was sick where it would be from the bottom. I needed a bathroom and I needed a bathroom quick.

The problem is I didn’t feel comfortable saying anything or asking them to stop. Everybody’s talking. We’re stuck in a little bit of traffic and I am now clenching while the van bounced around hitting every pothole while I was living in hell. Elizabeth was sitting right next to me. She had no idea what was going on. With clenched teeth, I told her what was happening and she felt awful. She didn’t know what to do. She grabbed my hand and tried to help me.

The van’s barely moving, we’re stuck in traffic, and I’m crossing my legs, hoping upon hope that the worst doesn’t happen. So now my head’s against the window, sweat is coming out. At the same time, I’m mentally processing what’s going on. Physically, I’m in the worst pain that I’ve been in forever. That was the first part. The second part is I’m about to have maybe the most embarrassing moment of my adult life. And the third part of that all is, with the pain and with the embarrassment that’s about to happen, this embarrassment would happen in front of the most influential people in my career who can make or break me getting a job, all the hard work that I’ve done for all this time is about to go down the drain and down my leg.

Every time we have to stop at a stop sign or a traffic light, I would have to brace myself to make sure and to try my hardest that didn’t happen. At one point, I pretty much gave up. I had my head down, I groaned, and I pretty much envisioned the hell my life would be at that university for the next two months with everybody knowing what just happened. Elizabeth held my hand. She told me to hold on, “It’s getting closer.” It was a race against time now to get to this building. I looked ahead. I knew every street. I knew every turn on how to get there but they weren’t in nearly as much of a rush as I needed them to be, and we were so close. There was one more traffic light and that was my final frontier. I needed to get through that. I wasn’t out of it yet. We had pulled into the parking lot. We were so close, but it was still so far away. Even at that point, I thought I didn’t even care if an accident happened but just make sure I’m out of the van when it did.

I’ll never forget seeing the building, pulling into the parking lot, me getting out and running toward the building. I can’t even imagine what I looked like running towards that building, struggling to get that door open, getting into the bathroom, and preserving my career. Nobody but Elizabeth had any idea that any of this was going on.

It wasn’t more than two weeks later when Larry Niswonder called me into his office and he told me that there were two job openings in Evansville, Indiana. They wanted me and Elizabeth. That was such an odd thing to happen. It was so difficult to get two jobs together and he was offering that to us. We accepted the job a month and a half later. We had started our staff positions at the Evansville Courier and Press. Two years later, Elizabeth and I got married. Three years after that, Elizabeth gave birth to our first son.

Now, all these years later, we’ve been married 21 years, and we have three sons. If things would have gone differently at Pizza Hut, there’s a good chance that none of this would have happened. These children might not have been born and I might be looking at a completely different life and career if they would have driven just a little bit slower.

View Details

Every Tuesday, we grab a past question from the Facebook group, then Meredith and Scott answer it and read some of the answers given by other listeners.

Whats something you LOVE, that everyone else hates?Show Podcast InformationThe question for this episode:

What’s something you LOVE, that everyone else hates?

Links for this episode:

The smell of horse farts

Awesome Facts about Bats

Meredith For Real episode 143 – Why is cannibalism taboo? Placenta, Columbus & Communion

Opossums

The TV show Alone

WWTL episode 75 – Woniya was alone in the Arctic

To check out the new Tuesday Question and get in the discussion, join us at WhatWasThatLike.com/facebook.

Sponsor deals:

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This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at BetterHelp.com/whatwas and get on your way to being your best self.

Go to cookunity.com/What or enter code What before checkout for 50% off your first week.

View Details

Every Tuesday, we grab a past question from the Facebook group, then Meredith and Scott answer it and read some of the answers given by other listeners.

When you were a child, did you ever have a same-age friend die? How did you handle it?Show Podcast InformationThe question for this episode:

When you were a child, did you ever have a same-age friend die? How did you handle it?

Links for this episode:

Meredith For Real ep 165 – Grieving during the holidays:

https://www.meredithforreal.com/podcast-episodes/episode/7a37d91f/ep-165-or-grieving-during-the-holidays-sneaky-symptoms-and-finding-joy

Death Cafes:

https://DeathCafe.com

WWTL ep 168 – Julie is a Hospice Nurse

https://WhatWasThatLike.com/168

Valerie’s House:

https://valerieshouse.org/

To check out the new Tuesday Question and get in the discussion, join us at WhatWasThatLike.com/facebook.

Sponsor deals:

Go to Seed.com/what and use code 25WHAT to get 25% off your first month.

Go to storyworth.com/what to save $10 on your first purchase!

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I’ve always been fascinated with the idea of human endurance. What are we actually capable of doing? It’s almost always a lot more than we think.

Daniel biked across the USShow Podcast InformationAt some point, I want to do a long distance bike ride. So far, the longest I’ve biked in a day is about 50 or 60 miles. And that was right here in this area, so afterward I went home and slept in my own bed.

But I’d really like to bike from here in the Tampa Bay area, across to the other side of Florida, the east coast. It would probably take me like 3 days. I love the idea of that kind of adventure.

But my guest today, Daniel, had a much bigger idea. His plan was to ride his bike across the entire US – from San Francisco all the way to New York City.

And – he started this ride without carrying any money or any food. He was going to depend on the kindness of strangers all along the way.

And that’s exactly what he did. But that’s not all – he recorded video all along the way. And he turned that into a documentary that’s won a ton of awards. So we get to see him struggling to bike up mountains, and across long stretches where he saw no one, and through some scary neighborhoods.

But my favorite part, and what made Daniel’s journey so magical, are the people he encountered along the way.

Public bathrooms can be good overnight accomodationsDeath in the desertFinding food for the dayHaving an amazing conversation with Fabiolamovie posterDaniel’s website:
https://www.weareallinthistogethermovie.com/

Contact Daniel by email: WeAreAllInThisTogetherMovie@gmail.com

Daniel is also in our podcast Facebook group:
https://WhatWasThatLike.com/facebook

Documentary We Are All In This Together on Amazon Prime –
https://www.amazon.com/We-Are-All-This-Together/dp/B0CLBBN833/ref=sr_1_1

Daniel on

Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/the_travelin_dude/

Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/TravelinDudeProductions/

YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/@TheTravelinDude

Full show notes and pictures for this episode are here:

https://WhatWasThatLike.com/174

Graphics for this episode by Bob Bretz. Transcription was done by James Lai.

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Episode transcript (download transcript PDF):

I’ve always been fascinated with the idea of human endurance. What are we actually capable of doing? It’s almost always a lot more than we think.

At some point, I want to do a long distance bike ride. So far, the longest I’ve biked in a day is about 50 or 60 miles. And that was right here in this area, so afterward I went home and slept in my own bed.

But I’d really like to bike from here in the Tampa Bay area, across to the other side of Florida, the east coast. It would probably take me like 3 days. I love the idea of that kind of adventure.

But my guest today, Daniel, had a much bigger idea. His plan was to ride his bike across the entire US – from San Francisco all the way to New York City.

And – he started this ride without carrying any money or any food. He was going to depend on the kindness of strangers all along the way.

But my favorite part, and what made Daniel’s journey so magical, are the people he encountered along the way.

Scott

Do you remember a specific moment when you came up with this idea? How did it come about?

Daniel

I honestly think that it kind of started from my childhood. Growing up, my mother really struggled with alcohol abuse and drug addiction. I didn’t have much of a connection with her. She ended up dying at a young age and it never really gave me the opportunity to get to know who she was as a person. I felt that lack of connection with her. That was kind of instilled in me at a young age. Then, my father ended up passing away at a young age as well. After those two things happened to me, I really started to question life and what I wanted to do with my own life with just that lack of human connection that I felt with my parents being gone.

Around the time that my father passed away, somebody gave me a book called “The Kindness of Strangers.” It was about a guy who hitchhiked across America with no food. He wrote a book about all the people that he met along the way. After reading that book, I felt so inspired and I thought, “Man, I would love to kind of recreate something like that.” After my father passed, I just felt this sense of recklessness in me. I really wanted to do something because I thought he was going to live a lot longer – same with my mom – and I realized who knows how long I’ll be around for. So yeah, that book inspired me.

I thought instead of hitchhiking across America, what if I were to try to ride my bike across it? Cause I think that when you ride your bike, you really connect with the communities that you’re riding through. You get to know the land very well. Like, when you’re climbing over the Rocky Mountains on a bicycle, you really feel the Rocky Mountains and you smell the areas that you’re going through. And being on a bicycle attracts curiosity from people. they see that you have your bags and they think, “Where is this guy coming from? What’s his story?” I thought that would give me an advantage if I was making a documentary because I figured I would have this unique opportunity to connect with the people that I met because of the curiosity that they have.

So I kind of combined that recklessness that I was feeling and also that sense– I wanted to really push it because who knows how long I’ll be around for, and that’s pretty much what inspired the journey

Scott

You mentioned your documentary and I watched it. Actually, I’ve watched it twice and it’s amazing. We’re going to have a link to that so people can watch it. But some of the questions that I have are– it’s kind of divided into two groups.

One is the social aspect of it. Who did you meet, who did you encounter and how did that all work? But also, I’m really interested in the logistics of how you do this long cross-country trip and make a documentary at the same time. I guess I have all kinds of questions, but let’s talk about what was the original plan. You’re in San Francisco and you were planning to go from there to New York City. Was the round trip part of the plan or how did that come into formation?

Daniel

The original plan was to try to get to New York City with no food or money. I had a sign that said, “Biking across the country, ran out of food, anything helps.” And then I was panhandling. I decided to use hidden camera glasses because I didn’t want the people to know that I was making a documentary at the moment because I was trying to capture the real genuine interactions that I had with people. If I was fortunate to receive help from somebody, I’d say, “Hey, do you have a story about when somebody helped you when you really needed it?” I started collecting stories about people’s hardships and compassion that they’d experienced in their own lives, and I was trying to figure out why were these people helping. What makes them want to help?

My goal was to get all the way to New York City from San Francisco. I remember standing at the Golden Gate Bridge when I left San Francisco and I was staring at it and thinking, “Oh my God, I have so far to go.” And I felt this sense of, like, panic for a second because I thought how far the Brooklyn bridge is – like, 3,600 miles away from here – and it was really intimidating. But what I found was, as soon as I started pedaling, I immediately felt better because I realized, “Just take it one day at a time. The goal was just to get to New York City.” I got there and I felt, “Well, I think I want to keep going.”

Scott

How far in advance did you plan this? How long did it take you to put it all together?

Daniel

I’d say about a year in advance. I really started looking at different routes, etc. Again, going back to the recklessness in me, I wanted to choose the most challenging route that I could find because I really wanted to push myself. It was kind of like a moment of just I didn’t care what happened really because I was feeling so reckless, but I feel like I channeled that in a way that was positive because I wanted to make something about compassion and adventure, etc. So that’s why I chose a route over the mountains and through the deserts.

Scott

How long did you think it would take?

Daniel

I thought that I would get to New York in about two and a half months, but I quickly realized that– I mean, from just the time that I would spend panhandling every couple of days, I would spend eight hours out there. Also, I realized that, sometimes, I would have a connection with somebody in a town and I would sit there for three hours and just hang out. So that kind of changed my schedule as well. Sometimes, I’d meet somebody and they’d say, “Hey, do you need a place to stay for the night?” And then I’d end up in a stranger’s home having dinner with them, which is really beautiful.

Scott

Yeah. I love that part of it. You just said, “Okay, I’m going to meet somebody. I’m going to hang out with them for a while.” And you met some really interesting people. Can you summarize your inventory of stuff that you brought with you when you started? What did you have?

Daniel

I had my surly long haul trucker bicycle, which is a touring bike. It’s able to hold a lot of weight and gear. I had about 60 pounds of gear. I had my hidden camera glasses. I brought a drone with me to capture the landscape shots. To program the drone, I would use my phone and use the GPS on it to program it to where it would follow me. So it gave you some really cool landscape shots and it seemed like I had a film crew with me. Then, I brought a GoPro camera that I strapped to my chest when I was riding to give that first-person view to make the viewer feel like they were there on the bike with me. And then I brought a tent and a sleeping bag. I brought some cooking gear, a water purifier, and a lot of– or not a lot, but I had some change of clothes. That’s pretty much it. The camera gear is what weighed the most out of anything.

Scott

Did you forget anything?

Daniel

You’re going to think this is absolutely ridiculous, but I left and I forgot my jacket. So I had my brother meet me in Santa Cruz and he brought the jacket for me on the date I left.

Scott

Yeah. Cause you did run into some cold weather for parts of this trip. You definitely wanted a jacket, I’m sure.

Daniel

Yeah, definitely. The one thing with my gear is, because I wasn’t planning on being on the road for too long, I only brought summer gear with me. But because I ended up spending seven months on the road, I definitely wasn’t prepared for winter. When winter came and I was in Montana, I mean, I was trying to use my summer gear to stay warm and that really wasn’t helping too well.

Scott

Okay, but when you started out, you left San Francisco, you literally had no food with you and you had no money in your pocket.

Daniel

Yeah, there was no food or money and I just had my sign that said, “Biking across country. Ran out of food. Anything helps.” But one thing, Scott, I will mention is, I read a book by an environmental activist named Rob Greenfield. He rode his bike across America and he was dumpster diving a lot of the way. So I knew he was going behind grocery stores to find food that was being thrown away. So I knew that was an option that was always going to be, like, a backup option if I needed it, which gave me more confidence.

Scott

In watching the documentary, it seems like, in a lot of cases, that was plan A, right? Cause you, you hit a lot of dumpsters.

Daniel

Yeah. Scott, it was really interesting. I had no idea that there was that much food being thrown away. I mean, it was insane. There were actually times where I would prefer, especially as time went on– sometimes, the panhandling could just be so mentally exhausting and I didn’t want to stand out in public for eight hours, so I would just– it was a lot easier to go behind a grocery store and just grab some food that was in the dumpster and that, and then I just keep going on my bike.

Scott

Yeah. You’re still self-sustaining, so to speak. But eight hours is a long time. When you started this, did you plan on spending that much time at each place just to get food or money?

Daniel

No. I thought it was going to be a lot less, honestly. But I would stop every three days, though, as well. Like, I wouldn’t stop for eight hours. The eight hours would give me the opportunity to have enough food or money for about three days or so. Obviously, it depended but, usually, I felt like, “Okay, I have enough to where I can keep going.” It also gave me a chance to rest my legs in some ways. So it was, like, a day off from riding the bike.

Scott

So you started on the California coast. Is that where you live?

Daniel

Yeah. I live in Monterey, California.

Scott

Was there any publicity? How many people knew you were doing this?

Daniel

What’s really funny is I hardly told anybody I was doing it besides my close friends and family because there was this level that I wanted to be, like, anonymous on the road and I didn’t want people to know what I was doing. For example, there’d be times I would meet other people on bike tours who were going across the country and they would say, “Hey, do you want to ride with us for the day?” But I’d actually declined because I felt like it was going to kind of get in the way of my documentary and my story, etc. So there was this level of anonymity that I tried to maintain the whole time.

Scott

From the time you started, how long before you stopped to ask for donations?

Daniel

The first time I stopped was about 45 miles. Yeah. I rode 45 miles on the first day. Then, I met a man in Santa Cruz. It was really interesting. He kind of foreshadowed. It was amazing. I asked him, “What made you want to help me, man?” He said, “There’s this quote that I learned at a young age cause I went through some struggles myself. I don’t give because I have a lot. I give because I know what it’s like to have absolutely nothing.” It was really fascinating because he was the first person that I met and he pretty much foreshadowed the whole journey for me because that’s what I started to witness as time went on.

Scott

I know you didn’t put every person that you encountered in the documentary, but I remember seeing that guy. When you stopped that first time, how nervous were you to start standing there holding that sign?

Daniel

Oh man, it’s hard to explain. I felt so self-conscious. I had no idea about just how much shame and guilt I would feel by holding a sign that was pretty much asking for help, and it hit me immediately. I mean, the funny thing with this journey is I really didn’t have much of a plan at all. I just figured, “Okay, I’m going to go ride my bike and just really just see what happens.” So when I finally received help from someone, the first thing that came to mind was like, “Hey man, do you have a story about when somebody helped you?” And that was, like, spur of the moment. I just thought about that and then I just ended up sticking with that question the whole time.

Scott

That is such an amazing question. I can’t believe, right off the top of your head, you just decided to ask him. So you weren’t planning to ask him anything?

Daniel

Not really, no, I didn’t really know what to say. That’s the funny thing about this. Again, in some ways, I think that I wanted to keep some serendipity with this whole experience and that’s why there wasn’t so much planning as far as the route goes. Even every night, I didn’t know where I was going to sleep or what town I was going to stop in, and that kind of increased the adventure and it just felt more authentic. And I kind of felt like I was evolving with just the flow of the journey, if that makes sense.

Scott

Yeah. Where did you camp on the first night?

Daniel

Yeah, the very first night, I didn’t know where I was going to sleep. I slept behind a baseball field. That’s another thing that’s just, again, kind of funny. I came across the baseball field. I thought, “Oh, this seems like kind of a safe place to sleep.” And then as time went on, that was always kind of my go-to option. If I couldn’t find a place off the side of the road or in the woods, especially in these more, like, condensed cities, the baseball field– I would hide out in the dugout and it gave me some safety and kept me from the rain.

The other funny thing too, is– I mean, I was always trying to find a place to bathe. and sometimes I would jump in a river to bathe. Other times, at baseball fields, once it got dark, I would just strip butt naked and just use their hose and just be showering in the middle of the baseball field. Just a random bike rider who’s naked showering in the–

Scott

I would be thinking, “Okay, I’m out miles from home. I’m naked in a baseball field. What am I doing with my life?”

Daniel

Yeah, that’s so funny. And there was also, it’s, kind of liberating in some ways because I just, like, really wanted to get into almost like the primal aspect of it. Like, I hardly wore a shirt the whole time when I was riding my bike because I felt like, when I grew a beard and it just– I really wanted to be in the lifestyle and it’s kind of exciting where, while you’re riding across different States and different areas, you’re always kind of looking for resources. What can I use to kind of help guide me along this – whether it’s using the dumpster, using the baseball field, jumping in a river, or sleeping in weird places?

Scott

Yeah. What were some of the more unusual places you slept? I know one of them was a graveyard, right?

Daniel

Yeah. That one was in Pennsylvania. I was riding near the Appalachian mountains and it was just, like, a rural area. It was getting dark and I came across– next to an abandoned house, there was this small graveyard of maybe 15 graves. I thought, “Well, this is the only place that’s flat around here that has decent grass.” So I just set up my tent there and that was a pretty memorable night.

And it was kind of a funny one. When I was in Colorado, there were a lot of wildfires happening. For a couple of days, I was trying to outrun these wildfires because of all the smoke/ Eventually, the smoke caught up to me. For a couple of days, I was breathing in that smoke and it was really starting to hurt my lungs, especially after eight hours of sleeping in a tent. I came across this old football equipment shed behind this high school and I thought, “It’s summertime, so it’s totally fine if I just sleep in this football equipment shed.” And there were soft pads that I put on the ground and I really got a good night’s sleep there and it kept me from the smoke.

Then, the next morning, I woke up at 8 AM and loaded my bike up with all my gear, and I walked out of the football shed and there’s this football team of, like, 40 players that are practicing – I guess, summer practice. And everybody literally – it was like a movie – stopped the practice and just stared at me thinking, “What the hell is this guy doing coming out of the shed at eight in the morning? Was he sleeping in there?”

Scott

Yeah. Yeah. I bet they were talking about that for a while.

Daniel

Definitely. Definitely.

Scott

And did you sleep on a high school roof?

Daniel

Yeah, that was actually the third night. Basically, I was near Davis, California. I set up my tent in this baseball field at first but I woke up in the middle of the night and there were cockroaches everywhere in my tent. Also, they got in my tent. It was so disgusting and there was no way I could fall back asleep just knowing they were crawling all over. So I didn’t know what to do. Again, I woke up at, like, maybe two in the morning, just grabbed my stuff, hopped on top of this fence, threw my gear on top of this roof at this high school, and I slept up there. It was a very strange place but also a memorable place. It was kind of cool to watch the sunrise being on top of the roof there.

Scott

And then there was another time you slept inside a tree.

Daniel

That was probably literally the best night’s sleep I got in the whole seven-month journey. I was riding through Northern California through the Redwoods and it started to rain in the late afternoon, so I thought, “Okay, I got to find a place that will keep me dry.” And I came across this redwood grove – I’m talking huge redwoods that are, like, 1,500 years old – and the bottom of one of them was hollowed out. So I set up my tent inside the tree. It was such a huge tree. I could stand up with no problem inside the tree. In some ways, I mean, it kept me dry from the rain and it also kept me warm. I know that kind of sounds a little hippie-ish but, in some ways, I felt like the 1,500-year-old tree was nurturing me in some ways and I slept so good that night.

Scott

You do have a little bit of a hippie streak in you, right? I mean, that’s what it sounds like anyway.

Daniel

That’s definitely in me for sure, yeah.

Scott

Okay. So you’re going on and you were, like, three days in and you had your first bike repair issue. Something went wrong with the bike and you had to hitchhike. Have you ever done that before?

Daniel

No, that was my first time hitchhiking. Again, I didn’t know what I was doing. I just didn’t know how long it would take or whatever. The crazy thing about that is I set my stuff down because my seat broke and I can’t ride a bike with a broken seat. I thought, “Let’s see what happens.” I walked to the side of the road. Two cars passed by, and the third car– so, literally, it was 15 seconds. The third car picked me up and it was unbelievable.

Scott

And that was the guy in the little van, right?

Daniel

Yeah. He was in a Westfalia van, and he said, “It’ll break your heart if a Westfalia van passes you by and doesn’t pick you up.”

Scott

That guy was hilarious too. I mean, I guess you guys were going up a hill or something. He had it all the way to the floor and it just wasn’t making any progress – hardly – and he’s swearing at the people honking at him.

Daniel

Yeah. He was such a funny guy. He was in his mid-eighties and this Sicilian guy – that’s how we bonded. I’m Sicilian. He’s Sicilian. His old van was so old and broken, beaten up, and he was driving so slow to where there was this huge line of traffic going. He was talking to me, and then a bunch of people is honking and he stopped his conversation and he went, “Fuck you asshole.” And then he just went right back into the conversation as if nothing happened.

Scott

He’s used to it probably.

Daniel

It sounds like it.

Scott

Carson Pass in Eastern California was over 8, 000 feet elevation and you were really struggling. Did you train for that kind of elevation?

Daniel

Yeah, that’s one thing I did. I worked with a physical therapist for six months before I left, and she was really trying to get my body nice and strong for that mountain pass, And that was the big test for me. That was the first really big mountain pass that I faced and it was a struggle. I had to take a lot of breaks while I was riding up the pass but, eventually, I got up to the top of the pass and it was so beautiful. When I got up there, it was up into the snow, and then, as soon as you descended that pass, you crossed the border and then you’re in Nevada and it was amazing because, 20 minutes earlier at the top of the pass, there was snow and pine trees. Then, after 20 minutes of riding, all of a sudden, I looked around and there were cactuses and you’re in the desert.

Scott

As much as you struggled going up the mountains, you seem to really love just coasting down at high speed on the other side,

Daniel

there’s nothing quite like the feeling that you get when you’re been working five hours climbing up a mountain pass and you have all that gear and you’re sweating, and you just want to get to the top and then you’re rewarded with this wonderful feeling of just adrenaline rush as you’re just bombing down the mountain, and that’s when I feel the most alive when I’m riding. My bike is just going fast down a mountain pass. In some ways, you look at the mountains and there’s this challenge or obstacle in front of you and you think, “Can I do this? Can I ride over this?” And I like to kind of make a game out of it in some ways and look at it as this obstacle that’s in my way. “Can I, in some ways, conquer the mountain – if that makes sense? And when you get over the top of it, it just feels like a moment of celebration to just feel the wind in your face and just give your legs a break. Also, usually, when you get to the top of the mountain, you have a wonderful view and it reveals “Where am I going next?”

After crossing Carson Pass and being in the pine trees, I realized, “Oh, I’m heading down into the desert now.” I crossed the Great Basin Desert in Nevada and they call it the loneliest road in America. This particular road is about a 400-mile stretch with only four towns. There were 18 mountain passes to climb and it was super intimidating going through there. Before I rode the desert, this man told me, “You better be aware of the scorpions. There’s a lot of scorpions. If you’re gonna be camping out there, watch out for the coyotes too.” And he warned me about running out of water. So I was feeling pretty intimidated before riding into the desert.

There was one particular day that really stood out to me. There was an 84-mile day with three mountain passes to climb with no services. I thought the most intense part was there was no shade. So I woke up with a certain kind of intensity that day and thought, “Okay, respect the desert. Cause this is no joke. You got a long way to go, especially carrying 60 pounds of gear.” After a couple of mountain passes, I had 35 miles left to go and I ran out of water because this hellish headwind hit me. It was really slowing my pace down. When I ran out of water, I got a little nervous because I still had 35 miles. I got so dehydrated that my nose started to bleed and that’s when I got really concerned because I thought, “Okay, now I’m losing a lot of electrolytes and that’s getting me super dehydrated.”

As I kept riding, I started to feel like I had the flu and felt super sick. What made it even worse was being out in the desert. Just along the side of the road, there were just tons of, like, carcasses from dead animals like dead cows and horses that wandered off and just died of thirst. So that definitely didn’t increase my confidence as I’m out of water, seeing all these dead animals. Eventually, I was able to make it over the third mountain pass and get out of the desert, but that was a super intense part of the ride and one that I’ll never forget.

Scott

Talking about where you were planning to go, I assume you used your phone for GPS the whole time to track your route.

Daniel

I purchased these maps by Adventure Cycling Association for about the first half of the trip for the western part of the country, and they were kind of more cycle-friendly roads, if that makes sense. It was a longer route, if that makes sense, but it would keep you away from traffic for the most part. So I used those maps up until I got to St. Louis. Then, when I got to St. Louis, I started using my phone for GPS. Again, I just knew, “Okay, I’m heading towards New York City.” It’s just going in a general direction. But there were also a lot of times when I would ask people when I was panhandling, “Hey, are there any cool roads that you’d recommend just going east?” And the locals would fill you in on certain roads that the GPS wouldn’t normally pick up on.

Scott

How did you keep all this equipment charged? Did you use solar?

Daniel

Yeah, great question. So I had a solar panel on the back of my sleeping bag. So, on the back of my rack, I would strap down my tent and my sleeping bag. Then, when it was sunny out, I would just strap the solar panel on there to charge some stuff. Then, also, every couple of days, I would stop in the local library and I would charge my stuff that way. That was always cool because I just liked the vibe of different libraries and I got to know a lot of different libraries going across the country. There’s just a really good feeling going into a local library, especially in these small towns of maybe a couple hundred people. You get this chance to connect with the people who work there, and it’s just really special.

Scott

Yeah, libraries are amazing. They do so much. You met new people pretty much every day, but did you ever experience loneliness on this trip for yourself?

Daniel

Yeah, there was loneliness and I think that it was because I grew a beard on purpose because I wanted to see if that would change the way that people treated me and, without a doubt, it did. Yeah, very obvious and more effective than I thought it would. When I was more clean-cut, I felt like I was more approachable. But as my appearance was changing, I noticed that people wouldn’t make eye contact with me as much. I was receiving much less help. Even when I would ask the question, “Hey, do you have a story about when somebody helped you?” In the beginning, people were open and receptive to that. But as I had a long beard, people were like, “Here’s $5 but don’t talk to me. I want to do my good deed.” And then that was it. So I definitely started to feel lonely. As I was standing out there with my sign, in some ways, I started to feel invisible in a way and it really made me think about how lonely that could be for people who live that lifestyle every day.

Scott

Did you see any other people holding signs like that? Like, actual people that are homeless and I’m wondering if they would say, “Hey, this is my territory.”

Daniel

Yeah. Really interesting point that you bring up is, on the West coast, I definitely saw a lot more homeless people who were holding signs and I learned that there’s some kind of territorial thing going on and you could feel it. Like, sometimes, I would be holding my sign, and then I’d see somebody else that was holding a sign who was actually homeless and I would get a look and I knew I needed to leave here for numerous reasons. First of all, I want to be respectful. That’s their real life and I’m just choosing to do this. Then, also, it did feel dangerous at times because it did feel like the guy was saying in some ways, “This is my territory. You’re taking away from me eating or me getting some money.” So, it felt threatening at times. I definitely felt that tension.

Scott

What kind of food did you find in dumpsters?

Daniel

Man, I couldn’t believe the amount of fresh strawberries and bananas and apples. I mean, that was just a staple for me, especially in the summertime, and I’m talking fresh. There’s nothing wrong with these and they weren’t even in the compost bin. They were in the dumpster. A huge staple for me was bagels. There were always bagels being thrown out and you get a lot of carbohydrates from the bread there. I ate a ton of peanut butter and jelly and the bagels were always a good option. I came across steaks. I came across tons of yogurt.

Scott

Did you have a way of cooking the steaks?

Daniel

I did. Yeah. On the top of my cooking pot, you could flip it over and you could use it as a little frying pan, so it was pretty, pretty sweet. That was amazing. And the eggs stay good for so long. So I would just hard boil. I came across the carton and, cool, I got a dozen eggs here. I’ll just hard boil these and I can just be snacking on these for the next couple of days.

Scott

I would think you must have been conflicted at some point because when you look in a dumpster and you see a dozen bunches of bananas, I mean, you can only eat so many at one time but yet you don’t want to bring all of them with you for tomorrow and the next day because it’s more weight and, plus, they’re gonna go bad.

Daniel

Yeah, it’s so funny that you mentioned that because I definitely felt those moments. The first time I started dumpster diving, I just loaded as much as I could. But then, I realized the two things you mentioned, first of all, my bike felt super heavy after that. Then, I realized I just couldn’t carry this much food. There’s not enough room and it felt like it was too much – and I’m talking literally. I can’t stress enough – I’m talking about dumpsters that were full of food. It was unbelievable and shocking.

Scott

The first time when you pointed the camera in there at all those bins of strawberries and they’re all just fine– it’s amazing what we threw away.

Daniel

Yeah. I think the grocery stores are afraid of getting sued, so they don’t want to take any chances at all, so they just throw away the food.

Scott

I want to talk about one of the people that you met. I think one of the earliest– well, maybe not one of the earliest ones but the one that really struck me– this woman named Fabiola. Where was she? Where did she live?

Daniel

That was in Kansas City, Missouri.

Scott

Okay. All right. She actually invited you into her home. I mean, my listeners know that one of the things that I really love is talking to people and having a really heartfelt or deep conversation. You had that with her that night. That must’ve been amazing.

Daniel

Yeah. Scott, there were certain moments along this journey that felt like it was fate to meet some of these people, if that makes sense. What happened with Fabiola was I was riding through Kansas City. I had my shoes on the front of my bike strapped down and I dropped a shoe, and I realized that after a couple of minutes, so I turned around and rode my bike back. It was at the stoplight. At the stoplight, this woman named Fabiola said, “Oh my gosh, are you on a bike tour? Where are you coming from? I’m so excited to see you.” And just really quickly, I said, “I’m Daniel. I came from San Francisco.” Then the light turned green and then she sped off. Then, I went panhandling in a different part of Kansas City.

Five hours later – Kansas City is a big city and it was probably 10 miles away from where I met her – I ran into her again and I thought, “Oh my gosh.” We had a chance to talk and Fabiola said, “Do you need a place to stay for the night?” And I thought, “Oh my gosh, absolutely.” Like, it’s incredible to be welcomed especially since I’ve been sleeping outside in a tent for the last couple of months. I had dinner with her and her family. She was from Nicaragua. So they cooked some nice Nicaraguan food. After dinner, I sat at the dinner table with her and I said, “Fabiola, what, made you want to stop and just start talking to me and invite me into your house?” She said, “I saw you on your bike tour and it made me think about my husband. My husband’s dream was to ride across the country. He didn’t get a chance to do that because he died of cancer when he was 40. I saw you and I wanted to celebrate my husband’s spirit. So I felt like I wanted to do something kind for you in honor of my husband. That’s why I welcomed you into my house.” And it was really beautiful because when we first met, she was talking about growing up in Nicaragua and speaking Spanish, and growing up poor, and I didn’t grow up with either of those things. I was fortunate. I wasn’t poor throughout my life and I’ve been pretty privileged growing up in California.

It made me realize when she started talking about her husband who passed from cancer and she started telling stories about what it was like those couple of years that he was struggling– my father passed from cancer and I remember, as she’s describing these stories, I started to think, “Oh my gosh, I have these same emotions. I went through these same human experiences that you did.” And it made me realize that, yeah, we grew up differently in these different cultures, but we also shared this common human experience of grief over losing a loved one, and that was just so beautiful because I instantly felt way more connected to her that way.

Scott

The perfect ending to the story would be that you and Fabiola are now married.

Daniel

I know, right? I know.

Scott

But that didn’t happen though. Have you had any contact with her since then?

Daniel

Yeah, absolutely. The really cool thing is throughout this whole process of putting out the documentary anytime it was in a film festival and you’re showing for different places, I’d always reach out to the people that are in the film to help me because it wouldn’t have been possible if it wasn’t for these super special people. They helped create this story. So anytime I have the chance to connect with them, I do. And the really cool thing is I’ve stayed in contact with almost every single person in the film, which is super special. There are a couple of homeless people who I wasn’t able to keep in contact with just because they lived, kind of, that transient lifestyle, but I still talk to most of the people.

Scott

That is so cool. I really loved watching all the interactions between you and the people who wanted to help you, and so many people said, “Hey, I’ve been through tough times and people helped me.” Was that kind of a common theme?

Daniel

Yeah, And that kind of goes back to where we were talking about the very first person I met who said, “I don’t give because I have a lot. I give because I know what it’s like to have absolutely nothing.” I really started to see that going through impoverished neighborhoods. For example, I was riding through Dayton, Ohio and this guy came up to me. His name is Shorty. He said, “Hey, here’s a couple of dollars for you.” I said, “Thanks, man. Do you have a story when somebody helped you and you needed it?” And Shorty went, “Well shoot, man. Right now, I’m going through kind of a tough time. I don’t have a job. I’m homeless. But God got me. It’s not to our understanding but there’s a bigger plan for your life. Sometimes you got to go with it. In ups and downs, you got to keep on smiling and you got to help another brother out.” So inspiring because it made me look at my own life and made me realize how much I actually do have. Witnessing this homeless man who literally doesn’t have a job and is sleeping on the streets but he’s still willing to help somebody was really beautiful, and he wasn’t the only homeless person that I met who ended up helping me. I mean, as you see in the film, there were numerous homeless people and it was really beautiful to be able to witness that.

Scott

How do you think this trip would have been different if you were not a white man?

Daniel

Yeah, I think it would have been tremendously different. The reason I say that is because, I mean, within the first week when I was riding through the Sierra Nevadas, this very nice man, as I was riding past his house, said, “Do you need a place to camp?” And I said, “Yeah, that sounds great.” He said, “You can camp in my yard, man.” “Thank you, man. That’s super kind of you.” So I stayed there for the night.

Then, the next day, he said, “You want to go on a hike?” And I thought, “Oh, for sure. This is great.” I got to see the area a little bit. He showed up on this hike and I’m feeling very welcomed. Then, pretty much out of nowhere, he just started going on this rant about how he hates black people. That was just a very eye-opening thing. Whoa. okay. So he was being super kind to me but if I was like a black man riding through this area, then it could have been totally different. And it wasn’t just that. I mean, there were other situations I witnessed as well– I mean, riding through a lot of areas of the country and just seeing the Northern parts– it wasn’t like the South either. It was Northern parts and even California seeing Confederate flags, a lot of different places.

There was a man I met when I was riding from New York back to California and he was a black man. We were sharing stories and he said, “Where have you been camping at most nights?” And I said, “Oh, man, most nights, I just sleep in baseball fields.” And he said, “Cops don’t bother you?” And I said, “Yeah, well, sometimes they come but they usually just tell me to leave early in the morning.” And this man looked at me and said, “Oh my gosh, man. Last week, I was staying in a campground where I was supposed to be staying and someone still called the cops on me.”

Then, there was a moment I had in a rural area in Idaho. This guy in this big truck pulled over and he said, “Where are you going?” I said, “Oh, I’m just going to the next town.” I was riding my bike. In this part, I had a long beard and I was looking a little different than when I first started. And he said, “Where are you from?” “I’m from California.” And he said, “Ooh, you shouldn’t admit that to people around here.” I said, “Okay.” Then, he went, “No, we’re all carrying guns around here.” And then he just stared at me and slowly drove off.

Scott

That is creepy.

Daniel

Yeah, for sure. And that was an area where there were Confederate flags and things like that.

Scott

When you were setting up some of the shots of you riding, there’s a still shot of you – the cameras in one place and you’re just biking past. Now, I know the typical viewer might just look at that and think, “Yep, he’s riding by.” I look at that and I think, “You had to stop and set up the camera in that spot and then backtrack, like, 50 yards or so and then bike past it for the shot, and then go back and retrieve the camera and go on your way. So making this documentary really added to the difficulty. You’re not just riding across the country. You had lots of other things to think about along the way. Was that always going through your mind – what the end product is going to be like?

Daniel

Yeah, that was confusing at times because, in some ways, I’m trying to stay super engaged and present as far as just riding my bike and witnessing these things. At the same time, I was thinking, “Oh, this could be a good shot here.” So I’d kind of stop the moment and set up my camera. Sometimes, I would set it up on a rock or something – just be resourceful and try to use what you can – and there’d be other times when I would stop and set up my drone and program my drone to follow me. It was kind of a blessing and a curse at the same time because, in some ways, when days were boring, it kind of gave me something to look forward to. If I was having a day where just the scenery wasn’t changing very much or whatever, I would always be on the lookout for kind of a cool shot and I’d break out my drone and that would kind of give me a little energy. But at the same time, there were moments when I was just really present and having a great time and just having to stop and feel like I needed to film this shot. It kind of took me out of the moment a little bit.

Scott

And you were a one-man crew. It’s not like you were bringing a film crew with you that could set up the shots and look at the dailies at the end of the day to see how it all went.

Daniel

Yeah. I really tried to. I really wanted to prove to myself that I didn’t need a film crew. I mean, you and I, before we started the podcast, we were talking about that. There’s something very empowering about knowing that you can do it all by yourself. We live in a time right now that is pretty cool where one person can literally just make their own movie, and it’s really special. Also, again, I wanted it to be raw and real. The idea of bringing a crew with me would totally not be a true experience.

Scott

One night, it was around one o’clock in the morning. You were riding down the street looking for a place to stay, and you didn’t even know where you were going to sleep that night. What happened that night?

Daniel

I was riding through Patterson, New Jersey. Normally, I wouldn’t stay in big cities, especially big cities with a lot of crime because it was obviously dangerous, but I met this wonderful woman named Elizabeth and she was from Columbia. I met her in front of a grocery store when I was panhandling and she was concerned about me. She said, “I’m concerned about you riding through this area. You can stay with me.” And I thought, “Oh my God, this is such a beautiful opportunity. Of course, I’m going to take her up on it.” So Elizabeth cooked me dinner. She lived in this very small apartment in a rough area of Patterson, New Jersey, and she was sharing all these beautiful stories with me about growing up in extreme poverty to where there were days when they didn’t even have the money to buy rice. I was capturing that moment while having dinner with her. I was feeling so inspired about having this beautiful connection with this stranger. Also, just being able to be fortunate to receive so much kindness from someone was so amazing and just uplifting.

I’m about to go to sleep at midnight. Her daughter and her boyfriend come home. Her boyfriend instantly was just grilling me with questions. “What are you doing here? Who are you? Etc.” Then, he started telling me about how dangerous this neighborhood is because of all the gang activities that are happening. He doesn’t trust me. Elizabeth was saying, “No, please, he’s fine. Let him stay. Leave him alone.” But this person got into my face and then he shoved me. He said, “If you don’t leave now, we’re going to have a serious problem.” He took my stuff and he literally just threw it out into the street.” So, at that point, I had no choice. I just got out of there. It was really sad because Elizabeth was crying. She did this really kind act for somebody and the boyfriend definitely didn’t trust me and wanted me there, so I said, “Okay, I’ll leave.”

So I was one in the morning and I was riding through Patterson, New Jersey, in literally gang neighborhoods where there are gang members on the street corners. And I was wearing bright green. I’m obviously not from there. I have all this gear on my bike.

Scott

One thing in this picture that doesn’t belong, right?

Daniel

Exactly. So my first thought is, initially, I want to ride to the next town and get out of here. But then, once I was on the street and saw all the gang members, I thought, “I need to get out of this street within seconds because I’m going to get robbed or killed or who knows what’s going to happen.” So I found this old abandoned warehouse and I rode my bike back there. There were all these abandoned semi-trucks and I had a really bad vibe about sleeping back there but I thought, “Well, this gets me off the streets. I’m just going to have to make do with it.” So I set up my tent in the corner of this warehouse or behind this warehouse.

I got woken up at 3 AM. I heard this big truck. At first, I could just hear the engine kind of idling close to my tent, so I woke up thinking, “What the hell is going on?” I had no idea. Then, I heard the truck start driving towards me slowly and my heart rate just started pounding. Again, I couldn’t see what was going on. I just saw some lights going into my tent. Then, I heard the engine just revving, driving fast towards my tent. At that moment, I literally thought, like, “I’m getting run over. This is how I die. This is it.” I’ve never had a moment like that ever in my whole life. My hands were so sweaty. My heart was racing a hundred miles per hour. Then, I heard the truck stop right in front of my tent. I heard the door open and close. Then, I think, “Okay, so I’m not getting run over, but I’m going to get murdered or robbed or something’s happening.”

Then, a person yelled, “Get the fuck out!” At that point, I was so terrified. I’ve never been this terrified in my whole life because, again, I can’t see what’s going on and I just felt stuck in my tent. There’s nowhere to go. There’s nowhere to go.

Scott

And I should mention this for anyone listening, you recorded yourself in this and it’s in the documentary. I mean, the fear in your voice and on your face is just obvious.

Daniel

Yeah. There’s this moment a friend actually pointed out to me, if you pause the film, you can see just complete terror in my face. I’ve never had that expression before. So I thought to myself, “Okay, he told me to get the fuck out. I’m going to try to sound as non-confrontational as possible.”

Scott

And you did that really well.

Daniel

Thank you. That was a survival tactic. I felt like this is what I needed to do at this moment. This is an instinctual move in some ways. So I unzipped the tent, lightened up my voice, and said, “Hey, I’m Daniel. How’s it going?” I just saw two headlights just beaming into my face, so I couldn’t see the person. So, I don’t know where the person is and, most importantly, I don’t know if they’re holding a gun towards me. They might be pointing a gun at me, especially, again, considering the fact that this is a gang neighborhood in Patterson, New Jersey.

He said, “What are you doing here?” Again, I was talking to these headlights and trying to calm my voice, and I said, “I’m just crashing for the night.” Absolutely terrifying moment. Then, the guy said, “Well, I’m a security guard. You can’t be sleeping here.” I felt like the weight of the world was just lifted off of my shoulders at that moment and I realized, “Okay, this person, they’re not here to kill me, but they’re patrolling the area.” But that moment, just considering all those circumstances, was extremely traumatizing and I was not the same after. I still had to ride all the way back to California from New Jersey. After that, sleeping in all these strange places wasn’t like an adventure anymore. It just felt scary after that.

Scott

What did you learn from this adventure?

Daniel

Man, there’s so much that comes to mind. I mean, the first thing that really stands out to me is there were a lot of people who showed up in my life in moments when I really needed it, especially as my appearance started to change. One particular story really stands out that’s tied into your question is I was in Oregon and, after seven months of panhandling, trying to find a safe place to sleep, trying to find a place to bathe, trying to get enough food and money, and being physically broken down, my body was really starting to ache and I was getting harassed more, and that was really wearing on me and I was just feeling so beaten up. I was standing on the side of the road, just stretching my body, and this was the closest I came to quitting these couple of days.

I remember thinking, like, “I don’t think I want to go on anymore. I’m just too exhausted.” This person walked up to me and his name was Gary. Everybody else was walking by. I didn’t have my sign out. I was not asking for anything. Gary picked up on the energy that I was putting out and he said, “Hey man, are you okay?” I said, “Yeah, man, I’m just kind of having a rough couple of days.” He said, “Hold on a second, man. I want you to just stay here for a second.” And he ran across the street to a grocery store and Gary came back with a bag full of groceries. He gave me a bag full of groceries and I wasn’t asking for it. Again, my sign wasn’t out but Gary picked up on the energy that I was putting out. I said, “Thank you, man.”

And I started asking him, “What’s your story? Where are you from, man? Where do you live? What’s your story?” He said, “I live on the streets. I’m homeless.” And I said, “What made you want to help me?” He said, “Because you look like you’re going through a rough time.” I truly believe that Gary because he’d faced a lot of hardships in his life. He was able to pick up on the energy when everybody else was passing by and he recognized the energy.

The thing is it wasn’t about the food or money because I actually had some food that day. It was the fact that he saw that I was struggling and he showed up for me, and that’s what I learned. Every day, we all have this super incredible opportunity to show up for somebody and it doesn’t have to be giving food or money to someone who’s homeless. It could be someone you work with. If you can tell their energy is off, just check in with them because that moment, for me– like, Gary changed my life just showing me that. It’s really cool because I think, “Holy shit. We can all be that person who shows up for somebody and we can change their life.” It’s really cool that there’s so much chaos in our world right now but one thing that we can always control, that we actually can control is how we treat each other, and we can all be a Gary to somebody.

Scott

Yeah. That was the premise for this whole thing, right? I mean, there’s so much chaos in the world and everybody’s fighting each other, but there are still a lot of good people in this world. That encounter was proof of it.

Daniel

Yeah, I totally agree with you. Another thing I learned from this experience is watching the news and listening to politicians and all the fear-mongering that’s happening with all this, when you go out into the communities and actually talk to people, especially people who are different, I think it’s really beneficial to learn to give them a chance to speak and listen to them, and then you have a better understanding, I think that the two things that happen are, first of all, there’s less fear of those people who are different and then you realize we’re actually maybe not that different. That’s another thing I learned from this because, a lot of times, I was going into neighborhoods that I normally wouldn’t go into and I was speaking to people who had different opinions, but it was so inspiring because I realized that we’re actually not that different.

Scott

Have you ever thought about doing this again?

Daniel

I have, Yeah. And I go back and forth in it because it’s interesting. Just yesterday, I was talking to this homeless man. He was panhandling on the street. Now, when I see people, I always just want to hear their stories because living this lifestyle for seven months created so many interesting, unique opportunities that are so different from normal life. This man was 45 years old. He said he’d been homeless since he was eight years old because his mom used to beat him. When he said that, I was like, “Well, how are you getting by at eight?” He was like, “It was the 80s. I would go and I would tell people I needed a quarter to call my parents.” That’s how he would panhandle. He’d say, “I need to use the pay phone.” He’d been homeless for 37 years and the amount of stories this person had was unbelievable and interesting. I said, “Well, do you eventually want to get into housing?” And he told me, he said, “That would be a waste of my life. Why would I go into housing now? This is what my life is meant to be. I’m meant to be out here.”

Scott

That’s his normal.

Daniel

That’s his normal. And in some ways, it’s really interesting because life is how you look at it. He brought the example. He’s like, “Well, working in an office is a normal day job. But I’m living in a more instinctual way.” And I thought that’s pretty interesting. I was tying that in because I have thought about doing it again just for the sake of so many unpredictable things that happen. There’s this crazy opportunity when you’re really just going with the flow and just letting kind of the journey take its own route, it leads you on a lot of really beautiful experiences, and I think that it really gets you connected and present in the moment.

Scott

Yeah. I mean, you were thinking, after about seven months, you were worn out and tired and didn’t want to keep going. I mean, for some people, that’s their life. They don’t have any choice.

Daniel

Yeah. And I can’t even imagine how difficult it is for those people who are living that life every day. I can’t even imagine.

Scott

For people who want to watch your documentary and your website, how can they find all that?

Daniel

Thank you for asking. yeah, so my film, which is called, we are all in this together. It’s streaming on Amazon Prime on Apple TV and Google Play. My website is weareallinthistogethermovie.com. And what I’d like to share is, in a couple of months, I’m going to be hitting the road and I’m going to be going to different cities across America and having live screenings of my movie in different theaters. We’re going to be using the ticket sales from those showings to raise money for the local homeless shelters in the city that we’re riding through. And yeah, I’d love to encourage anybody to check out the website. There’ll be a list of dates on there that talk about what cities I’m going through and it’d be really cool to meet a listener. Maybe we can go for a bike ride or go for a walk and share some nice stories with each other and also talk about the podcast, talk about how we’re both fans of this podcast because I’ve been listening to this podcast. I actually came across this podcast when I was traveling in Europe last year.

Scott

Really? I didn’t know that. Okay.

Daniel

Yeah, that’s pretty cool, man. I’ve been a fan of the podcast and it’s a huge honor to be on here with you.

Scott

Well, it’s an honor to have you here and you’re going across the country. I assume you’re not biking across the country. This is in a car or something, right?

Daniel

Yeah, I was tempted to do the bike ride, but I can hit way more cities in the car.

Scott

Yeah, for sure. And I know you’re coming to Florida. Wherever you’re coming to Florida, I want to know about it. I’m going to sign up and make sure I’m aware of when you’re here because I definitely want to meet up with you – and go to the screening – and any listeners that are here. It’ll be fun to get together.

Daniel

Absolutely. Yeah, that’s what it’s all about – connecting and supporting each other – right?

Scott

For sure. And you and I are a lot alike in that we both have a big heart for the homeless population. I do a lot of work with them here locally as well. What a great thing to be able to do – just go across the country, show your movie to people, raise money, and help the homeless people. You’ve got the ideal life now, I think.

Daniel

Thank you. And I can’t say enough about just the people that I met along the way. They helped create this story and it kind of goes in line with as far as the movie tour. Like, when I left, I didn’t know what I was doing as far as making a movie. And I would love to share with the listeners that I hardly had any film experience at all. I didn’t know what I was doing. I was learning on the road but I think that, sometimes, if you have a creative idea, just go for it because you never know what could happen. For me, personally, sometimes, I would have self-doubt about certain things creatively because I thought, “Oh, I don’t have any experience with that. So I won’t be any good.” This bike ride taught me that you don’t have to have experience. You just got to go for it.

Scott

Yeah. I was surprised when I went to your website. I mean, the number of awards this film has won and, if you just keep scrolling, it’s really gotten a lot of them.

Daniel

Thank you so much. I mean, it’s so incredible. Just to be able to share your art with people by itself is amazing, and then the idea of winning is a huge honor. Again, that’s why I can’t say enough about these people I met. Man, I’m so grateful because of them sharing their stories– like, we all did it together. We all did it. It wasn’t just me. It was those people who decided to be kind to me and to show up in my life. And then, all of a sudden, this story’s out there. And in some ways, I’m so happy because it gets to celebrate them because they definitely deserve it.

Scott

I really enjoyed having that conversation with Daniel. He’s such a genuine, down-to-earth person. And – I’m hoping to meet him in person in the not-to-distant future, because one of the cities he’s planning to visit in his movie tour is St Petersburg, Florida. He hasn’t yet finalized all the dates and the various cities he’ll be visiting to screen the movie – but you can check his website for up to date information, and you can also email him. I’ll have links to his website and his email address in the episode notes, at WhatWasThatLike.com/174.

Amy

Hi Scott, my name is Amy. I’m listening to the re-release of the episode Justin Found His Mother on Facebook. I am tearing up listening to it because I had the same exact experience a couple of years ago. I was adopted before I was even born. My first mother had decided she couldn’t keep me for the same reasons as Justin’s mother. She didn’t have the resources to give me the life that she wanted. I grew up with a family that was very different from my personality. They’re very awesome and very kind people. They gave me everything I needed to care for me, but it never felt like I had a mirror of who I am, my personality, and my quirks. I had never seen anyone that looked like me and my heart always yearned and ached to know the biological family.

I finally had the courage to try to find my– I found my mother on Facebook a few years before I even tried to contact her. I had to work up the courage to send her a message. So, I finally sent her a message. I think the same thing happened where it went to that inbox on Facebook when you’re not friends with someone. My mother’s probably in her 50s and couldn’t figure that out for a while. So a year later, on the day that I was graduating from massage school, the very day that I was graduating, I got home and saw that she had replied and, yeah, it’s just crazy. I just relate to everything that Justin is saying, all of the feelings, and it’s nice to hear someone else talk about it because I don’t know a lot of people who are adopted and don’t know a lot of people that are adopted who have had positive stories reconnecting with their birth family, and Justin reminds me of my own very much.

I finally met my birth mom a couple of years ago. I flew out to the Midwest from the East Coast to meet my birth mom, my half siblings – because she had a couple of kids after me – uncles, my birth grandfather, and my birth grandmother, cousins. They were all so kind. So cool just to finally feel the resonance of people who not only look like me, even though that’s big, but it’s just a certain feeling when you’re around people that you’ve come from and that you’re related to.

I’ve realized finally that it’s actually very special to be adopted because, if you grow up with your biological family, whoever you grow up with, you have a tendency to get annoyed by and we get under each other’s skin and you see the good and the bad and it can be harder to sometimes appreciate those who are close to us day-in and day-out – not that we don’t love them. I feel like when I met my birth family, we didn’t have that day-in and day-out frustration with each other. We just have this blank slate to build a positive relationship on. Also, it has made me appreciate my birth family more. It’s like I have two families that love me equally and I love them equally. My heart feels so full after a lifetime of feeling really lonely, misunderstood, lost, and kind of hurt. I didn’t know who I was and I had no reference for my identity, which was really hard, and I felt that way for as long as I can remember.

It’s like a reward after going through all of that. I now know who I am. I have two families. I hope that there are more people out there who have had the same experience. Thank you so much for listening to me and for sharing the stories that you do. God bless Justin and his birth mom and a newfound family.

Scott

If you haven’t heard that episode yet, it’s episode 170, and it came out on March 15, 2024, and it’s titled “Justin found his mother on Facebook”.

And we have a new Raw Audio episode – Raw Audio 40 just went live. The Raw Audio series are bonus episodes that include actual 911 audio and the stories that go with that call. In this episode, you’ll hear a man calling because his mother can’t breathe – and he calls more than once:

Male 1

Sorry, say that again?

911 Operator

Tell me exactly what’s happened?

Male 1

She’s struggling to breathe.

911 Operator

Oh, okay.

Scott

A husband and wife are surprised when someone is trying to break into their home

Female 1

He can only shoot if he comes in, right?

Scott

And, a man calls to turn himself in and get help for the elderly couple he was holding hostage

Male 2

First of all, I’m a piece of shit. I need medical assistance out here for this elderly couple. I’m turning myself in.

Scott

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Graphics for this episode were created by Bob Bretz. Full episode transcription was created by James Lai.

And it’s time for the Listener Story! You’re gonna hear this story because a listener, just like you, said “hey, I had something interesting happen to me – why don’t I record that in a little 5 or 10 minute story on my phone, and send it to Scott!” And that’s what they did. And that’s what you should do. Just record a story of something that happened to you, and email it to me at Scott@WhatWasThatLike.com.

This week’s story is about a scary encounter – at the grocery store.

Stay safe, and I’ll see you next time.

(Listener Story)

April 23rd, 2018 started off as a typical busy Monday morning for me. The kids had school at 8 and I was due to work at nine. My husband wasn’t home because he was working as a truck driver and he was out of town. I was having my morning coffee and getting ready to make the kids their lunches when I realized we were out of lunch meat. I thought, “Oh no, I have to make their lunches. How am I going to do this?” Because I also realized we were out of milk and they’re going to want their cereal. So I thought to myself, “Okay, well Albertsons supermarket is just down the street. I will go get dressed for work, run down there, get it, be back.”

So I was getting dressed, which turned out to be a pretty important part of this story because it ended up saving my life. I was a dog groomer at the time. When you’re grooming dogs, there is a lot of hair and I really wanted to wear my leggings because they’re so comfy, but I knew that they would just get so hairy because whenever I got done working, it looked like I came out of a blizzard of hair. So I just threw my jeans on and thought, “This’ll do.” My son’s just getting out of the shower and I tell him, “Hey, your little sister’s still sleeping. I’m going to run down to Albertsons to get milk and lunch meat. I’ll be right back.” So I head out to the car and I remember thinking, “Oh my God, I don’t have my cell phone.” But then I thought, “Well, fine, because I’ll be right back.” It was still on the charger from the night before.

I pulled into the parking lot and I was really happy. There weren’t that many people there and I thought, oh good, I can make it in and out and I can get on with my day. I got the milk, went to the lunch meat aisle, and I’m like, “Okay, which kind am I gonna get? There are so many different kinds. Do I want Turkey? Do I want ham?” Next thing I knew, I looked down the aisle and there’s a man coming – a much older man – and I thought to myself, “Oh, I’ll just move out of the way.” Cause I could tell he wanted to go look at the same place I was. He was looking at lunch meat.

I was just standing there and he said, “Excuse me, do you know what time it is?” I said, “Oh my gosh, sir, I’m so sorry. I don’t have my cell phone. I do know it’s probably about 6.15 because the store just opened.” Before I could even get anything else out, he lunged at me and hit me in the stomach. It was terrifying. It was so traumatic. It hurt so bad. It was, like, a stinging, stabbing pain like when you get punched in the gut. That’s kind of what it felt like. I was like, “Oh my God.” I kind of looked up at him and I started to cry. And I said, “Why would you do that? Why would you punch me?” He looked at me and he held up his hand, and I saw a knife, and he said, “I just stabbed you.” And I was like, “Oh my God.”

So I was, like, running – because he’s coming after me. He was, like, running after me up and down the aisles. I was trying to find somebody. I was screaming. I was sitting there thinking, “Where is help?” Finally, I got down the end of one aisle and I saw a worker. It was a man that was working in the meat department and I ran up to him, “Sir, please. Oh my God, please help me. This man just hit me and he’s following me. He’s chasing me.” The meat man, when I was telling him, he turned and there’s the crazy old man staring at us at the end of the aisle.

The meat man stepped in front of me to protect me, and he said, “Sir, what is the problem?” And the man said, “I stabbed her, and I would stab you too.” At this point, I was just, like, going hysterical because I was like, “What is going on?” The man got on his walkie talkie and said something. The next thing you know, two other workers come. By this point, the man was flailing the knife around in the air. They knocked the knife down, they knocked him to the ground.

After that, the meat man turned to me and he said, “Ma’am, are you okay?” And I was thinking, “No, I’m not okay. This crazy old man just punched me.” And the guy said, “Are you sure he didn’t stab you?” And I was like, “No.” And I looked down and there’s blood. At this point, I was freaking out, screaming, crying. The man was grabbing towels to help me. Then, the police came. They questioned me. They questioned the guy. The guy was still yelling, “I stabbed her, and I will stab you too!” It is insane.

Then, the ambulance comes and they take me to the hospital. Luckily, the knife only went in about an inch and a half. The doctor did tell me that what saved my life was the waistband of my jeans. So had I worn those leggings that day, the knife would have gone all the way in. I mean, I could have died and it’s still so shocking to this day that that happened. They did have to do a lot of stitches.

I was happy that they did charge the man with felony assault with a weapon. It turned out he was 74. About a week later, I did find out they sentenced him to Warm Springs State Psychiatric Hospital here in Montana because they did find him mentally ill, which isn’t surprising.

The only thing that I found really awkward was when the police questioned him about why he did this, he said that he was homeless and that he was very angry at the VA. I still to this day do not know what would push somebody to go hurt somebody else because of that, but I’m just so grateful that I made it and that I’m okay. The police did call my sister. So she was able to come take care of my kids for me while I was going through everything. It’s very traumatic. I’m lucky to be alive. I’m much more aware of my surroundings. Lots of therapy. But I’m okay.

The main thing of this whole story is this happened but I’m okay. Even now, every year, my co-workers celebrate my Stabiversary on April 23rd. They usually get me a cake from the Albertsons where I was stabbed at. Usually, they’ll say something like, “We’re so glad you survived.” And I just take it as that. I’m okay and I’m so thankful.

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Every Tuesday, we grab a past question from the Facebook group, then Meredith and Scott answer it and read some of the answers given by other listeners.

Is there a specific person in your life who you consider to be your enemy? How did that come to be?Show Podcast InformationThe question for this episode:

Is there a specific person in your life who you consider to be your enemy? How did that come to be?

WWTL episode 166 – Suzanne was stuck on the boat

Tim Ferriss has a fascinating conversation with Barbara Corcoran

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Enjoy this special presentation of RISK!, a podcast where people tell jaw-dropping true stories they never thought they’d dare to share in public.

Presenting RISK!Show Podcast InformationIn this episode, Cory Byrom and Chris Lundy share stories about the best and worst times with their friends from childhood.

For more episodes of RISK!, be sure to check them out wherever you get your podcasts.

Also:

This is the video from the TODAY Show that you’ll hear about in this week’s Listener Story:
https://www.today.com/video/like-mother-like-daughter-both-get-ambush-makeovers-610631747697

Episode transcript (download transcript PDF):

Hello, this is Scott.

And no, this is not a regular new-episode Friday. Today I’ve got something special for you.

If there’s one thing I know about you, it’s that you love when people share personal stories. And I love that too!

So today, I’m giving you a preview of a podcast that I think you’re gonna really enjoy. The show is called RISK.

If you’ve never heard of it… well, sit back and enjoy because you’re in for a real treat.

The website Slate dot com called RISK! “jaw-dropping, hilarious, and just plain touching.” Since 2009, RISK! is where people tell true stories they never thought they’d dare to share.

The special episode presentation you’re about to hear is titled “Buds” – as in “best buds”, people who are really good friends. I loved this episode so much, I’ve listened to it twice.

What you’re gonna hear are two different stories. The first one is from Cory Byrom, and the second one is told by Chris Lundy. These two men share stories about the best and worst times with their friends from childhood.

As I was listening to this it kind of took me back to when I was a kid, and the stuff that my best friend and I would do.

Take a listen, and I hope you enjoy this episode from RISK! titled “Buds”.

Kevin

Hello kids. This is RISK, the show where people tell true stories they never thought they’d dare to share. I’m Kevin Allison. This is Kenny Burrell, behind me now, and we are calling this week’s episode, “Buds”. These are two stories by men about best friends that they had way back when in their childhoods and how complicated that can be, sometimes, to have a good friend in your childhood. These are very tumultuous, emotional, and action-packed stories today. Out of the 560 or so episodes that we’ve made, I think it’s only the second where it was all men. In this case, it was just that these two stories were so kind of interestingly different and yet interestingly hitting on some similar territory that the backgrounds of these two guys. And the ways that their stories echo and differ from one another, I think, is very interesting.

The first was recorded in 2015 in Denver. We thought we had lost the audio for this one. We’ve been doing a lot of recovering, reconstituting, remastering of old archive material. Anyway, I was thrilled to find that this story is still so great and sounds great too. This is Cory Byrom, who you can find on Twitter at cdbyrom, with a story we call Iceberg.

Cory

So I want to tell you guys about my friend, David, for a little while, if you don’t mind. David and I had been sitting in his bedroom for a couple of hours with the blinds closed when his parents got home and told us about the several inches of snow that had fallen outside. We were at that age where sitting around in one of our bedrooms, listening to punk rock and watching horror movies was about as exciting as a Friday night could get. David fashioned himself after the classic British punk rockers. His hair was always in spikes or a mohawk, and it was rarely its natural color. He wore a denim jacket with safety pins all over it and a huge portrait of Johnny Rotten on the back that he had drawn. He was an excellent artist. While we sat around doing nothing, he would draw album covers for made-up bands that he imagined himself to be a part of while I dicked around on the guitar and that sort of thing.

Snow in suburban Atlanta was a pretty rare treat. So as soon as we found out that it had in fact snowed, we got on a couple of extra layers of clothes and then headed out just to kind of explore. There wasn’t really anything to do in the snow but just be out in it because it was so rare, it felt kind of magical and it was nighttime. Street lights cast kind of an orange glow all over the pristine blankets of white snow that were over everything.

We met up with another kid who lived near him who was just as bored with life as we were, and we just kind of goofed off. We were throwing snowballs, doing whatever. Oh, we rescued a bird. I mean, that’s something you do in the snow, right? The other guy – who I didn’t really know that well – he saw the bird and it was kind of hobbling around and he started to go for it. For some reason, I thought he was going to hurt it, so I’m like nudging David, “Holy shit, we’re about to fight because this guy’s about to hurt a bird. I don’t even know why I thought that he was a nice enough guy, but he didn’t. He grabbed the bird and stuck it in the pocket of his hoodie. Then, we walked back to his house and he set it up in the garage with a box and a heater. I think he took care of it for a couple of weeks and then it flew off. I don’t know how that has nothing to do with the rest of the story. I just like to tell people we saved a bird.

So after we dropped off the bird, David and I headed back out into the cold alone. Pretty soon, we found ourselves at the apartment complex pool. Given our haircuts and our ages, you would have thought that David and I would have been out to really cause some trouble but we were sort of shrouded in a cocoon of innocence that it’s hard to even imagine existed. We didn’t drink or do any drugs. We didn’t even smoke cigarettes. We would occasionally talk about, “Hey, we should buy some pot from this guy” or “So-and-so is getting some acid. We should get some.” But nothing would ever really materialize. We wore X’s on our hands to have a sort of a punk rock straight-edge identity, but the truth is we were just straight-edge by way of extreme laziness.

We were standing there looking through the fence at this frigid water and the snow falling on it. It’s really pretty or whatever. Then we climbed the fence and then we made snowballs and dipped them down in the cold water until they were just hunks of ice and then pelting each other with them. Normally, that’s the kind of thing I would have been really whiny about because I was and remain an incredible pussy but, with all those extra clothes on, you couldn’t even really feel it. So as long as we didn’t hit each other in the face, it was no big deal.

I don’t know whose idea it was to start building the iceberg, but we were suddenly very serious about it. It was a two-man operation. So one of us would be crouched down at the side of the pool holding this big hunk of icy snow that we had placed there, and the other one would be gathering up snow to pack on it and around it to make it bigger and taller. Building this iceberg was really sort of emblematic of the years that David and I spent together because these were sort of our formative teenage years and we had no car, we had no job, I was 15 at the time of the iceberg and David was 17. So we just kind of wasted time in the way that only dumb teenagers can, usually late at night, usually without our parents knowing what we were up to.

Once, we snuck out of his house late at night and we were going to go roll toilet paper, roll this kid-down-the-street’s house. But we can only get two rolls of toilet paper from David’s house or else his parents would notice the toilet paper was gone and then they would see the house that had been toilet-papered and know that we snuck out. So we just rolled the shit out of one bush. That was pointless. Four kids cleaning up the bush the next day. I don’t know.

Another time, we snuck out of his house and walked a couple of streets over to meet up with some girls at one of their houses. Only David took us to the wrong house. So we knocked on the window and then hid behind a car for half an hour while some guy in his underwear with a shotgun tried to find the little shits that scared his wife in the middle of the night. Not one of our smarter moments.

David always had something going on with some girl. We were always walking to see some girl that he had a thing going on with. Even though he was this grubby punk rocker, he was just about the most charming son of a bitch you’d ever meet and he could say and do things and get away with stuff that most people couldn’t, that I certainly couldn’t.

Once, he came into our ninth-grade math class and announced to the whole class, “Yeah, I decided yesterday I’m just not going to take showers anymore. I just don’t even give a shit if I’m dirty.” And all the girls giggled and made “Fuck me” eyes at him, and I’m sitting there all jealous. I couldn’t do that. That doesn’t make any sense. He convinced that same class that I had monkey feet. He’s like, “Yeah, Cory, take off your shoes. Show everybody your monkey feet. Whenever nobody’s around, he picks stuff up with them. He can use a knife and a fork. It’s crazy.” If anybody here has monkey feet, it’s not a big deal. I mean, it would be kind of cool, to be honest, but when you’re, like, 14, you don’t want people thinking you got monkey feet when you don’t have monkey feet. I don’t have monkey feet for the record, but they believed him because that’s just how it went with us.

We had a friend who lived with his grandparents and his grandmother was this, like, surly, irritable woman who cursed like a sailor and wouldn’t take shit from anybody, and we were all kind of terrified of her, but David plopped down on sitting next to her and he said, “Can you hear my voice?” When she barked back, “Yes,” he kind of lovingly laid his head on her shoulder and said, “Do you like it?” And she busted out laughing and it broke the ice with her. We actually all grew to really love her and realize she wasn’t nearly as frightening as she seemed once we kind of got beneath the surface. But that was the kind of sense of humor that David had. He didn’t mind putting himself in harm’s way for a laugh or pushing people’s buttons. He loved making jokes at my expense, much like the monkey feet.

Once, in one of the bathrooms in our high school, he drew on the wall, a huge, gigantic penis, 13 inches long and four inches wide. Again, he was a great artist. This wasn’t, like, just some scrawled outline. There were, like, veins and hairs. I mean, it was a masterpiece, frankly. Then, above it, he wrote, “Cory Byrom has a huge dick.” Of course, he didn’t tell me that he had done this. So I just go in the bathroom one day and I’m like, “God damn it.” He could have at least snuck into the girl’s bathroom if he was going to start spreading this rumor about me, right? So he was a very charming guy. A lot of our time wasted involved trying to play music together.

I played the guitar. We’d wrangle up a couple of the guys and try to start a band. Sometimes, he would play bass but he had a really unparalleled lack of rhythm. Other times, he would try to sing and his timing was no better there. So these sessions would usually end with us not speaking for a few days because I would get so irritated with his lack of focus and he would be so annoyed by my constant bitching about his lack of focus. So for the years that went by and all the times we tried to start bands together, we managed to write one song and it was called “My sister got plowed by Hitler.” It was pretty sophisticated.

Anyway, at least, with the iceberg, we had a physical representation of our time wasting. Once we were done building it, we could step back and look at this huge thing we had made in the pool and be proud of our accomplishments. So you can imagine my frustration when I went to go to the bathroom and came back to see the thing floating off in the pool unfinished, and I told him, like, five times, “Just sit here and hold it. Don’t do anything. Don’t try to add any snow. Just sit here and hold it. I’m just going around the corner. I’ll be right back.” I have no doubt that my insistence on him sitting there and holding it is exactly why he didn’t sit there and hold it because that’s just the kind of guy he was. But no, the iceberg had floated off and it was a done deal.

Over the next year or so, we started to drift apart as we both got into bands that took up a lot of our time – bands not with each other because that was not going to work. Even though our bands shared the bill a lot of times and we even shared a band member for a long time, we just didn’t see each other as much. He dropped out of high school and, unfortunately, even after our earlier attempts at being straight edge, he started getting into drugs. As he got more and more into drugs, his resentment towards me started to build partly because I was still very vocal against all of that kind of stuff.

His band started getting pretty popular and I think he saw that as kind of a middle finger to me as well, going back to our earlier days of trying to start a band and all of my constant criticism of him. This all sort of came to a head when he began publicly mocking me and talking shit about me pretty much every chance he got. He would make fun of me from stage. He wrote song lyrics that made fun of me. He was generally just an asshole. There was no event that caused it. It was just something that started kind of building and happened over time. If anyone asked him, “What’s your problem with Cory?” He would just be like, “Man, fuck that guy. He thinks he’s so much better than everybody else because he doesn’t drink or do drugs. And now he’s all high and mighty.” And I mean, the truth is I can’t necessarily argue with his reasoning. I mean, looking back on it now, I think I was probably as much of an asshole as he was. I just wasn’t quite as public about it. This went on for, I don’t know, a few years – maybe 18 months. It’s slowly built.

The thing is we still had tons of friends in common, so it was really awkward because we tried our best to avoid each other but we would often be sort of thrust into the same space. He was still the fun-loving, crazy, hilarious guy that I’d always known. He just wasn’t that way around me. For example, we had a friend in town visiting who was supposed to be staying over at David’s house. That friend came bursting into the Little Caesars where I worked and he was like, “Hey, I need somewhere to stay tonight. David got arrested.” So I had these conflicting emotions. My first thought was like, “Oh Jesus, what has he done now? Was it drugs or theft or violence or whatever?” And then my second thought was, “Good, that dick.” Because I kind of figured whatever he had done, he had brought it on himself anyway, so he’s getting what he deserved. But no, it wasn’t any of those more serious things.

He got arrested for streaking the Fayette County high school football game. Let me paint a little scene for you. It’s kind of misting out. It’s not really raining, just kind of drizzly. There are four teenage boys in a car taking their clothes off in the parking lot next to the high school football game. This is what the police officer found and he knocked on the window and David wrote it down as being the most cool-headed and charming of the bunch. The officer said, “What are you guys doing in here?” He said, “Oh, our clothes just got wet from the rain a little bit. So we just got in here to dry off and get on some dry clothes.” So this police officer did what I think any one of us would do when confronted with four teenage boys taking their clothes off in the car in a high school parking lot, and he said, “Okay,” and walked off because he’s like, “They do not pay me enough to deal with this shit. So whatever these kids are doing, they can fucking do it.”

Sure enough, just before halftime, David and these three other guys hop the fence of one end zone and they go tearing off down through the football field, butt naked. The crowd’s going crazy. The cops come in from the other side and are coming up behind them. As they get to the other end zone, the fence on the other side, our school’s head janitor, this big redneck guy is leaning up against the fence, and he casually tosses out some advice that David could have probably followed from then on. “You better move your ass, the cops are right behind you.” Sure enough, the cops caught him and the others and they were arrested for streaking the high school football game.

These moments of hilarious shenanigans aside, his drug use was starting to lead him to some pretty dark places. This culminated in a few Gigi Allen style performances with his band involving nudity, beer bottles, oral sex, and whatever else, and it was starting to get him a reputation of being kind of fucked up. Meanwhile, he thought I was a square, I thought he was becoming a junkie, and neither of us was wrong.

On the night of my 18th birthday, I went out to go to a party at a friend’s house and there was a Papa John’s box sitting on my car. David was a delivery driver for Papa John’s, so I was a little scared to open it because I thought he might have shat in it or something, which would be kind of funny, I guess, even though it was being a dick, but he didn’t shit in it, thankfully. When I opened it up, there was one of his band’s T-shirts inside and a message scrawled on the box that said, “I’m sorry, big hairy fatty.” Big hairy fatty was the term of endearment, if you can believe it. So it was the best gift I got that year.

I went to the party and David was there and we hugged and exchanged, “I love yous,” and he apologized. I said, “David, What happened? What caused all this?” He said he didn’t even know. The thing is it didn’t really even matter because I had my friend back. But over the next couple of months, when we hung out more and tried to go back to the way things used to be, it was never quite the same. Too much time had passed. Our inside jokes weren’t funny anymore. Our interests had shifted. He was still heavily into drugs. I was still heavily not. But we were at least on friendly terms and all that tension and awkwardness between the two of us and our group of friends kind of released because we were getting along and it was good. It wasn’t the same as it was before but it was good.

That following year, our lives took a sort of different direction as I went off to college and he moved up to Athens, Georgia to focus on becoming a tattoo artist. We didn’t see each other quite as much, but we were on good terms for the next two years. Just before I turned 21, I was up in Athens with a band. We were recording a record. The first night we were there, we got a phone call that David had overdosed on heroin. He was in the hospital.

We went to visit him and the gulf between us seemed bigger than ever. He was cracking jokes. He didn’t remember anything that had happened. We’d hoped it would be like a wake-up call to him but he remembered getting off of work and then waking up in the hospital. The part that he had missed – at least part of that – was his roommate coming home to an empty house, but a locked bathroom. He pounded on the door and there was no response. He walked around and looked in through the outside window and found David lying on the floor unconscious, so he called 911 and kicked the door in, but all of that was gone for David, and the events leading up to it were gone. He knew nothing of any of this. When he first woke up, he wanted to know who had kicked his ass. He thought he must’ve been, like, assaulted after he got off work. So we hoped that it would be a wake-up call to him, but nothing really changed after that because, to him, it was just like, I don’t know, a side trip that didn’t really affect him.

Over the next couple of years, he bounced around a lot between Athens, Georgia, and Savannah and Atlanta and New York, and even Fayetteville, Georgia, where we grew up and where his parents still lived and I would run into him every now and then. We’d see each other at parties and that sort of thing and he would always say he was clean, but you could tell he wasn’t. Once, my wife and I had gotten a new puppy and we took it to this party with us. David was there and he played with the puppy all night. Then, I saw him again a couple of weeks later and he said, “Hey, I heard you got a new dog, man. I’d love to see it.” Everything was just becoming a blur to him.

As the years went on, we had less and less contact. People would ask about him or I would ask people about him and the stories would always start with, “Well, I’d heard he was clean, but–” and they never really ended anywhere good after that.

In 2006, my first son was born. That night, I was feeling pretty emotional and nostalgic. I found David on MySpace and we had not had any contact in years at this point. I sent him a message telling him my news and he wrote back two sentences. “That’s wild. What’d y’all name it?” And he never wrote again.

After that, the day after Christmas of 2009, my wife and I were sitting around watching TV and she was chatting with a friend whose husband was a fireman in our town. The friend told her they had just heard over the police scanner that there had been an attempted robbery at the Walgreens with shots fired and that the suspect had a blue mohawk and was covered in tattoos. Our hearts sank. David had a friend drop him off at the Walgreens and he went inside and pulled out a gun and told everyone to get out. He headed straight for the pharmacy. Was rummaging through the drugs and he was trying to get the narcotics safe open when the cops got there. He tried to close the gate but he couldn’t get it to close. So he pointed his gun at the cops and one of them shot him twice. They hit him in the abdomen and luckily he did not die. As they were dragging him out, cuffing him, and putting him in the ambulance, he was reportedly yelling, “You were supposed to kill me.”

David is now on year 6 of a 20-year prison sentence and we’ve written back and forth a few times to try to patch things up. We’ve both done our fair share of apologizing. As you can tell from the telling of this story, for most of David’s story, I was just more of a bystander. I was a witness to his humor, his charm, and his talent, but also his pain, his overwhelming need for acceptance, and his ultimately devastating addiction. In all those years when we weren’t in as close contact, I could have tried to help him get clean. I could have fought with him or begged him or staged interventions – maybe other people did in my absence – but, ultimately, I didn’t do any of that. I didn’t really try to help him. So in the end, he just floated out of my life. Not unlike an iceberg in an apartment complex pool in the winter of 1993. Thank you for listening.

The Clash

🎜 Darling, you got to let me know 🎜

🎜 Should I stay, or should I go? 🎜

🎜 If you say that you are mine 🎜

🎜 I’ll be here till the end of time 🎜

🎜 So you got to let me know 🎜

🎜 Should I stay, or should I go? 🎜

🎜 It’s always tease, tease, tease 🎜

🎜 You’re happy when I’m on my knees 🎜

🎜 One day it’s fine, and next it’s black 🎜

🎜 So if you want me off your back 🎜

🎜 Well, come on and let me know 🎜

🎜 Should I stay, or should I go? 🎜

Kevin

This is RISK! This is the Clash behind me now and we just heard from Cory Byrom. Now listen, there’s a documentary that was made about Cory’s friend, David’s band. It’s on YouTube. The film is called, “Stopper: The Rise and Fall of the Bastard Squad.” So if you want to check that out, it’s on YouTube.

Let’s get to our final story today. This is quite a trip. This story comes to us from Chris Lundy, who is the host of the First Person Arts Story Slam. Oh my gosh, we love First Person Arts in Philadelphia and we’re so thrilled that they introduced us to Chris Lundy. You can find Chris on Twitter at LundyWorld.

This is also extraordinary in that all of the music in this story was composed by our audio editor, John Lasala. So let us go off on this journey. Now, here is Chris Lundy. With a story we call “413.”

Chris

So growing up, my big sister loved dating gangsters – like thugs and roughnecks. The rougher, the better. That was her style. The one guy she was most head over heels for was a guy named Duran. My sister and him were inseparable. You would not see one without seeing the other. Everybody knew that Duran was dating my sister and my sister was dating Duran. They were, like, this notorious couple.

Duran was as gangster as it got. I didn’t know what he did or how he did it, but everybody was afraid of Duran and Duran wasn’t scared of anybody. He wasn’t the biggest guy in the world. I consider him, like, lanky. When he was smiling, I mean, he had the kindest face in the world but, when he was angry, that same area would turn down and become this extremely intimidating scowl. So it was, like, two extreme opposites – same face, two completely different ends of the spectrum. He kind of walked to the beat of his own drum. He had his own set of rules, his own code. Even though he was on the outskirts of the rules and kind of had that bad boy thing going on, because he lived by this code, he seemed like a standup guy, an honorable guy, a trustworthy kind of dude. He had a lot of bass in his voice and he knew how to use it.

I remember one time, I was with Duran and he saw these 4 guys out in front of an apartment building. For no reason at all, he yelled to them, “Het, what the fuck are y’all looking at?” Not one of them said anything. I was floored by this. If I had seen these four guys, I would have been scared or just wanted to mind my business, but Duran unprovokedly initiated a beef with these four guys confidently and they didn’t say a thing to him. That was just more evidence that Duran was a motherfucking gangster. Everybody was scared of him. He had the neighborhood on lock.

I was growing up in a tough neighborhood but I wasn’t a tough kid. I was in middle school. I loved comic books. I collected pennies. I was that kid. I was a penny collector and I would lay them out in rows in my bedroom all by myself in the order from oldest to newest. My favorite ones were the old ones. The ones that were old as shit, on the back, they didn’t even have the Lincoln Memorial yet. It just said one cent on the back. Those were my all-stars. I love those.

My neighborhood was right on the border of Southeast DC and Southeast DC was notorious for being the roughest part of a rough city. So by being on the Maryland border there, it was like, you can make a left and go toward a Creek where there were trees and nice flowers, or you can make a right where if you weren’t wearing a bulletproof vest, you might as well just go ahead and plan your funeral. There was, like, this dichotomy going on and it shared a zip code, but the worlds were so different. I had friends on both sides of that line.

I was raised by a single mom, a Haitian immigrant, and she was tough. She ran a tough ship in the house but I don’t think she knew much about the neighborhood or what was going on outside of our doors. There were fights all the time for no reason, for stupid reasons. There were bullies all over the place and people would tease you about anything. If you have old shoes, you’re getting teased. We called it joning, right? So if someone were talking about your hair, they would be joning on you. People joned all the time. Fights were unprovoked. You could get jumped for no reason or worse.

Guys were getting shot for gritting their teeth on each other. Gritting– what that is it’s when you kind of look a person up and down in a sizing them up kind of way, and that was just considered a sign of disrespect. This sign of disrespect oftentimes led to somebody actually getting shot, actually getting killed. The worst part about it was this was normal to us. This was like a cultural norm. Everybody knew somebody who got killed. Everybody had a friend who died and we just accepted it as a way of life.

It was a scary little world that we lived in but, just naturally, I gravitated toward the good kid way of things like following rules. I remember nothing made me happier than bringing home my report card to my mother and showing her how well I had done. That would make my day. Getting her approval meant everything to me. So that’s the path I walked. That’s where I was, but I was always aware of just how bad shit was around the neighborhood, but Duran protected me from all of this just based on his reputation alone. If you fucked with me, then you might have to fuck with Duran, and nobody wanted to fuck with Duran.

He wasn’t stingy with his street knowledge either. He would school me up. He would give me lessons and tell me things like, for example, “If some bullies are messing with you, you pick out the biggest one and you hit them with whatever you could find – a brick, a stick, whatever you could find. You hit them with that and you’ll probably lose. You’ll lose that fight, but he’ll never mess with you again. And everyone who’s smaller than him, they’re definitely not gonna fuck with you because now you’re seen as the crazy kid that’ll hit somebody with a brick.” And it was true.

He taught me these types of things while he would cut my hair and that was kind of like his hidden talent. He was the best barber I’ve ever seen – like sharp lines, nice fades. It was an art form for him. He would really take his time. We would set up the bathroom, he’d sit me on the toilet. The toilet was the barber seat. He would line up his clippers and he would just shape me up. While he was doing that, we’d be talking. He was like a comedian. He’d asked me about girls and told me jokes. We talked about school. I mean, Duran taught me everything from how to shoot a gun to how to kiss a girl. If my mother knew what he was teaching me while he was giving me those haircuts, she would have kicked him out right then and there and told me and my sister to stay far away from Duran.

But he knew where we were, he knew the neighborhood that I was in and the type of shit that I would be subject to, so he was teaching me and preparing me for any situation that I might come across because of where we lived. He knew that I needed it. He knew I needed the help. Again, single mom– there wasn’t a dad around. Older sister– I didn’t have an older brother. He kind of stepped in as that male figure to teach me how to navigate the hood. It just boosted my confidence and it gave me this sense of security when Duran was around. Bottom line, I worship the ground he walked on.

When he asked me to take a walk with him one night, I jumped at the chance. I was in. As we’re walking one night, a car pulls up, and it’s Saquon. Saquon is another guy from the neighborhood, older than me but maybe a couple of years younger than Duran. Saquon was a little badass, not like Duran though. Duran was a badass that you took seriously. Saquon was more of a mischievous little guy. He didn’t really go to school or maybe he dropped out too – I’m not quite sure. No one really took Saquon too seriously. No one feared Saquon but if you dared Saquon to do something, Saquon would probably do it. That was his reputation.

He comes up and he goes, “Hey, yo, this is UUV.” Now, I didn’t know what the hell a UUV was, but for the record, a UUV means Unauthorized Usage of a Vehicle, AKA a stolen car. I assumed it was the model of a car like the Nissan UUV or something like that. I had no clue. I was just a little naive little kid. Duran motioned for us to get in, so we got in and I was thinking, “All right, I’m hanging with the boys. What are we about to get into?” We headed to a construction site where they were building these townhomes and Saquon was driving like a complete wild man. He’s doing donuts. He’s spinning out, jumping little ramps, and shit like that. Then, Duran takes the wheel and he’s even crazier than Saquon. He’s doing all kinds of stuff, driving fast. Then, out of nowhere, Duran goes, “Hey, yo, let Youngin drive.” That was me. I was Youngin. So I get in the driver’s seat and this is my first time ever driving. I’d never sat behind a wheel before.

I’m driving the car and we spot this porta-potty, and they say, “Yo, run that shit over.” Literally, they were saying, “Let’s play bowling. Let’s go bowling using the car as a bowling ball and the porta-potty as the bowling pin.” Now I’m thinking to myself, “This is insane. First of all, I’ve never even driven a car to begin with. And my first time out, I’m going to go bowling with porta-potties. I’m not understand what’s going on. First of all, Saquon must have excellent insurance on this UUV of his.” I was kind of shocked at myself that, “Yes, I was excited, but I wasn’t that nervous.” I think that I started to assimilate to being one of the bad boys. If Duran was saying that hitting this porta-potty was okay and Saquon was giving me the thumbs up, then this was the way to go.

So I lined the car up and I hit the gas and I’m going to this porta-potty and I’m thinking to myself, “Are you sure? Are you sure? Are you serious? Are you really about to do this?” Boom, crunch, crash into the porta-potty. It goes flying. There’s piss everywhere. Shit everywhere. I went flying through this porta potty and it was exhilarating. It felt like I was waiting for some type of award after the world’s greatest porta-potty killer – that’s how I felt after hitting that. It felt like I had graduated from this little innocent naive kid to this rookie bad boy. That’s what it felt like. I mean, I’m looking at the porta-potty destroyed. I’m looking around. We’re in this construction site, driving this car. It just felt like we could do anything we wanted to do at that time. It was exhilarating. Like, this kid– I never really did anything wrong and, for the first time, I felt like I was in a bad boys club. I was behind the velvet rope and I finally got to see what goes on behind there and I loved it. I love every second of it. So I’m still on this high.

Saquon takes the wheel. I’m in the back seat and we’re going back to our neighborhood for Saquon to drop us off. On our way out, we see five cop cars on their way in and I see Duran stiffen up and Saquon get really quiet. As the cops pass us one at a time, I turn and I see they all start to make U-turns in a single file. I take another peek at Saquan and Duran and they’re even more stiff, even more quiet, and I see something that I had never seen in my life and I never thought I would see. I saw fear on Duran’s face. I turned back around and I saw the cops, the lights flash on, the sirens blaring now, they hit the gas, sped up, and now they’re pretty much right up on our bumper. I’m scared shitless. I look in the rear view and I see Saquon’s face and he looks confused. He looks unsure. He doesn’t know what to do. So I yelled to him, “Stop the car. It’s the cops.” It was common sense to me. When you see police, if they tell you to stop, you stop. End of story. But Duran had other ideas.

Duran said, “No, go. I got warrants. GO!” I’m thinking to myself, “What do you mean ‘Go’? If cops say ‘Stop’, you stop.” Duran said, “Go.” Saquon obliged by mashing down on the gas. I’m thinking, “What the hell is going on?” In my little naive mind, I thought we were just playing, we were all taking turns driving Saquon’s car, messing around and now we’re being pursued by police and we’re actually talking about running away. It blew my mind and I couldn’t wrap my little head around it. What are your warrants for? What could Duran have possibly done? I panicked and Saquon obliged Duran’s request by putting the pedal to the motherfucking metal and gunning it.

That fast, we were in an all-out high-speed police chase and I’m seeing that we’re headed full speed toward an intersection and there’s no lights. There was a stop sign but there was no light. So the cars are coming east to west, west to east – they’re flying – but we’re going north to south and we’re not slowing down. If anything, we were picking up more speed. I’m bracing. I’m thinking, “Damn, this is the way I’m going to die – in the backseat of a UUV.” We go straight through the intersection. I don’t know what the odds are but we went through untouched, unscathed right through. Now the cops, of course, are going to be more careful through an intersection. So, they stopped to make sure they weren’t causing any accidents. At those speeds, an accident would have been fatal – no doubt – so them being more careful and stopping created separation. It gave us a little bit of breathing room.

So by the time we got to our neighborhood, there was a moment of peace. Saquon brought the car to a roll. It was just slow enough for him to jump out. So Saquon jumped out and then Duran jumped out. I tried to jump out but my door was locked and wouldn’t budge – fucking child safety locks. Because the car was still in motion, the rear doors couldn’t be opened from the inside, so I was trapped. I was petrified. I looked back and I saw that the cops had made their way through the intersection. My stomach dropped. I remember my face feeling tingly just from fear, from shock, from panic. I was yanking on the door. I even slid over to the other side and tried to yank that door open too. Neither side would open and the car was still moving. It’s still rolling.

I’m wondering, “Am I about to crash into something?” So I got danger in front of me. I turn around, I see the cops, I got danger in the back of me and I’m fucking trapped. I’m thinking, “How am I going to tell my mother what’s going to happen to me? Am I going to jail for the rest of my life?” Like, my body couldn’t handle the amount of shock that it was receiving. It was overloaded. I couldn’t physically process what my mind was sending to my body. It was overloaded. I don’t know what’s going on.

Out of nowhere, my door flings open. I looked and it was Duran. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I know how fast Duran is and I know that he had enough time to be gone – I mean vanish into the night – but he stopped and he came back to let me out. I didn’t even understand how he knew that I was still stuck in the car when they had both jumped out and sprinted away. He must’ve checked back or looked back for me. I don’t know. I’m having all of these thoughts, “How is he here? He had a clean getaway. He could have been gone, but he came back, circled back, and opened up my door.” I don’t know. I was frozen with shock. Then he snapped me out of it by saying, “Run.”

He took off. I jumped out of the car. I’m running behind him. I was trying to follow his path, but he was too fast. This guy was a streaker. He was gone and I’m trying to follow where he’s running to in the direction that he’s running but I can’t keep up. I actually saw, at this point, there were cops all over the place and I heard one yell “Freeze!” with their guns drawn, but Duran threw both of his arms up and kept running full speed. So he’s got both his arms up in the air, sprinting full speed, and still getting away. They couldn’t catch him. I’m telling you, this guy was a track star.

In all of this commotion, I noticed that nobody was after me. No one was chasing me. So I took this opportunity. I had the bright idea to take my jacket off, throw it into the bushes, and just start walking casually, blending into the neighborhood like I was a bystander who just happened to be outside. So I’m walking calmly, minding my own business, and then I hear that sound, the clanging, the clink clang of police batons, keys, handcuffs, and pepper spray – that sound that cops make when they’re sprinting. I hear it. I’m thinking, “All right, just stay calm. Just chill out.” It’s getting louder – the clanging, the clinking, the clanging. I’m like, “All right, commit to the role, Chris. Keep your cool. Keep your cool.” Boom. Two cops brought me down and they started pounding me – I mean, beating the shit out of me. One was kneeing me in the back. The other was grabbing my hands to put behind my arms. I guess I wasn’t moving fast enough because they were punching me in the spine. I was yelling out that I was a kid in hopes that they would lighten up a little bit. I knew that if they were determined to rough me up, that’s what was going to happen but at least scale it back a little bit to the middle schoolers version of whatever you’re going to do here.

So I was beaten up and they threw these cuffs on me extremely tight – I’m talking like fingertips losing circulation – and they threw me in the back seat. It was confusing to me because I was raised to be a good boy and to do the right things. If the police tell you to do something, you do it, you comply but the way that I was being roughed up– man, it was really giving me some doubts on that whole philosophy, that whole concept there. So I’m sitting in the back seat and the cops are sort of heckling me. I remember the canine unit guy came and he let his German shepherd in the backseat with me, barking ferociously all in my face. I thought I was going to be mauled to death in the backseat there, so I’m petrified. I’m wondering what happened with Duran, and what happened with Saquan. I’m seeing more and more cops, more and more patrol cars. It looked like this just huge scene had completely gotten out of hand because all you saw was red and blue lights everywhere.

So I was sitting there, handcuffed, waiting, thinking, and it started to dawn on me that it might not have been Saquan’s car. I was a completely naive little kid. So the cops took me down to the precinct, fingerprint, mugshot, jail, cell, the whole thing, and they’re pressuring me to give up the names of the guys who got away and I tell them. I say, “Listen, one was Saquon, I think, and the other one, I’d never seen him before. I never saw that other guy before in my life.”

A couple hours later, my mother gets me out. We walked to my mother’s car and Duran was ducked down in the seat, out of sight, ducked down. As soon as he and I lock eyes, he kind of makes this motion and this look to me to just keep quiet and not say anything. It dawned on me that he must have run straight to my house and told my mother some story that got me off the hook. There was no punishment, no yelling, no reprimand. Duran had somehow cleared it all up with my mom.

The police actually pinned the stolen car on me but, because I was so young and I didn’t have any priors, a fine and an apology to the vehicle’s real owner was enough to kind of clear everything up and my record was later expunged. Then, some time went by and I remember Duran not being around as much. His visits were kind of few and far between. Then, we got some devastating news. Duran had been killed. We didn’t know exactly what happened, but we knew that he got shot and that we knew that it happened in Washington, DC. At that time, that’s all we knew. Word spread around the neighborhood. Everybody knew Duran, so him being killed just spread like wildfire. It was the talk of the town. Duran was dead. Duran was killed. I remember there was this emptiness. It felt like my big brother had gotten killed, like my protector was gone. There were just empty, dark, sad times around then.

That year, DC was the murder capital and Duran was the 413th person killed in the city. I’ll never forget that number. Number 413. I later came to learn that the arrest warrant that Duran had was for murder – two separate ones, actually. He was in the life. Duran was in the life all the way. But what it did make me realize is, with everything on the line, Duran came back for me that night. He risked everything. A warrant for his arrest for two murders and he risked all of that to get me out of the backseat of that car. I don’t know. That just blows my mind.

Now I took Duran’s death really hard. After that loss, there was a shift in me. I started skipping school a lot. When I did go to school, my grades were bad. I wasn’t into anything like sports, no activities, anything like that. I wasn’t in anything. My haircuts were trash because I didn’t have to run around to cut them. It was a different time.

Over time, I started to find my way out of it, started to bounce back, and made changes for the better. My grades, sports– I was captain of the football team. I joined ROTC, student government. I was the homecoming king, a pretty popular kid, and a lot of it was inspired by Duran. He did want to teach me the ways of the street so that I would be protected and taken care of. He always knew that I was different. He always knew that I didn’t have to go to the left in that area and be in the life. He knew that I had what it took to be better than him and to be better than that, and to be better than my neighborhood and what my neighborhood had to offer.

So I get a phone call, it’s a police officer. As we were talking, I realized that this is the police officer who arrested me that night and took me to jail. He’s being friendly. He’s being nice. I’m reminiscing of just how bad he and his cop buddies were that night. But now, it sounds like a completely different guy and he’s being friendly and he’s checking in and he suggests that I participate in this essay contest, so I did.

The essay that I wrote was inspired by Duran. It was inspired by his passing. It was inspired by his decisions in our relationship. It was about how fucked up my neighborhood was. It was about change and about choosing to change and choosing to walk a different path, even though we were surrounded by just absolute shit. One of the things I said in the essay is that my friend’s death was a sudden turnaround. I saw how he lived and I saw how things ended up. I said that I was going to learn from his mistakes.

But what was a complete shock to me was that this essay caught fire. I remember local news stations coming to my school to interview me. The Washington Post did a cover story on it and they printed it on Independence Day. High schools were bringing me in to read the essay to their student body and answer any questions that they may have had. I even had a float at a local parade. I had my own little car because of this essay. It was insane how much attention and just popping circumstances that were around this whole damn thing just because of this little essay, but they all got it wrong. All of them – the Washington Post, the local high schools – they all got it wrong because they villainized Duran.

To me, Duran was a protector, and I saw that Duran lived by a code. He had honor. He was loyal. Although he did make some bad decisions, that didn’t mean that he was a bad person. I always saw him as a good person. I still do. I always had some apprehension once I saw the direction that they were pulling the essay into. I always had some apprehension about it because I knew that they were pegging it wrong and pointing out the worst of him in order to make me a turnaround story or a redemption story. But it wasn’t accurate because, a lot of the ways that I went about my life and the ways that I turn things around, I learned from Duran.

I still think about Duran from time to time. I think about everything that he taught me. I think it makes me remember that, in life, shit’s not black and white. There’s a whole lot of gray. You can pull great things out of bad, and then there’s a lot of bad and things that are supposed to be good that all was there that one night with that car. But I’ll always appreciate the way that Duran came back for me, how he risked everything. Everything was on the line. I didn’t know that he had an arrest warrant that would have put him away forever, but he knew. Despite that, he came back and he opened up that fucking door to let me out. They don’t make them like that anymore. Duran wasn’t scared of anybody.

Bobby McFerrin

🎜 Na-na-na-na. 🎜

Kevin

That is all for this week’s episode, folks. This is Bobby McFerrin behind me now. We just heard from Chris Lundy. You can find him on Twitter at LundyWorld. Also, John Lasala, like I was saying, did all the music composition and the editing on his own. Of that story, John has a favorite edit of his own, an alternate edit that we’re going to put up on Patreon for anyone who might be curious to compare. It’s not so unusual for an editor on the show to have a favorite version and for me to have a different favorite version. So I figure no reason we can’t share the alternate version over there for anyone who is curious to hear the difference. Folks, today is the day. Take a risk.

Scott

If you want to hear more sometimes ridiculous, sometimes scary, sometimes truly beautiful intimate stories, be sure to check out RISK!

Available now on the free Audacy app and EVERYWHERE you get your podcasts.

Graphics for this episode were created by Bob Bretz. Full episode transcription was created by James Lai.

And finally, like the end of every episode, we’re about to play this week’s Listener Story. This is a 5-10 minute story, sent in by a listener. Do you have a story? Of course you do. Record it on your phone and email it to me – Scott@WhatWasThatLike.com.

This week’s story is about getting an Ambush Makeover on the TODAY Show – and you can actually see the video of this appearance on TV – you can find the link in the episode notes at WhatWasThatLike.com/173.

Stay safe! I’ll see you next week with a brand new episode.

(Listener story)

My mother and I were in New York for a brief trip. We were there for, I think, three or four days. On our very first day, we thought we would get up early and go and hang out on the Today Show Plaza. For anyone who is listening and doesn’t know what that means, the Today Show is a morning show on NBC and they have an area outside their studio they call the Plaza where, a lot of the times, they’ll have the camera crew kind of pan across so you can see everybody waving and they have little segments where sometimes we’ll have people say, “On a trip to New York from Bay City, Michigan” or whatever, where the people are from or if they’re celebrating something.

My mom and I thought we would go and see if we could at least get on TV so people could see us waving or maybe we’d get really lucky and get to be one of the people that does a little segment that says hello to our family. So we got up early in the morning. It was late January, so it was pretty cold. We had heavy coats on and everything. We made our little sign and we were just kind of out there trying to figure out how this would work and how we could get someone’s attention to be on the little segments.

All of a sudden, we saw a couple of people kind of pointing at us and someone came over and said, “Hi, who are you here with? What’s going on?” And I was like, “Well, this is my mother and we’re here together.” One of them said, “Well, we’re looking for somebody to do this little segment. We call them ambush makeovers.” I immediately was so excited because I love makeover shows, or at least I did at the time – this was about eight or nine years ago now. Just the idea of somebody giving me a makeover was just so exciting to me. My mother, bless her, does not really like to be the center of attention but was willing to do it for me. So we were like, “Yes, definitely. We want to participate.”

Before they actually taped us saying anything, we had to sign some sort of liability form, I’m not sure. Then, we had to do the little reveal on camera where it looked like they picked us for the first time. We had to kind of fake the excitement a little bit because we already knew, but we made it look like they were just telling us for the first time. We were the pick for the ambush makeover.

What happened for the next three or four hours– oh my gosh. It was not at all what we were expecting. It was much more elaborate. They took us inside the studio and, seriously, for hours, we were in chairs. They were doing hair and makeup. I had never had my hair dyed before, except I think I had highlights once. This was, like, a super elaborate multi-step process. They did a really, like, crazy job on my hair and then they cut it and then they did makeup. They had us trying on different clothes. And I think the thing that surprised me the most was like, they really didn’t care what we thought of the clothes at all. They were very concerned about, like, making a look that their producers would like, which is fine, but I guess I just didn’t expect to not be a voice in this decision of what I was going to wear at all.

So my mom and I were in the same room while they were doing our hair and stuff, but they had a sheet hanging up so we couldn’t see each other. I had no idea what she was going to wear, anything like that because they wanted it completely to be a surprise when they did the big reveal. For, I’m going to guess, about three hours, we are going through all this process of hair and makeup and clothes. Then, finally, it got to the part of the show where they were going to do the live reveal and they had us line up. They wanted me to come out first and then they were going to bring out my mom.

Another interesting, like, little tidbit is that I wear glasses. I’m very nearsighted. If I have my glasses off, things have to be probably an inch from my face to be clear. I can see colors and shapes fine without my glasses, but no detail. They didn’t want me to put my glasses on, I guess, because they thought it would mask some of the makeup or whatever. They let me carry my glasses out but they wanted me to go out and turn around to see myself in the mirror and not put my glasses on. They wanted me to fake it a little bit, being able to see the details on camera, and I really tried my hardest, but when I turned around and looked in the mirror, I couldn’t really see, so I tried to fake it but Hoda Kotb, who was one of the hosts who was on the stage, said, “Put your glasses on” because, clearly, I didn’t fake it very well. Anyway, I turned around and my hair, I was so, like, unrecognizable to myself. It was very interesting. They put me in designer jeans that they had tailored for me, a top, and then a leather jacket. I did really love the hair color and definitely more makeup than I’ve ever had on in my life. I did like the makeover.

Then it was time to bring my mom out, so they had me turn my back. They didn’t want me to see her right away. They brought out my mother, whose name is Joan, and I heard gasps or whatever because they show the before and after. Then, I turned around and my eyes got so wide because my mother looked so beautiful. She probably looked 5-10 years younger because of the way they had cut and highlighted her hair. Then, they had put her in the same leather jacket as me, so we kind of matched. She had different pants and top, but the same leather jacket. So I thought that was really sweet because we had told them that we share or exchange clothes sometimes. They gave us the same jacket. So it was really sweet, a really, like, definitely once in a lifetime memory, and I really, really treasure that memory with my mother, for sure.

But we always laugh because I think the funniest part of the whole experience is, once we had done the live shoot, they let us stand on the stage long enough to take one picture. So seriously, like, one or two minutes, somebody took a picture of us with our phones, and then they were like, “Okay, do you want to wear the clothes out or change back into your clothes?” And we’re like, “Oh, we’ll wear it.”

So they literally just directed us down the stairwell and out this door that closed and it was one of those doors that leads out to the street, and there’s no handle to get back in. It’s an exit only. So the door closed and it was just all of a sudden we were just back in the normal real world, and we were just like, “Did that just happen?” It was just really funny. We were in this weird space for three hours where we were doing all this stuff we’d never done before and then, all of a sudden, very abruptly, we walked down some stairs and out a door and it was back into the real world. So we loved it. It was a great experience – not always what we expected, but a great memory. Our joke now is always that we got to have an ambush makeover, probably because we were the worst-dressed people on the plaza that day.

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Every Tuesday, we grab a past question from the Facebook group, then Meredith and Scott answer it and read some of the answers given by other listeners.

Have you ever gone back to visit your childhood home? How would you describe that experience?Show Podcast InformationThe question for this episode:

Have you ever gone back to visit your childhood home? How would you describe that experience?

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There are few forces in the world stronger than a mother protecting her baby.

Janette was kidnappedShow Podcast InformationIf you’re outdoors and you happen to come across a mama bear, everyone knows you better not get between her and her cubs. Actually, it’s a bad idea to be anywhere near them. If you appear as any kind of a threat, it’s not gonna turn out well.

But I would say that’s just as true for human mothers. They will do anything to make sure their baby is safe – and that includes risking their own life to save their child.

Janette was a young mother. She and her husband, Greig, had a young baby – their son Alex was just 9 months old.

So Janette and Greig had just arrived home. Their little Alex was still in the back seat of the car, strapped into his car seat. Then it happened. Just minutes later, they were in the car while it was being driven by two armed kidnappers.

She wanted desperately to protect her baby, but there was nothing she could do.

Janette and her husband were locked in the trunk.

Janette and family, with the car they were trapped inJanette doing a trunk release demonstration at an auto showthe glow in the dark trunk release, with a note from a grateful childHow YOU can take action to move the Hot Car Final Rule forward ASAP:
https://www.kidsandcars.org/hot-car-letter-to-congress-members

If you’d like to learn more and get involved with Kids and Car Safety, or contact Janette, you can do that at the website – KidsAndCars.org

The process that Janette went through to get laws passed

Laura’s episode – Laura’s Pain Became her Purpose

Laura’s non-profit is called Anderson’s Alert, and her podcast is called Beck’s Backseat to Change.

Full show notes and pictures for this episode are here:
https://WhatWasThatLike.com/172

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Episode transcript (download transcript PDF):

There are few forces in the world stronger than a mother protecting her baby.

If you’re outdoors and you happen to come across a mama bear, everyone knows you better not get between her and her cubs. Actually, it’s a bad idea to be anywhere near them. If you appear as any kind of a threat, it’s not gonna turn out well.

But I would say that’s just as true for human mothers. They will do anything to make sure their baby is safe – and that includes risking their own life to save their child.

Janette was a young mother. She and her husband, Greig, had a young baby – their son Alex was just 9 months old.

She wanted desperately to protect her baby, but there was nothing she could do.

Janette and her husband were locked in the trunk.

Scott

Are you claustrophobic?

Janette

That’s so funny you ask. I am extremely claustrophobic.

Scott

Oh, man.

Janette

This was not a good situation for me.

Scott

That took this to a whole new level, I can imagine. All right. Well, let’s set this up for us. Where were you living at the time, and who was in your family?

Janette

At the time, we were living in San Francisco and I had just had my first baby. Prior to that, I had worked for Eastman Kodak and Helene Curtis and had about 20 years of sales and marketing under my belt. But at this point, I had my first baby and that’s what I was doing and concentrating on.

Scott

Your baby was Alex… And how old was he at the time when this happened?

Janette

Alexander was nine months old.

Scott

Okay. And do you call him Alexander all the time or is Alex okay?

Janette

I call him Alexander. He truly prefers Alex.

Scott

So we’ll just say Alex. And this was in the fall when this happened?

Janette

Yeah, this happened on a Saturday night. So not only was it the night that the time changed, but it was also Halloween weekend.

Scott

And what kind of car did you have at that time?

Janette

At that time, again, we were living in the city and my husband’s job was in the city, so we only needed one car and that’s the car we had. It was an old Lexus, one of the largest sedans that they made. So it was big enough for car seats and all the equipment it takes to have a baby and go from point A to point B.

Scott

That night, you were out with some friends. Can you just talk about what we were doing and just take it from there, just kind of a minute by minute, what happened?

Janette

Well, we had plans with friends to go to dinner and we were going to meet them someplace. They just absolutely insisted that we come to their house and bring the baby because they wanted to see the baby. They live just north of San Francisco. So we went to their house, had a wonderful evening, and then we headed back into the city. As we approached our home, we pulled into the driveway and, of course, had the automatic door opener, and the garage door went up. We pulled in, but before the garage door had a chance to go all the way down, two masked men with guns slipped in underneath. They kind of rolled underneath – maybe what a dog would do.

Scott

Were they hiding somewhere on your property, do you think? What have you thought about that?

Janette

Yeah, my sense is that it was Halloween weekend, so they had masks on and they didn’t look out of place because you could be going to a party. So they had masks on. My sense is they were just kind of strolling around in the neighborhood and finding or trying to find someone who maybe let their guard down and they were going to rob them and do whatever they had in mind, but it was very random. We didn’t know who this was or why this was. So our sense was they were just kind of cruising the neighborhood and looking for someone to take down. Like I said, if it had been three seconds, that garage store would have been all the way down and they would not have gotten into our garage.

The next thing that happened was they put loaded guns to our heads and ordered us to get into the trunk of our car. Of course, none of this made sense. I think they must have been in the wrong garage. They were very insistent and shoved us into the trunk of our own car and slammed the lid. Well, During that entire time, our baby was asleep in the backseat and they didn’t even know that there was a baby involved in this whole situation. So, it wasn’t until they slammed the truck and then opened the car door, they could see that obviously there was a baby and the only thing we heard them say was, “There’s a baby.”

They took off out of the garage. We’re traveling through the streets of San Francisco at a pretty high rate of speed. And if you can imagine, when you have two adults in the trunk of a car and you’re going up and down the hills of San Francisco, in many cases, you’re bottoming out the car, but what we were more worried about is, “Where’s the baby? We couldn’t hear the baby.” My husband was the one closest to the back seat. I was closest to the bumper. I kept saying, “Can you hear anything?” And we couldn’t hear anything. Just the thought of two men with guns in their hands inside the passenger compartment with our baby was really much more than we could bear.

Scott

Was it completely dark in there?

Janette

It wasn’t completely dark when we were traveling through the streets of San Francisco and the reason for that is you have taillights and brake lights and all of those things. So there is a teeny bit of light. It was pretty dark, but there was a teeny bit of light. We were praying a lot. We were trying to figure out where the baby was. I mean, nothing made sense. I remember saying to my husband, “I saw this Oprah segment and it talked about if you don’t get away from your abductors in the first five minutes, you’re dead.”

Scott

Yeah, that’s the rule. Never go to the second location, right?

Janette

Absolutely. But, we didn’t have much of a choice in the matter, especially since our baby was there. We couldn’t have run because then the baby would have been left all to himself.

Scott

So you’re kind of stuck in that spot. How much could you move around when you were in the trunk?

Janette

Well, it was very limited. I know my husband was feeling around because we had a little tool kit that’s in the trunk of a vehicle. After this had happened, at some point, we decided to try to get back in the trunk together but we couldn’t. So my observation on that is I think fear shrinks you because somehow we did fit into that trunk one way or the other.

Scott

Wow. You mean after the whole thing was over, you experimented with how you fit in there?

Janette

That was years later.

Scott

Okay. And was it difficult to breathe?

Janette

As I mentioned at the beginning, I am very claustrophobic but, when you fear for your life, the survival instinct really kicks in. So my husband was looking for some tools and I started to do the only thing I thought I could do which was rip through the carpeting that was in the back of the car. I don’t know why but just my sense of survival kicked in. So I started pulling and pulling on all that carpeting and it did expose. Wires and things that I wasn’t even sure what they were, but it did expose some wiring that I started to pull on.

Scott

Do you have phones with you at that time?

Janette

Well, this was back in 1995 and we did have a phone but it was not one of those huge ones, but it was one that was big enough that you just left it in your car. So it was in the passenger compartment.

Scott

Not like today where you have it in your pocket. If you did, they would have probably taken it away from you anyway.

Janette

Probably.

Scott

Were you strategizing on thinking, “Okay, what are our options here?” What was your plan then?

Janette

Well, our plan was survival and our plan was to save our baby boy. I mean, it was, “Forget us, this is the most precious thing in the world to us.” We have no idea where he is. We can’t hear anything. Obviously, he’s not crying. That doesn’t mean anything because, when we pulled into the garage, he was asleep. We’re going through the streets of San Francisco and I’ve done this so many times I could kind of tell, just the way they turned right and left, that we were headed south. For some reason, I said to my husband, I said, I wonder if they’re taking us to LA or maybe to Mexico because I could just tell that the car was headed south. As I was exposing these wires, I could tell that we were going on the freeway. So it went from surface streets to the freeway. Again, you can tell that just by the speed and everything else. I didn’t know if maybe we could get a message to the outside world that something was wrong with this vehicle. Maybe we would get pulled over or maybe a police officer would see it and then do something about it. So I’m pulling and pulling on these wires.

Scott

That’s what I’m thinking. If you pulled some of those brake lights or back or rear tail lights or whatever, then the cop might pull you over just for having a tail light out. But if there had been a way for you to open the trunk at that point. Would you have done that?

Janette

I can’t speculate, but maybe one of us would have gone to get help, especially when we could tell that we were on the freeway and then you could tell we went on an exit ramp so the car slowed down quite a bit, and that might have been a time to escape. But it was very difficult because you’re torn between trying to get help and, at the same time, being there and protecting your baby.

Scott

So they got off on an exit. It sounds like you could tell they had some kind of destination in mind.

Janette

Yes. We could tell that they were back on surface streets. We had no idea where we were, but when they left the surface streets and went on to an unpaved road – like bump bitty bump – I’m like, “Oh no, that’s it.” I said to my husband, “They’re going to rape me. They’re going to cut us up. We’re dead.” I can’t believe he had the presence of mind to say this, but he was like, “I don’t know what’s going to happen, but know that I love you.” Basically, we were saying our goodbyes.

Finally, they stopped the car and I could hear another car running and they were saying things like, “Get it set. Make sure you get it set right.” And I had no idea what that meant. In my mind, I figured they had the baby and he was in the car seat and they were going to put a gun to his head and say, “If you don’t do this and this or this, we’re going to blow your baby away.” That’s what my thought process was.

Eventually, they were talking to us and then they opened the trunk lid. And again, I’m claustrophobic. I have had back surgery. So, being in that position for that amount of time was extremely uncomfortable, but I poked my head up because I wanted to try to get a sense of where they had taken us. Well as soon as I did that, I got hit in the head with the butt of a gun and shoved back down and said, “Don’t you be looking around.” They wanted cash. They wanted jewelry. They wanted ATM cards. And they kept asking us, “What’s the pin number for your ATM?” And the first one my husband gave wasn’t right. I said, “No, it’s not that.” Then, they asked five different times and I was thinking, “Boy, they are stupid. Can’t they get it?” But I guess maybe criminals ask several times to make sure you’re not just making something up and they’re getting the right one. So we did give them that.

Scott

So they probably had done this before.

Janette

I would say so. I mean, it might even have been an initiation to get in a gang or something – I don’t know, but that’s a guess. And then the last thing they said to us before they left was, “If this isn’t the right pin number, we’re going to come back and kill you.” So as bad as that sounds, I found it kind of comforting because A) we had given them the right pin number, and B) that meant they were leaving. So that was actually good news for me.

We’re stuck in this trunk and there was no light source. The car was not running. We didn’t know where we were. There were no lights to be found anywhere. And of course, afterward, we found out we were in the middle of the projects in a forest. So that’s why there weren’t any lights.

Well, I’m focusing on this area where I had pulled all the wires. Again, this can only be defined as divine intervention because I saw this little light and, mechanically. If you’re looking at this from the standpoint of an engineer, there couldn’t be a light because everything was off and there was no source but I saw this little light and it was shining on a piece of metal. So I said to my husband, “I think I found the trunk release.” Those words did not come from my brain, but they came from my mouth. So I took his hands, like, over my body and, I’ll say, in the olden days, where you had a trunk release that was able to open your trunk remotely from the passenger compartment that would open the truck, and my husband knew that.

Scott

Right. Because that’s a mechanical thing. It’s a cable that goes all the way up to the driver’s area and you pull a lever.

Janette

Yeah. If you’re dropping somebody off at the airport and you want them to grab their bag, you just push that button and it opens the trunk. They grab their bag and away you go. That had existed. So I brought my husband’s hands to that area and he felt around a little bit and he was able to find the cable that could open that trunk. He pulled the cable and the trunk opened up just the way it would’ve if you had opened it from the passenger compartment. At that point, obviously, I pole vaulted out of the trunk of that car, went to the back seats and there was no baby. There was no car seat. There was nothing. They had taken everything in the car.

Scott

What’s going through your mind when you see that empty back seat?

Janette

Well, that was beyond the worst part of this whole situation, and it’s so weird how your mind works during these times of stress and unbelief of what’s going on. I said to my husband, “They’ve taken the baby. They’re going to sell them for $30,000!” Well, Where did I come up with that amount? That little kid was worth a million at least, but I said that and it just became the mantra. “We got to find the baby. We got to find the baby. We got to find the baby.” So here we are in the middle of who-knows-where. They had taken everything.

I had hidden in the glove compartment in the owner’s manual, one of these little plastic pop-out keys. It’s a one-use thing. So we were able to actually start the vehicle and try to figure out where we were. I kept yelling at my husband, “Come on, let’s go! We got to find the baby!” And he was kind of outside of the car, I guess, trying to see if somebody was still there or looking for hints and things or maybe even the baby out there, but I was like, “Let’s go home. Maybe they took the baby out.” And he said, “No, we’re going to call 911.” And I’m like, “No, let’s go home. We’re just going to get in more trouble.” But he insisted.

We were able to see the lights of San Francisco to our left, so we knew we had to head north. I grabbed a little piece of paper and a pencil that was in one of the side compartments of our vehicle and I started writing down street names because I thought we were going to get lost. I have no idea where we are. Then, he insisted we call 911 and I’m like, “No, we’re going to just get in more trouble.”

Scott

I got to ask you about that. What was your reluctance on dialing 911? How would that have caused more problems?

Janette

Well, we were in the middle of the projects. I wanted to get somewhere safe. In fact, the first time he started to pull over to a pay phone, this whole gang of kids started coming to our car. As I was insisting that we go home and he said, “No, we’re going to call 911”, we found another payphone. Again, it was a dicey neighborhood. And within a minute of him calling 911, a car pulled up and there were all these grubby guys that got out. They had a poncho and were really sketchy. And I’m like, “Oh, I knew it. I knew we were going to get in trouble. They didn’t hurt him. They didn’t go to the phone booth and do anything. Then one of them came by the car. I was absolutely terrified. I would not get out of that car. He flashed a badge and I wasn’t even going to believe him then, but came to find out they were undercover officers and that area was so dangerous that four of them traveled together and immediately the 911 operator had sent them to us.

Eventually, when they weren’t hurting my husband, I decided to get really brave and put the window down a little bit and I said, “What are you doing? We got to go find the baby.” And he said, “I’m on with 911 and they’re going to send an officer to our home.” So within that time, uniform officers showed up and I felt just a little bit more comfortable. Eventually, the officer got back to my husband and said, “Yes, they had gone to our home and they did find the baby. He was in his car seat, all alone, sitting in front of our home.”

Scott

So he was probably there that whole time.

Janette

He was there that whole time. And it was in the middle of the morning by then.

The good news– cause I’m always looking for the good news. The good news was that they left him in his car seat. I frequently tell people that a car seat can save a child’s life even if it’s not in the car because if they had taken him out – he was nine months at the time – he would have just crawled into the street. That would have been the end of them. So they found the baby.

Scott

How many hours had passed from the time in the garage until the policeman found the baby?

Janette

That’s just a couple of hours. I mean, it wasn’t all night or anything. So once they found out about that, the officers that were with us wanted to find out if we could take them back to where this happened. I had written down those streets, so we were able to guide them and they got out and looked for some things. Then, it became this whole situation of them trying to figure out whose jurisdiction would be involved in this because our home was a crime scene, the place they took us was a crime scene, and our vehicle was a crime scene. And we just left our car sitting by that phone booth. We slipped it there because the officer said we had to come with them.

They did bring us back to our house. When we pulled onto our block, I mean, I couldn’t believe it. There were cop cars and lights and all sorts of stuff going on. So when we pulled into the driveway, I could see, in the middle of the garage, there was a light and it was shining down on an officer who was holding our baby. Our baby was playing with his little walkie-talkie thing and he looked just fine. So that’s when I lost it. I tried to get out of the vehicle but I was locked in. I was like, “Let me out of this vehicle or I am going to rip off this door.” They go, “Just hold on, be patient.” I said, “I can’t be patient.”

Scott

And you’ve already demonstrated that you can get out of a car that you’re locked inside.

Janette

Absolutely, but I didn’t realize– I mean, now that I think about it, when they take people in their car, they double lock it so they can’t get out, but I had never experienced that. So finally, when I was able to get out of there. I ran into the garage, I took my baby, I went upstairs to my home, went into the rocking chair, shut the door holding my baby, and decided I would never, ever leave him alone. I would forever stay in that room, stay in the rocking chair, and just hold him.

Scott

That was a safe place.

Janette

That was a safe place. But people had other ideas as to what we were supposed to be doing.

Scott

After this incident, it would have been easy. You’re holding him, you’re safe. It’s easy to think, “Wow, I’m glad we’re okay. Let’s not let that happen again.” But you took action. What did you do over the next few years? How did that get started? How did that seed get planted in your mind?

Janette

Well, when we were with the police officers, one of them said to me, “It never ends this way.” And I was like, “Well, what do you mean it never ends this way?” She said, “You don’t have to have much of an imagination and look at the different things that happened to you tonight. People usually do not walk away unharmed.” And that question got stuck in my mind, “How does it end? How does it end?” It was like a tape playing in my head. “How does it end? What did they mean?”

It may sound silly, but after going through the whole recovery and trying to work through PTSD, I got a fax from God – nobody believed that I got a fax from God, but I did – and it sort of said, “We spared your family and I’ve also given you talents. So get out there and change things.” And I know when I told my minister that I got a fax from God, she said she had heard about different ways of people communicating with God but never heard of anyone getting a fax. That just was the way it was for me.

Scott

Well, can you elaborate on that? Do you mean you have a fax, or a piece of paper, or is this something that came to your mind as a thought?

Janette

It definitely came to my mind. I have no proof that one of those old thermal fax machines spit out something, but it was very clear to me I needed to do something. And you know how people always say, “There ought to be a law”? And I’m like, “This is crazy. How can someone be trapped in their own car trunk without the ability to get out?”

I thought about, many years ago, when I was young, children would be trapped in refrigerators because they were just thrown out on the front lawn for the garbage people to pick them up. Of course, kids are curious and they see the refrigerator and they get in, but they weren’t able to get out because of this latch that was on the old type of refrigerators. So many years ago, a law was passed that said if you’re going to leave a refrigerator out on your front lawn, you have to take the door off, and subsequently, the law said you can’t manufacture refrigerators that have latches on them anymore so nobody could ever get caught in a refrigerator. I thought that was just like a perfect parallel to what had happened to us.

I started doing some investigation and I wanted to learn how it ended and what they were talking about. This was before Google because this happened in 1995, but there were some kind of rudimentary search engines at that time. So I would put in “Locked in trunk” and probably got about 10, 000 matches, and those had anything to do with you’re going to go to a trunk show or truncation on phone lines, all sorts of things about trunks, and I would read each one of these one by one, and then maybe on 5,000 or 1,000, I would find a case and it would tell me about what happened during a trunk entrapment. My rule was I didn’t get to count any cases where the person was already dead before they were put in the trunk because that wouldn’t help anything because nobody had any information and nobody had any data.

I had to build a database all by myself using really rudimentary search tools. Again, I didn’t know how to refine a search at that time, but these cases were brutal – rape, drowning, or car set on fire. It was terrible. So that’s when I started writing to car companies and said, “Boy, you really need to do something about this.” I was pretty naive that I thought they would actually do something about this. They basically were non-responsive. So that’s when I figured out I probably needed to look at another avenue to make this go away.

Scott

And what you were telling them that they needed to do was to put that trunk release handle inside the trunk every time they made a car, right? That was your end goal?

Janette

Oh, absolutely. if you build something, you can get in, you got to build it so you should be able to get out.

Scott

What did you find, as far as the cases? Was this a widespread thing with fatalities or how bad was it?

Janette

It was pretty bad. All sorts of things that I would never even have imagined were going on when somebody puts you in the trunk of your car, takes you to a secondary location, and has full power over you and anything they want to do with you. I guess it became just this really convenient – and I’ve used this term – coffin on wheels to take people and do really bad things to them and, many times, kill them.

I had my piles of paper, read all the cases, and, unfortunately, at that period of time, my mother was very ill. She was dying from cancer and I was in the hospital and the nurses said, “What are you doing?” I explained what happened and I was looking for this information. One of them knew about a case where they were trying to figure it out, but it sounded like a trunk entrapment case and they connected me with the sheriff for that area. The sheriff for that area in Michigan happened to know his local US representative, who was Bart Stupak. Bart Stupak used to be a state trooper, so he was very familiar with this type of situation.

So I met with him and told him that we needed some help on this. He actually was able to get some language that was passed to add trunk releases but, oh no, there was a lot of fight about that. The best he could do at the time was to get language added to a bill that said that they would study the issue of trunk entrapment. I know that’s not going to happen. We pushed and we did have a study that was with a group of people from the car companies, from toy companies, public health, you name it. It was a very good committee. They kind of had to invite me because I was the only one that had data. So it was put together as an expert panel on trunk entrapment. So that happened in Washington, DC.

We went through a series of meetings and then it was time to vote, “Were we going to suggest that trunk releases get added to vehicles?” I remember one of the favorite days in my whole life is when I was telling the group about what the objections were from the auto companies – there were two. One would say, “If there was a trunk release in, the criminal would become more aggressive and immobilize the person in the trunk, so they couldn’t get out. Either that or they would cut off the trunk release so you couldn’t get out.” That didn’t make sense. Again, I had read hundreds and hundreds of these cases by then. Like I said, one of my favorite days is when I said, “I just can’t imagine how people have this information. Does somebody go to jail with a clipboard and say, ‘What would you do if there was a trunk release in a vehicle?’?” Because none of it made sense to me. But the reason it was my favorite day is because the gentleman from the FBI confirmed that what I was saying was correct and that there’s no way to predict criminal behavior. So all of that was smoke and mirrors and everybody kind of bought into it for years and years because a letter had been written to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration as early as 1979, asking for trunk releases to be put in.

At that time, the then head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Joan Claybrook had written a letter to the car companies trying to find out why they’re not doing this. And of course, they came back with, “Oh, that’s criminal behavior. There’s nothing we can do about that.” But at the same time, when the head of NHTSA – the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration – writes a letter, it goes up to the highest echelons of their organization. So I have the notes from those meetings. Back in 1979, how much do you think it would have cost to add an internal trunk release to vehicles?

Scott

I don’t know. It’s a simple cable and a plastic handle, right? I mean, that’s all that’s involved, right? I mean, it shouldn’t have been more than a few dollars – I would think $5 or $10.

Janette

No, it was considerably less than that. And again, this is another thing that just disappoints you to your core. They estimated at that time that, adding a trunk release to all the vehicles, would cost three cents per vehicle. Three cents!

Scott

That was the core of their objection then – that it would cost us money – right? I guess when you multiply it by the number of cars, it would come up to some dollars, but three cents to save somebody’s life…

Janette

Just so you know, that’s how the auto industry works – they would rather take a lawsuit here and a lawsuit there and settle it than prevent this from happening, and that’s why it was so difficult to make change. They don’t like to be told what to do. I’m sure people weren’t writing thousands of letters saying, “Put it in a trunk release, put it in a trunk release.” Because they didn’t understand how prevalent that was. Obviously, this was something that needed to happen.

We worked through the situation and then it came to the point where we had to vote on where we were going to recommend that trunk releases to be added to all vehicles, and I thought we were home, we were there, and then, all of a sudden, the automaker started to turn on me, so to speak, and they said, “No, I don’t think we need it. We don’t need it.” And I just went crazy. I said, “What?! You agreed with this in all of our previous meetings. Now you think you’re going to vote against it?” And they said, “Well, we don’t see that it’s needed.” And what actually turned it over to happening is I said, “Oh, that’s fine. If you’re not going to mandate these trunk releases, I want to let you know that I’m working with many different states and they are going to put in a regulation for trunk releases. You can send different cars to every state in the union that have trunk releases and that don’t have trunk releases.” Then, somebody spoke up and said, “Oh yeah, she’s right. we’re familiar with those lawsuits.”

Scott

That would cost them a lot more than three cents.

Janette

It sure would, but it ended up we won by one vote. Of course, that night, we went out and celebrated, and actually had dinner with Ralph Nader, which was very exciting for me.

Scott

Yeah. He seems like he would be at the forefront of something like this as a consumer advocate.

Janette

Well, I think he knew what we were doing in the background but, like I said, that was just a wonderful privilege to see and meet and talk to him several times. But nothing could have been better than to celebrate with someone like that after a small little trunk release victory we had accomplished. There was a situation in 1998 and this is just about the same time as we’re going to get going into this trunk entrapment expert panel. I was eight months pregnant. There were three different cases that happened in less than 30 days and it resulted in the death of 11 children. 11 children in less than 30 days died in the trunk of a car. I don’t even know how the USA Today reporter found me because we had moved out of San Francisco. We were in a temporary home until we found our new home. She called and wanted to know about this trunk entrapment case. And I said, “Well, this is what’s going on with that. What about the other two cases that happened?” And she went, “What are you talking about?” So I brought her up to speed, gave her all the information, and on Monday morning, that article hit the paper – 11 kids die within 30 days – and my phone would not stop ringing. It was within probably an hour, people were showing up on the door from NBC nightly news. There were calls from the Today Show, CBS Morning Show, and Good Morning America. I needed to get on a plane and talk about this.

Scott

Because you were now seen as the expert in this area.

Janette

Oh, I was the only one who had the data and years of knowledge because nobody else had ever done this before and, of course, was able to talk down all those other crazy excuses that the auto industry and others were making. Yeah, it became national news very quickly and we were able to get the truth of the story out there, and not all these other excuses.

Scott

So by that time, you said the auto manufacturers had agreed to do it, but they weren’t mandated by law yet. Is that correct?

Janette

Well, like I said, we won by one vote to suggest that NHTSA write the rule and it hadn’t been written by then, but I think if they weren’t going to write it with 11 children dying in 30 days, that put a tremendous amount of pressure on the agency to do something about that. In the past, when someone else might’ve wanted to accomplish this, they didn’t have any data. One thing I’ve learned in this society is if there is no data, there is no problem, and that’s what has been going on for years and years. So it really was the power of the data and being a survivor advocate that probably helped push this along much faster than other types of things we’ve been working to change.

Scott

So how long before it was actually required by law?

Janette

The regulation was written in 1999 and you always have to give the auto industry a couple of years to implement. So basically, all vehicles model year 2002 or newer had to have a glow-in-the-dark trunk release and it doesn’t matter where on earth that vehicle is made. If it’s sold or leased in the United States, it has to come with an internal glow-in-the-dark trunk release installed.

Scott

Yeah, I’ve seen them. They are that odd shade of green that, if it’s dark, you’re going to be able to see it.

Janette

Yeah. It’s called phosphorescence.

Scott

So you got that accomplished. I mean, it’s amazing that you kind of took that on as one person, but then you had the data and you had the story of being trapped, and then combined with the, I guess, timeliness of that one 30-day period where all those children didn’t survive that. You were like an unstoppable force at that point.

Janette

Oh, absolutely. When something this life-changing happens to you, you do have a choice. You can curl up into a ball and never leave your house again. I went through those different, we’ll say, stages of grieving, but probably the best one ever was the angry part. I was angry. I knew my life was never going to be the same and it did change the course of my life, but there was no way I was going to accept vehicles being made without a trunk release when it was so easy and so inexpensive, and it could save so many lives. Scott, this is the absolute best part of this whole story. It just makes my heart sing.

Because we continue to collect data on things like this that happened, it’s not unusual for there to be a media story that says, “So-and-so got thrown in the trunk of their car. When they pulled in to get gas, they pulled that little glow-in-the-dark release and jumped out and their life was saved.” All sorts of stories like that, which makes us very happy. But the best news is we have not been able to document one fatality in the trunk of a car that has that glow-in-the-dark release – I’m talking zero, zip, zilch, nada, none – and that, truly, is very rewarding.

Scott

I can imagine. Man, 100% effectiveness. That’s so rare in any area. You’re talking about saving people’s lives. You got to be pretty proud of yourself.

Janette

Well, I’m very happy that we were able to reach this goal and have the peace of mind that nobody else has to go through what we did – being thrown in their own trunk, assaulted, left for dead, as I said, in my coffin on wheels. It’s 2024. We shouldn’t have these types of situations. It’s so obvious what needed to be done.

Scott

You’re working on some other projects. I mean, that’s great. You got that accomplished. You reached your goal. You started this nonprofit. Can you tell us about that and what other things you’re working on now?

Janette

Well, after this had happened, which is kind of rare, I guess– our organization at that time was called TRUNC, and it stood for Trunk Releases Urgently Needed Coalition. We accomplished our mission, so I guess it was time to shut down, right? Well, that isn’t what happened. Different people contacted me and said, “Oh, you should be working on how dangerous power windows are because they’re strangling children. Well, you really need to work on kids knocking cars into gear and being killed.” And I was like, “Hey, I just sort of wanted to get in trunk releases.” But of course, at the same time, I realized they all fit in the same category as trunk entrapment, meaning that these are things that happen off the public road or highway and our government was not collecting any data about that. That’s why I had to build my database about trunk entrapment. So here we go again.

I have this strong adage. If there’s a problem and you don’t do anything about it, you’re part of the problem, and I wasn’t going to be part of the problem. Build cases about people being strangled by power windows. Build cases about kids knocking cars into gear. So the new organization, Kids and Car Safety works on what we would call non-traffic incidents. Most people don’t understand that every year, we hear 40,000 people die on our roads and highways. I mean, that is such a terrible number – over a hundred people a day are dying this way, and it’s just one here, one there. So I guess it doesn’t capture people’s imagination when they realize a hundred people every day are being killed. But what they don’t realize is that to get into that database, 1) you have to be involved in a crash, 2) that crash needs to happen on a public road or highway, and 3) you have to die within 30 days of that incident. So there are all sorts of filters before that database is compiled and finalized.

Well, what about all this stuff that happens off the public road that isn’t crash-related like trunk entrapment, people being backed over in parking lots or driveways? None of that was even being looked at. So that’s where we took that challenge on and I’m happy to say we were able to get a regulation passed such that all vehicles, doesn’t matter where in the world they’re made, but they now come with a rear-view camera as standard equipment.

As I got more involved in this whole area, I was saying, “How come we’ve been making cars for a hundred years, and there’s never been any standard as to what you should be able to see when you back up your car?” Then, as cars were getting bigger – SUVs and pickup trucks – that blind zone kept growing and growing. So 15 years later, I’m happy to say, through a tremendous amount of fighting, we were able to get that rear visibility standard and now everybody has a rear-view camera and you don’t have to pay extra for it. It is standard equipment.

The other thing we were able to do was get safer power window switches because the old ones were, like, a rocker or a toggle. A little child might be in the car and want to wave to someone, and their knee would hit that little switch and the window would go up so quickly and with so much force that they couldn’t even call out for help. So safer ones, you have to scoop up, we call them pull up and push down – that’s the way those work. Also, now you have to have your foot on the brake before you can put your car into gear. So many hard-fought battles, but what these all had in common is our government was ignoring them because they didn’t fit that criteria. We had to build the database and make sure people understood how often that happened and how preventable it can be, and work to get a standard so all vehicles would have those safety features as standard equipment.

Scott

This stuff is just common sense. I mean, you’d think if the auto manufacturers wanted to make their cars as safe as they possibly could, they would have come up with this stuff on their own. But I mean, is it accurate to say it all just comes down to cost – even if it’s a tiny cost?

Janette

Usually. And not wanting to be told what to do. I mean, I can’t tell you how many times people say, “Well, there ought to be a law. There ought to be a law.” I said, “Yeah, let’s work together. Let’s do it.” So that’s sort of become our specialty – things that happen off the public road or highway. We were able to get a law passed for a regulation to be written for rear seat belt reminders. I mean, talk about a no-brainer. If you get in your car today and if you, as the driver or the passenger don’t buckle up, you get the buzz. Why weren’t there rear seat belt reminders in the back seat? We tell everybody to put their kids there because that’s where it’s safest but we don’t have the same safety equipment back there.

The good news is we did get that law passed. The bad news is it still hasn’t been written. The regulation is 15 years overdue. How can we let that happen? So we’re fighting and fighting. It looks like that is going to happen, hopefully, before the end of the year. But 15 years of people dying who were sitting in the back seat and didn’t have their seatbelts on? Do people realize that 50 to 60 percent of the people who die in vehicle crashes aren’t belted at all or children aren’t even in a car seat? Nobody likes that little buzz, but I do because, as soon as someone’s irritated by it, they buckle up so it’ll turn off and then we’ve won. They may not realize it but they’ve won too.

Scott

Isn’t it amazing that they won’t buckle up to save their own life or their child’s life or someone in the back seat, but they will because that little beeping is annoying, isn’t it? It’s a funny comment on human nature, I think

Janette

It is. And I’m sure there’s been all sorts of studies on human factors and things like that – what motivate people. If that’s all it takes to save lives, then let’s do it.

Scott

For somebody listening to this now, what can people do to help you or to get these things moved along more quickly?

Janette

Well, something we are working on right now and have been working on literally for over 20 years is the fact that children unknowingly get left alone in vehicles or enter a vehicle on their own and that can result in a hot car death. We’ve been working and working to get this passed – what is called the Child Present Detection. We got the law passed but the regulation hasn’t been written yet. We have documented that, since 1990, almost 1,100 children have died in a hot car. How can we let that continue if one or two children die because they’ve had some bad formula or even just get sick? The shelves are empty. Same with peanut butter and romaine lettuce. I think part of it is that people don’t understand how this happens. They want to blame the parents, but that’s not what is happening. We’ve got a neuroscientist we work with who explains very clearly what happens in our minds, especially when we go on autopilot. So we have a link on our website where people can go and say, “Get this finished. Nobody wants to see children die in a hawk car. Nobody.”

Scott

And what is your website?

Janette

Our website is kidsandcars.org.

Scott

And if someone wants to contact you to volunteer or help or with a question, how should they get in touch with you?

Janette

Oh, please go to the website for a myriad of reasons. One is you can get a hold of us, but also you can learn and educate yourself about the dangers of trunk entrapment, power windows, kids knocking cars into gear, backovers, and now there are frontovers. Our cars have gotten so big, you can’t see for eight to ten feet in front of your vehicle and nobody knows that.

Submersions is a problem that’s continuing to gain. Then, car thefts with children left inside – that thing has just skyrocketed. We know that car thefts have gone up. Can you imagine how that gets racketed up when there’s a child alone in a vehicle and a car is stolen? So there’s all sorts of information there that you can use, and that will help you protect your children, your family, and everyone you know.

Scott

And we’ll have a link to that in the episode notes, so people can go there and get involved. This is the thing about public pressure that really what brings change, right?

Janette

That’s one important element. Anything from survivor advocacy, lawsuits, to data and information, to passionate parents who we work with, who are willing to be stabbed over and over again after the most horrific situation in their life, having lost a child, but do it because they don’t want another family to have to go through what they went through. They are our real heroes and we owe them all a great deal of thanks and appreciation.

Scott

You heard Janette mention some of the hero parents she works with to get these laws passed to keep kids safe. One of those people is Laura, who was on this podcast not long ago. Laura’s life was turned upside down because of a hot car death, and she’s working tirelessly with Janette to bring about the changes that are needed. Laura also has her own non-profit and podcast – I’ll have links to all of those in the episode notes, at WhatWasThatLike.com/172.

And as you probably know, I’m constantly at work putting together future episodes – whether it’s new WWTL episodes, or bonus ones, or the weekly Tuesday Question episodes with Meredith – we’re having a blast with that. I’ve always got a pipeline of guests – people with amazing stories, who are willing to come on the podcast and talk about it. I’m never worried about running out of content, that’s for sure.

Graphics for this episode were created by Bob Bretz. Full episode transcription was created by James Lai.

And now we’re about to hear this week’s Listener Story. Because that’s what we do at the end of every episode – we play a 5-10 minute story that was sent in by a listener. And you know what? All of the other listeners are waiting to hear YOUR story. What are you waiting for? Just record it on your phone and email it to me – Scott@WhatWasThatLike.com.

This week’s story is from a listener who had a mishap on a mountain.

Stay safe! See you soon.

(Listener story)

Hello, Scott. My name is Jasmine and I am from Phoenix, Arizona. I was listening to episode 76 recently and it reminded me of a time when I took a spill down a mountain. It was March 10th, 2021, I believe, and it was my 30th birthday. So I took my 2 kids – one was 12, I believe, and one was 6. I took them to hike the mountain Picacho Peak with our 1-year-old lab pit bull, Olive. It took us about an hour and a half to get from our house to Picacho Peak. So we drove out there with just the kids, the dog, and myself because my husband was working, and we started to climb Picacho Peak. The kids are loving it. The dog is loving it.

But there was a woman out of the corner of my eye who was trying to approach my dog and I told her, “She’s friendly, but she is shy. So please don’t touch her.” The woman proceeded to come closer and tried to touch the dog, Olive, and Olive freaked out and ran. I have her leash around my wrist, which I know better now– it was around my wrist and she just pulled me down the mountain.

We were maybe a little bit less than halfway up at this point and she was just pulling me further and further down. I’ve got dirt all over me. I am scraped beyond belief. I’ve got cactus in me and I can hear my kids just yelling from up higher on the mountain. I got my bearings back after what felt like forever, but I’m sure it wasn’t very long at all. I stood up and I was making sure the dog was okay first, of course. Then, I took a look at myself and I was beaten up pretty badly. I am bleeding from my knees, my elbows, my arms, my legs.

When I looked back up the mountain, I saw my kids but I didn’t see the lady who scared my dog anywhere. But in the end, I was okay – pretty beat up, like I said. We went to the gift shop afterward and I was able to get the kids something to calm them down and I drove the hour and a half home. When I got home, I was able to take a closer look at myself and pull all the cactus out of me. I had to throw away my pants because they were completely shredded. But it was still probably one of the best 30th birthdays because I have a story to tell and lots of scars still.

Thanks, Scott.

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Every Tuesday, we grab a past question from the Facebook group, then Meredith and Scott answer it and read some of the answers given by other listeners.

TQ5: You earn a million dollars (tax free) for every full year you spend in a maximum security prison. How long would you stay?Show Podcast InformationThe question for this episode:

You earn a million dollars (tax free) for every full year you spend in a maximum security prison. How long would you stay?

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View Details

Every Tuesday, we grab a past question from the Facebook group and post some of your answers.

TQ4: You get to have lunch with any living celebrity. Who do you choose?Show Podcast InformationThe question for this episode:

You get to have lunch with any living celebrity. Who do you choose?

To check out the new Tuesday Question and get in the discussion, join us at WhatWasThatLike.com/facebook.

Sponsor deals:

This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at BetterHelp.com/whatwas and get on your way to being your best self.

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When I was a kid, I don’t think I knew anyone who had an actual security system in their home.

Show Podcast InformationIt just wasn’t heard of. I’m sure they existed, but really, for most typical middle-class families, you just didn’t think a lot about someone breaking into your home.

And we certainly never had the concept of a home invasion – you know, someone coming right through the front door, while you’re home and awake, with plans of theft or even violence.

But these days, if there’s a knock on the door, everyone’s suddenly on high alert. Who’s at the door? In our house, we have the doorbell camera and we also have cameras all around the house. Because answering the door – literally opening the door to your house, to a stranger – can be a really dangerous thing to do.

Annie knows this. As a young woman, she was home alone in her new place, and she heard someone knocking.

She opened the door, and immediately regretted it.

Annie at 23, after the attackAnnie with her daughter, KayleighRoscoe Smith recent prison photoIf you are a victim, you can contact RAINN 24/7 (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network): 800-656-4673. Or you can chat with someone directly from their website – https://RAINN.org

You can read Annie’s Victim Impact Statement here.

Full show notes and pictures for this episode are here:
https://WhatWasThatLike.com/171

Graphics for this episode by Bob Bretz. Transcription was done by James Lai.

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Episode transcript (download transcript PDF):

This episode contains discussion of graphic sexual violence. Listener discretion is advised.

When I was a kid, I don’t think I knew anyone who had an actual security system in their home.

It just wasn’t heard of. I’m sure they existed, but really, for most typical middle-class families, you just didn’t think a lot about someone breaking into your home.

And we certainly never had the concept of a home invasion – you know, someone coming right through the front door, while you’re home and awake, with plans of theft or even violence.

Annie knows this. As a young woman, she was home alone in her new place, and she heard someone knocking.

She opened the door, and immediately regretted it.

Scott

When this happened, you were working as an actor in a children’s theater company. Was that? Was that your plan for a career at that time?

Annie

Yes and no. I think my plan at that time was simply to work as an actress anywhere that would have me. That was a particularly fortuitous meeting though and I say that because it was what enabled me to get my equity card so that I could join the Actor’s Equity Union, which was the big stage actors union, so it was a very well-known and very well-respected company. But yeah, it was for kids. I had not anticipated that but it was a really interesting gig for a year.

Scott

It is interesting. I mean, it’s not like a typical job that you think about. How old were you at this time?

Annie

I was 23. I had actually worked for a year prior to this year as an intern for this company. So I had two years with it, and I was bumped up to full company member a couple of months before the attack happened.

Scott

I understand you met your boyfriend. He was also an actor.

Annie

He was. We actually played the parents of Abraham Lincoln in an outdoor drama in Indiana one summer and we formed a relationship. Then, I moved with him to Louisville, Kentucky where he got a job at this children’s theater. I was able to get work there the following year. It was a bad relationship if I’m being honest. It was not a relationship of equals. It was kind of emotionally centered and not rewarding, I’d imagine, for either of us by the end there, but I was really young and it was very difficult for me to see my way through to separating myself from this relationship. It took a lot to get there.

Scott

But you did eventually.

Annie

I did eventually, and I did it because my mother, bless her heart, went in for emergency heart surgery. I actually took a few days off of the company, which was an unusual thing, and I flew back to North Carolina where my mother was in the hospital. I remember walking in the night before her surgery. She looked up at me, didn’t even say hello or anything, just looked at me and said, “Are you leaving Matthew?” I opened my mouth and the word “Yes” came out, and I thought, “Oh, okay, well, I guess I am.” I really had not thought that that was the case until that moment, but then she came through with flying colors. To me, it sort of took on this mystical quality of a promise to God. “My mom came through okay. She’s going to be alright. I have to leave Matthew now. I have to go out on my own. I have to do this.” I knew it was the right thing to do but it was difficult.

Scott

That is so interesting though – when you kind of have the self-talk and you give yourself an answer that you weren’t expecting. But then, you think, “Wow, I guess that’s the right answer.”

Annie

And it was the right answer. Despite what happened, I want to make that clear – it was absolutely the right answer. But yeah, it would take a lot to get me there. So when my mouth opened and the word “Yes” came out, I don’t think anybody was as stunned as I was.

Scott

So you broke up and then you found yourself your own place.

Annie

I did, and I felt very fortunate. This place was gorgeous. It was built for young professionals and artists and it was in the downtown area. It was a former factory of some sort, I think, or warehouse, and they had reconfigured it to be a lot of apartments on the perimeter of a square courtyard. It was close to the theater complex and other members of that company also stayed there, so it felt like an ideal location for me.

Scott

So you had your own place, but you weren’t really completely alone because the other actors lived in the same complex.

Annie

Exactly. And a couple of members of the administrative staff as well. In fact, the guy to my right was one of the assistant directors, so I felt. I felt very young in a lot of ways. 23 is very young, especially when you’ve never been out on your own before. So it was important to me to feel like I had a support network or at least a few people that I could turn to.

Scott

But yet still with your independence.

Annie

Exactly.

Scott

Let’s talk about what happened. We need to talk about the week before it happened. You were doing laundry on a Friday afternoon.

Annie

I was expecting another friend to come down and visit me from Chicago. So of course, I spent the afternoon scrubbing and cleaning and doing laundry. Our laundry was actually a separate room closer to the front of the building, so I had to cross the courtyard to get to and from my apartment. I was sort of near the last load, I think, and I ran back to my apartment. I thought I closed the door. I’m fairly sure I didn’t lock it though. Well, I know I didn’t because I heard it open when I was in the bathroom and I remember calling out “Hello” and I didn’t hear anything. I talked myself into believing that I hadn’t closed the door all the way and the wind had blown it open a little bit, but I didn’t think much more of it because I was running to get the laundry done. By the time I came back, I think my friend was pulling up at that moment. I didn’t have a lot of space or time to think about what had happened.

However, when I came out of my apartment to get that last load, after I’d heard the door, I saw this man across in front of me, several feet away, but I saw him in profile. I remember it was striking because he was so tall. He was very tall. He looked like he was wearing the quintessential downtown Louisville waiter uniform, black pants, white shirt. It looked like he had one of those black waiters’ aprons tied around his waist – I could be wrong. I might be making that up but, in my head, that’s what I associated him with. So I remembered him.

Scott

When you saw him, were you concerned or suspicious or anything?

Annie

Not at all. I mean, I knew that I hadn’t seen him before but that wasn’t relevant really because I’d only been there for a week and a half. So clearly, I hadn’t seen everybody who lived there and it did not strike me as odd at all. Just the fact of his height and the way he was dressed – I noted it. That’s it. That moment was gone and the night went on. So the next morning, my friend and I were getting ready to leave to go get some breakfast. I had an early morning rehearsal. We were rehearsing a Christmas play. Our call times were kind of strange. This was an early morning for me.

So, I walked out. But as I was walking out, there was a woman actually, she was knocking on my door as I was opening it, and I’d never seen this woman before. She was dressed like she’d been out – like a heavy coat. It didn’t look like she was running from one apartment to the next. It looked like she was on her way somewhere. She handed me my wallet and I recognized it immediately as my wallet. I was stunned because I didn’t even know my wallet wasn’t in my purse. I hadn’t had any reason to get into it and it just didn’t occur to me. She said, “Is this yours? I found it down here on the ground in the bushes.” She sort of thrust it in my hand and took off really quickly before I could ask her anything and it seemed strange to me. I just couldn’t figure out what could have happened.

Then, I thought back to the day before– I don’t know if I thought about it that day or maybe it was a little bit later but, eventually, I put it together. When that door opened and I was in the bathroom, this guy was rummaging through my purse. I had less than $10 in there – I was still a struggling actor – but that money was gone, but nothing else was gone. I just thought, “Okay. Well, all right, chalk this up to a city experience for the young kid. Always lock your door. Even if you’re inside, always lock your door.” And I sort of let it go. I thought, “All right, well, big deal.” I didn’t even call the police over it. It just seemed like one of those rites of passage that a young person goes through and a hard experience teaches you not to leave your door unlocked in the future.

Scott

And even if you did call the police, you don’t have any proof. You didn’t see anybody take anything.

Annie

No, there’s nothing I could have done and nothing they could have done. That was assuming that the man that I saw was the person who took the wallet. I didn’t even know that. That’s the only piece of information I could have given them, so I just felt like that’s pointless and I didn’t do anything about it. The following Friday was December 7th. I was expecting a friend to come see me, and she was one who lived across the courtyard from me in one of the other apartments.

I had made dinner for myself and I was eating. I was watching something on TV. I had this tiny little colored set but it was, like, from the theater shop department. Basically, my entire apartment was furnished with cast-off set pieces from the theater shop department – things that they weren’t using in the set design that year. It wasn’t a lot. It was just enough to make it a little homier.

I remember thinking,” I don’t know if my friend’s going to come by or not, so maybe I should just go to bed.” There was a knock on the door. It was about 9 o’clock at night, I think. I went to the door and it was one of those doors with a wooden frame and the middle part of it is all glass. The lighting outside wasn’t terrific but I think there were blinds. I pulled the blinds back and I saw somebody – whoever it was – wearing jeans. For some reason, that suggested to me that it was my friend. I opened the door and there was this man before me, and he said, “Is Mr. Charles Stuart in?” Almost immediately, the thoughts hit my brain, like this tsunami of “What the heck! This guy does not mean you well. He is dangerous. You need to close the door.” Somewhere in there, I thought, “I wonder if this is the guy that I saw last week. Isn’t this the guy? I don’t know. “

I started to slam the door shut and he pushed his way in and I screamed very loudly. I was banging on the door next to me. I was hoping that my friend in the apartment next to me would hear it but he very quickly subdued me. I mean, he was very quick about it. I don’t know if he had done this before. If he hadn’t, then he was a natural because I couldn’t even process what was going on. All of a sudden, my scarf was tied around my mouth really tightly and my neck, almost choking me. He had my arms pinned and he said, “If you don’t shut up, I will cut you.” I felt something like poking into my middle back and I thought, “That’s a knife. He’s got a knife and he will kill me.”

I decided just to try to be calm and sort of talk my way out of whatever was going on, maybe talk him down at the same time, but he was very worked up, very angry. I remember he went straight to my purse. I had $5 in there. He grabbed that out of my wallet again. He stuffed that into his pants pocket and then he kind of frog marched me to the back of the apartment where there was one of the two bedrooms and it was completely empty. There was no furniture or anything in it. He made me take off my pants and lie down on the floor and he began to sexually assault me. He started by trying to perform oral sex on me. The anger still seemed to be the thing that was driving him the most. I was very confused as to why he was doing this for a minute. I was talking, like, “If you want money, I can get you money. I know a friend.” I was just trying to come up with anything to get him off of me and get him out of the way so I could slam the door and be safe, but I wasn’t thinking things through very clearly at the time because nothing I said would have made any difference to this man at all.

Scott

You can’t be expected to be thinking clearly at a time like this anyway.

Annie

You really can’t. I mean, the things that go through your head will kind of surprise you later on. But I think the body and the mind both have a way of protecting you and you’ve got, like, these coping mechanisms that help try to keep you safe. I could tell from the way this guy was with me that, if I fought back, I would get injured. So if I was going to fight back, I needed the opportune moment, the perfect moment and I needed to commit and do it quickly. That opportunity presented itself to me. While he was concentrating elsewhere, I was able to get the scarf out from around my neck and I had it in my hands. I remember thinking, “I can wrap this around his neck. I can loop it around his neck, and I can pull but I will have to kill him. He’s not going to stop unless I do that.” That thought made me hesitate, “Can I really take a person’s life?”

I paused just long enough that he looked up and saw what I was doing. I guess he figured out what I was about to do, at which point, this man rammed his fist inside of me. I cannot express to you enough how absolutely painful that is just on a physical level, first of all. But then, he’s yelling at me, “I WILL RIP YOUR WOMB OUT! I WILL RIP YOUR WOMB OUT!” over and over again. And I was like, “I believe you can do it. I believe you would do it.” Through my tears and screams, I was trying to reassure him that I wouldn’t try anything, and I didn’t. I just wanted to survive it and get through with it at that point, and it did last much longer.

After that, he did try to rape me vaginally and I thought that he wasn’t successful because it didn’t last long at all. The next thing I know, he’s off of me, he’s pulling up his pants, and he said, “You need to stay there. I will be watching. Don’t come out.” I think it’s, like, for 10 minutes or something like that. “Don’t call anybody.” And I thought, “You’re an idiot if you think I’m not calling somebody after that.” A few minutes after he left, I heard nothing, so I got dressed and I sort of tentatively peeked out and I was looking for him. My front door was wide open.

I just got my courage together and I ran out the door and I ran next door and I started banging on my friend’s door trying to get some help. He finally opened it and he hadn’t heard anything. The soundproofing on these apartments was top-notch because he had not heard a thing. I called 911 from his apartment and he gave me some water and was trying to calm me down a little bit. I was completely vibrating with fear and just the adrenaline, I guess, was dissipating. It was such an odd experience not to be in control of your body really, and it was painful. I hurt everywhere and I just wanted this to be over but I knew I had to talk to the police. I never even questioned that.

They came in, shining their very bright flashlights, and asking very pointed questions, and I felt like they didn’t believe me. I felt like they came to me from a perspective of disbelief. I found out later that’s not the case but their training at that time, I think, was so ridiculously centered in suspicion and proof that they treated sexual assault victims as if they were not telling the truth until they found proof that they were. It was very difficult. It was difficult to be around and to be subjected to that after having endured that kind of trauma. But they took me to the ER and I had to wait for hours to get a sexual assault evidence kit performed on me.

Scott

Did the hospital have those kits? Did they keep those or did the police give you those?

Annie

I think the hospital even back then kept the kits on hand, but they have to have a police officer there to take custody of it immediately and reserve chain of custody. I was sitting there with one detective. I think the detective left at one point and there was a uniformed guy there. I had to go to the bathroom so badly. Finally, somewhere around midnight, I said, “I just have to go.” I don’t know if it was the nurse or the officers– one of them shrugged and said, “Well, yeah, you can go, but if you go, you might be getting rid of evidence. Your call.” And I thought, “This is ridiculous. I have to go. I can’t not go.” So I was as careful as I could be but I didn’t think at that point that there was any evidence to gather because I didn’t think that he had ejaculated or finished the rape at all because it just seemed to me very quickly, abruptly ended.

So they finally came in sometime after midnight and they took that kit or did all the collection. And if you’re not familiar with it, it’s just such an incredibly invasive procedure. They have to visually inspect the area. They perform, like, a pelvic exam. They’re looking for scrapes and contusions and all kinds of stuff. They’re collecting samples. They have you stand up and they have to pull hairs out of your body, like off your head, your pubic hair– they’re collecting, like, 10 hairs from each location.

Scott

And it sounds like that would be even more pain on top of what you were already experiencing.

Annie

It was absolutely so degrading even though I knew they had to do it. I understood why they had to do it. It was just, “Oh, if there were any better way, this is just such a terrible thing to have to endure, especially after a sexual assault.” I don’t know how she would get that evidence. In my case, it was a really good thing they did. The neighbor who was supposed to come over and see me – the one I had been expecting – actually accompanied me to the ER, so it was very sweet of her and I really appreciate her to this day for her kindness.

She let me sleep on her couch. She had a futon couch. She had a smaller, like, studio apartment but I wasn’t about to sleep in that room in that place at all. So yeah, I went over and slept with her. Then, the next day, my ex-boyfriend came and collected me and took me to a friend’s house in Elizabethtown, Kentucky just for the weekend so I could get away. I appreciate that concern. I appreciated that act of kindness, but it was not a good place for me to be because they’d also given me the morning-after pill to prevent pregnancy and one of the side effects of that is just severe nausea. I was sick to my stomach for pretty much the entire weekend. Then, Monday came around and I went back to work, and things started to sort of slowly regain some normalcy, except with this overlay of now I am the complaining victim in this sexual assault case and they’re looking for the guy and he’s out there somewhere. He knows where I live and he’s apparently familiar with where I live. So that was kind of terrifying.

Scott

Did you consider moving?

Annie

I did, but it didn’t really make a whole lot of sense for me, and that’s because of what was going on in January of next year. This was December. So, in January, the company that I was a member of split in two and there was a home company and a road company. I was in the road company and we were going out on this national tour of a play for six and seven year olds about Paddington Bear of all things, so that was actually good. The play was, like, the best choice if I had to do this but, then, I was out on the road for 5 months until May. It didn’t make a whole lot of sense for me to move before then.

Scott

You want to go ahead and talk about the piece of mail that showed up?

Annie

It was so weird. The night it happened, when I opened the door, the rapist, said, “Os Mr. Charles Stuart in?” or “Is Mr. Charles Stuart here?” or something like that, about a week and a half or two weeks later, I went to the mailbox to get my mail and I had one piece of a bill or something – there were some other pieces directed to the occupant or whatever. There was also an envelope – an official-looking one – directed to my apartment number, but addressed to Mr. Charles Stuart. Every hair on the back of my neck went straight up, and I thought, “Oh, holy cow, this is significant. I don’t know how, but it has to be, right?”

I called the police. I told the detective what I found. He sent over a uniformed person to collect the envelope, which happened very quickly. I guess about a week before we left, I got a phone call back from that detective and he said, “I found him.” I said, “You found who?” He said, “I found Charles Stuart.” I thought, “Oh yeah, I’d almost forgotten.” He said, “Yeah, you’re not going to believe it but he’s serving a 30-year prison sentence for rape in Virginia.”

Scott

That’s way more than a coincidence.

Annie

It’s got to be! This guy knew enough to know that man, Charles Stuart, lived here. They’re both apparently involved in the same criminal activities. That’s bizarre. But yeah, that happened. And I thought, “Well, okay, at least that gives them something to pursue while I’m out on the road, I guess.” Because I really didn’t think there was much evidence.

Scott

So you didn’t really have a lot of hope that this was even going to be resolved.

Annie

I don’t know if I had any. After the first few weeks, I started thinking about all of the obstacles that are in their way – like every little challenge to finding out who this person is. I mean, how would you figure that out unless there were fingerprints on file unless there was some kind of something? And of course, this was pre DNA days. This was a couple of years before DNA became widely used in criminal investigations. I mean, I thought, “Well, okay, maybe they can get a blood type, but I don’t think the guy ejaculated. So how would they even know that?” I felt very, I won’t say depressed about it then, but I just felt kind of resigned to it. “This was how it was going to be.”

So I went home for Christmas for a couple of weeks before we went out on tour. Two days after Christmas, I realized that I was late on my period and my mother was just as sweet and supportive as she could possibly be. She bought me, like, 2-3 different kinds of pregnancy tests, and all of them were positive. By the next day, she said, “Okay, what do you want to do?” I said, “I can’t have this baby. I can’t bear my rapist child. I can’t.” She said, “Absolutely. Okay.”

By the end of that day, she’d arranged an abortion for me. We’d gone to the clinic. We had to wait 24 hours, even back then. Of course, now, I probably would be denied an abortion given the state that we were in but I was able to secure it and I have never regretted it not one minute, not one second since then. That was the right decision. What I regret and what I resent is being put in that position. That should not have happened to me or anybody. Nobody should have to make that choice, but I did. I made it. I’m glad that I did and it’s the choice that I would support any woman making in that situation. So that was another little awful thing.

There are so many consequences to this and I was the one bearing them all. I kept thinking, “When is it his turn? When does he get to bear some of these consequences?” And through the years, I thought, “How would I know him? He could come up to me.” That was the other thing – I couldn’t pull up his face in my memory. I couldn’t sit here and think, “Okay, I remember certain things about his appearance and I could physically or verbally describe him.” I could not pull up the face.

So, about six months after the assault, I moved back home with my mother and I was sort of taking some time to collect myself. I was working in this retail job. I just wanted to be as low-key as possible and focus on my own healing, whatever that meant. But one of the uniformed officers in Louisville called me while I was in my new home, several states away, and he said, “I’ve been working on this in my spare time and I think I know who raped you. I would like to send a photo lineup to your local police department for you to look at. Are you okay with that?” I said, “I’m happy to. But you should know, I don’t know that I remember his face all that well.” And he said, “That’s fine. Not a problem. The person might be there or might not be there. Just do your best.”

Those officers brought the six photos to my workplace and I remember taking them into the back office because I didn’t want to do this out in front of the customers, obviously. I looked at them and I thought, “There’s no emotional reaction to any of them. There’s no clinching in my gut. I don’t think he’s here, but if he is, I don’t recognize him.” So that just further reinforced in my mind that I don’t recognize this person. I would not recognize him. I said, “I’m so sorry. I don’t recognize him.” They took the photos and that was that. It was so strange because I remember I kept thinking, “Why am I not falling apart? Why am I not having more PTSD symptoms? I seem okay. What is that about? Can I possibly really be that okay?” And I thought, “Well, you know what, if I am okay, then I should help others. And if I’m not okay, then I should be around people who understand.” To me, that meant our local rape crisis center.

Scott

The fact that you recognized that you shouldn’t be okay was really smart. What triggered that, do you think? I mean, a lot of people would think, “Well, I guess it must not have been that bad because I don’t feel like I’m traumatized like I would expect to be.” But you knew that didn’t make sense.

Annie

Yeah. It was like a little small part of me that was sitting in observation of all this. I think that’s something that maybe possibly came from yoga. I don’t know. I practiced yoga for many years and one of the things that I think every teacher sort of said in some way or another was, “You don’t have to react. You can step outside yourself and sort of observe what’s going on.” That was sort of the precursor to mindfulness, I guess. So I was thinking in terms of, “Okay, what is going on? How am I feeling? Observe that, record that, put words to that.” But what I was observing was normal pulse. I don’t seem to be overly fearful. I feel a little twitchy sometimes. Like, I’ve got a little too much energy but, I don’t know, that might just be me being in my mid-20s in a rockin party town and I thought maybe that’s what I need. I mean, I just need to go out and cut loose a little bit and I tried that for a few months, but that didn’t work.

Scott

You worked as a volunteer as a rape crisis counselor.

Annie

I did. Weirdly, I saw a flyer somewhere that they were looking for volunteers, and I thought, “Okay, I’ll give them a call. I don’t know if I’m what they’re looking for, but maybe this will help me too. And in helping others, I can sort of recover my own from my own trauma.” So I went through their training. It was three days of several hours worth of workshops, practice, and consultations. We had to practice listening to each other non-reactively, how to be supportive without feeding fear, and how to talk to police officers because a lot of the officers were maybe not the most attuned to a victim’s suffering, let’s say. Some of them were pretty much like I had thought those first officers responding to my rape had been. They come across as very suspicious and “You’ve got to prove to me that something happened to you.”

Being a counselor, my role was completely different. My role was, “I absolutely believe you. I’m here to advocate and support you.” I did that for a couple of years and I have to say that was one of the best things I could have done. It was one of the hardest things I could do. You get called at two in the morning to get to the local ER because a woman’s been brought in by her roommate and she’s bleeding and crying. She can’t tell anybody what happened but everybody knows.

That’s difficult. That will trigger all kinds of stuff if you’re also a survivor. But for me, it also triggered really deep empathy, and I was able to use that at least to stand beside these people and say, “Look, I’ve been where you are. I have been where you are. You can come through this. I’m here for you. What do you need right now?” Because everybody else that the victim meets the night of a sexual assault wants something from her. My only focus was on her – “What do you need?” – and I found a real empowering spirit in that. I felt a little bit like an avenging warrior, like, I was going to go – not like I was going to go – chop down whoever did it although, sometimes, I probably could have quite easily, that I was there to protect a sister who had also been raped. They were usually sisters – they were predominantly women – although it’s absolutely true that men can be sexually assaulted, and we all went to special training for that too.

Scott

At this point, a couple of years had gone by. Your memory of his face was fading. You really had no information about him and he seemed to have just disappeared. I can imagine, at that point, you’re thinking, “Well, that’s it. There’s nothing more that can be done.”

Annie

That’s exactly what happened. I just concluded that was a part of my life that sucked, that probably did some damage, and that I might see some results of that damage later in my life, but I hadn’t yet and there was nothing else to be done. So, I sort of compartmentalized it and stuck it in a drawer and put it up on the shelf, so to speak, and I went on with life. I didn’t think that it was affecting me. I see now that it was. I see now how it affected me. But at the time, even self-awareness was not enough, or at least the amount that I had wasn’t sufficient. I look back now and I see it almost immediately, like, my world started to contract.

I stopped going out. I stopped doing a lot of things. Somehow, by the time we got to 2019-2020 when the pandemic hit, how everybody had to learn to live that March, I’d been living like that for years. My groceries are delivered. I hardly go out anymore. I’m like a hermit, and I do blame him and what happened to me. I blamed the rape and I blamed the rapist for making me feel like I can’t leave my home, but it’s not an agoraphobic thing. It’s more like there is nothing out there that interests me. I’m working on that now. I’m still trying to overcome that now but that’s how it was for, like, 29 years.

Scott

And that was not the end of the story. You were doing some research with the idea of writing a novel. So over this time period, 29 years, you had gone into a career of writing. Is that what you were doing at that time?

Annie

Yes, I transferred over to writing or started writing when I was, I guess, somewhere around 2008-2009. I began doing online digital writing like blogging, copywriting for websites, that kind of thing. I was working on novels or a novel, but it just wasn’t coming together and I thought I just needed to put that aside and try something else. I had seen a couple of books that had been turned into movies or TV shows that were based on the author’s experiences – like fictionalized accounts. They call it autofiction when it’s written. I thought, “I could probably do something like that. Maybe that might suit my experiences in theater and in Louisville.”

So I started researching that and it almost occurred to me immediately, “Why have I not searched for people who have been right with the same circumstances or the same MO?” I thought I could search for the area for Louisville and I could search for late 80s, early 90s. I think he’s done this before and he probably did it again after. So there are probably others out there like that who were also hurt by him and maybe we could, I don’t know, compare notes and maybe come up with something that the police haven’t thought of. So I did this very simple Google search and I think it was something for, like, serial rapist, 1990s Louisville, Kentucky.

The first result for me back then was a picture and a news article about a man who pleaded guilty to several counts of rape. One of the survivors was telling the story of her assault and there were a few things in there that were really similar to my assault like the way he was so angry and the fact that he had her take off her pants and lie down on the ground, and I thought, “This could be him.” I don’t know what to do with this, so I went to my Facebook page and I asked all my friends on Facebook, “I think I found my rapist. What do I do?” And everyone was like, you got to call, you got to call the police department because they need to know this, “That is him. If it’s not, then maybe it will help them find the person who did this to you.” I thought, “Well, that’s never going to happen, but okay, fine.”

So the next day, I called the Louisville Metro Police Department and I was directed to a wonderful detective. He was trained in trauma-informed detective skills – investigative skills that took into account the victim’s trauma. I told him what I had found and I said, “I don’t know that you can do anything. I don’t even know what you could do, but here’s the information I found.” And he said, “Okay, Annie. I need to know what you want to happen with this. What’s your ideal outcome?” Nobody had ever asked me that. Just like all those victims that I had served before when I was a crisis counselor, everybody wanted something from me but nobody ever asked me, “What do you want to have happen?” Well, except my mom right before the abortion, she asked me– but nobody else. And I thought, “Wow, I’ve waited 29 years to hear that from a police officer.”

So I told him I’d like to know who did it. I’d like to know a name. I would love for him to be put in jail but, if I can’t have that, at least I’d like to know that he exists, I’d like to know his name, I’d really like to know who Charles Stuart is, and I’d like to know why he picked me, and, and, and–

Scott

Well, he asked, right?

Annie

He asked, and he said, “Okay. I think I can probably help you with some of that. I don’t know if I can help you with all of it but I will do whatever I can.” He was absolutely 100% true to his word. He went above and beyond to help me out. He immediately pulled the file. When he pulled the written file, he was calling me daily to update me on what he had found, which I really, truly appreciated because I had never before really been kept in the loop at all. What he told me would just astonish me because these detectives from the original round had not ignored me. They did believe me. They did try their best to find this guy.

They had 12 suspects identified at one point and they ruled them out with DNA. In July 2019, that was the first time I learned that he had left behind DNA. They had samples. I thought that was amazing. That’s huge. But they had ruled out all the other guys. So none of the ones that were in that original photo lineup that I looked at earlier– all of them had been ruled out. So we’re basically starting from square one with a bunch of people ruled out and a few leads. But his DNA would be great if we could find somebody and match it to you. So, to get it into CODIS which did not exist at the time– it came around a few years after that.

Scott

Is that, like, the DNA database?

Annie

That is the Combined Offender DNA something– I can’t remember the rest of it. Yes. That’s what most law enforcement agencies now have access to. So they could put in a DNA profile and see if that person has been apprehended or incarcerated before. If they’ve been given any kind of DNA sample or if their DNA was collected at a different crime scene, that would be in the system.

Scott

So kind of like a 23andMe for bad guys.

Annie

Exactly. So I thought, “All right, well, we’ll see.” And he’s like, “It’s going to take two to three months.” And I said, “That’s fine. I waited 29 years. I can wait a couple of months.” So he went and he found my kit in this huge warehouse. The warehouse had moved– like, all the databases and all the kits had been moved physically in the intervening years. So I thought the fact that they still have my kit and my file was nothing short of amazing to me. The fact that he could find it was incredible. He looked inside and he went, “There’s a couple of pieces of evidence here that have not been tested yet.” And I thought, “Okay, what does that mean?” And he’s like, “Well, if we can find DNA on these pieces of evidence, then we have a clean sample we can put into CODIS and see if he’s been entered in there before, see if we know who he is.” And I thought, “Oh, okay.” All of a sudden, after 29 years of nothing, things were moving so fast. All of this took place in just a couple of weeks, really.

Scott

But were you thinking at the time, “It sounds like this is really good, but I don’t want to get my hopes up”?

Annie

Oh, gosh, absolutely. Yes. Even at that point, I really did not think the detective would be able to finally resolve this or solve the case. I really didn’t think that was going to happen because I thought, if it were going to happen, then it wouldn’t have already happened. He had 30 years to commit crimes and be arrested and if he’s not already in there, then– well, it turns out he was.

Sometime, I think, in August, the detective called me and said, “They found DNA on the evidence that I submitted – the new evidence that has not been tested yet. They found a DNA profile. It’s not yours. It’s male. They’re going to enter that into CODIS and see.” A couple of months after that, he called me back and said, “We got him. We know who he is.” The kicker is, if I had done this a year before, he would not have been in the CODIS database. It was an assault that he committed and pleaded guilty to, and part of his plea was he had to submit his DNA, and that was done a year before I called. That’s the only reason that they could find him.

So they found him and he had a name. I didn’t know the name. I didn’t get any of that information. The detectives said, “Well, my job now is to go make contact with him and I just want to get him to commit to a couple of facts and be put on record as saying this. That way, I can use that information against him later if it plays out the way I think it’s going to.” So he found a couple of photos of me at my younger age and he went to this person’s apartment. He asked him very clearly about what I’m here for. I guess he took, like, kind of this sort of self-deprecating, “I’ve got to follow these things up, you know how it is. I don’t really expect anything and I don’t know that I necessarily believe anything happened.”

Scott

Just a formality.

Annie

Just a formality. Have you met her? Do you know her? And he said, “No, I’ve never seen her before in my life. I’ve never met her.” And he said, “Okay, so you haven’t been in her apartment.” And he gave the address and he kind of paused. “No, I don’t remember ever being in that apartment.” He kind of stuttered a little bit, I guess, but he was very clear, “No, not him. He didn’t do it.” So the detective said, “All right, well, would you be willing to do a DNA test just to rule yourself out?” And he kind of pulled back. He went, “I’d have to talk to a lawyer about that” or something like that. And I thought, “Okay, well, I trust the DNA. I’m not sure I would trust my perception of it but I trust the DNA. I trust the science.” So the next thing the detective wanted me to do was another photo lineup. So he sent the six photos to my local police department. On December 6, 2019, I went to see if I could identify any of them. This was the second experience I’d had with the photo lineup and the first one was not good.

Scott

You didn’t even remember the face then, right?

Annie

No, it was just such a hit to my self-esteem too that I couldn’t figure it out, I didn’t know who this was or recognize him. But the reason I couldn’t recognize him is he wasn’t in it because, as soon as this detective, she laid out the photos in front of me and she was going over, “Okay, here’s what I want you to do. Pick one.” My eyes just went immediately to this one picture and I just said, “That’s him. That’s him.” I was so sure. Everything in my body reacted like, “That’s him. That is him.” My hands were shaking and I looked up at her and she said, “Honey, are you okay? Do you need a tissue?” That was the moment when I realized I was crying. I didn’t know I was crying but there were tears coming out of my eyes looking at this man who attacked me and I knew that was him. I recognized it. That was a very big moment for me.

Scott

You were looking at a picture of him having aged 30 years also, right? Or was it a younger picture of him?

Annie

It was slightly younger but he was older than he had been at the time. Everybody in the photo lineup looked about the same age – like 40 to 60, somewhere in that range – so I identified the person. I wrote down my name, my initials, I did all that stuff. She sent it off to the detective in Louisville and I went back home and just waited. Then, I started second-guessing myself again, “Oh, maybe I was wrong. I don’t know.” But I got a phone call from the detective that afternoon and he said, “You did it. That’s him. That’s the guy.” And I said, “Okay, what now?” She said, “Well, tomorrow is the 29th anniversary, isn’t it?” I said, “Yeah, it is December 7th.” He was, “I’m going to give you an early Christmas present. I’m going to go arrest this guy.” And he did.

Scott

Everybody listening right now is saying, “Yes!!!”

Annie

Me too. I mean, he downplayed it a lot when he was telling me the story. What I heard was he was in there with, like, his boss and a captain or something and they were in the car and they were staking the guy out. I mean, it was literally like Law and Order Louisville SVU. His brother came and drove up behind or into the driveway or whatever. The brother saw the detective’s car and noted that it was the detective. He knew who I was so I thought I was going to have to go– I have to go now. I cannot wait for this. So when his brother pulled back in, Roscoe literally ran to the guy – the rapist ran down the stairs to get into his brother’s car, I guess, and the detective sort of hopped over the end of the car. I imagine it was like one of those slide-on-the-trunk moves like Starsky and Hutch or it might not have been. But in my head, that’s what it was.

And he’s like, “Hey, you going anywhere?” And the guy said, “Oh, I’m going out of town to see my daughter.” And he goes, “No, I’m afraid not. Step out of the car, please.” So he arrested him and they did a second DNA test and it matched the evidence again, completely. So he was charged and arraigned. He was given a bail of – God bless Kentucky – $250,000. And that kept him in jail until his case was disposed of in 2022.

Scott

So he was in jail for how long before the trial started?

Annie

Well, for December 7th, 2019 until October 2022 – like the first week of October.

Scott

Almost three years.

Annie

He eventually accepted a plea deal and it was not a terribly long sentence, but he had already been in jail for three years too. So I thought, “You know what, I’m okay with this. I just want this over. Through the attorney, I was the victim’s applicant, I guess. I said, “I would like to do a plea deal. I’m happy to do a plea deal, but I want him to sit down with me and I want him to answer these questions that I have.” And they posed that to him. Although they were not in favor of it – none of them were really – they said, “Okay, we’ll ask.” And his response was, “How can I admit to something that I don’t remember doing?” The wording of that just struck me – not “I can’t talk about something I didn’t do, but something I don’t remember doing.” I thought, “I don’t believe you, I think you do remember it. I think you don’t want to, but I think you do remember it.” He had a very long rap sheet, none of which were sexual assaults as far as I know, so mine seems to have been an anomaly in his career, but he was a criminal. He had a long, lengthy history with law enforcement.

Scott

Or he had sexual assaults and just never got caught for them.

Annie

That’s entirely possible. There’s going to be a lot of things out there that he never got identified. I don’t know if there’s DNA in those other cases or not, if they even exist but, hopefully, now that he’s in there and he has this charge on this record, then maybe they can find them.

Scott

He had to be thinking after 29 years, “I’m free. I got away with that one.”

Annie

You’ve got to think that he would. I mean, that is a long time and you’d think you’re scot-free. Then, all of a sudden, out of nowhere, this Louisville detective comes up and says, “Hey, by the way, remember this woman?”

Scott

So he’s currently in prison, right?

Annie

He is, yes. He pleaded guilty to second-degree rape, sodomy, and burglary and he was sentenced to 6 years or so and three of his time served. So yeah, I mean, he could get out as early as next year but I am firmly connected to Kentucky’s Victims Notification System. I will get a phone call. I will get an email if anything changes with respect to his incarceration or release date but I also go and check the website every couple of weeks just to be sure.

Scott

And the other thing too is he’s going to turn 76 years old later this year. Did you ever get any answers about why he targeted you? Have you tried to contact him at all?

Annie

I have not tried to contact him. The detective also asked as the victim’s advocate, I think. If I could pose those questions, the answer that we got back every time was, “I don’t remember. I don’t remember doing it.” In fact, he even tried to assert that at the plea hearing. I’m pretty sure I was listening in. I was participating via phone and the judge gave me time to make my statement. I read a statement of impact and I got to the end of it and I was shaking. I was just like, “I can’t believe this is over.” I was sort of, again, filled with that adrenaline dump and trying to process all that.

But I heard him start to speak over the judge. The next thing I heard, I heard him say something like, “But I– but I–” and his lawyers just said, “Shh. Shh.” I literally heard them hush him. I definitely heard the judge say, “Mr. Smith, I would strongly advise you not to say another word right now.” And he didn’t. He took the hint and he was silent from that point on. But I would love to know, did he just see me while he was prowling around looking for his old friend?

Scott

Yeah, was it a crime of opportunity?

Annie

That turned into a target? I don’t know. Probably. I think that’s probably the case. But I knew it was him. Here’s the other thing that was very reassuring to me because when this happens to you, and it’s a stranger, and you have to recount all of these details, you feel this incredible pressure to be accurate and not to get anything wrong, not to claim knowledge of something that isn’t right, or at least I did.

I knew certain facts and I was trying to communicate those facts. I remember saying very clearly, “He’s six foot three.” And they were like, “How do you know he’s six foot three?” And I said, “Because last week, my friend from Chicago drove down to see me and he spent the weekend with me and he is six foot three and I know what he feels like standing next to me. I know where his head comes and where my head comes to him. This was exactly that.” I was very insistent on that. I found out through the reopening of the case that everybody who saw it, there were three other people who saw him that night who described him the same way. I didn’t even know that the other eyewitnesses existed but they saw him and they all said, “Yeah, he’s very tall around 6’3, 6’5, somewhere around there. In fact, he was 6’3 exactly.”

Scott

He’s going to be eligible for release in the next year or two. Do you have a plan of action for when he gets out? I mean, you’re several states away, so that’s a good thing.

Annie

It is.

Scott

But what have you thought about when that happens?

Annie

I mean, realistically, I don’t think that he has the resources to come after me. If he does– I mean, that’s a good question. I’ve got certain things that I do for my protection that I’ve always done since this happened and maybe I’ll beef that up a little bit, but I will be prepared. Better believe it. And if it happens again, I’m not going to hesitate this time. You should know that.

Scott

What’s your incentive for wanting to get this story out to people?

Annie

Well, there’s a couple of things. One is that sexual assault is such a common experience, especially for women and I want other women to know they’re not alone. If this happens to them, they can survive it and they can come through the other side with some kind of justice. I want them to know that, first of all. Second, and might even be more important, there are so many rape kits out there in police warehouses all across this country. Some of them may not even be viable anymore because they haven’t been preserved well. The ones that are there need to be tested. Every single kit needs to be looked at and needs to be tested. In my case, he would never have been found if the detective hadn’t gone and physically pulled the kit and found two pieces of clothing that had not been tested and sent those into the state lab in Kentucky for testing. We would not be here. I wouldn’t be talking to you today.

Scott

And that’s only because you called.

Annie

Well, yeah, that’s true too. I mean, you’ve got to call and you’ve got to be a little in-your-face about it sometimes. I would wish that everybody would get an astonishingly caring and competent detective like I did. A lot of them aren’t, probably most, and that’s unfortunate, but okay, whatever. Do what you can with what you’ve got. Finally, I guess, to police departments everywhere, I would say, you all need to start training your detectives in trauma-informed techniques for investigation and for hailing witness interviews because that made all the difference to me. He made me feel like I was, if not driving the train, then at least in the area. I was being consulted and that is so empowering and helpful, and it’s really crucial. It’s been crucial to my healing, to be honest with you.

Rape is a crime of– it’s not a crime of sex. It’s about power and control. As long as you’re in your rapist’s presence, you don’t have that control. It’s something that we all take for granted. I can move my body. I can get away from you. I can say, “Not now, you can’t be in my space.” But what if you can’t? And you are subjected to somebody else’s vile, cruel impulses. Well, you’ve lost control for that little bit of time and the only way to heal – and I believe this firmly – is to get it back, to be in control, to be given the authority to be in control of your case, to say, “I want you to go after this guy. I want to pursue this. What do you need from me?” But that takes a lot of guts sometimes. It really does.

Scott

You had a lot of guts. You did it.

Annie

I don’t know if I did or if I just moved so fast that I sort of didn’t realize that. But either way, it worked out.

Scott

I think, for detectives that get a cold case like this resolved, they should get a bonus or something.

Annie

I absolutely 1,000% agree. This guy took a 30-year-old case and ran with it and nailed it shut within four months, and he did it on the anniversary of the crime. I can’t tell you how meaningful that was to me. Like, he gave me back that day.

Three years later, after Smith had pleaded guilty, I remember posting on Facebook, “Wow. For the first time in 30-plus years, today is only Pearl Harbor day.” That’s all it is. I mean, that’s a big day, obviously, but it’s not what it was for me. It wasn’t like my personal Armageddon day. So that was a huge gift that he gave me and I really appreciated it.

Scott

I think Annie is amazing. It takes a lot of courage to talk about the details of the trauma she went through. But she wants other victims to know that they’re not alone.

If you’re in a situation where you’re being abused sexually, help is available. You can contact RAINN – that’s R A I N N, which stands for the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network. You can call their hotline any day, any time. That number is 800-656-4673. You can also chat with them directly on their website, which is at R A I N N dot org. I’ll have that information in the episode notes.

Also in the episode notes, you can get Annie’s full Victim Impact Statement that she read as part of the sentencing process. And you can see pictures of Annie! The episode notes are at WhatWasThatLike.com/171.

A few episodes back, my guest was Julie, who talked about what it was like to be a hospice worker. That prompted Heather to send in this voice mail –

Heather

Hi Scott, my name is Heather and I was just listening to your podcast about Julie, the hospice nurse. I have a little story for you from when my mother passed away back in 1992. She was in a palliative care hospital receiving hospice care, I guess, you could say. There were four siblings. We had all been called in because she was supposed to pass away that evening. She was exhibiting symptoms. She had been kind of in an unresponsive state for a few days – maybe four or five days. Before that, she was exhibiting strange behaviors like eating things that weren’t really there and that kind of thing. They called us all in and they said you might want to come in tonight because this could be her last night. So, we all went down and we sat there for several hours. Then, the nurse came in and checked her, and she said, “Well, she seems to have rallied, so it’s not going to be this evening, so you might as well go home.” So we all went home.

The next day, I went in. I came around the corner and my mother was sitting up in bed talking to her friend, Mary. I was so stunned I couldn’t even talk. She looked at me and she went, “Oh,

hi Heather. Can you do me a favor and go get Mary a coffee down the hall? There was a little kitchenette down there.” So I said, “Yeah, sure. Mary, can I see you out in the hall?” So Mary came out and I told her what had happened the night before. She said, “Oh, she seems fine to me. She was sleeping when I got here. But then, she woke up and we had a conversation.” She’d been there for half an hour, so I just was so stunned.

So I went down to the kitchenette. There was a nurse sitting in there doing some paperwork. I turned on the kettle and whatever, and she said, “Strange how that happens, isn’t it?”

And I said, “Oh, you know what’s going on down there?” And she said, “Oh yeah, I see it all the time.” And I said, “Oh yeah, it’s bizarre. We were just here last night because she was supposed to die and now she’s sitting up in bed. I don’t get it.” And she said, “Is she really close to that woman?” And I said, “Oh yes, they’ve been friends for many years. They’re very good friends.” And she said, “Well, was she away somewhere?” And I said, “Yes, actually, she was over in Holland visiting family.” And she said, “Well, I bet you she said, ‘I’ll see you when I get back from my trip’.” My mother was just holding on, waiting for her to come.

The next day when I went in, my mother was back unresponsive. The next day, I think she had the death rattle. She was dying of lung cancer and then it turned to metastasized brain cancer. So I was sitting there and I was only 23 years old. My father had passed away when I was 17, so this was my last parent. So I was sitting in the room with her. She would breathe and then it would be really shallow. Then, I’d look and wonder if she had passed, and she didn’t pass, and then she’d gasp, and it was really terrifying, actually. And I was afraid of death. I’d always been afraid of death, but I didn’t want her to die alone.

So anyway, I went down to the kitchenette to see if there was anybody there who could come and sit with me and there was a nurse in there. She said, “Oh, I’m really sorry. We’re a little short-staffed today.” And I said, “Oh, okay.” So I went back into my mom’s room and next thing the nurse comes in and she’s got my mom’s little table thing. She had set that up so that she could do her paperwork so I wouldn’t have to be alone. So that was very nice.

So I sat there all day, literally, from probably 6 in the morning. Then, my sister-in-law and my brother came in right after they finished work – so probably about 5 o’clock. I was a smoker but I didn’t smoke all day because I didn’t want to leave my mother alone. So, as soon as they came in, I got up and went into the smoking-room again. This was a long time ago so, yes, there was still a smoking room in the hospital. So I went in and I just sat down and lit my cigarette. Then, my sister-in-law came running in and she said, “Heather, your mother passed away.” And I was so angry that she had done that. I sat there all day long against my wishes, I guess you could say. I didn’t want her to be alone, but I didn’t want to see her die either. It was kind of a very torn experience for me. Anyway, I was very upset about that.

Then, one of the nurses was in the smoking room talking to one of the patients and she came up to me because I was beside myself. I was very, very upset, crying and crying because she had passed away, but crying because she purposely waited till I was out of the room.

That’s how it seemed to me. So she said, “Well, you’re the baby and she probably knew that you didn’t really want to be there, and you were just doing it for her. So as soon as she felt there was somebody in the room with her that could handle her passing away, she passed.” So just listening to Julie’s stories brought back a lot of memories for me. So I thought I would call and share them with you. I love your podcast. I’ve called in a couple of other times. Anyway, take care and keep up the great work and interesting stories.

Scott

And if you’d like to listen to Julie talking about her hospice work, that’s episode 168 titled “Julie is a hospice nurse”.

I always welcome any comments or questions about any episode. If you have something to say, you can record it and send it to me like Heather did. Or you can come on over to the Facebook group and join over 6000 other listeners for some super interesting discussions. And you can answer our new question every Tuesday! That’s at WhatWasThatLike.com/facebook.

Graphics for this episode were created by Bob Bretz. Full episode transcription was created by James Lai.

And here we are at this week’s Listener Story. You know who sent this in? A listener – just like you. We want to hear your story! Just something interesting that happened to you, that you can tell in about 5-10 minutes. Record it on your phone and email it to me – Scott@WhatWasThatLike.com.

This story is about a boss, who had something important to say.

Stay safe! I’ll see you next time.

(Listener story)

This happened in the summer of 1982. It was a summer job between high school graduation and college. I got a job with a group of other kids who were in my high school – about five of them – at a country club, and we were basically a mixture of janitors and laundry people. Where we work was not air-conditioned. It was really hot. The laundry place with dryers and no ventilation got extremely hot. Someone even passed out. We had to wear these course uniforms. It was a little uncomfortable, but that was fine.

Now, I have to give a little background. I worked at a Jewish country club because I’m Jewish. Because the other two country clubs in my town were restricted, there were no Jews allowed and no people of color. Our boss was this older German woman in her mid to late seventies, and she was very sprightly and very stern. She had very high standards and I really wanted to please her. I’m pretty much the only one who went above and beyond, and she really liked me because I was a good worker. This group of high school students– all of them made fun of me because I was like the teacher’s pet. We kind of jokingly said, “Oh yeah, she was probably a Nazi, ha-ha-ha-ha.”

Little by little, she’d invite me a little bit each day to come into her air-conditioned office and she would serve me cake and Start to tell me about her life before, during, and after World War II in Germany. Over the course of a couple of weeks, I heard more bits of the story that she wanted to tell me. Basically, what I remember is that she had such a great marriage. She met her husband before the war. He was, I believe, a mechanic and he joined the Nazi party because his boss made him do that and he just went along. She said that, as things kind of got worked up in Germany, people saw something in Hitler because things had been so bad before. Her husband was drafted and went to war.

The war ended and that’s when the whole concentration camp stuff came out. At this point, she got very emotional. I mean, there was some crying and she said, “We didn’t know. We didn’t realize. Nobody knew. I was 17 and I didn’t know how to process it.” So I was like, “Well, I’m in air conditioning and I’ve got cake. That’s good.” She told me what happened to her husband. He was captured by the Soviets, ended up in a gulag, and eventually sent back home. By the time he returned, he was so emaciated. His health was so bad. He had been tortured. I think he had broken bones – they didn’t heal well. He was just in really bad shape and he died soon after. She was bawling.

I didn’t really know what to make of it, so I just listened and I supposed she was confessing to me like I was a surrogate jew and I was going to forgive her. Other kids I worked with weren’t Jewish, so she picked me to confess to, I suppose. So the summer ended. I went off to college and I thought maybe I’d write something about it. I thought maybe I could make some meaning about it, but I didn’t. I just went on with my life and that was my summer job before college.

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Every Tuesday, Scott and Meredith grab a past Tuesday Question from the Facebook group and answer it, and also talk about some answers submitted by listeners.

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Every tourist destination wants their guests to have a happy experience, but few places do that as well as Disney World in Orlando, Florida.

When Disney World visitors were surveyed, 75% said they were very satisfied with their experience.

Did you know, the Magic Kingdom Park at Disney World gets around 21 million visitors every year? And if you combine all of the Disney parks, it’s around 58 million people each year. And people keep coming back. And for anyone with kids, it’s a no-brainer – that’s where the kids want to go.

My guest today is Tricia. She and her sister, Heather, and their mom and dad, would make trips to Disney World every year. It was a family tradition that they all looked forward to.

They knew the layout of the Magic Kingdom by heart, and it didn’t matter that the rides and the attractions and the fireworks were the same as when they were there the year before. It was their place.

But there was one family trip to Disney World that was not like any of the others.

Tricia’s mom and dadTricia and Heather with their mom at the Magic KingdomTricia’s dad, Paul, admiring the Cinderella CastleTricia and her husband Scott on a recent trip to DisneyFull show notes and pictures for this episode are at
https://WhatWasThatLike.com/139

Graphics for this episode by Bob Bretz. Transcription was done by James Lai.

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Episode transcript (download transcript PDF):

Every tourist destination wants their guests to have a happy experience, but few places do that as well as Disney World in Orlando, Florida.

When Disney World visitors were surveyed, 75% said they were very satisfied with their experience.

My guest today is Tricia. She and her sister, Heather, and their mom and dad, would make trips to Disney World every year. It was a family tradition that they all looked forward to.

They knew the layout of the Magic Kingdom by heart, and it didn’t matter that the rides, the attractions, and the fireworks were the same as when they were there the year before. It was their place.

But there was one family trip to Disney World that was not like any of the others.

Scott

I’m talking with you today, but pretty soon people are going to realize this story is really about your dad. Can you just kind of give us a quick picture of who your dad was?

Tricia

My dad was awesome. It’s hard to talk about my dad without sharing a little bit about what he looked like. He was tall and heavyset. When he was younger, he had curly black hair which greyed once he got a little bit older. He always worked. He was a really hard worker most of his life. He worked in the produce marketplace just outside of Boston. He had a Boston accent. I remember he would work early mornings every morning. Deliveries of fruit and vegetables would come through the marketplace. He would be ordering fruit and vegetables for supermarkets and they would be loaded on trucks later. He drove those trucks and everybody knew him. He was a loud and quick-witted presence and a big smoker. He smoked 2 packs of Larks a day – I don’t even know if they still sell them, but I have a pack of his larks that I keep. I remember him just being silly and quiet at other times.

Scott

Yeah. It sounds that, in a job like that, you almost have to be loud and extroverted because there’s so much action and things happening all the time.

Tricia

Yeah. It was a very entertaining place to visit when I was younger. It was like being backstage at a theater production.

Scott

Your mom and dad met up and they got married. That’s when they discovered Disney World. How did that happen?

Tricia

They met in 1980 and they were married that same year. My mom is a singer and a bass player in a band – the same band for over 40 years – and they do covers of memorable songs. They used to play a lot of weddings and a lot of clubs. One night, my mom was playing at a club where my dad was working as a line cook at the time and he asked her out, and that was that. They fell in love. Later, we used to joke that the Beatles song was about my parents because, if you know the lyrics, one of them worked in a marketplace, the other was a singer in a band, and they had a couple of kids which, in our case, was me and my younger sister. They honeymooned at Disney World.

Scott

Was that just by chance that they went there on their honeymoon or had either one of them been there before that?

Tricia

My mom went – I want to say – when she was in high school on a class trip. She went to Disney World in Florida. My dad had never been. So when they were thinking of a destination, my mom suggested Disney World. So it was my dad’s first time. My mom would say she didn’t know if he even liked it because he didn’t give much of a reaction. She would say, “He didn’t say anything.” Later, she realized that he was overwhelmed. I think, part of that was he had a tough upbringing and I think seeing the imagination and the fantasy of something like Disney World which really strikes you as just a very delightful, fanciful place when you first see Disney World. I think he found a little bit of safety in that, and he loved my mom so much that he was overwhelmed with love and joy.

Scott

It’s called the happiest place on Earth. Everything is over the top, overwhelming, big, and happy. I can kind of see why he would have that reaction. You guys kind of made that your family destination every year.

Tricia

It’s true.

Scott

I mean, Disney World was kind of a big part of your family – would that be accurate?

Tricia

A huge part. We went to Disney World as a family almost every year. My dad wasn’t a Disney movie fan. He was a Disney Park fan and loved the music. Even though he wasn’t a Disney movie watcher, he loved the score from so many of the animated movies – Aladdin in particular, as well as the original music from the Disney rides. We would go to the pool. In addition to my mom being in a band, she was also a music teacher. She taught music to children in public school and she also gave music lessons. So our vacations happened every August because my sister and I were out of school. My mom wasn’t teaching. We would talk about going to Disney from the time we landed home from the last trip until the plane ride for the next trip

Scott

You mentioned that you got what you call the vacation planning videos in the mail?

Tricia

Yes.

Scott

I’m not familiar with that. What is that? Is that something Disney sends out?

Tricia

Yes. This was so normal for my sister and I. Then, as we talked about it, as we got older, it is very unique to us. I’m guessing Disney World’s marketing team would make these 30-40 minute advertisements around, “Come to Disney World. Here’s what you can do.” And they were well-produced. They would talk about the different hotels and the different parks where you could eat. At the time, I believe my dad would order them through travel agents. We would get them sent to the house and we would watch them as a family. At one point, we must have had dozens of these VHS tapes that we would just put in to watch at dinner. So this is kind of crazy. He would play games with my sister and I, like a quiz where he would say, “You’re standing in front of the castle. How do you get to Space Mountain?” And my sister and I would say, “Oh, you go this way, this way, this way. This is the best possible route to get to a particular ride.” He just always wanted to relive what it was like to be there.

Scott

Did you just go to the Magic Kingdom in Disney World or did you go to the other places like Epcot and some of the others?

Tricia

We did. So we went to Magic Kingdom, Epcot, MGM Studios – which is now Hollywood Studios and later Typhoon Lagoon when they made that water park – and Animal Kingdom. But our favorites were definitely Magic Kingdom. Polynesian Hotel was the hotel that my parents wanted us to stay at most frequently. Now, it’s outrageous in pricing, but we were able to make it work years ago. Epcot was another big one that we loved.

Scott

Can you talk about your dad’s health as it began to decline?

Tricia

He is half-Italian and has a large appetite to kind of prove it – we all do. He developed diabetes when I was little. I don’t remember how old I was. When I think of my dad, I always remembered him being diabetic and he would inject insulin, but he wouldn’t make any lifestyle changes. When I mentioned that he had a tough upbringing, his dad – my grandfather – was an alcoholic and a pretty violent one. I think that my grandfather’s alcoholism may have been passed down in a sense as a substance abuse disorder for my dad, and that drug for my dad was food. So it made him happy. It may have triggered some type of endorphins or dulled pain, and that was the way that he liked to share conversations with people – over food. His own form of entertainment was over food. His health continued to decline with his diabetes into my twenties. Eventually, he needed a kidney transplant. He refused to take a kidney from me, my sister, or my mother. He wouldn’t let any of us get tested.

Scott

Because you and Heather were both adults now, right?

Tricia

Yes.

Scott

So if you were a match, you could have donated.

Tricia

Yeah, absolutely. We would have donated, but there were two reasons why he refused. One was because he was afraid if something ever happened to my sister or me, and we needed both of our kidneys, he did not want to put us in any type of jeopardy. The other reason was that he wasn’t going to change. So why take a kidney that he was going to waste, for lack of a better phrasing? That was hard to kind of watch your parent make that decision just knowing that he was going to live out his life his way – all of the medical trauma that went along with it.

Scott

It’s tough being on a kidney waiting list because you just never know if you may get one soon. You may never get one. How long was he on that list?

Tricia

Months. He was on dialysis for months. Dialysis is difficult because he would spend the day at a dialysis clinic and he would be exhausted for a couple of days after. Then, as he started to feel better, it was time for him to go back to dialysis. It’s wild to think that it was his choice. He wasn’t the type to listen to reason around this. I think he was a complicated individual. So, one evening, he went out to dinner with my mom – I can’t remember if my sister was with them or if she was out. I know I was home. I still lived with my parents. I got a phone call at the house and it was a hospital – their hospital. They said, “We have a kidney for Paul – my dad – and it was through a cadaver donation.” So this individual chose to donate their kidney and it matched my father in their database. So they gave a call and I answered, thank goodness. I was clueless because I said, “Oh, my dad’s out. He’ll be back later.” The person on the phone said, “You need to get your dad right now and get him to the hospital.” That’s when it hit me. I called the restaurant and I got ahold of my family. They came home because it was before cell phones. Well, it wasn’t quite before cell phones – it was definitely a time when it was less common to have a cell phone on you all the time.

Scott

So you had to call the restaurant and get their attention that way?

Tricia

I did. Then they had to leave and come right home to get– I think they got, like, a change of clothes and said goodbye to me and my sister. My dad was a great dad. He did the best he could and he wasn’t a very “I love you” type of dad, wasn’t a big hugger, and that sort of thing. So I remember him in the car and me at the window of the car saying, “I love you.” And his reply was, “Okay.” That’s how I knew he was going to survive that transplant because if he said, “I love you” back I knew something else was going on, but he just very matter-of-factly said, “Okay.” And I said, “All right, he’s going to be okay.”

Scott

It’s just funny hearing that interaction and that dialogue because if you say I love you and they respond with “Okay”, some people would be offended or insulted. But you knew your dad. You knew it was the way he was.

Tricia

Yeah. It calmed me down. So he got the kidney and it worked beautifully, and he still wouldn’t change anything about his lifestyle no matter what we did or said to him. He was stubborn. I mean, we stopped buying him cigarettes once and he would still go out and get them himself. When I would run errands or something, he would say, “Oh, get me a pack of Larks on your way back.” I would do it and we stopped. We all made the commitment not to do it to try to help him quit, and it didn’t matter. He was going to go out himself and get him then. Because he is a diabetic, he attempted to make maybe very minor changes but, in the end, his diabetes took his right leg. So he had an amputation and he had neuropathy, which is something that causes weakness and numbness in his limbs. So instead of using a prosthetic limb, he had to use a wheelchair or a scooter. Then, it started getting more difficult for him because we were from Massachusetts. The winters were really hard on him and he loves the sun, so he really wanted to go to Disney World more and more consistently as his health declined.

Scott

Was he still able to keep working at this time?

Tricia

He worked for as long as he could. Then, between the kidney transplant and then the loss of his limb, he had to stop working. He tried to partner with a travel agent because he knew so much about Disney. He thought he could be helpful in arranging vacations for other people. Unfortunately, that didn’t work out because his neuropathy would make it difficult for him to type sometimes. So he had difficulty with mobility and he had difficulty typing but, if he wanted something, he would still get it. So he could order his own food if he wanted to eat something. He would order it to the house. He would take his scooter down to a convenience store at the end of our– we lived on a very busy street. He would take his scooter down to the convenience store and he would knock on their window and they agreed to give him his cigarettes and bring out his change because it wasn’t wheelchair accessible. He basically said, “Your store isn’t wheelchair accessible, but it’s fine by me. I won’t make a big deal to the city. When I come knocking, give me a couple of packs of Larks. Here’s the money. Here’s the change.” So they would do a deal on the sidewalk of the convenience store. That’s how stubborn he was – almost like, “I dare you to try and change who I am.” It was really frustrating.

At some point, we just decided to accept that. This is how he was going to live his life and we didn’t want to isolate ourselves from the relationship we had with him. Like, tough love didn’t work. So my mom, my sister, and I just– it was tough, but we did our best.

Scott

I’m just trying to put myself in your shoes. I mean, your frustration– you see him and his health declining and it was as if he didn’t care about it or as if he didn’t want to live long enough to stay with his family longer. That had to just be terrible for you to try to deal with.

Tricia

It was. It really was. And for his siblings. He’s one of four and they also tried to intervene. It’s difficult to articulate to those who haven’t met him, but that’s Paul. It was either love him as he is or turn your back on him. My family wasn’t going to do that, so we kind of watched him self-medicate. We did our best to love him and we did our best to get him to Disney as often as we could.

Scott

Did you ever ask him, “Dad, don’t you want to keep living? Don’t you want to stay with us?”

Tricia

I did. I did get up the courage. He was very vocal that he was going to live his life the way he wanted to live his life, and that hurt. I think something deeper was going on with his mental health. At one point, I did come to the radical acceptance of, “He’s not going to live long enough to see my sister and I get married, or my sister start a family.” So I asked him half-jokingly, “Dad, what do you want us to do when you pass?” He responded, kind of, half-jokingly. He said, “Cremate me and throw me in Disney World.” I said, “Okay.” I knew that’s what he wanted and his answer didn’t surprise me.

Scott

Yeah, you could have predicted that, I’m sure.

Tricia

Yeah, very much.

Scott

So he ended up spending more and more time in Florida.

Tricia

He did. He decided to spend most of the winter in Florida at an extended-stay hotel, which was near Disney property. He would’ve loved to have moved down there. There were a lot of pieces to that though. My mom was a teacher, so she would need to get licensed in the state of Florida in order to continue teaching music. She would need to quit her band and she would need to leave her own support system because, with my dad being unable to work, she was both the primary breadwinner and also a primary caretaker of my dad. My sister and I helped. My mom was his partner physically, emotionally, and mentally, and to ask her to then relocate was just too much. So, the plan for that winter was for my dad to go to Florida and then my mom would visit him on her winter break from school. So this was kind of the first test of, “Here’s where we can spend the winter and we’ll see how it goes.”

Scott

And he was mobile enough and could take care of himself enough to get by on his own, being in Florida by himself…

Tricia

Yes. So I took the initial trip down to make sure that his flight down was comfortable. I got him set up for the extended stay. I made friends with the hotel staff so they understood who my dad was. He had contacts with a visiting nurse association, so he had everything that he needed to be well while he was there. Of course, our family was in constant contact with him daily. As long as he had his cigarettes and his scooter, he was the happiest you’d ever see him.

Scott

And then your mom came to visit…

Tricia

Yeah, she visited at the extended stay, and then they decided to book a room for a night or two at the Polynesian on Disney property. It was their hotel and they wanted to reconnect and enjoy the park together. They had dinner. Then, later that night, my dad had a heart attack. His body was done.

Scott

Tricia’s mom, Christine.

Christine

Well, every time I called him for those three or four weeks he was there in the extended stay, he always sounded winded. He was breathing heavily. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t catch his breath. So I said, “Paul, I’m going to call 911.” “No. Wait. It’s okay. This happens all the time.” So I think he was having the heart attack over the past few weeks. I know he was. Then I finally called him and then his last words to me were, “Christine, I can’t breathe.” That ring in my mind every day.

Tricia

Looking back, we think he knew and he was holding out for my mom, so we were very grateful that he had my mom with him when it happened – not that you could ever prepare yourself, but we knew that my dad was on borrowed time through his choices, despite our effort. So, 911 was called and my dad was taken to Celebration Hospital. I think Celebration used to be a part of Disney – very close to Disney property. My mom called my sister and I and we immediately flew down to be with our parents. My dad had lost consciousness as a result of the heart attack and never regained it. He was in the hospital for a few days and we were hoping for him to get better, and he never did.

The hospital did scans on his brain and told my mom that he was deprived of oxygen for so long that his brain was permanently damaged and, if he regained consciousness, he would not be able to eat on his own or speak, and would require 24-hour care either at a nursing home or some facility that was equipped to deal with his needs. So my mom had to break this news to my sister and I’ll never forget it because we were standing in the hallway – my mom, my sister, and I were in a little bit of a circle. My mom was explaining to us what the doctors told her and what my dad’s life would look like if he regained consciousness. My mom and I went quiet. I was processing the news internally. I think my mom was too.

My sister, who is an incredibly gentle soul – she’s not assertive – said in the most firm voice I have ever heard out of her mouth with so much conviction, “No.” My mom and I like snapped out of it and said, “You’re right. No, he wouldn’t want that at all. He wanted his freedom. He lived the way he wanted to live no matter what. So my mom contacted a priest. My family is Catholic. They gave my dad his last rites. He was removed from life support and he passed away at age 52.

Scott

So young…

Tricia

So young. I’m 40 now. As I get older, it blows my mind just how young my dad was when he passed. It’s very sad.

Scott

Yeah. 52 is hardly middle-aged.

Tricia

Hardly. Yeah. Unbelievable.

Scott

Now, you, your mom, and Heather were in Florida. You mentioned that you weren’t quite fully grieving yet at that time. Why not? What was going on there?

Tricia

We went into, like, a logistics mode. I think we suddenly felt like we were on another planet. It was very much, “Okay, what do we do now?” The fact that he was truly gone did not hit us for quite some time.

Scott

Just because there were a lot of details you had to take care of.

Tricia

Yes. We were at the extended stay hotel. My mom and dad had their reservation at the Polynesian, and then that ended. My dad made friends with the hotel staff and they became fond of him, which was very easy to do. They transferred the reservation to my mom and we all stayed in his room to handle these next steps because we were truly at a loss of, “What do we do now?” So, we started to donate his clothing, his scooter, and things that we couldn’t ship back or we wouldn’t ship back with us. Like, what do you do? We just went robotic.

The hospital went into the next-step mode as well because they wanted to know what to do with my dad. My mom had him cremated. I remember we were in the hotel room when the crematory director knocked on the door. He got a box in his hands and came into the room. There was a table in the hotel rooms. He pulled out this bag of ash and went, “Here’s Paul.” And he popped it on the table in a hotel room in Florida, turned on his heel, and walked out. That was it. My mom and my sister looked at each other like we were on some kind of hidden camera TV show. It all happened over the course of a couple of days and, now, here we are. My mom and I locked eyes and she said, “What are we going to do?” I said, “We scatter them in Disney.”

Scott

People that are listening to this right now just got a big smile because they know what’s coming.

Tricia

They know what’s coming.

Scott

So you’re talking about logistics?

Tricia

Yeah.

Scott

Obviously, Disney does not allow this.

Tricia

No.

Scott

And you had to figure out how to do it anyway.

Tricia

Yes.

Scott

What’s your plan?

Tricia

At that time, Magic Kingdom. When my family thinks of Disney, we think of the Magic Kingdom, which is Disney’s main park. That’s the one with the castle and that location. I think they all do, but that one definitely at that time did bag searches. They have since added metal detectors. Back then, it was just bag searches upon entry. I knew we can’t just bring a bag of ash into the park, so it’s also a bit of a dark Disney secret that people have scattered ashes before. So we weren’t going to be the first. I was thinking that, maybe, they were expecting us to act a certain way. Like, I didn’t want to act shady and draw attention.

We didn’t have a car, but the extended stay was on a main road and we could walk to a gift shop. I had the idea of walking to a gift shop and buying one of those metal water bottles, so you couldn’t see the contents. Presumably, the cast members who would search the bag would just assume that it was a water bottle and not some kind of defacto urn. So we did that. We got a water bottle and went back to the hotel. I was at the hotel room’s table pouring ashes into the bottle. I thought it would be like pouring sand, but no. It is quite messy. So now I was wiping my dad off the hotel room table like toast crumbs and kind of brushing my hands together over the bottle to get all of this ash in thinking like, “What is this? What are we doing?” Still, grief hasn’t hit. It’s just like I’m in Operation Scatter Ashes in Disney.

I put the bottle of ash in my bag. We got tickets to go to the Magic Kingdom. We were walking to the security entry and I got anxious. I thought, “I might get caught. I might go to Disney jail – which is an actual thing. Maybe we would get caught and banned in perpetuity from all of these parks.” So we got to a section where you get checked if you got a bag. If you don’t have a bag, you don’t get checked. So my mom and my sister went through and I’m the one getting checked.

Scott

I just have to say this. This feels like a scene from Locked Up Abroad where somebody’s trying to get through airport security and they know they’ve got a little bag of cocaine in one of their carry-ons or something,

Tricia

Yes. I was terrified. If they had found it, I was playing through my head, “What are they going to say?” “Hey, what is this?” What do I say and what do I do? So all of this was going through my head and I could barely hear what the security person was saying. They opened your bag. They kind of do a little rifling through. I was looking at the water bottle the whole time thinking, “Do they open it just to make sure there’s no alcohol in it or is there a protocol I wasn’t aware of?” They took a look and they kind of slid it by and said, “Okay, go ahead. And we were in.”

Scott

It may have come down to which particular agent you happen to go through but, I’m sure most of the time, they see so many bags and bottles and everything come through all day and they’ve got a long line of people they’ve got to deal with. I think that played to your advantage.

Tricia

Yeah, I think the crowd was definitely on our side. We got through. Now, we feel like we’re completely on another planet. I remember everything that I looked at seemed to have a haze over it and I felt like I was walking through jello and it wasn’t just the Florida humidity. It was a very strange feeling. Our emotions had not caught up to us. Dad’s gone, but it still doesn’t feel like he’s gone. We’re at the Magic Kingdom, but my dad’s not at the Magic Kingdom. We’re about to scatter ashes – like, so otherworldly. We went directly to the restrooms as, like, our first stop to kind of collect ourselves. So we got Dad through, but we haven’t scattered anything yet. I was worried that if we were just standing around pouring ashes into our hands out in the open, it would definitely draw attention. So, in the bathroom stall, I opened up the bottle and I was like, “You get some ash and you get some ash.” So I poured ashes into my hand, my sister’s hand, and my mother’s hand, and we clenched our fists. We would carry his ashes in our clenched fists to ride number one, which was the Carousel of Progress. My dad’s favorite rides were the Carousel of Progress, Space Mountain, Peter Pan’s Flight and, fittingly, the Haunted Mansion. Then, his favorite hotel was the Polynesian. So these were the places that we intended to go.

Scott

You had your agenda.

Tricia

We had the agenda.

Scott

Can you describe the carousel of progress for people who haven’t been there?

Tricia

Yeah, absolutely. Think of it like a movie theater but, instead of a screen, it’s a stage that has animatronic characters and the stage moves around the characters. So, the only place to scatter ashes inside would be on the theater floor, which felt really rude. So, instead, we chose to scatter in the flower beds that are out in front of the ride.

Scott

So that’s kind of out in the open?

Tricia

Very much so. Oh yes. Anyone could see. My mom did a very obvious look around and, like, tossed a handful like she was feeding pigeons. I remember scream-whisper, “Mom! That’s too obvious!” So I had to demonstrate, like, “Just look at the flowers and then just open your hand and let it go.” So I did it, and then my sister did it and it was like, “Okay, first ride down. Let’s go back to the restrooms and then put more ash in our hands.” That’s the way that it went between each ride. We would go somewhere like a restroom and grab more ash. So that’s for the carousel of progress. Then, a very short distance away is Space Mountain, which is a rollercoaster in the dark – completely indoors and pitch black – so I thought, “Oh, this is good. This will be less likely to draw attention.”

It’s a three-people seat in a coaster cart. It’s kind of like a bobsled. You’re seated one behind the other. So me, my mom, and my sister can all sit in the same cart. Then, it was my turn to get too comfortable because we were going down this hill and the ride is very quick as a rollercoaster. I kind of tossed exuberantly the ash because, now, I’m feeling like, “Oh, this is for my dad” and tossed. I got an entire face full of ash blown back at me. And that’s when I laugh and then I start to cry because my dad would have loved to have seen that. That would’ve tickled him very much.

Scott

And he was there when it happened.

Tricia

Yeah. Yes, he was.

Scott

So then it was onto Peter Pan’s Flight.

Tricia

Yes. Peter Pan’s Flight. So you sit in a boat – that’s what your cart looks like. It’s suspended from this ceiling. If you look down, you see London – because Peter Pan takes place in London – and it was beautiful. That one was easy. We just kind of held our hands over the side of the boat and kind of gently opened them and the ash hit the floor. Then, we started walking over to the haunted mansion. This is the strongest memory that my mom, my sister, and I have. As we’re walking over – the Haunted mansion is on the other side of the park – this parade seemingly started all around us. I can’t really articulate it but it was as if my ears were blocked and suddenly unblocked. I looked around and there was this parade happening. Parades happen throughout the day at the Magic Kingdom, but never before have I seen this particular parade. Characters are singing and dancing on a float. The song that they’re singing and dancing is Shake A Tail Feather by Ray Charles, which was a favorite of my dad’s. My dad loved the movie The Blues Brothers, and it includes Ray Charles singing that song. We all felt something. We all felt my dad. We all looked at each other and we knew something is happening. It felt like he was all around us.

I mentioned that my family is Catholic. I’m an atheist. I share that because we all felt something. So, my atheism, which is not a disbelief in a God or Gods, it’s important that I share that I just lack a belief in a God or God. I hope I’m wrong. I’d love to see my dad again but it added an additional struggle to my grief. If I believed in heaven, I could believe that my dad is in a better place or, maybe, he’s reunited with loved ones or that I’d see him again, but I don’t. But to feel that moment– never before have I felt something like that that comforted me and let me know that my dad is around us, he’s okay, and he’s free now.

Scott

So you felt that and it didn’t necessarily need to be a religious thing for you, but it could be spiritual. Is that how you would describe that, you think?

Tricia

Yeah, I would agree with that. I do believe that energy has to go somewhere and maybe that’s where my dad’s energy ended up. It was a really good moment. So the Haunted Mansion is another dark ride. It’s a haunted house. Instead of walking through it, you sit in a buggy and it takes you through this haunted house. Because it’s all dark, we felt that we wouldn’t be seen, but the reality is that the Magic Kingdom has video everywhere and they can see visitors in dark rides. They can see you everywhere. So we did the thing where we kind of put our arms over the side of the buggy and sprinkled. There’s a cemetery scene in the ride and that’s what felt to be most appropriate. So we sprinkled him in the cemetery. I don’t mean to kind of dismiss this, but I am a realist and I knew that he was probably vacuumed up that night, but it didn’t matter. Nothing could capture or take away what we did that day for him. Nothing could take away the peace that it brought to all of us and just the silly kind of adventure. That was how we memorialized my dad.

Scott

Yeah, it seems like the perfect way to honor him. So you had one spot left.

Tricia

Yeah, we did. So we took the monorail, which is a suspended subway of sorts that will travel from the Magic Kingdom to a few other places – one of them being the Polynesian, which was my parents’ place. So, it was night at this time and we walked towards the lake. It’s called Bay Lake. It’s got sand. Today, you can’t reach the water but you could stand in it if you wanted to. We kind of tossed ash in the water and mixed it into the sand. We were looking at the castle across the water and it’s like, dad everywhere. It was good. It was a good ending to all of that. We didn’t have a funeral. My dad didn’t want one. What we did that day was exactly what he would’ve wanted. My mom got to spend time with my dad at their place – the happiest place on earth for them. As the rest of the moments unfolded from letting my dad go to then honoring him with how we kind of snuck him into the park, it bonded my mom, my sister, and I. It’s probably not surprising that we share a gallows humor together, so we were able to laugh and create our own peace, honor my dad, and then surround my mom in comfort. It was a really beautiful experience.

Scott

It sounds so much better than a formal funeral service. It just sounds more appropriate for him.

Tricia

Yes. Yeah, for us, it was. I think it was so important for us to listen to my dad because he always said who he was. He never tried to be anything other than Paul. He would drive you crazy being Paul, but you couldn’t help but adore him and be able to give him that last honor of, “We see you. We know what you want. We’re going to make it happen no matter what it takes.” And yeah, to your point, it was the most appropriate way to say goodbye.

Scott

Once again, Tricia’s mom…

Tricia

I felt exuberant because I was doing his wishes. It didn’t feel weird. I mean, I felt a little funny when I was trying to do it because I was sure that someone was going to arrest me and say, “Okay, you’re going to be in prison for life for doing this.” But no. I felt released. I felt like I was doing his wishes and I knew he was happy with it. I knew it and we did the right thing. I do want to go back again, but I’d like to go back to a different hotel and I want to revisit it a different way so that I can still remember him, but remember him and show him the new Disney in my heart.

Scott

Have you been back to Disney World since then?

Tricia

Yes, both my husband and I. We actually honeymooned there ourselves. I’ve been back with just me and my mom on girls’ trips. Me, my mom, and my sister have been back as a family as well.

Scott

It continues to be a family tradition, it sounds like.

Tricia

Yeah. In a way, it’s how we visit my dad, which sounds silly in a way saying it out loud, but that’s where he is. That’s where we feel him the most. That’s where we have our best memories. So, as much as it is just a fun place to spend time and have a vacation, it does have a deeper meaning for my mom and my sister. We get to revisit my dad anywhere we go on the property.

Scott

And you don’t have to go to a cemetery to do that.

Tricia

No.

Scott

We didn’t plan this – you and I – but you’ve told me that, as we record this, today is your dad’s birthday.

Tricia

It is. It is so wild how it worked out, but he would’ve been 66 years old today.

Scott

What’s your favorite memory of your dad?

Tricia

He would make up his own song lyrics. I mentioned how much my dad loved the Aladdin soundtrack. There was a line that was “Prince Ali! Fabulous he, Ali Ababwa.” So instead of saying that he would sing – and this is out loud around the house, in the car, or wherever – “Prince Ali fabulously, look at his outfit.” Like he would just make up silly lyrics. He would have our family in stitches. When we talk about my dad, we’ll sing his songs instead of the actual lyrics because he had so many for all these different songs. What endears me beyond that is my husband does the same thing and they never met. So it’s kind of like it’s special.

Scott

That’s so interesting. I’m sure you’ve heard this phrase that a daughter marries her father. That sounds like it’s come true in your situation.

Tricia

Yes, I think so. I think my husband and my dad would’ve been best friends. All of the wonderful characteristics that my dad has, I see it in my husband. My sister is married. She got a six-year-old daughter and her husband possesses a lot of certainly the hardworking qualities that my dad had. So it’s like we get to live in our own relationships aspects of our dad. It’s been really nice.

Scott

What’s your reason for wanting to share this story of your dad?

Tricia

I wanted to share it because there isn’t a normal way or a standard way to memorialize someone or to grieve, and I think this is kind of an oddball one. So it gives me the opportunity to share a unique story, and our actions brought us so much comfort in our grief. My hope is that, if anything, people can relate to this and feel like they can grieve and memorialize someone in their own way as well.

Scott

If you’d like to see some of Tricia’s family pictures with her parents at Disney World, those are in the show notes at WhatWasThatLike.com/139

You might be surprised at how many people sprinkle the ashes of their loved ones at Disney. It happens pretty regularly. But if you’ve ever been to Disney World, you didn’t notice it. That’s because Disney is very much aware that this happens, and they are on top of cleaning things up. They even have special vacuums they use for this, so it doesn’t affect anyone’s experience at any of the parks. So millions of people keep going there, and they love it, because it really is the happiest place on earth.

I have a couple of things I want to share with you. Earlier this week, we celebrated Mother’s Day. If you’re a mother, I hope you had an amazing day with your family or your friends.

But you might be listening to this right now, and you’re a mother who’s struggling. If you have a teenager, you might be having a really difficult time, and Mother’s Day maybe wasn’t so great, because of the tension in that parent/teenager relationship. It might seem like life is just one battle after another with your child. Of course you love them, but you might feel really stressed out by the constant fight.

Well, I have something for you today. This is just for you. Take a few minutes and listen to The Letter Your Teenager Can’t Write you.

(The Letter Your Teenager Can’t Write You)

Dear Parent:

This is the letter I wish I could write.

This fight we are in right now. I need it. I need this fight. I can’t tell you this because I don’t have the language for it and it wouldn’t make sense anyway. But I need this fight. Badly. I need to hate you right now and I need you to survive it. I need you to survive my hating you and you hating me. I need this fight even though I hate it too. It doesn’t matter what this fight is even about: curfew, homework, laundry, my messy room, going out, staying in, leaving, not leaving, boyfriend, girlfriend, no friends, bad friends. It doesn’t matter. I need to fight you on it and I need you to fight me back.

I desperately need you to hold the other end of the rope. To hang on tightly while I thrash on the other end—while I find the handholds and footholds in this new world I feel like I am in. I used to know who I was, who you were, who we were. But right now I don’t. Right now I am looking for my edges and I can sometimes only find them when I am pulling on you. When I push everything I used to know to its edge. Then I feel like I exist and for a minute I can breathe. I know you long for the sweeter kid that I was. I know this because I long for that kid too, and some of that longing is what is so painful for me right now.

I need this fight and I need to see that no matter how bad or big my feelings are—they won’t destroy you or me. I need you to love me even at my worst, even when it looks like I don’t love you. I need you to love yourself and me for the both of us right now. I know it sucks to be disliked and labeled the bad guy. I feel the same way on the inside, but I need you to tolerate it and get other grownups to help you. Because I can’t right now. If you want to get all of your grown up friends together and have a ‘surviving-your-teenager-support-group-rage-fest’ that’s fine with me. Or talk about me behind my back–I don’t care. Just don’t give up on me. Don’t give up on this fight. I need it.

This is the fight that will teach me that my shadow is not bigger than my light. This is the fight that will teach me that bad feelings don’t mean the end of a relationship. This is the fight that will teach me how to listen to myself, even when it might disappoint others.

And this particular fight will end. Like any storm, it will blow over. And I will forget and you will forget. And then it will come back. And I will need you to hang on to the rope again. I will need this over and over for years. I know there is nothing inherently satisfying in this job for you. I know I will likely never thank you for it or even acknowledge your side of it. In fact I will probably criticize you for all this hard work. It will seem like nothing you do will be enough. And yet, I am relying entirely on your ability to stay in this fight. No matter how much I argue. No matter how much I sulk. No matter how silent I get.

Please hang on to the other end of the rope. And know that you are doing the most important job that anyone could possibly be doing for me right now.

Love, Your Teenager

Scott

Hang in there moms. And dads too.

And I also got this voice mail from Russell, with more appreciation for the moms –

Russell

Thank you, Scott. Russell here. I’ve been binging on “What Was That Like” for the past month. Though many of your episodes are perspective-changing, what rattled my brain the most was the firsthand account of giving birth. It shows a light on how this otherwise beautiful miracle life can be scary, intensely misunderstood, and ironically deadly. With Mother’s Day just around the corner. I want to leave a message of gratitude to all the moms listening, especially my own Mother, Ann and my partner Kristen, Happiest Mother’s Day.

Scott

Graphics for this episode were created by Bob Bretz.

Full episode transcription was created by James Lai.

The Letter Your Teenager Can’t Write You was originally written by Gretchen Schmelzer. It was read for us today by Elle Ray James. If you need a voiceover artist, you can hear samples of their work online – there’s a link to that in the show notes.

And now, this week’s Listener Story! It’s how we end every episode. I’ll bet you have a story you can tell in about 5-10 minutes, and if you do, record it on your phone and email it to me – Scott@WhatWasThatLike.com.

This one is about a mom who had to perform CPR on her daughter. And I’m gonna go ahead with the spoiler so you don’t have to worry about listening to it – it has a happy ending.

Stay safe, and I’ll see you in two weeks.

(Listener story)

To give you a little background, my husband, Keith and I were 42 at the time this happened. Our daughter was almost six. I am a licensed practical nurse and was working in a clinic at the time. My husband is a maintenance worker employed in a foundry. We had a hard time getting pregnant and were only able to have one child. We lived in Minnesota and it was a very warm Sunday afternoon in August. We were all outside cooling off in the above-ground pool we had put up for the summer. It wasn’t very large or deep, but we still had a lot of fun in it. I took a break to sit on the patio and relax about 15 to 20 feet from the pool, and Keith had gone inside to use the bathroom. Neither one of us was drinking alcohol and we don’t use drugs.

Our daughter stayed in the pool doing her favorite activity – diving for toys that sink to the bottom. She would go down and gather all of them and ask us to throw them again while she closed her eyes so that she couldn’t see where they landed. Keith came back outside and we started talking. It was less than a minute later when he asked me where she was. Since he couldn’t see or hear her, I said she was going down for dive sticks and we started talking again. It was only another minute when we realized it had been too long, so he ran to the pool and saw her lying on the bottom. Somehow he was able to reach over the pool, grab her suit, and pull her out. We still have no idea how this happened, but are so grateful that he was able to do this.

Immediately I ran over to where he put her – on the grass – and saw that her lips were blue and she wasn’t breathing. Being a nurse since I was 20 years old, I have taken many CPR classes and have done it on people, but they were patients in a nursing home, not our child, and I had others with me to help. I forgot all of my training and was at a loss as to what I should do. I started praying and screaming to call 911, but we couldn’t find a cell phone. We later found it under a towel. Keith did eventually find a phone and they almost sent a helicopter to come to help us, but it turned out that it wasn’t needed because it was hot. Our neighbors had their windows closed with air conditioning on and didn’t see us or hear us, even though they were all home – our houses are close together. I started praying again and doing rescue breathing, not even thinking to feel for a pulse. After a few breaths, nothing was happening. So, I started chest compressions. After about 20 to 30 seconds, she started coughing and throwing up a bit. It was at that time that the first responders came running around the back of the house to help. She was conscious by this point, but not responding. I’ll never forget the way this kind man instructed us to get changed and grab some clothes and shoes for her along with her favorite toy or blanket while they got her loaded.

We made sure our pets were inside and locked up our house while we were headed to the hospital. The paramedics, at first, wanted Keith in with her since he was calming her down once she came to, as she was hysterical, and they told me to drive by myself the 30 minutes to the closest hospital. The driver heard this and said I was going to ride up front with him since our town was completely under road construction and he didn’t know the back road, so that is what I did. I immediately called my family as they only live a couple of blocks away and they are also headed to the hospital. Our small town has a siren that blows for emergencies, so they had heard the siren but had no idea it was for her.

We got to the emergency room and there was a discussion of flying her to a bigger hospital, but one doctor said she was comfortable keeping her local. She does have a history of asthma and that had concerned them. She spent the night in the pediatric intensive care unit and had her own private nurse. Once she got to the floor, the nurses fought over who got to give her a new American girl doll as hundreds were donated to girls her age. She quickly learned how to use the adjustable bed and call light and thought they were the best thing ever.

I drove back home to get clothes for us because she said I would know where to find things before Dad would. When I came back, she was showing off her new skills with the bed and call light. By 2 o’clock in the morning, she was done sleeping, so the nurse took her to the nurse’s station to play games so we could sleep. We went home that morning. The next day, she and I and the neighbor girls went back into the pool. I told her she couldn’t live her life in fear and – she loved swimming – she agreed. She did wear a life jacket for the first few minutes, and I was right by her side.

Now, I bet you’re wondering what happened. It turns out that she started twirling ballerina style, got dizzy, and fell. They told us a child will instantly panic when they go underwater by accident, and they think that is what happened. The water was not over her head. She could swim and was very comfortable around water. A month later, we put her in private swim lessons at age 6. She started out in level 2. By spring, she completed all of them except lifeguard training that she was too young for. Remember, she was only 6. She still loves swimming but gets nervous when the water is over 8 feet. We did a lot of praying and I really struggled with guilt as I was alone outside and should have been watching her better. While she was in the ICU, I asked Keith if he and I were okay. He said we both should have been watching her and we both saved her and that we were just fine. He and I are not ones to fight, and we weren’t going to start then.

View Details

You’re listening to the What Was That Like podcast, but this is not a regular episode. This is a bonus Raw Audio episode.

Usually on this show I talk to a regular person who’s been through something really unusual. Like they got attacked by an alligator, or they were buried in an avalanche, or they witnessed a murder. That person comes on the show and tells the story of what happened, first hand.

That’s not what we’re doing today. This bonus episode is called Raw Audio. The Raw Audio episodes are 3 real-life stories, and they include the 911 calls that were made when it was happening. You’ll hear that audio, as well as the story of what happened.

These episodes are usually only available exclusively to listeners who support the podcast for $5 a month. You can sign up for that at WhatWasThatLike.com/support. When you do that, you also get all the regular What Was That Like episodes without any ads. And you can binge all of the past Raw Audio episodes – right now there are a total of 32 of them.

But today, we have a special one and it’s available to all listeners. Every once in a while I like to put out an extra episode like this, so if you’ve been thinking about it, you can see sort of a free sample of what you’ll be getting when you become a supporter. If you like real-life stories, and the feeling that you are right there as it happens, I think you’ll enjoy this content.

And here’s the content warning for today’s episode – you’ll hear about a plane crash, a murder/suicide, and a home invasion.

And of course, after these 3 stories, we’ll have our regular Listener Story like we do for every episode.

To binge all 32 Raw Audio episodes and get all the new regular episodes ad-free, sign up here:
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https://WhatWasThatLike.com/138

Graphics for this episode by Bob Bretz. Transcription was done by James Lai.

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Episode transcript (download transcript PDF):

You’re listening to the What Was That Like podcast, but this is not a regular episode. This is a bonus Raw Audio episode.

And here’s the content warning for today’s episode – you’ll hear about a plane crash, a murder/suicide, and a home invasion.

And of course, after these 3 stories, we’ll have our regular Listener Story like we do for every episode. So let’s get to it.

Scott

Naperville, Illinois. Lloyd and Maureen McKee, both in their sixties at the time, lived in a neighborhood in a suburb of Chicago. This community is called Aero Estates, and it’s called that because it includes a small residential airport. Lloyd is a pilot and they owned their own small airplane. They lived in this community for 12 years and they flew their plane often. One day, around noon, Lloyd and Maureen took off to head toward Pittsburgh with Lloyd piloting the plane. Shortly after takeoff, something went wrong. Near the end of the runway is a business area, and the plane ended up crashing into the XSport Fitness Club. This was midday on a Wednesday, so the fitness center was packed with people working out. Several people who witnessed the crash called 911.

911 Operator

Naperville 911. How can I help you?

Male caller 1

Hi. A little one-engine airplane took off from the airport at 83rd Street and crashed into the XSports fitness center on 75th and Route 59. I mean, it’s just inside of Route 59.

911 Operator

Ok. Do you see anybody coming out of it?

Male Caller 1

We were walking here on the trail and we just saw it crash into the building.

911 Operator

Okay. Hold on one second. We’re going to get help out, okay?

Male Caller 1

Okay. I’ll hold on.

911 Operator

You witnessed it, you said?

Male Caller 1

I witnessed it. Right.

911 Operator

Okay. Hang on one second. Did it go actually into the building?

Male Caller 1

It went into the southwest corner of the building.

911 Operator

Of the actual building, correct?

Male Caller 1

Of the actual building – the XSport Fitness Center. Okay.

911 Operator

Naperville 911. How may I help you?

Male Caller 2

Hi, I’m at Naperville Aero Estates Airport and I just saw a plane crash into a building.

911 Operator

Okay. Where at?

Male Caller 2

It’s north of whatever the building is. It’s like a shopping mall north of Naper Arero.

911 Operator

Okay. Do you know what the cross street might be?

Male Caller 2

I don’t know.

911 Operator

Okay. So it’s north–

Male Caller 2

North of the airport. I think there’s a home depot in that shopping mall.

911 Operator

Naperville 911. How may I help you?

Male Caller 3

A plane just flew into the XSport Fitness Building.

911 Operator

Okay. All right. Is it on fire?

Male Caller 3

It went through the building. It’s inside the building.

911 Operator

Okay. All right. We’ll get the fire department out there, okay?

Male Caller 3

Alright.

911 Operator

Thank you.

911 Operator

Naper 911. How can I help you?

Male Caller 3

I already spoke with someone. There’s a plane crash into the XSport on the corner of 75th and Route 59th.

911 Operator

Did it go actually into the building?

Male Caller 3

It went actually into the building.

911 Operator

Did you see any flames or anything like that?

Male Caller 3

There are no flames at the moment.

911 Operator

Okay. We’re getting help on the way, okay?

Male Caller 3

All right. Thank you.

911 Operator

Thank you.

911 Operator

How can I help you?

Male Caller 4

Hi, my name’s Mike. I’m at the Costco at 75th Street and 59. There’s an airplane that took off in that small airport there.

911 Operator

Okay. Did it went into export fitness?

Male Caller 4

Yeah, I believe it crashed.

911 Operator

Okay. You said you’re across the street. Can you see if there are any occupants getting out?

Male Caller 4

No, I’m throwing my car up at Costco. I can’t even see. I just heard. I saw the airplane. I heard the impact.

911 Operator

Okay. We have help on the way, okay?

Male Caller 4

Awesome. Thank you.

911 Operator

Thank you.

911 Operator

Naperville 911. How can I help you?

Male Caller 5

Hi. We’re over at XSport Fitness 75th and 59th.

911 Operator

You calling about the plane crash?

Male Caller 5

Yeah, the plane just crashed into the building.

911 Operator

Do you know if anybody on the plane has been able to get out?

Male Caller 5

We haven’t had a chance to see. We see this gasoline leaking all the way into our gym.

911 Operator

Okay. You’re able to evacuate the gym?

Male Caller 5

Yeah, we’re evacuating right now.

911 Operator

In anybody in the gym hurt?

Male Caller 5

No, no one’s hurt in the gym yet.

911 Operator

Okay. We’re on our way.

Male Caller 5

All right. Thank you.

911 Operator

Thanks. Bye.

Scott

When first responders arrived, they found Lloyd and Maureen pinned inside the plane, but they were conscious and able to communicate. They were able to be removed from the plane and were taken to Edward Hospital. Their injuries were non-life threatening, consisting mostly of cuts and broken bones. Even though there were 280 people inside the fitness club at the time, none of them were injured. Many heard or felt the crash, and they all quickly exited the building. After an investigation, The National Transportation Safety Board cited the probable cause for the crash as “pilot’s failure to abort a takeoff”. Other contributing factors were improper annual inspection of the aircraft, as well as a hole in the plane’s exhaust pipe. There was a pre-flight inspection, but it failed to notice two critical engine malfunctions that caused the crash.

Stone Island, Florida, in Volusia County. Carlos and Lara were married and had an 11-year-old daughter named Adrianna. Their marriage had failed and they were separated while going through a particularly nasty divorce. Lara and Adrianna had left and were now living with Lara’s father, Phil. Part of the agreement they had worked out was that Carlos was not under any circumstances to visit them at Phil’s house. But one Monday morning, around 8 AM, he went there anyway, armed with a gun. He shot Laura and Phil multiple times on the porch of Phil’s house. Then he made a phone call to a friend to ask her to come and get his daughter. Adrianna was a witness to these two killings. At some point, she was able to run out of the house to a neighbor. That neighbor called 911.

Female Caller 1

There’s been a shooting. I’m at (hidden information). I think two people are dead.

911 Operator (Male)

Okay. Ma’am, did you see the people get shot?

Female Caller 1

No. But a little girl that lives there did.

911 Operator (Male)

Okay. Alright, stay on the phone. Let me get rescue started. Don’t hang up. Okay, ma’am? Hold on a second.

Female Caller 1

Okay. Okay.

911 Operator (Male)

Ma’am, where’s the person that did the shooting?

911 Operator (Female)

Where is your emergency?

911 Operator (Male)

911 transfer. It sounds like I got a possible double shooting over at (hidden information).

911 Operator (Female)

Okay.

Female Caller 1

It’s two houses down from here.

911 Operator (Female)

Okay, ma’am, take a deep breath. Okay. This is the fire department paramedics. I want to help you, but you have to answer my questions.

Female Caller 1

Okay.

911 Operator (Female)

What phone number are you calling from?

Female Caller 1

(Hidden information)

911 Operator (Female)

Where was the shooting at?

Female Caller 1

(Hidden information) That’s my home. Take a deep breath. We have paramedics coming, okay? So stay on the line with me. The best thing you do is give me as much information as you can, okay?

911 Operator (Female)

Okay. Do you know the people that were shot?

Female Caller 1

Yes.

911 Operator (Female)

Okay. Do you know how old they were?

Female Caller 1

No. How old is Phil? She’s asking me questions. They’re coming. They’re coming.

911 Operator (Female)

They’re on their way. As we’re speaking, they’re already on their way, ma’am.

Female Caller 1

I need the paramedics. I need the police here.

911 Operator (Male)

Yes, ma’am. Ma’am, ma’am. Listen, ma’am.

Female Caller 1

(Silence)

911 Operator (Male)

Ma’am. Ma’am. Ma’am. Ma’am, I need your help, please. Hello, ma’am.

911 Operator (Female)

Talk to the police officer.

911 Operator (Male)

Ma’am. Listen to me. Okay. I got the cops coming. This lady on the phone – she’s a paramedic. Can you tell me where the person that did the shooting is? Ma’am?

Female Caller 1

I’m sorry. I’m sorry.

911 Operator (Male)

Where is the shooter?

Female Caller 1

He’s in the house.

911 Operator (Male)

Okay. Did he shoot himself or is he still alive, do you know?

Female Caller 1

No, I think he’s still alive.

911 Operator (Male)

You think he’s still alive? Okay. Can you tell me – did he shoot two people or did he shoot himself?

Female Caller 1

He shot two people. There’s this little girl right here, right now – she saw it.

911 Operator (Female)

Okay, she’s with you.

Female Caller 1

(Sobbing)

911 Operator (Female)

Okay, listen to me, ma’am. The best thing you can do is take a deep breath and calm down for her, okay? Calm down. I know. Take a deep breath. Alright. Okay. Okay. Talk to the police. Talk to the dispatcher. Tell him what you know.

911 Operator (Male)

Ma’am, where are the people that he shot? Are they inside or outside?

Female Caller 1

They’re inside. They’re inside.

911 Operator (Male)

Okay. All right. So the people that he shot are inside. Can you tell me the guy’s name who did the shooting?

Female Caller 1

Carlos Negron.

911 Operator (Male)

Carlos Negron?

Female Caller 1

Yes.

911 Operator (Male)

Okay. Can you tell me how old Carlos is? About twenties, thirties, forties?

Female Caller 1

He’s in his forties.

911 Operator (Male)

Okay. And he went in the house?

Female Caller 1

He’s in the house.

911 Operator (Male)

Do you know the address?

Female Caller 1

The address is, hang on just a second. I’m going to–

911 Operator (Male)

No, I don’t want you to get too close. Don’t go there. If you don’t know the address, that’s fine. I just want you to just tell me if you know it. If you don’t know it, that’s fine. Clear away from there.

911 Operator (Female)

Does she know her address?

Female Caller 1

Honey, what’s the address at that house? Where is she? She’s on the porch?

911 Operator (Male)

Ma’am. Ma’am.

Female Caller 1

Yes?

911 Operator (Male)

Who are you talking to?

Female Caller 1

I don’t know the address.

911 Operator (Male)

I understand. Just listen to me, okay? You’re doing a wonderful job. I appreciate all the help you’re giving me. That person that you’re speaking to – were they in the house when this happened?

Female Caller 1

Honey, were you in the house? She’s on the phone too.

911 Operator (Male)

She’s on the phone too?

Female Caller 1

I think so.

911 Operator (Male)

Is she talking to 911?

Female Caller 1

Are you talking to 911? No.

911 Operator (Male)

Okay, so this girl– she was inside the house when the shooting took place?

Female Caller 1

Were you inside the house when that happened? Yes, she was.

911 Operator (Male)

Okay. How old is she? Stand by Central Fire, please.

Female Caller 1

She’s 11.

911 Operator (Male)

She’s 11 years old. Okay. Was she shot?

Female Caller 1

No, she’s not.

911 Operator (Male)

Okay. All right. So the little girl was not shot. Okay. All right. What I want you to do is I want you to take that little girl with you right now, and walk over and stay in front of your house, and just go right by your front door in case you need to go inside. Can you do that?

Female Caller 1

Yeah. (Inaudible)

911 Operator (Male)

What’s that?

Female Caller 1

(Silence)

911 Operator (Male)

Ma’am, I want to try to get you and her safe. Okay?

Female Caller 1

Her mother is laying on the front porch.

911 Operator (Male)

Okay. I understand that. I need you to get away from the house. I need you to see if you can take her and move away.

Female Caller 1

We’re down two houses down. Get away from there!

911 Operator (Male)

Ma’am, who are you speaking to? Ma’am?

Female Caller 1

There’s a guy there. There is a guy walking around the front of the house that is not the shooter.

911 Operator (Male)

Okay. That’s fine. Okay. Listen, you can’t control that. I need you to help me here, please. I need you to take that little girl, get her away from there, and just move her away safely. Okay? Let’s not worry about what anybody else is doing. I need your help.

Female Caller 1

We’re two houses down right now.

911 Operator (Male)

Okay, that’s fine. Okay. Is she still on the phone with somebody?

Female Caller 1

Honey. Honey. The police are going to want to talk to you when they get here.

911 Operator (Male)

I just need her away from there. We’ll keep you on the phone here.

Female Caller 1

Okay. Don’t go near there.

911 Operator (Male)

Yeah. Nobody goes near that house, okay? They’re putting themselves in danger by doing that.

Female Caller 1

God! You don’t know what he’ll do!

911 Operator (Male)

Ma’am, do you know that girl?

Female Caller 1

Yes.

911 Operator (Male)

She kind of needs to stay away from that. I don’t want you to go after her. You told her. You did what you could.

Female Caller 1

Oh, God.

Scott

While that person was on the phone, another neighbor called. This person had been out walking her dog and heard the gunfire. You’ll notice that this caller was pretty impatient with the dispatcher and the fact that police and first responders didn’t show up immediately. It also sounds like the crime scene may have been compromised.

911 Operator

Where’s your emergency?

Female Caller 2

(Hidden information) I’m coming! I’m coming!

911 Operator

What city are you in?

Female Caller 2

It’s in Enterprise.

911 Operator

What’s going on there?

Female Caller 2

There’s a shooting.

911 Operator

Who’s been shot, ma’am?

Female Caller 2

I believe a woman and a man, and I believe the shooter’s still in the house. I’m not sure if he’s alive or not. I don’t know if he’s alive. Actually, wait, I just heard the shots fired. I’m standing right in front of the house.

911 Operator

Let me see here. Just stay on the phone with me, okay?

Female Caller 2

I’m with you. I’m with you.

911 Operator

Where are you? You’re standing right out in front?

Female Caller 2

Right. I am.

911 Operator

Okay. You know these people?

Female Caller 2

I do.

911 Operator

Who are they to you?

Female Caller 2

Neighbors. Are they on the way?

911 Operator

We have the call, ma’am. Who’s inside the house with what?

Female Caller 2

The shooter was in the house. I’m not exactly sure who was in the house, but the daughter of the mom who I think was in the house is still in the house– and the grandfather and the dad.

911 Operator

So you’re not sure–

Female Caller 2

A woman, a man, and the man who’s doing the shooting are in there. (Screaming in the background)

911 Operator

And you just heard all of this or?

Female Caller 2

Yeah. I was walking my dog and I heard shots. I thought maybe somebody was shooting the gator or something, but I don’t think so. We need somebody here right away.

911 Operator

Okay. So when you heard the shots, then what happened?

Female Caller 2

I am still walking around the corner. There’s no visible sign of anybody inside. I don’t hear anything. I’m scared to go in to find out because the guy is still in there with a gun.

911 Operator

Yeah, don’t do that. But I’m just trying to understand how you’ve come to the conclusion that people were shot. Did someone tell you this or is this a speculation?

Female Caller 2

The neighbors said so, and the little girl whose mom is in there is saying that she was also in there at the time. But I did hear gunshots.

911 Operator

Right. I understand that. But how do you know somebody was shot?

Female Caller 2

Just by what the little girl is saying. I don’t know. I walked up and I called 911.

911 Operator

She was in the house?

Female Caller 2

Was she in the house? Yes. Why isn’t there somebody coming?

911 Operator

They got to drive there, ma’am.

Female Caller 2

The fire department’s just across the street.

911 Operator

They need police officers there as well – someone’s standing there with a gun.

Female Caller 2

Okay. There was a police officer that lives right around the corner. Should I walk back and get him?

911 Operator

No. The units that are on duty got to respond, ma’am.

Female Caller 2

Hey, don’t hear any sirens or anything.

911 Operator

Just stay on the phone with me until I get there.

Female Caller 2

That’s what A-D said.

911 Operator

And who else is calling ma’am?

Female Caller 2

The next-door neighbor.

911 Operator

And that’s the one that was in the house?

Female Caller 2

No, the next-door neighbor was at her house and she fire gunfire. She came running out. She’s on the phone – I don’t know with who because I’m consumed with this phone call.

911 Operator

Right. But we have somebody else on the line called before you.

Female Caller 2

That might be the next-door neighbor. I’m going to walk back. (Inaudible) so I’m going to walk around back. You want to with me?

911 Operator

Ma’am, wait for the officers, ma’am. Don’t do that.

Female Caller 2

No! Nobody’s coming! I don’t even hear a siren or anything. I’m walking.

911 Operator

Ma’am, hello? If we have officers pulling up on scene and there’s a shooter in the house, they’re going to be coming there with their weapons drawn and you should not be–

Female Caller 2

I understand that.

911 Operator

So you need to get away from that area. You also told me that somebody’s shooting inside the house. Why would you walk onto the property and walk by–

Female Caller 2

I’m not on the property.

911 Operator

Stay off the property.

Female Caller 2

I’m not on the property. (Inaudible) on the back deck. Oh my God. Are you still there?

911 Operator

Yes, ma’am.

Female Caller 2

I’ll wait for you on the back porch. Oh, my heart’s racing. He shot himself too. So there are three bodies on the back porch.

911 Operator

Okay, so you went back there? Ma’am?

Female Caller 2

I’m sorry, go ahead.

911 Operator

All right, so you went back there?

Female Caller 2

Yeah. Well, I’m not on the property. I’m next door. I’m looking on the back deck and I see three bodies. One girl, two men.

911 Operator

One girl and two men.

Female Caller 2

Yes.

911 Operator

Okay.

Female Caller 2

And it doesn’t look like anybody’s breathing.

911 Operator

Okay.

Female Caller 2

Oh my God. This is unbelievable. This is unbelievable. Somebody got to get here right now. Where are they?

911 Operator

They’re driving there, ma’am.

Female Caller 2

Okay. I got to go. I have to see if anybody is alive. Oh my God. Where are they? Where are they?

911 Operator

Ma’am, they’re driving there. I need you to calm down.

Female Caller 2

I’m calm. I’m calm. But my heart– (inaudible)

911 Operator

You need to get away from there because the officers are going to be pulling up and they’re going to be trying to clear that area. So you need to get away from there.

Female Caller 2

I’ve got to go get the dog. It’s a great dane inside. Actually. It’s in the back.

911 Operator

At where? At the house or– ma’am, you need to stay out of there. Stay out of there. The officers are pulling up with their guns drawn. Stay out of there.

Female Caller 2

She’s yelling at him to see if he’s alive. She’s not listening to me. She’s going in – the next-door neighbor.

911 Operator

Who just went in the house?! Who’s going in there?!

Female Caller 2

The next-door neighbor.

911 Operator

The next-door neighbor? You need to stay out of the house. How many times do I have to tell you to stay out of the house?

Female Caller 2

Then you better get somebody here.

911 Operator

Ma’am, we have officers– (crosstalk) Ma’am! Ma’am! This is the sheriff’s office. That’s a crime scene. Get out of that house. I’m telling you to get out of the house now.

Female Caller 2

This is a crime scene. You got to get away.

911 Operator

Get out of the house! I’m ordering you to get out of the house! Period. The deputies are coming on scene. Get out of there and go meet with the deputies.

Female Caller 2

(Screaming in background) I agree.

911 Operator

Tell her to get out of that house, ma’am because you’re putting–

Female Caller 2

I’m not in the house (crosstalk).

911 Operator

Tell her to get out. She’s going to get shot by a deputy if she don’t get out of the house. That’s a problem.

Female Caller 2

Can you grab her? She needs to get out of there.

911 Operator

Get her out of there and go meet the deputies please, okay?

Female Caller 2

Here they come. The sirens are coming. Come on, you got to get out of there.

911 Operator

Just get out of there. Go meet the deputies. Okay?

Female Caller 2

I hear the deputies. I’m going to hang up. I got to get the other dogs.

911 Operator

Okay. Alright, thank you.

Scott

When police arrived, they found Lara and Phil dead on the scene. Carlos had also killed himself with his gun, which was found near his body. Adrianna, now orphaned, was put in the care of the Florida Department of Children and Families.

Hollywood, Florida, north of Miami. Luis was 11 years old at the time. This happened on a Thursday afternoon. His dad went out for a bit to pick up dinner, so Luis was home by himself watching television. He heard a loud knock at the front door. Shortly after that, he heard the glass being smashed out of a back window. He called his father who told him to call 911. Luis quickly ran to his bedroom and dialed 911 while he was hiding. And for the first part of the call, the dispatcher was questioning if it was a prank call.

911 Operator

Where is the emergency?

Luis

(Whispering inaudibly)

911 Operator

Where?

Luis

(Whispering inaudibly)

911 Operator

Is there an apartment number?

Luis

No, it’s a house.

911 Operator

What’s your name?

Luis

Somebody broke into the house.

911 Operator

Are you inside the house?

Luis

Yes.

911 Operator

Are you alone inside the house?

Luis

No.

911 Operator

How old are you?

Luis

911 Operator

What room are you in?

Luis

In my room.

911 Operator

In your bedroom?

Luis

Mmhmm

911 Operator

Is the person inside the house?

Luis

Yes, ma’am.

911 Operator

What does he look like? What does he look like?

Luis

I don’t know

911 Operator

You don’t know if he’s a white male or a black male?

Luis

No. (Inaudible)

911 Operator

Okay. And you don’t know what he looks like. How do you know he’s in the house if you can’t see him?

Luis

I hear him.

911 Operator

You hear him?

Luis

They’re coming.

911 Operator

Where are they?

Luis

(Whispering inaudibly)

911 Operator

Where?

Luis

(Whispering inaudibly)

911 Operator

Where are your parents?

Luis

In the gas station.

911 Operator

In the gas station. Okay. I just heard somebody. What are you doing? What’s all that noise in the background?

Luis

I’m trying to hide.

911 Operator

Are you moving furniture?

Luis

Yeah. (Whispering inaudibly)

911 Operator

What?

Luis

(Whispering inaudibly)

911 Operator

What are you doing?

Luis

Hiding.

911 Operator

Okay. You’re still in your bedroom?

Luis

Mmhmm.

911 Operator

Hold on a second. I don’t know if it’s real or not.

Luis

It’s real! It’s real!

911 Operator

Well, he said someone. Did you hear the person talking or anything?

Luis

Yes.

911 Operator

You heard him talking? What was the person saying?

Luis

I don’t know. He’s in my parent room.

911 Operator

He’s in your parents’ room. Do you know how he got into the house?

Luis

He broke the glass.

911 Operator

From which window?

Luis

The kitchen. He’s coming.

911 Operator

Can you go into your closet and hide in your closet?

Luis

It’s two people.

911 Operator

It’s two people?

Luis

Here they come.

911 Operator

What kind of voices do you hear? Do you hear two men or a man and a woman? Two men?

Luis

Mmhmm.

911 Operator

Can you tell me what they’re saying?

Luis

I don’t know. I can’t hear anymore.

911 Operator

Do you know what side of the house they’re on?

Luis

No.

911 Operator

The north, the south, the east, the west, or anything like that?

Luis

North.

911 Operator

North. Okay. You’re looking at the house. Are they on the right or the left side of the house?

Luis

Left side.

911 Operator

Left side.

Luis

It’s a yellow house.

911 Operator

It’s what?

Luis

A yellow house.

911 Operator

Okay. He said, if you’re looking at the house, it’s the left side.

Luis

(Inaudible)

911 Operator

Looking at your house, is your bedroom on the right or the left?

Luis

What? No.

911 Operator

What did they yell?

Luis

I don’t know. I’m in my room under my bed. Are the cops here, yet?

911 Operator

Be quiet, okay? Talk very softly, okay? Hello?

Luis

Hello.

911 Operator

He’s under the bed. If I’m looking at your house, what side is the bedroom? Where is the bedroom?

Luis

In the left on the north side.

911 Operator

On the left. In the back or in the front?

Luis

In the front.

911 Operator

In the front?

Luis

Mmhmm.

911 Operator

Okay. Front of the house.

Luis

Are the cops here?

911 Operator

They’re outside. I want you to stay on the phone, okay? Did you hear a knock at the window?

Luis

Yeah, I hear them knocking.

911 Operator

You hear the officers knocking on your window. Go to the window. He’s going to the window.

Luis

I see them.

911 Operator

You see that? You see the officers?

Luis

Can I come out from under my bed?

911 Operator

Yes. Come out from underneath your bed and go to the officers at your bedroom window. Can you see them?

Luis

I’m coming up

Scott

With the burglars still inside the house, police were able to pull Luis out to safety through his bedroom window. Officers then made entry and apprehended two teenagers both aged 17. They had ransacked the home. There was a third burglar, also a 17-year-old who was captured later. The three suspects were charged with burglary of an occupied structure, grand theft, and possession of burglary tools. Luis was a straight-A student. and he said later that he didn’t understand why the burglars tore up his academic awards. His father planned to contact the school and see about getting those awards replaced. In a statement, Lieutenant Nicole Coffin of the Hollywood Police Department said, “The quick thinking and smart actions of the child and the rapid response of officers led to a successful outcome in this incident.”

I hope you enjoyed this episode. For me, there’s just something about hearing an actual 911 call that makes everything so much more real.

And if you want to binge all 32 Raw Audio episodes, and get all the new What Was That Like episodes ad-free, come on over and sign up as a supporter. That’s at WhatWasThatLike.com/support. You know, when you do that, it’s not just about the money, although that is definitely appreciated. But it’s also you telling me, hey Scott, I like what you’re doing here! And that means a lot, it really does.

As always, graphics for this episode were created by Bob Bretz and the full episode transcription was created by James Lai.

And this week’s Listener Story is about something I have never done – and probably never will – karaoke.

Stay safe, and I’ll see you in a week.

(Listener story)

(Listener Story)

It’s fair to say I’m a karaoke fiend. The first time I remember doing karaoke was at Six Flags in Great America, the one in Gurnee, Illinois. To be specific, our high school class was there for a physics trip. I think we were supposed to learn how roller coasters react to gravity and different kind of angles and G-forces and things like that. I don’t really remember learning anything, but I do remember performing the song Fat Lip by Sum 41 with one of my high school friends. It was a delightful time and it got me hooked. To date, I have performed over 600 songs at karaoke at places all around the world. How do I know it’s over 600 songs? I have a Spotify playlist of all the songs that I have done, which is just all kinds of bananas, but never fails to produce a good song.

I also hosted karaoke when I lived in Los Angeles at a bar where Jewel, as part of a Funny Or Die video, went undercover to do karaoke. If you’ve not seen that video, I highly recommend checking it out. About 75% of the people in that video were still local, still regulars when I was hosting karaoke just a few months later there. I even won $50 in a karaoke contest. One time, I sang the song My Band by D12, which features six different rappers in it. I got second place behind a woman who used to be a Chaka Khan backup singer. I still maintained that she had quite the advantage and the leg up, and it showed in the judging. All of that led to the foundation of what I consider my crowning karaoke achievement, which was performing at halftime of a WNBA basketball game. My friend was having her birthday at a bar that did gong karaoke. It’s kind of, like, showtime at the Apollo, but for singers. If you get enough people that are displeased with your performance, they’ll hit a gong. You’ll be escorted off the stage and you don’t get to finish. Little did I know that my friend’s sister worked for the San Antonio Spurs entertainment crew, and she told me about something new that they were trying for the WNBA’s Silver Stars – halftime Karaoke.

One week later I was driving down to San Antonio ready for my big break. I had a friend with me. We got there about three minutes before halftime was going to happen. My friend’s sister was frantically running around looking for me. We bumped into each other and got all set. She said, “Go up to the second level. There’ll be people up there that can get you all set up and all that.” There were three of us that would be performing during halftime. The first is a 13-year-old girl who’s the daughter of one of the executives in the Spurs organization. I don’t remember exactly who it was, but I remember hearing that she was the daughter of one of the higher-ups. She sang Michael Jackson’s Human Nature, which I think is a challenging choice for anyone, let alone a 13-year-old. But hey, teenage years. That’s probably the hardest part of our lives, right? Like, we’re going through some stuff and that’s a song all about that, and she nailed it. She knocked it out of the park. She did a fantastic job.

I want to lighten the mood a little bit. So the song I had chosen was I Believe in a Thing Called Love by The Darkness. It’s got all the classics of a nice karaoke. It’s got a guitar solo that you introduced by yelling guitar. It’s got a nice high falsetto, a part where people can clap along, and it’s just a great classic rock song. As I was waiting my turn, I felt less like Justin Hawkins – the frontman of The Darkness. I certainly didn’t have a skin-type spandex body suit on like he often likes to rock. I was more like Eminem at the start of Lose Yourself. My knees were weak. My palms were sweaty. Thankfully, no vomit or spaghetti on my sweater.

Then, I got handed the mic. They told me where I could kind of move around to. I said all right. That’s going to be my pong esque back and forth because I like to move around at karaoke. The guitar started and the drums kicked in, and I just lost myself in the song. It was a little disorienting seeing myself on the jumbotron as I was performing, but I did my best to scan through the audience and look at the people who looked like they were having fun, who looked like they were enjoying the song they were singing along to. Those were my people. When I made eye contact and gave them a grin, it was just the coolest moment. When that guitar solo kicked in, I said “Guitar” and handed my microphone to one of the employees there because I was going to go around and high-five people in the section that was closest to me. They were all enjoying it. I said, “Hey, I going to give you some dap here.” They thought I was done performing though, so I didn’t get to sing the end of the song, but I got through 2 verses, 2 choruses, and part of a solo. I’d say that’s pretty good.

I got back down to my seat. My friend was super excited for me. She gave me a high five. Other people around me were saying how much they enjoyed it. I sat back in my chair and watched the Silver Stars play the rest of their game. I think they lost by, like, 25 points that game. They were playing the Minnesota Lynx who were the top team in the WNBA that year. So perhaps, like my battle with the Chaka Khan backup singer– not the fairest of fights, but we powered through and it was a wonderful time.

I think the takeaway that I got from that is to say yes to things I didn’t know what to expect. Sure, I had done karaoke, but never in front of thousands of people, and it was just the coolest experience I got over my stage fright. I was never going to see these people again except for the one friend that I came with and maybe my friend’s sister. Other than that, who cares? Let loose the wind. I think, sometimes, it’s so easy to get caught up in our own insecurities and our own self-doubt. Throw it all into the wind. Try something new. Get out of the comfort zone. All the cliches– they’re cliches for a reason – because they work. I felt awesome with it. I still karaoke to this day.

The next time you are out at a karaoke bar and someone is on stage and they look a little uncomfortable, they look like maybe they don’t know what they’ve done, maybe they’re even saying, “Hey, this is my first time ever performing karaoke,” go up to the stage and give them a high-five. If you don’t want to touch anyone, just give them some words of encouragement. They will certainly appreciate it knowing that someone has their back just like thousands of people had my back, and I am very appreciative of it. Thank you for listening and whatever you do today, whatever new thing you try today, I know you’re going to rock it.

View Details

The Greek historian Herodotus wrote about seven great architectural structures. That list became known as the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

Of those seven achievements, four were destroyed by earthquake. Two were destroyed by fire. Only one is still standing – the Great Pyramid of Giza, in Egypt.

This pyramid today has a height of 450 feet, or 137 meters. It was the tallest structure in the world for over 3800 years.

And now, it’s a popular tourist destination. People from all over the world will travel to Cairo, and stand next to this enormous structure, and just wonder about all the manpower and materials and work that went into creating it.

And there are others, like today’s guest, Alex, who look at the Great Pyramid and think “I’d like to climb to the top of that pyramid”. And Alex came up with a plan to do just that.

What he didn’t plan on was getting caught.

view of the city waking upAlex at the topAlex in the temporary confinement area, after getting caughtIf you’d like to contact Alex:

Email: brock.alex@gmail.com

Twitter: @ABrockstar32

Pyramid map:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Giza_pyramid_complex_(map).svg

Full show notes and pictures for this episode are here:
https://WhatWasThatLike.com/137

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Episode transcript (download transcript PDF):

The Greek historian Herodotus wrote about seven great architectural structures. That list became known as the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

Of those seven achievements, four were destroyed by earthquake. Two were destroyed by fire. Only one is still standing – the Great Pyramid of Giza, in Egypt.

This pyramid today has a height of 450 feet, or 137 meters. It was the tallest structure in the world for over 3800 years.

And there are others, like today’s guest, Alex, who look at the Great Pyramid and think “I’d like to climb to the top of that pyramid”. And Alex came up with a plan to do just that.

What he didn’t plan on was getting caught.

Scott

What were you doing in Cairo?

Alex

It’s funny when you look back on the path that your life has taken and how many events you could trace back to just a random choice – sort of an arbitrary event of chance type deal. When I entered college, I had to pick a foreign language and I kind of had done, like, the French thing in high school. I wanted something a little different and there were some options. I just saw Arabic on the list and I kind of just, “Sure. I’ll sign up for Arabic 101. Let’s go.” That decision has cascaded and changed my life so much, including the story that we’re about to talk about. My college had a relationship with the American University in Cairo to do an exchange sort of thing. So, for my third year, I signed up to do that for a full year. I was at the American University in Cairo studying Arabic and taking other courses as well from, like, the fall 2006 semester through the academic year.

Scott

So you were a college student, you were in Egypt studying the Arabic language, and you had this crazy idea. How did this idea get into your head?

Alex

During the break between semesters – the winter break – I came back to the US. My family wanted to see me. While I was home, I was on Facebook and I came across a classmate of mine who was taking Arabic with me, who posted these photographs that were just like, “Wait, what?! They looked like they were from on top of the Great Pyramid Giza.” As I read the captions and the comments and all that, it was, “Yes indeed, that’s exactly what was going on.” I thought, like, “How did you possibly do this?” So I was anxious to ask him about it. I returned to Cairo – flew back to Cairo – sometime in early January. When I saw him, I was like, “Dude, we need to have a conversation. Was that really on top of the pyramid?” He said, “Yeah, it was.” I was like, “How did you make that work?” He told me that he went late at night to, sort of, the site – the Monument site – and gave a guard a hundred pounds, which was about $20 at the time, just to let him enter the park. The guy let him through. This is very believable. Like, bribery is bribery. Greasing palms is an effective way to get things done more efficiently in Egypt and across the Middle East because, like, one-third of Egyptians live on less than $2 a day, so 20 bucks in someone’s pocket is a big deal. I was like, “Really? Wow, that easy, huh?” He said, “Yeah.” So that put the idea in my head, especially because I had been an avid rock climber since I was about 13 or so, so, clearly, I wanted to climb

Scott

This makes me think of something that parents say. If your friend jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge, would you do it too? Apparently you would.

Alex

Well, it’s a fair point. I was 20 at the time and. There were all kinds of decisions that I made when I was 20 that I would neither repeat nor endorse now. I had not fully developed a brain and whatnot. It just sounded really cool. It does. I’ll give you that.

Scott

It does sound cool. So you were an avid rock climber – you said that already – and you had a rock climbing friend, Ryan. How did you guys meet?

Alex

Yes, he became my best friend. We met at our local climbing gym in Cincinnati, Ohio, where we’re from. When we first met each other, we didn’t like each other at all, and then we became just the closest of friends who spent all our time together. So we had such a close friendship. I was going to turn 21 in March of 2007. As a sort of birthday present – I think he was in college in Massachusetts at the time – he booked a ticket to come see me in Cairo and we were going to hang out for a week. We met at the climbing gym and we were climbing partners, sort of. There’s a climber, there’s a belay right down managing the ropes, and all of that. People typically climb in, like, partnerships and that’s the kind of relationship that we had.

Scott

It seems like a climbing partner was coming to visit you and you had this crazy idea – the pyramid. It’s like all the details are sort of coming together. You wanted him to come and go with you, obviously. How did you bring him into this?

Alex

Kind of, as a surprise. I wasn’t so sure yet myself. I mean, I knew I really wanted to do it, but I was nervous about doing that.

Scott

Of course, because this is highly illegal.

Alex

Yeah. So, I was really thinking hard about it and I didn’t want him to be super jazzed about the idea. Then, I find myself sort of thinking, “Oh, maybe this isn’t such a good idea.” So I waited until he was in Cairo and he was totally in. He was like, “That’s amazing. That’s it. We should do this.”

Scott

He was there for almost a week before you even told him, right?

Alex

Yeah. If I recall, the climb happened on his penultimate night in Cairo, so I think I told him maybe the day before that – three days before he was to part, probably, in the morning. He had questions. He was sort of like, “Whoa, wait a minute.” I studied Arabic and the culture for a couple of years. He’s coming into this totally blind, so he definitely had some questions, but then he was in.

Scott

But this climb isn’t like typical climbing at the side of a mountain. Do you need to take equipment or ropes?

Alex

For the pyramid? No.

Scott

I mean, because it’s at a 90-degree angle– what is the angle that you’d be climbing?

Alex

I don’t know, actually. That’s a really good question, but it’s not quite what you describe. The angle is not as gentle as it looks from the ground. I found that out, sort of, halfway up the climb, when I looked below me, I thought it would sort of fan out like a staircase. If you fall, you’re going to probably, maybe, like skipping a stone across a pond. You might hit a few, but you’re going straight to the ground.

Scott

You planned it, obviously, at night just for less visibility.

Alex

Yes.

Scott

What happened?

Alex

You guys started by drinking a lot of coffee.

Alex

Egyptians might get mad at me for saying this, but you would think of this as Turkish coffee. Heavy grounds toward the bottom. It’s very strong, typically with a lot of sugar. So yes, we were certainly pounding that to make sure that we would be awake even just to get there and then also the energy for the climb.

Scott

As if the adrenaline wouldn’t do the trick.

Alex

There was that, yeah. That was a nervous energy, but the coffee certainly helps.

Scott

What time did you leave to set out to head toward the pyramid?

Alex

I would say it had to be between, like, 1-3 AM, something like that to hail a taxi. Cairo is a city of 18 million people. I mean, there’s stuff going on all night long, so you can eat very easily, find a taxi, but you can’t really just hail the taxi and say, like, “Take me to the pyramids.” It’s going to raise an eyebrow. So we hailed a taxi and the location I gave was– there’s kind of, like, an area outside the main gate. There’s actually a Pizza Hut that has probably one of the best views of the monument site that’s there. So I sort of gave that as a location and just had him drop us off there near the main ticket boots of the pyramids.

Scott

It almost seems like you’re overly cautious. Like, what’s the taxi guy ever going to say? Is he going to call the police? Like, these guys want to go to the pyramids at [3:00] AM. Something’s up.

Alex

Right. Which, of course, is absurd. Like, he doesn’t care. He just wants his fare. I think you’re onto something there that was indicative of not the anxiety, but the nervousness around, like, not wanting to screw this up, and getting into legal trouble in a foreign country. I mean, they have a whole show about it, right? What’s it called?

Scott

We’ve all seen Locked Up Abroad.

Alex

Right. It’s not usually on people’s bucket lists. There probably were some steps that we took that were overly cautious, but it’s better safe than sorry.

Scott

There are multiple pyramids at this location. Why did you choose this particular one?

Alex

I guess I can think of three reasons. 1) It’s the one that my friend, my classmate did. If there were other factors that made him decide on that, whatever. I knew that one was doable because I know someone who did it. 2) It’s the tallest. It’s 481 feet tall, if I’ve got that right – about 187 meters. So, if you’re going to climb a pyramid, you might as well climb the tallest one. Most important is its peak. The smaller of the two is a true complete pyramid that has, like, a pointed top for reasons that I don’t know. The larger of the two does not. It’s missing sort of the top couple percent of the stones and there’s a flat landing or kind of a platform up there, so you could actually summit and, like, hang out. That’s a big advantage for sure.

Scott

So you got there and you’re starting to survey how to get in…

Alex

Yeah. I was kind of, like, just checking the area out for, like– we don’t know what we’re doing. I got as much advice from my classmate as I could, but when you’re actually in there, it’s kind of like, “Well, what do you do?” So we’re walking around. At the time, there was a perimeter fence, but the security was so poor that stretches the definition of both perimeter and fence – to call it that – and we did find a gap that was away from the main entrance, not like a gaping hole, but it was obvious that it would be fairly easy to get through. So we thought that we’ll just give that a trip, and we did. Well, that area was guarded. Out popped the guard who sort of, “Whoa, stop.”

I was pretty nervous at this point. I mean, I had done sort of the bribery thing, let’s call it – tipping for sort of casual things. If you’d like extra service, you can get things done very quickly. If I had to deal with government paperwork because I was a student abroad, I could slip some money to the person at the counter and be in line faster, but nothing like this. So I was pretty nervous at this point. When the guard stopped us, it was like, “Okay, here we go.” So I reached into my jacket and I pulled out a hundred-pound note and I sort of said, like, “Oh, I’m sorry for the inconvenience here. I hope that this will sort of make up for that. He was not having any of it. He backed away palms up. “No. I can’t take that. Get out.”

Scott

What bad luck. You run into a guard with a little bit of integrity.

Alex

Exactly, yeah. The chances of that were pretty low. The chance that the spot was even guarded was extremely low.

Scott

Because yeah, this is the middle of the night. There’s normal viewing tourist hours during the day. Nobody’s going to be wandering around there that time of night except for the security guards…

Alex

And the people who are trying to break into.

Scott

Exactly.

Alex

But yeah. This was a spot where there was no natural security post. Obviously, if we had seen him before we tried to get in, we wouldn’t have tried to go there. So he was probably just hanging out at a sort of unofficial post. It was a surprise.

Scott

So it seems like this is a critical part of your adventure here. Did you, at that point, think, “Okay, well I guess it’s not going to happen.”?”

Alex

You’re right. It was a critical point because we were dejected. The only method that I had learned to make this work fail, but we weren’t willing to give up just yet. We were bummed. We’re walking around perimeters, sort of, discussing between ourselves like, “Do we just go home?” Like, “No. We’re here. Like, Ryan, you’re leaving soon to go back home. We’re going to do this.” And then we kind of went back and forth like that. Eventually, we found ourselves back near the main gate and were still sort of discussing what we ought to do when one of us – I don’t remember who – said like, “Look at the guy at the very main security booth, like, right at the entrance. Check it out.” The guard there was elbow on knee, head in palm, snoring asleep and totally out. So Ryan and I sort of exchanged glances and shrug. This is our end.

Scott

And there were no other guards in the area that could have seen you?

Alex

Surprisingly, no. Not that I recall. I think there was, like, the one main gatekeeper, if you will. We didn’t know what we were going to find inside, but there was a shopkeeper who – like I said, again, being Cairo at 3 AM, there are still little sort of bodega-type things that are open – was leaning in the doorway. He was alert and awake. He saw us standing there.

Scott

How far away was this shop from the main gate?

Alex

I’m really bad with this, but I would say a couple of hundred feet – like half, a football field.

Scott

Close enough that he could see that you guys were kind of walking around acting suspiciously.

Alex

Yes. And that we were interested in the entrance to the pyramids. So it’s kind of a different version of “bribing the guard” thing. I had only been in the country for 7-8 months or whatever it was, but I did have enough on-street knowledge to know that we needed to patronize this guy’s shop if we were going to mollify him to sort of turn a blind eye to whatever it is that we were about to do. So I was like, “Okay, we’ve got to go do this.” So we did. We went in. I bought a bag of peanut M&M’s, little mini-sized ones – I don’t remember what Ryan got – and that did work. I mean, I think the guy stayed at the cash register. He didn’t even come back to the doorway. So we were on our way. The guard was still asleep. So we just literally snuck right past him and just walked straight through into the maintenance.

Scott

So the gate wasn’t locked, closed, or anything. He would be there spotting somebody coming in if he were awake?

Alex

Yeah. Like I said, at the time, in 2007, it really was quite porous. The whole thing was very penetrable. So he was supposed to sort of act as the gate, but he was tired. So now we’re in. Just to orient in space, when you’re looking at the main entrance, sort of like the iconic photo, the sphinx is, like, in your face, straight ahead and the two main pyramids at the site are sort of staggered behind that. So when we enter, the sphinx is in front of us. On the left, it is obviously a very popular tourist site. So there is, like, a trotted path to follow that people would walk to go see things – we’re just walking on that – and there’s a retaining wall on the left hand side for whatever reason – I guess to separate the sort of the actual site from the walking path. We were kind of, not cartoonishly, sneaking tiptoeing, but we were ducked a little bit, crouching, and using the retaining wall for some cover because there was a maintenance crew doing something on the sphinx itself – a pretty sizable one. Actually, it’s way too hot during the day in Cairo to probably do that kind of work. Plus, it detracts from the tourist factor, right? So they must do that stuff at night. We didn’t want them to spot us. It was unlikely that they would have if we had just walked normally but, again, we were nervous.

Scott

But they’re just doing their job though. They’re not there to guard the place.

Alex

No. It was very clear. They didn’t even seem like they were Egyptologists doing some kind of preservation or there was scaffolding that was involved, et cetera, so who knows what they were doing. They were very involved, chatting amongst themselves. Egyptians are very charismatic, charming, and love humor, and so there were lots of boisterous laughter. They were not paying attention to us. But nonetheless, we did use the retaining wall as some cover. At some point, we kind of paused and had a whisper conversation among ourselves. I don’t remember what the decision in front of us was but, like, should we do this or this? When we heard a sound all of a sudden and we turned around, it was another guard 10 feet away. He’s snoring. He’s also asleep. Clearly, this also was not an official post but he maybe wants to avoid the detection by his supervisor to grab a quick nap. I mean, he was right there. It was like, “Okay, we got to go.” So we started moving quite a bit more quickly past him just in case we would wake him up and we’d be detected.

We passed the Sphinx. Now, it’s behind us on the left. The sleeping guard that we didn’t expect was behind us on the right on the main path. At the Monument site, on the left hand side, it’s no longer there, but it was really weird. I never went inside this thing. It was this museum that supposedly held something called a solar boat. It was called the Giza Solar Boat Museum. This held an actual artifact, an actual ship called a solar boat, and they were the vessels that were used to transport the body of the pharaoh upon his death to the burial site at the pyramid – the boat from life to the afterlife was the idea. It looked like– have you ever, like, flown internationally into Dallas?

Scott

No.

Alex

Okay. Well, they have these weird little, like, pods that carry you from the plane to the gate. It just looked like a weird capsule that is on the left. There’s the path and the one side of the pyramid is directly on the right. So we’re between those two things. We were there. We were at the base of the pyramid. We’re using the museum thing and the pyramid itself as cover from both sides. There were supposed to be guards at each of the four points at the base of the pyramids, but we noticed that, on the far side away from us, there was a sort of makeshift campfire going. They were gathered around that and talking amongst themselves. I’m sure that the night shift got– I mean, nothing’s going to happen. Nothing ever happens, so they weren’t staying at their posts and they were just doing their own thing. We noticed that it was a concern, but it was not. We were not thinking that it was likely that they would stop, turn around, and see two people standing in the dark.

Scott

How cold was it?

Alex

February is a month when there are a lot of sandstorms. Also, for some reason, it’s a month where people burn a lot of trash and they do that at night, and that kind of warms it up. This is, maybe, in the third week of March – I don’t really remember. I had a jacket on, but Ryan didn’t. He just had a T-shirt on, so it must have not been that cold.

Scott

Once you start climbing, you’re going to be warm anyway.

Alex

That’s true, yes. But this was a pivotal moment here. I mean, we’re standing at the base and I’d be curious to know if Ryan would agree with this. If he had at that point said, “This is not a good idea, man. Let’s just get out of here.” I would’ve said, “Yep, you’re right. Let’s go.” We’ll be on our way. I know I would’ve felt that way. I wondered if he would say that he felt the same way if I had said, “Nah, let’s forget about this,” or if he would’ve fought me on that. But that’s not the way it went anyway. It ended up going where I looked at him and I said, “Well, I guess we better start climbing.” Ryan looked back at me and he said, “Yeah, I guess we should.” He started. Off he goes. I was like, “Oh shit, I love that.”

Scott

No hesitation. Just get going.

Alex

Absolutely. I think he was maybe waiting for, like, a green light from me – who knows. I don’t know what he was thinking, but he’s off. So I was like, “Okay, shit. We’re doing this. Here we go.” So we started climbing.

Scott

What’s the texture of the surface of the wall? Did you know what to expect? Was it what you expected?

Alex

Yeah, I did kind of know what to expect. On one of the site surfaces, there is a tourist site. I don’t remember how far up it was, but you can go inside of the pyramid and there’s, like, hieroglyphics on the inside. You can see where they would bury the– so, some version of climbing the pyramid is legal and, in fact, encouraged as part of the experience. So it’s not like you’re not allowed to touch them. People are all over them all the time. I had been to see the pyramid because I was in Egypt. I did kind of know what to expect about that. Climbing it when there isn’t, like, an ushered way to do it was a different experience. These things are massive. It’s got about 2.3 million stones – the whole thing – and the lightest in weight of them is about 2.5 tons. At the bottom, they’re near 10 tons. It’s just absolutely enormous. So I knew about the texture. It is true, though, on the thing about the angle of incline that we were about to scale. I did envision – I don’t know why – more of a staircase-type experience. I’m going to step up and push myself up with one leg and then I’m going to do it on the next thing, and it was not like that at all. That’s why I referenced the size of these stones.

Scott

So what was the process of– as you went up, how did you gain altitude?

Alex

It did change as you ascend because the stones do get smaller. When you’re near the bottom, the next stone that you need to get on top of is about waist level. So you’re clearly not in a staircase-type experience. Like, I had been expecting that I would put my elbow or my forearm kind of on the stone in front of me that I needed to get on top of and then hoist a leg up on that stone, and then kind of use that as leverage to roll the rest of my body – not roll, it wasn’t like that – as leverage to get the rest of my body up on top and then rinse and repeat.

Scott

At the top of each of the individual stones, there was a little bit of a ledge?

Alex

Yes, definitely. There was a sufficient ledge. It wasn’t like I’m going to lose my balance and fall.

You were comfortably on the next stone. Maybe, about halfway up, I did look down. People who are afraid of heights don’t look down, but we were fairly-experienced rock climbers. Like, that was not a problem. So I looked beneath me and that was a little nerve-wracking. It does not fan out like a staircase like you would expect. I mean, when you look at any picture of the pyramid that’s taken from the ground, it really looks– I don’t know why this is different when you’re climbing it, but it really does look like, sort of a gentle– and so if you were to fall, it might be like falling down the stairs hitting each step along the way. That is not the case. You might skid across a couple of them, but you’re pretty much headed straight to the ground if you fall once you reach a certain height. So that did make me a little nervous. I mean, at this point, if you’re halfway up, it takes just as much effort to go down as it does the other half, so there was no thought of stopping. I just noticed it and I was like, “Oh, okay.”

I would say maybe two-thirds or three-quarters of the way up, we do start to hear some sound. We stopped and paused because we didn’t really know what was going on or, like, what was starting. Well, it was the Adhan, which is the loudspeaker that is affixed on top of mosques that announces the call to prayer. Muslims pray five times a day, and this had to be what’s called the prayer. It happens a little bit before dawn. “Allahu akbar” begins the call to prayer, and that’s what was happening. The person whose job that is is called a muezzin. Cairo has about 4,000 mosques in it. They call it the city of a thousand Mosques, but it’s much more. I think, now, they’ve synchronized everything and they only have one muezzin. So it’s sort of a standard system and that was not true then. Every mosque had its own muezzin who would announce the calls to prayer and not everyone’s watch was on at the same time.

Scott

They didn’t synchronize.

Alex

Yeah. And the way they would chant– everyone had their own little style. So one guy started and then it started to swell as the other mosques joined in. Eventually, it was this cacophony. The sound enveloped us. We’re out in the desert and it was, like, sort of a moment of we’re not in Kansas anymore. Wow, this is really cool.

Scott

What a unique soundtrack for the adventure you were having right there.

Alex

Exactly. The lights of Cairo were on one side. The pyramids are not remote out in the desert. I mean, like I said, from the main gate, there’s a Pizza Hut right across the way. It sort of is at the edge of a megalopolis. So the lights of Cairo on one side, the sound of this call to prayer, and then the barren desert on the other side– yeah, it was pretty cool. I mean, it was sort of a moment to pause and soak in the whole climb. I don’t totally know – It took about maybe 45 minutes or an hour, maybe. Ryan summited first, and I followed not too long after. I was really surprised at how big the platform is. Like I said, this pyramid has a flat top to it. You can’t get a sense of, at least – maybe, I’m just bad at this – the size from the ground about how big it would be. Not that we would have to stand in place for fear of falling over the edge, but I didn’t think there would be enough room to, like, really kind of hang out. It’s huge. I would say, as an adult, you could take, like, maybe 8-10 wide stride steps from one side to the other. There’s a lot of room up there. I got to the top. Ryan was seated. His legs were kind of dangling over the top platform. He looked at me and said, “Hey.” There we were on top of the great pyramid.

Scott

It’s over 480 feet tall, which is 187 meters. So you’re up almost the height of a 50-story building.

Alex

Well, Scott, I had never thought about it. Yes, I had never thought about it.

Scott

Yeah. I mean, I can imagine you’d be a little concerned that if you got up close to the top and slipped and fell, that would be a serious fall.

Alex

It would definitely be a serious fall, but it really is the nature of that platform in such that, even if you’re just slightly careful, you’re good, you’re safe.

Scott

What was up there? What was it like being on top of this thing?

Alex

We had enough sort of, I guess, ambient light from, I don’t know whether it was from the city or what, but you could see on the surface of the platform. A bunch of names were carved into it. Some were, like, from the 1800s – people that had done this. Others were more recent. I think I read somewhere afterward that, in the 70s, this was a very popular thing to do. Someone had left, like, a Swiss army knife up there in order to continue this tradition. I don’t remember how, I’d have to ask Ryan, but it sort of said on the knife itself, on the plastic, sort of red surface of a big Swiss army knife, “Welcome to the club. Use this to carve your name into the top of the pyramid. We’re not interested in defacing the monument.” So Ryan pocketed the pocket knife. To my knowledge, I would imagine that he still has it to this day. That’s quite a memento.

We were just sort of looking, hanging, looking out over the city lights, walking around, and taking a few selfies. Well, Ryan, like I said, was really into analog photography. Dark room. He was really into the whole process. So, throughout the whole trip, he had been very interested in achieving or obtaining quality photographs that he could develop. Then, back in the US, I had a little– it was called a power shot. It was a Canon simple little thing, but it did have a timer. The platform looked like an antenna, almost. It’s like a wooden structure that mimics the completion of the actual pyramid shape. I don’t remember exactly how, but you were able to place a camera somewhere such that you could then do a timer and have a picture taken. We both did that and I took a short video. I wish I had taken more, to be honest, as it got lighter. I just have one that’s maybe half a minute long. I’m, “This is fucking cool. We are on top of the pyramid right now.” We were really just taking it all in. It really is an enormous, one of the biggest, most populous cities in the world on one end, and then, like, quintessential – what you think of as the desert – on the other. So there we were.

Scott

How long did you stay up there?

Alex

Probably about an hour and a half – two hours I would say. We got a little bit of daylight. You can see the other pyramid – the smaller one that is truly pointed – so that was cool. We were looking down, sort of, upon that and were really kind of laughing at like, “This is just insane – what we just did.” So, yeah, it was about 1.5-2 hours, something like that. It was great and it was truly a magical experience. I will never do anything this cool ever again in my life – I’m quite certain. Then, it was time to get ready to head on down. Young 20-somethings didn’t really think things through such as one perhaps might have, and the problem that we did not anticipate for the descent was the effect of the sunrise in a big city when the sun rises with tall buildings blocking a lot of light. That increases as the day goes on and the sun gets higher in the sky. We all know what I’m talking about. That was not the case here. When the sun crested, it might as well have been noon. I mean, there’s nothing out in the desert. There’s nothing to block the sunlight from being just everywhere. It was day as soon as it was sunrise. It was like a normal full-on midday day.

Scott

Obviously, being at the top of the pyramid, there are no tall buildings around you to block the sun from you. You were the tallest.

Alex

Yes, we were. That’s right. We were also very interested in not being detected, and detection is obviously significantly easier when there’s sunlight. So the combination of these factors created a problem. It was time to start going down.

Scott

Obviously getting up is optional. Getting down is mandatory.

Alex

That’s a good point. Descending is mandatory. Yeah, it’s a good way of putting it. I guess the guards around the campfire at the base thought, “Well, shit, it probably ought to get back to work now. Day is going to start.” So they resumed their posts. It was time to start descending quickly. We realized the situation that our chances of being detected were increasing rapidly by the time.

Scott

I’m putting myself in your shoes. I’m thinking now it’s daylight. Obviously, somebody’s going to see us as we come down.

Alex

Yeah. We were really hoping to avoid that. The cover of night was basically everything. First of all, it was the time when the guard was asleep. Second of all, obviously, it’s dark. I was definitely nervous about what was going to happen. They were at each of the four points of the pyramids, so it’s not like there was a more strategic area for the exit. At some point, we’re going to go from the last stone to the ground and then we’re going to be between two guards.

Scott

Exactly, yeah. Did you go down the same surface that you climbed?

Alex

We did not.

Scott

What was your reasoning behind which way to go down?

Alex

That’s a good question. I believe we went down the side where, like I said, there’s sort of a part of the monument site where you can go in. I guess we just figured that maybe it would be more stable for safety reasons because they would curate that area for normal tourist traffic. I’m kind of post-hoc thinking about what the reasoning might be, but I’m not sure if we put a whole lot of thought into it. We just knew that if we were going to evade detection at all, we needed to get going.

Scott

What’s the process for going down? I mean, I’m picturing you sliding down on your butt.

Alex

Yeah, pretty much. You sort of scoot your butt across the surface of the stone, reach down with your toe, and then just put the rest of the weight on your one foot and then get the other foot down. That process gets more necessary as you near the bottom. Like I said, the stones are smaller on top and larger at the bottom. I don’t remember what the very, very top few steps were like but, at some point, it’s pretty much scooting your butt, putting one foot down on the lower one, and then putting the rest of your body weight on it. About a third of the way down, sure enough, I guess, a guard was looking upward for whatever reason. We were spotted, and he was not happy. He was really not happy. He was sort of pointing forcefully, like, “Get down here!” So we picked up the pace even more. I was very nervous at this point. I really don’t know why. I don’t know how I thought that this was not going to be the outcome.I mean, I guess we needed to leave. I should have asked my classmate about a safe descent.

Scott

Yeah. The exit strategy. That would’ve been a good thing to get from him.

Alex

It really would’ve been, I was taken in by the romance of the barricades of just doing the climb itself. I didn’t really think about the rest of it. So, my heart was racing now. I realize we’re in trouble and, quite frankly, I don’t know what kind of trouble it’s going to be. As we’re scooting along, he sort of turned to me and said, “How do you say I’m sorry in Arabic?” I told him, and he totally butchered it with, like, his voice trembling when he got down, but he tried. I must have seen this in a movie and my brain in sort of a panicky amygdala-activated state was able to access this idea – I realized that they don’t want evidence of this possibility getting out there, so they’re probably going to take our cameras and get rid of our photos. I said, “Hey, Ryan. Switch out the film that you took pictures with. Put it in a blank and I’m going to switch out my memory card and put it in a blank one.” So we did that as we were descending. Of course, the other guards from the three posts have all gathered around the one that spotted us to sort of handle the situation. If they were to seize my memory card, they would be seizing a blank, and likewise with his roll of camera film.

When we got to the bottom, Ryan said he’s sorry. I took a different approach, sort of – very overly confident in trying to do the whole Egyptian charm charisma thing. I offered the guy, “Hey, do you want a cigar? Do you want a cigarette?” And he just was like, “No, I don’t want a cigarette. I’m angry. You are in trouble.” But I was kind of, “Hey, good morning!” and trying to play this down a bit, but that was not effective at all.

Scott

Well, the fact that you were already up there obviously made them look foolish because somehow you had gotten past them.

Alex

That factors into what eventually happens because that’s exactly right. It probably was a bit of that. They’re thinking, “Great. Now, we have this whole process that we’re going to have to go through.” They sort of ushered us to, like, a security booth – I think it was near that weird museum thing. Six people or so could fit inside the booth. They sat on a bench and they were sort of discussing among themselves what to do. Sure enough, they did one of the first things they did. They seized the cameras and they grabbed a blank memory card, and they seized Ryan’s camera and they seized a blank roll of film.

Scott

Did you try to fake disappointment that, “Oh no, there goes our pictures.”?

Alex

Probably not. I think we were probably, like, looking kind of down. In my periphery, I could see what they were doing and I’m sure I couldn’t hide maybe a tiny smirk. Again, I was learning Arabic – at this point, it had been 3 years. I wouldn’t have called myself fluent in Arabic until after about 15 years of studying it. I could sort of get by with some everyday stuff, but I don’t really know what they’re talking about. They’re clearly having a discussion on how to handle this. One of them kept turning to us and gesturing with wrists– that’s how I learned that word – like, “You are arrested, you are detained, you are in trouble.” It was probably the one that spotted us who did it three times or so. Ryan was very– I mean, he’s like, “Man, I have to get on a plane like the day after tomorrow. That’s not happening. I can’t do that. That’s it.” Like, “Well, it’s not really up to me, man. I don’t know what to tell you. We’re in some shit here.”

At some point, it was time to act. I did exactly what you suggested earlier. I sort of said, “Hey, okay, let’s all hang loose a little bit. You can take us downtown and put us in jail and we can do that whole thing, but it isn’t going to reflect very well upon all of you because we clearly were able to get past you and you weren’t doing your jobs very well. So it’s in everyone’s best interest if we can find a way to work this out.” Then, there was more huddling and discussing among themselves. They were into it. They bought into it. Part of this has to do with American privilege in Egypt. The American passport is kind of a shield to a lot of things. 20% of Egypt’s GDP, on average, historically, is from tourism. So if there was a news story about the harsh treatment of Americans by Egyptian forces or officials, justified or not, that is bad because of the reliance of Egypt’s economy upon tourism revenue. The passport is a bit of a shield in ways that it is not for Egyptians in their own country. It’s not cool.

So I was leveraging sort of that, I guess – plus these guys wanting to keep their jobs and us wanting not to go to jail – to come up with this idea where, “Hey, let’s just be cool and everybody go about their business.” Someone said, “Come with me.” So we followed him and he ushered us over to this, like, I guess I’ll call it a holding cell because that’s at least the function it was playing right now. There were remnants of a campfire and there was a bunch of camel shit in there. It was just sort of not an official tourist site. I don’t think there were, like, hieroglyphics or anything related to antiquity but, for some reason, it’s mostly an enclosed walled structure where someone had a fire and Camels released themselves at some point. He told us, “Just wait. Do not move from here. Wait until [8:00] AM when the park opens to the public, and then just go.” That’s pretty much what we did. I think we probably had to sit in there for maybe another 1.5 hours or so. There are photos of us sitting in that thing too. Ryan actually looked pretty alert, but my eyes were– I’m tired. This was a pretty exhausting experience. I’m looking like I’m about to go to sleep.

Scott

Aside from the physical part of the climb, I mean, it’s got to be mentally exhausting to almost get caught and then actually get caught.

Alex

Yes. And I felt a sense of responsibility sort of throughout the whole trip, frankly, when he was there because, objectively, when I look back on it, upon reflection, I didn’t know shit. I was the host and he was the guest. It’s like, “Hey, you’re doing this Arabic, Egypt thing. I’m going to trust your judgment on these things.” That added to the mental energy that was involved. I felt the obligation to resolve the situation and handle the interactions with the guards and all of that. Ryan was kind of just there at everyone’s mercy, so I felt really bad about that. Yes, it was very draining. We got some funny pictures from inside there too. So that’s what we did. At 8 o’clock, the monument site opened to the public and we walked right past a main gate guard who did a double take of, “Wait a minute, hold on. How are you coming from the inside? How could you be a tourist interested in the only still-standing ancient wonder of the world and spend, like, two minutes and then go,’ Yeah, I’m cool. Saw it, let’s go.’ What is going on here?”

Scott

Didn’t even ask to get your hands stamped or something.

Alex

Yeah. Exactly. Right. He was just, “What is going on here?” We did not engage. I immediately hailed the first taxi that I possibly could. They started lining up around that area at that time, so it was very easy to sort of get in the car and go. We were just laughing our asses off the whole ride home, just like, “What did we just do?” That was when, like, the good adrenaline kicked back in and we’re sort of safe. We’re in safety. We even got to keep our pictures. We accomplished our goal and it was wild.

Scott

Best outcome you could have hoped for.

Alex

Oh, absolutely. Or not being detected – that’d be the only thing I would add. Given the detection, that was certainly the best outcome that could have happened. When we got back to my apartment– in the first semester, I lived in the student dormitory where the study-abroad-kids mostly stay, but some Egyptians also stay there as well. I met and became very good friends with an Egyptian named Mina. He is still a very good friend to this day. For the second semester, he and I had rented an apartment together. We just said, “Let’s get our own place and do that.” So we got back to my apartment and it was early. We were being loud, so Mina woke up, came out, rubbed his eyes, and like, “What the hell is going on here?” We said, like, “Dude, we’ve got to tell you what we just did.”

As we describe the events of the night, his jaw is increasingly dropping gradually, like, “Oh, what?!” He was in total shock. He said, “You do realize that, if I did something like this, I would almost certainly be in a jail cell right now or probably being beaten for doing this? I cannot believe you guys tried to do this and this is another. This speaks to the whole American privilege bed of– yeah, it’s sad. I had some access to his heritage that he was barred from. So I loaded the memory card into my computer immediately because Ryan’s going to do his whole artsy and going to use a dark room. I was like, “Let’s see. He needed to do that later back in the US.” Mina wants to see him too. He was like, “You have pictures? Show me. Let’s see them.” So I loaded them up. We were checking out the pictures, and watching the video. Then pretty much right away, I shot an email off to my parents and my sister – I don’t remember what the subject line was.

There’s a really good picture of Ryan and I standing on top and you can see the smaller pyramid in the background standing side-by-side, hands around the shoulders, smiling real big – it just came out really well – so I chose that one and just put it in the body of email and sent it off. I remember my mom responding, “Oh, that’s such a cute picture of you and Ryan. I hope you guys are having a great trip.” Clearly, she did not understand what was going on. She wasn’t getting it. She wasn’t understanding. I responded and sort of said, “Yeah. Take a look. Take in the surroundings. Where do I have to be to obtain this image? Ryan and I broke into the pyramid and climbed to the top last night. A no doubt and all-caps response came back, “YOU DID WHAT?!” My poor mother… I probably just gave her a heart attack. They were sort of like, “Okay, you’re an adult. You’re thousands of miles away.” But yeah, she probably was stressed out.

Scott

Yeah. She was worried that you were going to make an international incident or something.

Alex

Then when she realized what was going on, she was like, “Oh my God, what is wrong with you? What are you doing?! Whatever you’re doing over there, just go to class and go home.”

Scott

You do crazy things when you’re 21 years old. Would you take a risk like this now?

Alex

No. I reflected on this and I would not. I think I would’ve been very jealous of my classmate who did this and been like, “Man, that’s really cool.” But I don’t think I would’ve even gone there in my head about, “Well, how should I plan–” No. I’m 37 now. This is when I was 21. The risk aversion accumulates as you age. I don’t think I’d have the guts to undertake something like this. It turned out that I would’ve been barred from the opportunity anyway. About 1.5 years afterward on August 8, I got an email from my dad. I don’t remember what he said, but it was something like, “Gee, you guys really motivated some changes over there.” It was a link to a news story. I opened it up and it was about this huge makeover of the security of the Monument site. I think that’s where I read the thing about in the 70s – it was kind of, like, a really popular thing to do. But even today, people would try to climb to the top and the security was woefully inadequate, et cetera. So they were installing a 12-mile chain link fence around the whole perimeter. They were going to put cameras, alarms, and motion detectors. I mean, totally different. I mean, I couldn’t tell you how different– a complete makeover is the exact phrase. It was night and because, before, they just kind of put up, like, something.

I don’t know how many people between March of 2007 and August of 2008 attempted and did this climb – I’m sure some – but I imagine Ryan and I were among some of the last people that were ever able to do that.

Scott

These things are solid rock. It’s not like you could really damage them, but was there any concern that, “Hey, this is a country’s national treasure. We’re going to be climbing it, desecrating it, or anything?” Did you ever have any thoughts about how that would be perceived?

Alex

I did wrestle with this and I think I honestly still do. Yeah, it’s a great point. Ultimately, I think that the construction started about 2550 BCE and they’re still standing, so they’re clearly quite sturdy. I mean, there is the part that is open to the public, so there is foot traffic already kind of on the monument.

Scott

But it’s limited though.

Alex

It is.

Scott

They would probably walk in and walk out through a gift shop, get little key chains, or something.

Alex

No. It’s not like that. If you could imagine, I don’t know– let’s say you’re at a museum that has airplanes in it and maybe a mini little staircase – you are contained and directed, so all of the traffic is taking place in a very specific area. But, it’s been around for thousands of years. Despite Napoleon, the invasion of Egypt, wars, and all kinds of natural forces and all that, it has stood the test of time quite clearly. We did take the– Ryan has the knife. We weren’t into that. I mean, it was cool to see someone from, like, 1800 or whatever who kind decided to carve – like, that was cool – but I didn’t want to encourage that. I guess I’d have to say someone who pushes back on my rationalization about the point you’re bringing up– if someone really pushed back and said, like, “Yeah, but come on.” You’re not supposed to do this just like how you’re not supposed to use flash photography on the Mona Lisa or whatever. Little by little, it’s going to cause– I probably would have to capitulate at some point if someone really stood their ground about that. But it doesn’t keep me up at night, yeah.

Scott

if they’re still okay after 4,000 years, a couple of US college students aren’t going to destroy them. It sounds like they’ve got it blocked off because it’s not going to happen anymore anyway.

Alex

Yes. When I read the security overall, I was like, “Oh, whoa. No one is getting–” I mean, unless you came up with a sufficient bribe, it would now be totally reliant on unethical security guards to give– and even then, I guess the cameras would capture it and I’m sure that people would watch the footage and all that.

Scott

That’s funny. Your whole plan was hinging on this bribery thing, and that completely failed.

Alex

Totally failed. Can’t believe it. Still can’t believe it. At another major tourist site, you’re not allowed to take any photographs of the inside of the temple because, frankly, they want you to buy the postcards or the official images because that’s another source of revenue. But very easily, you could circumvent that. The odds of this plan working were actually quite good and, like, we ran into the one guard, I guess, who was uninterested in money or who just had integrity and character. So that was unlikely.

Scott

If people want to contact you, how should they get in touch with you if they have questions or if they’re planning their own escapade up the side of the pyramid?

Alex

I would be happy to assist. By email is good. I’m also on Twitter. I’m sort of off most other social media platforms, but we can list those, I guess.

Scott

Yeah, that’s easy enough. Obviously, in the show notes for this episode, we’ll have the pictures that you took from the top, so people can see that. It’s pretty cool.

Alex

Oh, great. Cool. If you start a new job and they’re like, “What’s interesting about you?”, I mean, it’s my automatic go-to. I’ll never do anything as cool as that ever in my life. I’m positive about it.

Scott

If you’d like to see the full transcript of this episode, as well as pictures of Alex and Ryan on top of the pyramid, you can get all of that in the show notes for this episode, at WhatWasThatLike.com/137.

If you enjoyed this episode, and you like hearing stories of people trying to do something without getting caught, you might enjoy my conversation with Emily, from episode 79. She was trying to get through airport security, and under her dress was a large volume of cocaine –

Emily

“We just have to ask you a couple of further questions.” I was like, “Okay.” And they’re like, “Do you have any drugs in your suitcase?” I was like, “No.” They’re like, “Okay. Well, just to check, we’re going to send it through this X-ray and then we’re going to scan it.” So they scanned it with, like, an ion scanner and it came up clean – I could kind of breathe a little bit – but I still couldn’t look him in the face. I just couldn’t. Then, he asked me, “Okay. Well, Ms. O’Brien, we’re actually going to have to do a body search. Is there anything that you want to say before we do that? Do you have drugs on you right now?” Then, I stared at the floor and my ears were ringing so loud. It took me so long to answer that they had to ask me again. That’s when I looked up at him straight in the eye and I said, “Yes.”

Scott

That’s episode 79, titled “Emily was caught as a drug mule”.

I have to tell you, I continue to be totally amazed at the conversations we have in the podcast listener Facebook group. Yeah, we talk about podcast episodes, but there’s a whole lot more than that. Recently I posted a question for the group – I asked “What’s something you wish you could forget?”. And wow, some of the answers just blew me away. There were the funny ones, like one person said “the last two seasons of Game of Thrones”. But there were others, telling stories of past abuse, or losing a child or a grandchild – situations where it’s easy to understand why you would want to forget those things. Just story after story from people who really just opened up and spilled their heart out. So far there are over 100 responses to that question. It just confirms the fact that you never know what someone has been through, and I just love being a part of all that. If you haven’t yet joined us there, I hope you come over to WhatWasThatLike.com/facebook and get in on these amazing discussions.

Graphics for this episode were created by Bob Bretz.

Full episode transcription was created by James Lai.

And now, here we are at this week’s Listener Story. Do you have a story? I’ll bet you do. If you have something interesting you can tell in about 5-10 minutes, record it on your phone and email it to me, at Scott@WhatWasThatLike.com. We end every episode with a Listener Story, so you might just hear your story right here.

This week’s story is about an undetected injury.

Stay safe, and I’ll see you in two weeks.

(Listener Story)

Hey there. This is Maia. When I was 18, I was invited to go sledding with my boyfriend at the time, his aunt, uncle, cousin, and myself. On my first slide down the hill, my sled, which was one of those saucer-type sleds, spun around, so I was sledding backward. I could not see where I was going. I decided to just hang on and hold through. I ended up hitting a tree very hard.

When I came to, I was nowhere near a tree. I had bounced back from the forest and landed several feet away with a broken neck. I did not know I had broken my neck, so I stood up and walked away. In fact, I was more concerned with my boyfriend’s aunt because I thought I had hit her. Little did I know that any minute turn of my head or my body could paralyze me from the neck down. Out of all the odds and throughout this whole experience, I was not paralyzed at all. Unfortunately, nine out of 10 people who experienced the same type of neck fracture are paralyzed from the neck down. Luckily, I was convinced to go to the hospital to get checked out. If anything, I probably have a concussion or whatever – it won’t hurt kind of thing.

While awaiting my x-rays, I was getting in and out of bed to use the bathroom, and I walked around with a broken neck. This is crazy. Once the doctors found out that my C6 was fractured, I could not stop hearing the word “miracle” coming from the nurses, the doctors, and my family members. It still echoes in my head today. From there, I was airlifted to a bigger hospital where I laid prostrate for six whole days awaiting my emergency surgery. It was brutal, to say the least. Now, 10 years later, I still have my cadaver belt, 4 screws, and a metal plate behind my throat holding things together. I can walk, dance, and run around as much as I want. I feel like the luckiest person alive, and I’m so thankful.

A few interesting tidbits that I’d like to add from this experience– I’m going to brag for a second. This happened three months before graduating high school. I still graduated and the top 10% with honors. This is actually pretty funny. I never was a huge sweet person. I never really had a sweet tooth or anything until this happened. Now, to this day, I love sweets. The first thing I ate after coming home from the hospital was an entire box of Chips Ahoy – not like me at all. My mom said that the man I got my cadaver bone from must have been a sweet lover. So thank you to him because sweets are amazing.

View Details

Content warning – this episode includes discussion of drug use and suicide.

For anyone who creates online content, the big goal is to have your content go viral.

Whether it’s a Tiktok or YouTube video, an Instagram reel, or a Facebook photo – when something goes viral, the person who posted it is kind of quasi-famous for a few days or a week.

This happened to me once, several years ago. I posted a video on Facebook, and it just took off like crazy. It wasn’t even a video that I created personally. But people saw it and shared it, so it was seen by millions of people – right on my Facebook profile page. So I was getting hundreds of friends requests every day from people I didn’t know (and I declined all of them, of course). It was kind of fun, but also a little weird that suddenly my Facebook page was being viewed by so many people, all over the world.

But for some people, having their photo go viral is not a good thing. That’s what happened with my guest today, Sarah. She got in trouble for selling drugs. This was her first time ever being arrested, and she made the mistake of smiling for her booking photo. That’s when things got crazy, and she was nicknamed in the press as the “Adorable Drug Kingpin”.

The other reason this story went viral was because of where Sarah’s dad worked. His employer was the Drug Enforcement Agency. Sarah’s dad was a DEA agent.

Young Sarah with her dadthe booking photo that went viralSarahSarah’s art on vinyl recordsIf you’d like to contact Sarah, her email is empathy.always1@gmail.com

Show notes for this episode:
https://WhatWasThatLike.com/136

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Episode transcript (download transcript PDF):

Content warning – this episode includes discussion of drug use and suicide.

For anyone who creates online content, the big goal is to have your content go viral.

Whether it’s a Tiktok or YouTube video, an Instagram reel, or a Facebook photo – when something goes viral, the person who posted it is kind of quasi-famous for a few days or a week.

For some people, having their photo go viral is not a good thing. That’s what happened with my guest today, Sarah. She got in trouble for selling drugs. This was her first time ever being arrested, and she made the mistake of smiling for her booking photo. That’s when things got crazy, and she was nicknamed in the press as the “Adorable Drug Kingpin”.

The other reason this story went viral was because of where Sarah’s dad worked. His employer was the Drug Enforcement Agency. Sarah’s dad was a DEA agent.

Scott

Sarah’s parents were divorced, so she ended up living with her mom and her stepdad.

Sarah

I lived with my mom. She was remarried to my stepdad. I lived with them. They had my brother and sister, Grace and Jack. I also have an older brother from the same parents. My dad was remarried to my stepmom, Kristen, and they have three boys. My dad’s job with a drug enforcement agency required him to move, travel, and live in all different places in the US and outside of the US, so we were not always very close, and a lot of that was my own choosing.

Scott

She graduated from high school and went off to college. Like a lot of kids at that stage, she didn’t know how to manage that new sense of independence.

Sarah

My mom was rather strict just trying to keep me safe. So when I got to college, I realized that I had ultimate freedom – no one to tell me what to do or when to come home – and I just lost control very quickly. Once you have this ultimate freedom, you have that realization of like, “Oh, well, no one will know if I don’t come home tonight, or if I do my chores or my homework.” There’s no one to be accountable for you but yourself. It’s easy to just go into your own desires and wishes without thinking of the consequences.

Scott

As a teenager, Sarah was taking medication for a few things, including anxiety. But when she got to college, she thought she could self-medicate.

Sarah

I had been on antidepressants since I was 15 for generalized anxiety disorder and major depressive disorder. I stopped very quickly after getting into college. Once I started to smoke pot, I realized – or I thought – “Well, this makes me feel better, so I don’t need to take medication anymore.” I stopped taking medication and replaced it with drugs and alcohol.

Scott

And things went downhill pretty quickly…

Sarah

It started with marijuana and it wasn’t really much. It helped me relax. It helped me get rid of some anxieties. I started to heavily rely on that as a coping mechanism. So whenever I was sad, or celebrating, or nervous, I started to smoke. About maybe a month after I first started regularly smoking weed, I had tried MDMA.

Scott

MDMA is the drug more commonly known as ecstasy.

Sarah

That was my second illicit substance to try, and that really changed my life. I thought that was incredible. The feeling of being on drugs was something I hadn’t experienced before and I quickly just spiraled. Ecstasy – what it’s chemically doing is flooding your brain with serotonin and dopamine, which are neurotransmitters responsible for feelings of, like, joy and feeling great physically, mentally, and emotionally. It’s just like “high” where everything is good. I mean, nothing bad could ever happen. That’s how you feel when you’re high on MDMA ecstasy. Once I experienced that for the first time, I was like, “This is how I want to feel every day constantly. This is the feeling I’ve been searching for as long as I can think.”

Scott

And she didn’t stop there.

Sarah

I proceeded to take harder drugs from ecstasy. I would say, like, the next step I took was going into psychedelics. So I started using a lot of psilocybin mushrooms and LSD tabs, searching for this realization of like, “If I trip this time, I’m going to have a sudden spiritual awakening.” I was just using drugs, trying to fill a void that couldn’t be filled by drugs, but I just kept going.

Scott

Sarah was able to continue this direction without it being detected, and part of that was because it wasn’t yet having a negative effect on her studies.

Sarah

I was actually doing very well in school at the time. I was at Blinn Community College. In my first semester, I took five classes. In the next semester, I took four. So I was in a normal, like, heavy class load. I did schedule all my classes to be in the evening. Since it was community college, you could take a 4.30 class. So I pushed everything back to the afternoons. That way I could stay up, get high, get drunk, wake up, and still have time to make it to school. My compromise with myself was if my grades start slipping, I will stop doing drugs. I was able to maintain grades, so I just kept on rolling.

Scott

But as she progressed down this path, she realized that these stronger drugs were more expensive. She needed a way to pay for this habit.

Sarah

In the beginning, I hung around a lot of people who were using drugs, so most of it was for free. I didn’t have a job at the time. Once I started to advance into more expensive drugs like LSD or mushrooms, the people I was associated with and choosing to hang around were like, “Well, just sell. You can sell some weed and then it will pay for itself.” I thought this was a genius idea. Oh, well, if I’m only selling to college students and people that I know, it’s not going to be bad. I’m not selling to kids. That was a really sorry excuse that I used to then proceed into selling narcotics.

Scott

But selling marijuana wasn’t enough. Since it’s not that expensive, it really doesn’t bring in much money.

Sarah

It does not, and I learned that very quickly there. I wasn’t making enough money for it to be feasible for me to continue to buy more expensive drugs, so I quickly began to sell cocaine, LSD, and MDMA.

Scott

So now Sarah has actually become a dealer for serious narcotics. She really didn’t think that, in the beginning, it would progress to this. She knew she had to stop at some point, but the goal she had set for herself that she wanted to achieve was not what you might expect.

Sarah

No long-term goal to stop. I mean, it’s something that I think is very juvenile and naive as, at that time, I really wanted to be able to buy, like, a Honda Ruckus moped that is maybe $2,000. So my long-term goal was to be able to buy a moped at some point. Like, no plans of running an enterprise or doing this for the rest of my life. It was very much just living in the moment, living for the next high, and hoping to buy a moped along the way.

Scott

From this point, she progressed to taking pills.

Sarah

I started to take Xanax pills, Alprazoman – not anything that you would buy at the pharmacy but pressed Xanax pills. These aren’t like pills that were made in a pharmacy where you would buy them if you had a prescription. These were made somewhere within the country, maybe outside of the country, by people who actually have a pill press that is pressing these drugs together. This is not pharmacy-grade material or something that I was prescribed. When I really dove into pills and Xanax, I started– because I didn’t like drinking. The only reason I liked to drink is to get drunk. I didn’t like to have to go through the whole process of drinking. So whenever I would take a Xanax, I could start to feel like I was drunk. Like, you’re just kind of loose and things don’t really matter. I quickly started to take it. I started out with taking two, then three. Towards the end of my drug-using career, which was about two months later, I was taking 8-pressed Xanax bars a day, and the sole reason was to black out. I just wanted to not remember anything I did. It couldn’t end positively.

It quickly took over my life and I didn’t really know how to get out. I mean, selling drugs isn’t, like, a 9-5 job. It’s 24/7 because everybody’s looking for drugs all the time. This quickly took over and I was at a point where I didn’t even know how to get out, even if I wanted to. This advanced to being, like, cool and being invited to all the parties because I thought people wanted to be around me to do something. “I was like I can’t control this. I don’t even know what to do at this point.” So just taking tons of Xanax and blacking out was a lot easier than facing anything that I had gotten myself into during this time.

Scott

Sarah often had drugs in her car and in her apartment. She often felt kind of stressed about that, which probably anyone would be in that situation. But then, she had what she called a premonition.

Sarah

I had been selling at this point for about three months. I had times when I was, like, nervous if I was picking up an ounce of cocaine and driving home with feelings of like, “Ooh, this is a little bit nervous.” It was three days before I had this atrocious feeling in my stomach – like there is just something wrong. I was confiding in one of my acquaintance’s friends at the time, and he was like, “You’re just in your head. It’s not a big deal. Nobody would ever come to arrest you. There are bigger people that sell drugs. They wouldn’t come after you.” – Very ignorant thinking. He was just telling me that I was paranoid, but I can’t shake this feeling. Something just feels awful.

Scott

And then, there was a knock at the door on Friday morning at 8 o’clock and it wasn’t even that early. I usually think of a drug raid being, they bang on the door at 4 in the morning to wake you up or something, but this was at 8 o’clock in the morning. What happened that day?

Sarah

Yeah, it was November 6th, 2015. It was around 8 o’clock in the morning and it was a Friday, so I didn’t have school. I had my Fridays off. I was laying in my bed and I heard that dreaded thuds just like in the movies on my back door. So I kind of woke up out of my sleep and was a little bit confused because I had roommates at the time. If they didn’t have their keys, they would knock. I was like, “Oh, it’s probably somebody at the house. They just didn’t have their keys.” So I waited for a second and then I heard another on my back door. So I wasn’t thinking that I was being arrested. Like, that did not come to my mind. I was like, “Oh, someone’s just being annoying. They want me to wake up and come open the door.” I looked out through the peephole and there was a postal person, so I was like, “Okay, I guess they just want to deliver this package.” When I opened the door, the postal person moved out of the way and my house was raided by law enforcement.

Scott

They were waiting for you to open that door.

Sarah

They were ready. I guess anyone would open up for a postal person.

Scott

How many cops were there?

Sarah

I can’t say for sure. I would say at least 8-9.

Scott

It was a crowd of people ready to come in.

Sarah

Yes, they were absolutely ready for whether I was going to fight, shoot, or run away. They were prepared for all circumstances.

Scott

Did you have any weapons there?

Sarah

No.

Scott

You don’t seem like a gun person at all.

Sarah

Not a gun person. I had nothing. I was just a college student standing there in a big T-shirt looking completely shocked.

Scott

You had to be so scared.

Sarah

I was scared, but I guess it didn’t feel real. I know, a lot of times people say, “When trauma happens, it feels like a movie,” and it did. It felt like I was watching this happen from someone else’s perspective. I was shocked. I mean, I couldn’t believe that it was happening. They came in with a police search warrant and kind of pushed me into the kitchen. If you walk in from the back door, it was our kitchen. Then, immediately to the left is my bedroom. So I am just standing in the kitchen. About 4-5 officers went into my bedroom, which has all of the narcotics – everything laid out everywhere. I mean, I have some of the crime scene photos from afterward, which I do not enjoy looking at because it was just a mess. I mean, there were bongs all over my apartment. Scales and cocaine were just sitting out on the bookshelf. Everything was in plain sight. This was not an operation where I was ready where things were hidden. All my money was in a Ziploc bag in a Walmart lampshade. So they quickly found everything that they were looking for and gave me the documentation for a search warrant.

Scott

You were like the jackpot for them.

Sarah

It was so easy. I mean, they did not have to search for anything. It was all right there.

Scott

Yeah. In a movie, as soon as the major drug dealer hears the knock on the door, he grabs everything, runs to the toilet, and starts to flush it down the toilet. But with you, it’s like, “Nope, here is everything.”

Sarah

Yeah. Here it all is. I was not even thinking about getting rid of anything. I wouldn’t have time. It looked like what a drug addict’s room would look like – not someone who was sophisticated in selling narcotics, but more like a drug addict.

Scott

Can you talk about the evidence that was on your phone?

Sarah

Yes, they pulled over 150,000 text messages off my phone. I did not delete anything ever. I was not cryptic or smart about using code of, like, “Hey, I’m coming to pick up insert-code-word-for-something.” It was just like, “Hey, do you have three ounces of cocaine?” I’m like, “Yeah, come by. Here’s a picture of it. I’m at my house. Here’s my address.” I basically put myself on a platter and served it to law enforcement. Here I am and here is everything you could possibly need. They were collecting all the evidence from my room. They took my phone. The warrant included my laptop and me. There were some really nice officers there.

Once they saw my phone, I begged them to please allow me to keep my laptop because all my schoolwork was on there, so they allowed me to keep the laptop, thankfully. They searched the car. We had, like, a policeman who was kind of asking me about everything in my apartment. I was claiming that I didn’t know anything, I was scared, I was crying, and confused. I don’t know any of these officers’ names. They were all really nice considering the circumstances. They asked me if I was a dangerous criminal and I said no. So they allowed me to have my handcuffs up front, which was just a nice gesture that I still appreciate to this day, even though the circumstances were really bad.

I was taken down to College Station Jail and I waited there for about 8 hours until I knew what my charges were. At that point, I wasn’t able to make a phone call. It’s a very small county. It’s a city jail, so it’s not even equipped for people to stay. It’s like you’re just here for a little bit. The investigator came, read out my charges, and told me that I’d be transferred to the Brazos County Detention Center since they were all felonies. Once I was transferred to Brazos County Detention Center, which was about 5.30 PM. You are booked into jail. They took you there. They took off your clothes. They did your search, did your fingerprints. You sat in booking for a few hours. So you’re just there in your normal clothes. There are payphones for you to make a free call and there’s, like, a list of bail bonds – I didn’t know what any of that was.

At this point, I still thought that I could call my friend at the time, that he was going to be able to bail me out, and my parents were never going to know. I thought that we were just going to be able to pay this money, I would get out, and we would keep this a secret. Very ignorant.

Scott

Doesn’t it strike you now looking back at “How could I have been so naive?”

Sarah

Every day of my life. I’m still, like, “Naive, stupid, and ignorant. What were you thinking?” I never prepared for the worst outcome or even looked into what that would be. I knew what I was doing was illegal, but I came up with tons of excuses for, “Oh, I wouldn’t get caught and I’m not selling that much.” A bunch of lame excuses. So I never went through, like, “This is a consequence of what would happen.” The fact I thought that my parents wouldn’t find out – or the whole world by that – just feels very stupid. I decided to call my mom, let it ring three times, and hung up. I called my dad, let it ring once, and hung up. I did not want to talk to them. I was completely ashamed and embarrassed. How would I explain to them that I was in jail for four felony counts of manufacturing and delivering narcotics? I didn’t want to tell them, so I called my friend back at the time and I was like, “Hey, I can’t get in touch with them, so I’m going to need you to tell them.” This friend is no longer in my life and he had never talked to my parents. I gave him my mom’s number to call her and just let her know that I was in jail.

Scott

So she got a phone call from a stranger, saying, “Your daughter’s been arrested.”

Sarah

Yeah. At that point, it was probably 9.30-10.00 o’clock at night because I was too much of a coward to do it myself.

Scott

How far did your mom live from where you were in jail?

Sarah

She was about an hour away. My dad was living in South America at the time and we didn’t have much communication at all for these past few years. They were actually in town because my dad was getting ready to move back from South America to Houston, so my mom was able to get in touch with my dad and they were able to coordinate and then drive up to the jail to see me.

Scott

And you didn’t even know they were coming to the jail, right?

Sarah

I did not.

Bill

We happened to be in Texas at that very time, looking for a new home.

Scott

Sarah’s father, Bill.

Bill

That morning, I remember it very distinctly. We were just getting ready to fly back to Panama after we found the house that we were going to buy in Cyprus. My wife and I were packing our bags. We had our three boys with us as well – her younger brothers. As I came out of the shower, my wife came to me and said that I had missed a phone call from Sarah’s mother, Shawn. I checked the voicemail and it said that she needed to see if I could help out because she had gotten a message from one of Sarah’s friends that Sarah got arrested. I was puzzled and shocked, obviously, when I first heard this. Immediately, my thought was, “Maybe, it was a minor in possession of alcohol” because I know the school or Texas is very stringent about that. Very strict. They would write tickets and arrest people. So I called her back and she said that it had something to do with drugs. Then, again, my thought was, “Well, she must have been around somebody that was in possession of marijuana.” I immediately had no instinct to think that she had really gotten herself into some serious trouble. I made some phone calls over to the College Station area through some police contacts that I had. As I talked to one of the detectives who actually was in charge of the case, he was shocked to find out that Sarah’s father was a DEA agent and he laid it all out to me. I just remember feeling almost numb. I couldn’t believe what was being said to me. It was almost like I was outside my body watching a person receive this news. It was stunning, to say the least.

I’ll never forget that feeling of walking into the main area where they have the glass and you can speak to inmates on the other side of the glass. Her mother got there about the same time that I did. As I was standing there, Sarah came walking out from behind a door in an orange jumpsuit with makeup that had run down her face from crying. She was in a very fragile emotional state as all of us were.

Sarah

I got booked into jail after our phone calls and tried to go to sleep. The next day, they came in and let me know that I had a visitor. I assumed it was my friend coming to tell me everything was taken care of and I was going home, and this will forever be the worst moment of my whole life. When I walked into that room in my orange jumpsuit to have a visit through the pane of glass, sat down, and waited for the door to open, it was my parents. I still remember what they were wearing to this day. That was almost seven years ago. I will never forget that. It will likely forever be the worst day of my entire life.

Scott

And you had not seen your dad recently anyway?

Sarah

No. It had been some years since we had seen each other. So it was really– shame isn’t a big enough word to summarize how I felt. I wish there was a bigger word than shame. Maybe there is and I just don’t know it yet. I haven’t found a word to encapsulate that feeling.

Scott

They had to be so confused.

Sarah

Confused, shocked. I blindsided my whole family by never asking for help or giving them any inclination of what I had going on. My dad told me not to panic, that things were going to be okay, and that I was able to post bail to get me out.

Scott

How much was your bail?

Sarah

My bond was $35,000. The bail is 10%, so $3,500.

Scott

They said they would get you out, right?

Sarah

Yes.

Scott

They’re going to post the bond. Did you just get out right then? Or how long was it?

Sarah

It took about five hours. They were like, “Don’t worry. We’re working in the process to be able to get you out. Everything’s going to be okay.” The visit was relatively short because it was traumatizing both of them as well as myself, but mostly them. I didn’t want them to continue to have to talk to me through a phone, through a pane of glass.

Scott

So you didn’t really have a chance at that point to explain to him about what happened, how you got into this spot, or anything?

Sarah

No. My dad turned into law enforcement mode. Like, he was prepared. He was like, “Look, we’re going to get you out. This is what’s going on. We’re paying the bail. We’ll take care of this soon. We’re going to see you soon.” My mom was obviously just hysterical. She kept putting her hands on the glass and just asking me “Why?” and was crying. She was wearing a Vineyard Vine’s pink raincoat. I can still see it, like, clear as day. At that point, I didn’t even have answers, which hurt. So I went back to our 8-person tank. I waited a few hours. They came, called me, and told me I was leaving. The process was pretty easy. They gave you the clothes you came in with. I signed the paperwork. They transported you to the bail bonds office. That’s where I actually got to, like, physically see my parents for the first time, I guess, not through a pane of glass.

Scott

So you got out and you got in the car with your parents. What’s that conversation like?

Sarah

One of the most challenging moments that will forever be a pivotal point for my life to change completely. It was something that my dad said to me that I can’t forget and I think it’s important not to. His exact words were, “You made a monumental fuck up, but your life is not over. The next part is going to be even harder because now I need you to be 100% honest with us about everything. That’s the only way it will get better.” I was not wanting to share all of those details with my parents, but it was what was necessary.

Scott

And your dad had some special insight of this because of his work with the DEA, right? He kind of knew how this all worked.

Sarah

He does it from, like, an arresting officer’s perspective, but not anything that happens after. He was working on much larger investigations, so he’s like, “I knew that people went to jail. What happened after that wasn’t my business. In my mind, those people put themselves in jail and it sucks for you.” Once it became his family, I know it provided a different insight. He knew how the next proceedings were going to work and he was like, “It will only work if you are 100% honest.”

Scott

This gave him a little bit of a different perspective.

Sarah

Definitely.

Scott

But I love the fact that his reaction to this is incredible. “This is my daughter. I have to do something.” He wanted to help you, rather than, “Okay, you screwed up. You did this to yourself.”

Sarah

That’s what I would’ve expected and understood – for them to be like, “Look, we’re not getting you out of jail. You put yourself in this situation” – especially with my dad. I mean, I was so horrible to this person for years, behind petty family stuff, being a teenager and a jerk. I was not kind to my dad and it was not any of my dad’s doing. My dad always tried to reach out and make things better and try to mend things, but I was unwilling because I was a kid and selfish. I mean, for both my parents to be there and my dad to stand by me with those words of “This is a monumental fuck up, but it’s not over” continue to resonate in my life. Even when I do make mistakes, him standing beside me through all this will mean more than I think anything that anyone could ever do.

Scott

So you went back home and that’s when you saw the booking photo?

Sarah

Yes.

Scott

Tell me about this. This is a booking photo, not a mugshot. What’s the difference?

Sarah

So your mugshot is when you first come into any sort of, I guess, jail. When I got to College Station jail, it was like how you see in the movies where you’re going to stand to the side, they’re going to take a side picture of you, and you’re going to stand to the front and take a front picture. So that had all happened in the first place I was at. Once I was transferred and it went through booking again, they did your fingerprint and asked you questions.

They said I was taking a booking photo and they explained that this was for an ID that you carry around the jail, which is true. It’s like a little printed-out piece of paper to prove that this is you and your spin number. So when I took that photo, I thought of it as an ID photo and I smiled. It was just something I guess that was natural to do in a picture. I was scared out of my mind and confused at this point, but that is the photo that was attached to every article ever. I was smiling because I thought that it was funny and that my dad would get me off on everything, which could not be further from the truth, but it’s how it looked.

Scott

Right. It looked like you weren’t taking it seriously.

Sarah

Absolutely.

Scott

We’ll have that picture on the website in the show notes. But yeah, it looks like when the press got this photo– obviously, mugshots and booking photos are public. It’s all public information. They must have people that go through these things and just find some stories that are unusual and look for these photos. But when they saw your picture and you were a young 19-year-old girl smiling for the camera like an Instagram influencer or something with the article that went with all of this huge variety of drugs that were found in your apartment, you got nicknamed the “Adorable Drug Kingpin.” Do you remember what you thought the first time you read that?

Sarah

I do. It was a KBTX article, which was the one at College Station. That was the first one that came out, and that was before I got that atrocious nickname. It was “College student arrested in apartment for selling methamphetamine,” which was not the case – technicality thing. The first time I saw it, I remember going downstairs and waking up my mom because I was so upset that it said “methamphetamine” like that mattered. I was like, “But that’s not the case! It’s not like that.” She made me understand that how it progresses from there is they can say whatever they want and it just spiraled from there to Houston Chronicle to being picked up by Death and Taxes, which is, I think, who gave me the nickname. It just then took on a life of its own.

Scott

It literally went viral.

Sarah

It went viral everywhere. I’ve read every article, every comment, every Facebook share. I read all of it.

Scott

That’s probably the worst thing you could do for your own mental health.

Sarah

Right. The absolute worst thing. My dad kept telling me, “Just don’t look.” I get it objectively to just not look at it. But when I tried to put it in perspective, I was like– imagine if you were working and there was a group of coworkers that were gossiping about you, most of us would want to know, like, “Well, what were they saying?” I just couldn’t stop looking and the comments, understandably, were not kind. I just absorbed all of them, which led me to a very dark place.

Scott

You were already feeling down, vulnerable, and not knowing what’s going to happen in my life right now. Now, it seems like everyone hates you. What were some of the messages? You even got emails, right?

Sarah

Yes. When your worst mistake is broadcasted for the entire world to give their opinions on, understandably, I wasn’t expecting anyone to be rooting for me. The emails ranged from, “I hope you overdose in your own vomit. Fucking kill yourself,” to strange people offering to marry me, which was weird. But most of it was, “Go fuck yourself. Hang yourself. Do everybody a favor. She needs prison for the rest of her life. Fire her dad. Make sure her mom loses her job.” It strayed into my family although it’s my mistake. Somehow, it’s my parents’ responsibility. I was ready to end my life behind it because I genuinely thought that they would leave my family alone if I just killed myself and took the easier way out of the situation.

Scott

Did you voice that? The suicidal ideas to your parents?

Sarah

Not immediately. It took a while before I mentioned it. It was in those five years of waiting. When I told my stepmom, I was like, “I can’t do it. I can’t handle this because it went viral. It would continue to come up. Any time I had a status hearing or anything, it would come back up in the news again. I can’t do this anymore. I think it’s just better if I kill myself.” She was like, “You can’t. That’s not an option. You have to think about everyone else and how that would affect them.” Truly, at that time, I thought it would be better if I just wasn’t here. It would stop the people from accusing my dad of things, coming after my mom, and questioning my siblings about this at school if I just wasn’t here. My stepmom made it very clear like, “That’s not an option. You would destroy our lives forever. So you can’t.”

Scott

So you were out on bond and you didn’t really know how long you were going to be out.

Sarah

Correct.

Scott

How did this affect your school – because you were still in school?

Sarah

Yes, I was in school. I was arrested in November. I got out and I continued class. I had to have a disciplinary meeting because I was arrested even though it wasn’t on school grounds. I guess its policy is not to be arrested. So I had a discussion with the disciplinary board and they told me that I was fine to proceed and continue to go to school. It was December. I was taking the finals. I registered for the next semester to continue at Blinn. One day, I was switching around some classes and I got a notification that I had a hold on my account, which typically happens if your tuition didn’t process or you have an unpaid textbook. I went and checked in, and said I had been expelled until 2025. At that point, it was 2015. So I called the disciplinary board – the lady I had met with – and I was like, “Hey, this says I’m expelled.” She’s like, “Yeah, well, they had a secondary meeting and they decided that you cannot come back. So you can finish out the next, like, 8 days I had left of school, and then you cannot return.”

Scott

And they had already told you that you could continue school unless you got convicted.

Sarah

Yes. And continue school. So I was ready for the spring semester. At that point, I was commuting back and forth because I was evicted from my apartment. I was ready to start spring so I could continue college to get ready to transfer. I tried to transfer into A&M but it was cut short.

Scott

You said you got evicted from your apartment. Obviously, there must be a rule in the apartment about no drug dealers.

Sarah

Yeah. Don’t commit felony crimes. You cannot live here.

Scott

You can’t argue with that policy, really.

Sarah

No, not at all. I get it.

Scott

So your current status at this point is you’re living with your mom. You’re in therapy, I understand. You’re back on your regular medication, and you’re staying sober. Did you feel like things had– I mean, obviously, it was still up in the air about what was going to happen with the charges, but did you feel like you had turned the corner and started on the right track now?

Sarah

It felt like I was on the way, obviously, to something better. I wasn’t quite sure what that was. Being clean from drugs was very challenging at first, but I understood that it was not an option to go back. I can’t and I did not want to go to jail for anything new and bring more stuff on my family. So I started to feel, I guess, better. It’s still kind of a confusing time. I’m learning to navigate and deal with the issues that I ignored for over a year with doing drugs. An important lesson I learned is getting high and escaping doesn’t fix those problems. So when you get sober, it’s time to deal with all of them. So I was dealing with a lot of self-esteem issues and trauma from what I had caused for myself and my family. But I did start to feel like I was in the right direction. It was time to look for something else.

I had that semester off that spring, so I applied to Texas State, Sam Houston, and A&M because my goal was to be an Aggie and follow in my older brother’s footsteps. I really wanted to be an Aggie. So I set the application, turned it over to my higher power, and was like, “Look, if that door’s not for me, close it and I’ll know and I’ll move on to a new goal.” It was February 17th when it came in the mail that I was accepted and got into A&M. I was very excited to tell my parents. At first, they’re happy, like, “Oh my gosh! you got in!” And then, we were quickly like, “Well, why would we send you back? Why would you go back to the exact spot where you were and were involved in drugs and derailed your life? Do you really think that’s a good idea?” So they took some time to think about it, understandably, while I just pleaded with them to please let me go back.

Scott

When they were saying “go back”, this was not just going back to the college environment. You were going back to the same city, pretty much, right?

Sarah

Same city.

Scott

Did that worry you at all like it worried them? I

Sarah

I understood why. I was just riding on this, like, I cannot believe I got in. I still question who reviewed the application and didn’t recognize the name. And to that person, I’ll forever be grateful. I couldn’t believe I got in. It was something I wanted so badly and I couldn’t believe I’d gotten there. So after some weeks of annoying my parents and begging them to allow me to go back, I was like, “I’ll put the tracking and the Find My Friends.” There’s another app, not just Find My Friends. It’s more intense where they can, like, track your location throughout the whole day. I was like, “I’ll live on campus. I really want to do this.” My dad made it clear and he’s like, “If we give you this opportunity, if there is a single mess up or a minor possession, if you’re drunk and disorderly, you’re coming home and that’s it. You can pay for community college. We’re not doing this again.” Understandably, I mean, they already paid for me to try to go the first time and I messed it up. So they put a lot of faith in me and that is my driving force to go there and do what I needed to do.

Scott

You had a lot of incentive to be successful this time.

Sarah

Yes. And not to allow anything to take me off course.

Scott

The thing that’s kind of unusual about this is, from the time you were arrested and got out on bond, it was quite a long time, even enough time for you to go to college and graduate.

Sarah

Correct.

Scott

That’s very unusual, isn’t it?

Sarah

It is. It was five years total with the insurmountable amount of evidence I left behind – the 120,000 plus text messages that aided in my case, taking longer to get up the docket – and having an attorney whose goal was like, “We just need to keep pushing it back. The more time you allow, the better.” In my mind, I just wanted it over with. I was like, “No, I just want to get this over with.” It’s like this looming cloud and a million bricks on my shoulders. I just want to know what the outcome is going to be. He was like, “The best thing to do is wait. We’re not going to push the issue until they bring it up.”

Scott

And you weren’t going to trial because you had already confessed to everything. This was just a sentencing hearing.

Sarah

Correct.

Scott

So you were waiting and they were pushing this back and back even though you wanted it to be over with – that was really to your advantage, right? Because you got to show all the people that are going to be at this sentencing hearing how well you’re doing now. You had 5 years to show them that.

Sarah

Yes, it worked to my advantage. Being objective, I can see why it was the better option. The more distance I’m able to put between myself, the more accomplishments I’m able to show. Like, “Hey, it’s been five years. I graduated from Texas A&M. I immediately got a full-time job. I’ve been promoted at my full-time job. I’m on the right track and I’ve been sober.” So it was a lot of time to prove that I had changed.

Scott

What kind of work were you looking to do?

Sarah

I majored with a Bachelor of Science in psychology. I was hoping to eventually have an LPC for a licensed professional counselor. During that time, I knew what my charges were, but I remained hopeful that I would end up pleading down to something smaller and not taking a felony charge because, in the state of Texas, with a felony, you cannot hold any sort of state license. I wanted to work in a rehab or something that allowed me to help people and try to prevent teenagers from ending up and putting themselves in the situation that I did. So that was the career path. But having a criminal background makes it incredibly difficult to get a job. So I took the first job I was offered out of college, which was being a receptionist at the company I currently work for now. I had a little bit of an ego, thinking of like, “Oh, I have a degree. Tons of places will want to hire me. I’m from a great college,” but a criminal background will outweigh a college degree every time, which is fair. If I owned a company, I don’t think I would be like, “Give me everyone who’s a felon. That’s who I want to interview.” It made it very challenging, but I’m very blessed that this company took a chance on me and allowed me just to start by answering the phones. I’ve been promoted now 4 different times since I’ve been employed there. I was able to start making more money and have more responsibilities and start an adult career. It’s not in the degree field I wanted to be in or the career field, but I knew how important it was to have a job.

Scott

Yeah, that’s a big factor they consider when you go to your sentencing.

Sarah

Absolutely. And you don’t get to be picky when you have a background. You just take what you can get and be grateful for that.

Scott

If you go in for different things, you must have had to take some time off work and they were okay with all that?

Sarah

Yes. The company was very understanding of my circumstances which I’m very grateful for. When I would have a court appearance, they’d understand I’d have to take half a day to drive up to College Station and sign paperwork that I’m waiting or I didn’t run away. When Covid hit, that pushed my court almost back a year. So that allowed me to have a little more time of not having to go in person, but they were very understanding of my legal situation.

Scott

When the day of your sentencing came in December of 2020, what did you expect your sentence to be, or what was the maximum you could have gotten?

Sarah

I know with first-degree felonies, the maximum you can be sentenced with is up to 25 years. Like that’s the statute for the felony itself. There were a lot of feelings on all sides of how it would go. My attorney was hopeful it would be probation. I was not that hopeful. I didn’t think that it could go that way. I didn’t think it was going to be prison. I assume maybe 6 months in county jail or doing weekends where, like you work, you go check yourself in on Friday, you stay till Sunday, you leave, and I could just do a year or two of weekends. I was hopeful that I would not go to prison.

Scott

You were hopeful for that, but I understand that when you went to the hearing, you were prepared for the worst. How did you prepare for that?

Sarah

I had one credit card at Marshalls, so my finances were taken care of. I had my phone shut off. I drove my car up to the court hearing along with my parents. Since it was Christmas time, I had everybody’s Christmas presents wrapped and separated in the back of my car, my car title, and all financial documents so that if things went the wrong way, my family had their Christmas gifts, my car and all that stuff was as taken care of as it could be.

Scott

Because if you knew, whatever you were sentenced to, if you had to go to prison, you would be remanded into custody that day after that hearing.

Sarah

Immediately.

Scott

What was your sentence? I was sentenced to 8 years in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice to run concurrently, which is where they all run at the same time. I had three counts of 8 years and then a 2-year state jail felony, and it was all to run at the same time. So it’s together, but it was still 8 years in prison.

Scott

What did you think when you heard 8 years?

Sarah

I had to go back to look at the court transcript so that I could– because I’m sick, weird. Like, who would want to read that again? Me. But I wanted to remember it the best I could because, at that moment, I thought things went okay in the sentencing hearing because, like, first, the prosecution goes and presented their mountain of evidence and I was like, “Oh my God, I just want to run away.” When we were on lunch break, I was like, “Just let me run. I’ll run and just get it as far away as I can, and they catch me.” My dad’s like, “No, it was their turn. They make things obviously look as bad as they can be. It’s our turn afterward. So I had one of my bosses testify. My therapist testified. My dad testified. And I ended up testifying. I took the stand and thought that would help somehow. I thought things went okay. In my mind, I thought that me taking accountability for my choices and being able to show what I had done would be enough for them to allow me to do county jail time – something that would allow me to maintain the life I had built for myself.

I remember what the judge said. He said prison is for 3 things – to reform, to deter from future actions, and for punishment. He said, for reform, you’ve shown yourself to be reform. It’s been five years. I haven’t committed another crime. You have a job to deter from future action. Obviously, you haven’t made the choice again. I think it made a pretty big impact on what making this choice again would do. So I was feeling hopeful. Then, he said, “But for punishment, what you did was wrong. You got up here and you admitted that you knew it was wrong and you did it anyway. So I’m sentencing you to eight years in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice to be remanded now.” My parents were there. I was in another horrible moment. My mom was crying and begging them not to take me away. My dad and stepmom were there too. My therapist and his mom were just like, “Hey, it’s going to be okay. It’s going to be fine.” At that point, it just felt like circus music going on in my head, like, “What is happening?” I mean, I was prepared to do county jail. I had no idea what prison was going to be like.

Scott

Yeah, that’s a whole other story.

Sarah

Yeah. It was not an experience that TV or movies can prepare you for. It’s absolutely one of a kind.

Scott

So you were taken into custody…

Sarah

Taken into custody at the courthouse. They were nice enough to let me hug my parents one more time, take off my Aggie ring and my earrings to give them so I didn’t have to bring that into the jail to go into property because things can get lost. I went back and went through the booking process again. Fingerprints. When I took my booking photo, I did absolutely not smile this time. I kept it sad.

Scott

You learned that lesson.

Sarah

Yeah, I stayed sad. Just authentic sadness. Since this was Covid, I had to spend the first two weeks in solitary, which is by myself in a cell about the size of this closet for 23 hours a day and you come out for one to use the phones. That was my first mental challenge. Definitely difficult to be in such a small space with your own thoughts in jail.

Scott

What do you do all that time? Did you have books or anything? What could you do?

Sarah

I did have books. My family sent in some books. We were able to pass books from one cell to the other by sliding them out and attaching them to something heavier like a tray. So people would pass books to each other. I was reading whatever it was I could read. I didn’t care about the genre. I was not picky. So after two weeks, I moved into a general population, which was my first time being in the general population. There were a lot more people, a lot more space, and just kind of adjusting to jail. So you’re in the county jail until the TDCJ, Texas Department of Criminal Justice assigns you a number that night. They will let you know. At 2 o’clock in the morning, pack your stuff up. You’re pulling chain and you’re going to prison. I didn’t pull chain.

I was in county jail for almost, I think, 35-to-40 days before I pulled chain and went to prison. I met some nice people that were in there that kind of prepared me. I was looking for all the advice I could get. I had only seen Orange as the New Black, so I was like, “I don’t want people to beat me up or steal my stuff. Like, how do I avoid getting in fights like you see on the tv? How do I not want to be forced into a gang?” All these preconceived notions that I quickly learned – it’s not like that.

Scott

You mentioned Orange is the New Black and this is what it seems like, though – the naive non-St. Street Smart Girl heading to the big tough prison. You shouldn’t have watched that show.

Sarah

I watched it again once I got out to see how accurate it was. I was like, “No, not like that.” I don’t even know how to explain it. It’s very overwhelming. Getting there, the first unit you go to– I don’t know if all I would assume other states are like this but, in Texas, all women are processed through the exact unit. It’s one unit. It’s the diagnostic unit where you’re going to go. You take your IQ test. They’re going to check your mental and physical health. That way, they can assign what jobs you’re going to have and the next unit that you’ll go to. So I was at the processing unit for almost three months, and that was a mind fuck of its own, just adjusting to prison.

I was still struggling with, like– how you put something into words because everything is stripped of you. Like, you’re not called a name. My number was 2334173. That’s what they’re going to call you or your bunk number. I had a lot of different bunks, so it’s dehumanizing. You’re on their schedule. You wear their clothes – the prison clothes that are assigned to you. You work at the job. They tell you when you get up and when you go to bed at 10 o’clock. 10 o’clock is lights out. The free time is in a room with 60 other people. Breakfast is at 4 o’clock in the morning. Lunch is at 10.30. Dinner is around five. You don’t have any control over your day. You do what you’re told. You don’t ask questions and keep your head down and do what you’re told.

I didn’t mind listening to doing what I was told, but it was on a whole other level. Yeah. It was intense to find a way to make it work and not be miserable. I mean, my go-to in the free world was, typically, that I would just kill myself. You’re not going to be able to kill yourself in there. The only way is if you starve yourself, and no one’s going to do that. So I had to accept that there was no way out. The only way out was through. If that meant 8 years, that meant 8 years, which was dreadful to think about. I was lucky enough to bunk with a lot of really kind women that gave me great advice on how to do time and not lose yourself or lose your sanity.

Scott

That’s one thing that I would wonder about. The people that you came into contact with there– this is prison, so a lot of them are in for a long time and they’ve done really bad things. Did you meet other women who you were scared of attacking you? Or did you kind of congregate with the ones who wanted to help you?

Sarah

Some advice I got, which remained true, from people was, “In county jail, you’ll find your people. You’ll find people that are like you, sit on your bunk, and read your book. Don’t get a girlfriend, which is the reason why there are fights.” Almost every fight I saw is behind girlfriends and someone that you’re dating or that someone passed a note to somebody. So I just stayed on my bed and stayed quiet. I did end up meeting like-minded people and we would start talking about a book. It’s big to have pictures. So, if you’re fortunate enough that your family sends you pictures, we would share pictures. Women really do come together even in a place like that where not everybody was nice and some people were a little bit rough around the edges, but there was a sense of community in the strangest way of, like, if someone came and they didn’t have money on their books, they weren’t making store.

People would all come together and chip in to get them noodles, to get everyone something because you didn’t want to see people go without because prison is not the place where you want to not have anything for yourself. So there were moments of humanity that I saw even in an inhumane place that gave me hope. It was like a standard rule that you don’t ask why people are there. It’s just not your business, which is a really important rule that I learned going into prison, that is to mind my own business. Something I still sometimes struggle with is being a little bit nosy. So I learned to just not worry about what anybody else has going on unless they want to talk to you about it. I did bunk with people. One of them had done some pretty horrific crimes, but I learned it’s not my place to judge and it’s not my business. I just base it on how people treat me there. If you treat me kindly, I’m nice to you. Just keep it at that level.

Scott

So your next hope was to get out on parole. When did that come up? How long were you in? Or how much time did you have to do before you were eligible?

Sarah

I had to do 14 months. The way parole works is– depending on your time. My crime was not aggravated. So, for an 8-year sentence, I was eligible to see the parole board after 10 months. So I prepared for that by staying out of trouble, not breaking any of the rules, and not having any cases. I was able to be promoted to trustee status, which looked good for parole, but I was trusted to work outside of the yard. I did outside yards like mowing, weeding, and eating all around the prison. Your family can write in and write letters and your work people can write in to speak on your behalf that you have support when you get out. You can be seen 6 months before and you don’t know when you’re seen because you actually never see a parole board. You don’t see anybody. You’ll have an interview with, like, an officer that will ask you questions like, “How do you feel about crime? Are you sorry for your crime? What do you plan to do if you get out?” And they’ll pass that info along. But really, it will be three different people in an office that you will never meet who will decide if you go home that year or if you have to wait another 365 days for an option to go home.

Scott

That’s got to be such a common misconception because I’m picturing you sitting in a folding chair facing 3 people at a long table and you’re just pleading your case, like, “I’m all better now.” But you don’t even see these people.

Sarah

You never see them. You can write letters – I wrote a letter. I have no idea if they see it, but you have to relinquish control over what happens – that was one of the biggest lessons I learned in prison. I couldn’t control it. All I could do was what I was responsible for, so I stayed out of trouble, went to my job, and did exactly what I needed to do. That was the only thing I could put in for what the parole board would see. Otherwise, you’re really just a file that comes across their desk. One person votes and, typically, everyone else votes on the first person’s vote and onto the next one.

Scott

You must have deliberately tried to not get your hopes up. Do you think you had any chance?

Sarah

Well, for my first 6 months, I did ask a lot of other people. I asked everybody that I met, “Do you think I’m going to make parole? Do you think I’m going to make parole?” And the majority of people were like, “No, you have an 8-year sentence. There’s no way you’ll make your first parole.” So I was like, “This is hopeless. I’m not going to go home.” It’s very challenging there not to think about, like, even though you’re in prison and this is your life, the world keeps turning. Your family keeps waking up, getting older, having birthdays, having Christmases, and you’re just missing it. I was very neurotic at the beginning behind everything I was missing. Every birthday, every Easter, anytime a holiday came, I was like, “I’ll never get this back. I’ll never be with my family at this point in time to see them where they were at.” Some of my siblings were reaching pretty big milestones. My only sister had her 16th birthday and it crushed me that I was not there to see it. But I got very wise advice from someone that was like, “You have to stop thinking about them. Your world is in these four walls. That’s all you have. Your world is getting up, going to your job, and going to chow. You can love your family, but you can’t control it. The more involved you try to be, it will make you crazy, and it does. Like, I just focused on, “I can’t get to them. What if they get in an accident? When will I ever find out?” I mean, that stuff will drive you to a not-safe space. So, I didn’t want to get my hopes up, but at the same time, I was just desperate that the answer was yes. Like, I could not lose hope that it could be Yes.

Scott

It seems like when you write the letter to them, you have to strike some kind of balance. Like, you want to tell them the whole truth, but you also want to kind of think, “Okay, what do they want to hear? Do I need to write that in the letter?” Were you thinking about that?

Sarah

Yeah. It was hard not to. I don’t want to come across as, “I don’t deserve to be here because, whether I think it’s true or not, I’m here because I committed a crime and it’s wrong.” But I’m also like, “Well, but what does everybody write? Everyone’s going to write that they don’t deserve to be there. What is the right thing for these people that I will never meet?” So I kept my letter just pretty basic and took ownership of my choices and everything I had learned just in those 10 months of being in prison and hoped that it would be enough. I had seen it take months for people to have an answer and seen it take less than a week. Whenever I had my parole board hearing, my family was notified because your family is able to zoom in – only one family member – and I think it’s cut down to, like, 10 minutes. It’s quick, which I understand because there are hundreds of thousands of inmates. Like, they don’t have time to hear everybody’s story. So my dad let me know. He is like, “Hey, I think it went well.”

Scott

Wait a minute. Your dad– who was in this Zoom meeting?

Sarah

It’s one parole person that will vote. My mom was able to be there and my boss was able to basically, like, stand in to show, like, “Hey, this person has support. When they get out, they can come live with me. They’re going to have a job.” These are things that are important because they want to know. They’re not giving you a bus ticket to be, like, good luck. They want to know you have support. So my dad thought it went well, which I was, like, “Well, did they say anything?” He’s like, “No. They just listened.” I’m like, “Dad, I needed you to find out somehow, like, what they were going to say.” He’s like, “She seemed nice.” I was like, “Okay.” I knew her name – they told me – so I prayed for her and just turned it over the best that I could.

Scott

It really seems like it’s almost better that those people could be on Zoom with this one parole person instead of you trying to plead your case.

Sarah

Yeah, I understand. I wish they’d give you a list of options because, like, what if I didn’t have family? There are plenty of people who did not have a support system and I’m like, “Then no one gets to go and you’re just a manila folder that they look at for two seconds and they’re like, ‘next.’” It’s not fair and it made me feel guilty at times for having support when I would see people who didn’t. It made me very grateful for my family, but it also just sucks knowing that some people don’t have people and that’s an incredibly lonely place to be – to not feel supported, seen, remembered, or that you’re not just lost in a cage somewhere and no one’s thinking about you.

Scott

How did you find out the result?

Sarah

I called my friend. So I have a very close friend who’s cat-sitting for me right now, and I called him first. I used to call every day and try to find out if something was going on. I know I drove him nuts because every time the answer was “No, there wasn’t anything new,” my demeanor would change completely and I was devastated.

Scott

How would this friend know before you knew?

Sarah

It’s posted online. By finding out online, you’ll find out about a month sooner than it would get to you in jail that you made parole.

Scott

So you didn’t have access to check it online?

Sarah

No, nothing. Just calling.

Scott

So that was probably a pretty regular phone call for you.

Sarah

Yes. And I was like, “Is there anything online? Is there anything new?” I knew it hurt as badly for my family as it hurt for me because it’s hard not to be envious while you’re there because like I learned that even though I’m the one in prison, everybody is doing time. We’re all doing time together because my family wants to help me and they can’t. I want to be with my family and I can’t get there. So I had to learn to not be as selfish and be like, “Well, I’m the one who’s in prison. You guys don’t understand.” I learned, like, they do understand because, as badly as they want to give me this news, it’s just not here yet. I had to be patient.

One day, when I got up, I was feeling really crappy. I didn’t have work, so I slept until like noon and I didn’t get out of my bed. I called and I was just, like, in a funky mood knowing that the answer was going to be no. I could just hear the difference in his voice. He said, “Are you ready to come home?” I said, “What are you talking about?” And he’s like, “You made parole.” So what everybody had told me in prison was like, “Don’t let people know you made it. Don’t let anybody know you made it. People will try to take that from you because if people know you’re going home, they could get in a fight with you or place contraband in your space. Don’t let people know.” So I tried to remain calm and I was like, “Okay, I got to call my dad.”

I called my dad and he’s like, “I can’t wait to see you. You’re coming home.” And I’m like, “Okay. But when?” Because you get an answer, which is an immediate release, a delayed release, or you can be released to a program. I had an FI2, which was a delayed release, but I didn’t know when it was going to be. So that was the next hurdle. I found out I made parole, but finding out when I’d be going home took– I found out on October 1st that I made parole, but I did not leave until January 7th.

Scott

Oh, that’s a long time.

Sarah

Yes.

Scott

And you kept it a secret from the other people that whole time.

Sarah

As long as I could. Because as what people said about, I guess, like– depending on the facility you were at this. My last facility was a smaller group of people, so there were only 18 of us in a room. When you spend almost 24 hours a day with 18 people – I had been there for 7 months – you get to know each other even if you don’t like each other. Sometimes people don’t like each other, but you live in the same space. There is 1 phone, 2 showers, and 4 toilets. So you learn to get along. My acquaintances in prison picked up on it pretty quickly that I had made it, so I pulled them into the bathroom to try to have a private space to tell them that I had made parole. They were really excited. So they started screaming and crying and then everybody found out. But I was really lucky to be in a space where everybody was excited for each other when we found out someone was going home. So I was glad I didn’t have to hold on to that for all that time. I don’t think I could. I was very excited but also wanted to be humble as not everybody makes parole. The last thing I wanted to do was put that in someone’s face that I was leaving and they weren’t.

Scott

Can you talk about the day that you left prison? Did your parents come and pick you up?

Sarah

I had my friend come get me because only 1 person is allowed to come. So, like, your whole family can’t be there for a reunion. None of that. I didn’t want to have to pick between my dad and my mom, so my friend came and picked me up. I got out on the 7th. Once I found out on the 2nd of January, it was just a few days, so I was like, “Hey, you’re going home in 4-5 days. Oh my God, this doesn’t feel real.” So for the next four days, my friends and I drank a lot of coffee to stay awake and, like, tell stories and be silly. One of my friends got up early, braided my hair for me, and did my makeup so that I would feel nice when I was leaving. I had all my belongings packed up, but it just didn’t feel real. Like, I couldn’t believe I was actually leaving until I’d stepped out of those gates as a free person. They came and got me around 10 o’clock and they’re, like, “Bunk 4. ATW,”, which means all the way. Like, you’re going all the way out of the gates. So I packed up my stuff and walked out. They take you to the front. They look through things again, I guess, to make sure you’re not taking anything. I don’t know what you would take out of prison that they might want, but they checked to make sure.

Scott

If there’s anything illegal, they probably want you to take it out, right?

Sarah

I mean, I would think so. I’m not sure what they’re looking for, but that’s fine. They looked through my things. My friend was able to come in and give me clothes. That’s when it felt real – when I got to go into the bathroom, not accompanied by an officer for the first time in 14 months, and change by myself in privacy and not get strip searched and to put on, like, real underwear and a bra. Life-changing. I was like, “Oh my gosh. Real clothes that aren’t made of, like, thick canvas.”

Scott

Institutional clothing, yeah.

Sarah

Yes. It’s not great quality. They don’t put a lot of, I guess, funding towards women’s clothing when you’re in prison. I get it, but still. I walked out the gates, out the front door, and they said, “Don’t come back.” I left and got in the car. The first place I went to eat was McDonald’s. Most people are like, “Oh, I want to go get steak.” Like, that’s what I thought for a long time. But as soon as I got in the car, I was like, “Go to the nearest fast food place, please. I don’t care what it is. I just want to eat garbage food in the real world.” It was about 10.30 in the morning when I had chicken nuggets, fries, and milk.

Scott

So you had real garbage food rather than prison garbage food.

Sarah

Oh, the prison food… I’m an extremely picky eater. Like, I still eat like a 12-year-old still. I’m trying to branch out now, but prison food is terrible. So I didn’t care what it was. I was like, “Just something that isn’t like mystery meat or something questionable if it’s even edible,” and it was McDonald’s.

Scott

So you’re out on parole now, but there are conditions. It’s not like you’re just a free person forever. What are some of the conditions of your parole?

Sarah

Correct. When you’re granted parole, you’re essentially doing the rest of your time in the free world. I will be on parole until December of 2028. So you come out and you go report to your parole officer. Depending on what your crime is, if it was violent or if you had certain crimes while having certain classes, if you had an aggravated charge, you might be required to take an anger management class.

So I had to report to my parole officer, and since I had a drug-related offense, I was required to take a UA every week for the first two months and then go from there. So each week, I’d go in and do a UA test. I had–

Scott

Urine analysis?

Sarah

Correct. So just a drug test to make sure that you’re clean. I can’t go anywhere where the main source of revenue is alcohol. There are a lot of situations that you could no longer, I guess, put yourself in or I won’t risk putting myself in.

Scott

And you had to come out to a job, right? Or you had to get a job?

Sarah

Yes. I was fortunate to come back to the company I had previously worked for before becoming incarcerated. They had a job for me. So I was able to start full-time employment right away. When you’re released on parole, you obviously can’t be released to your own house because you don’t have one, so you have to parole to somebody’s house. So I paroled to a friend’s house while I got situated to get my own apartment, and that took about 9 months. Once I had money and I started to look for an apartment, that was another challenge. A lot of places don’t want you to live there when you have a background, which was a little bit discouraging at first because I would get really excited just to be told no.

Once I found the place I lived at now, I was able to explain to the property manager. I just asked if I could have a conversation with her and tell her a little bit about my situation. Thankfully, she was really kind and understanding and was like, “I get it. We all make mistakes.” So now, I have my own place. Navigating friendships has been hard. I have one very close friend who’s here. Over the past three months, I’ve started to try to make friends. I’m just incredibly wary of everyone and what they might be doing, not that they would intentionally do something to me, but most people drink or smoke pot. I mean, I know I would if I could, but I can’t be around it. I can’t run the risk of being in someone’s car and they forget they have weed in it. If we were pulled over, I’d go back to jail and my parole would be revoked. I isolated myself for the first probably 6 months. It was hard being, I guess, a young adult because the crowd that likes to go to a bar, to go to a club, or to go have drinks learned that’s not what I do. I’m sober. I don’t drink alcohol. Meeting people has been hard.

Scott

I would imagine it would almost border on paranoia, being so concerned that you don’t accidentally– you were originally sentenced to 8 years and you did 2 years, but you’re doing your whole sentence. It’s just that the last 6 are out on parole. That’s why it’s 2028.

Sarah

Yes, I did 14 months inside. I guess I’ve gone for two years now, but it’s still parole. If you violate that parole and commit a new charge, you will go back, you will not see parole, and you will serve the remainder of your sentence in prison. So, it’s just not worth it. My dad and my stepmom helped me a lot in making friends. I always run everything by them, like, probably too much.

Scott

I’m sure they don’t mind.

Sarah

Thankfully, my stepmom is a great sport when I call about literally everything, all the time for advice. My dad helped me out in like, “I was invited by some friends to go to this, but there could be people there drinking. What if somebody that I’m with starts acting crazy because they’re drunk and it draws attention?” My dad’s like, “Okay. understand that you’re being careful, but I don’t want you to hold yourself up and not ever meet people. I get it – being careful – but also don’t let your anxiety and what-ifs drive you away from ever experiencing friendships.”

Scott

So what do you do if you don’t go out with friends to clubs and stuff? Have you gotten other hobbies? How do you spend your time?

Sarah

I got into painting. I do a lot of DIY crafts, which has been very good for me. It’s very therapeutic to take on something that I didn’t have any experience with. It was more of a challenge for me to follow through with something that I was not good at because I have a default character to quit when I try something once and it doesn’t turn out perfect. So, in challenging myself, I’ve actually become okay at painting. I’m not like Picasso, but it’s been therapeutic. I still go to therapy every week. I’m going to support groups like NA, AA, Nar-Anon, spending time with my family, and spending a lot of time with my cat. I’ve found ways that are filling up my time, but I’m still learning how to be social or what that will look like and not being scared to try.

Scott

Yeah, you got to just ease into it. How did this whole experience affect your relationship with your dad?

Sarah

It allowed me to have a relationship with my dad that I would not have. I don’t know if we would ever have had any sort of relationship if this didn’t happen. Having an adult relationship with a parent is really awesome. Getting to know my dad over these past five years and him getting to know me and realizing that we’re very much alike.

Bill

We’ve never been closer than we are right now. She’s an incredible young woman. She impresses me every single day. I think that she is sorry for how things went between us, and believe me, I was no altar boy’s terms of how our relationship went and how things went with her mother. I was an immature dad when we first had Sarah. I was young. There were a lot of things I wish I could do over in terms of that and things that I missed out on. But we’ve both looked at where we were and where we are today. I think that I’m a sounding board for Sarah. She leans on me for advice and I’m constantly impressed with her.

Sarah

Having a father figure that I rely on and include in my life has set so many standards for me of, like, whenever I do choose to be in, like, a romantic relationship, my stepmom and my dad set an amazing example of what that is supposed to look like. Having my dad is really cool. I mean, it’s not like I didn’t have him before, but putting in the effort on my part and including him in my life has changed it all for the better and it makes everything that had to happen to get to this point worth it.

Scott

I can’t help but think of the comparison of someone in the family dealing drugs, being heavily involved in that world, and a close family member being a drug enforcement agent. Have you guys ever watched Breaking Bad?

Sarah

We love Breaking Bad. We love it. I’m someone who watches it quite a few times. We were very excited to watch Better Call Saul together and just be involved in, like, the entire Breaking Bad Universe. Spoiler alert, if anyone’s not watched it, every time when Hank dies, I’m like, “Turn it off. This is like seeing my dad– like, this is my dad.”

Scott

Yeah, you’re Walter White and he’s Hank.

Sarah

Yeah. I’m glad that ours ended differently and we’re both alive and better, but we love Breaking Bad and that’s a fun aspect that we can tease each other about.

Scott

Sure. It’s a connection. Did this experience affect his job or his career at all?

Sarah

No. Thankfully, the DEA was understanding of the situation and allowed my dad to deal with that privately. He has retired since then and has been working at a different non-government company now. So he is retired, but he likes working.

Scott

What’s next for you? You’re doing some public speaking. What do you have in mind going forward?

Sarah

I really enjoy when I do get to public speak and be involved in, like, teen academies and get to speak to our younger generation. I think I resonate with them best because I’m like, “I was you not that long ago. It doesn’t matter – your socioeconomic status, where you were born, what your parents do for a job. Anybody can fall into addiction.” There’s this preconceived notion of like, “Oh well, if you were socioeconomically disadvantaged, that’s who’s going to fall into drugs.” I’m like, “Drug addiction is not bound by race, time, or wealth. It can affect anybody, and don’t think that it won’t be you because it will.” So I enjoy talking to teens and I do some parent talks also. I just try to talk to them about what my experience was and what I think could help someone else. Like, I know it was obviously not my parents’ fault or any of the choices that I made, but I can speak from a teenager’s perspective and have a close relationship with your kids, not just asking them, “Hey, what’d you do for school?” I know that as a teenager, they’re trying to find their sense of independence. I’m like, “While they might push you away, they really do want a close relationship with you. Keep pursuing them and get on their level. If your kid loves video games, grab a controller and ask them to play 2-player and just get on their level so that you can really get to know them and know what’s going on because we build up walls as teens and we think we have it under control. But you definitely need that parent to just be there for you emotionally and it will make your kids want to come to ask you for help. “

Scott

If you’d like to see the full transcript of this episode, or if you want to see pictures of Sarah, including the booking photo that went viral, you can get all of that in the show notes at WhatWasThatLike.com/136.

Sarah mentioned doing some public speaking to parents and kids about her story, and her father Bill often goes with her to those events, and he told me he really enjoys that.

Bill

She and I have done those together. I sat there and listened to her speak, and I’ll tell you this. The first time she did it, when I actually sat there, I watched her air her soul and become very vulnerable in front of a group of strangers. To say that it was impressive doesn’t really do it justice. I think she really made a difference with some people.

Scott

And this voice mail came in recently –

Jessica

Hi there. My name is Jessica. I just want to call and say I’m loving the show. I just started listening to the podcast last week. It’s been suggested a few times before through ad reads on other podcasts, and I finally added it to my podcast app and I’m hooked. Thank you for the work you put into the episode show notes. I love that you include guest info, pictures, videos, entire transcripts, and more on your website. It really helps connect this to the story. It’s added content that we just don’t get with other podcasts. I love that you allow the guests on the show to tell their story in their own way. I’ve never felt so impacted by the stories I’ve heard. I haven’t been able to get some people and episodes out of my head since I started listening. Thank you.

Scott

And if you have a comment, you can record it on your phone and email to me, or you can call the podcast voice mail line anytime day or night, at 727-386-9468.

One of the things I get regularly in my email are people sending me their own story, wondering if it would be a good fit for a podcast episode. And usually I can tell right away if it would work or not. So if you have a story that you think might work, go to the website, WhatWasThatLike.com, and click on the form to send in your story. The more details you can provide, the better. I can’t necessarily respond to every one of them, but I do read all of them.

But today I also wanted to let you know about some of the more specific stories I’m looking for. So just in case you may have personally experienced one of these things, or maybe you know someone who went through this – here are a few that I’d like to do.

I’d like to talk to a prison employee, who is or was in charge of executions.

I’d like to hear someone’s story about inheriting an island or a castle from an unknown relative.

I’d also like to hear from someone who survived being a passenger in a train when it derailed – OR, being a passenger in a car when it was HIT by a train.

And then this one, which is really sad and we hear about this happening here in Florida – sometimes a parent will be driving somewhere with their baby or small child in the back seat of the car, and they’ll get to their destination, or they’ll arrive home and go inside – and forget the baby is in the car. So many times that happens, and the child doesn’t survive because of the heat. So much to talk about with a story like that, and to hear it from the parent’s perspective would be really intriguing.

So if any of those things have happened to you or someone you know, I’d love to hear about it.

Graphics for this episode were created by Bob Bretz. Full episode transcription was created by James Lai.

And now, we’re at this week’s Listener Story. Every episode ends with a story that’s about 5-10 minutes long, and it’s sent in by a listener about something interesting that happened to them.

This Listener Story is about a family nightmare.

Stay safe – and I’ll see you in two weeks.

Sarah

In 2000, my boyfriend and I bought a house where we lived with our kids from previous marriages. Life was good at first, but within a year it had changed dramatically. He had become very manipulative and controlling. His daughter was a master manipulator as well and had become a handful. Still, I thought I could make this work. My boyfriend was an only child and came to the United States in 1970. I was very unhappy and was planning on moving out with my daughter.

When he was diagnosed with cancer, I felt obligated to stay and take care of his kids. In 2004, he went through a stem cell transplant and had to move in with his parents for a month. Upon arriving home, things got worse each day and he fought me daily on taking his medications. He was in and out of the hospital weekly. I was teaching full-time, taking care of the house and kids, and making the hour drive daily to the hospital and the evenings.

During one of the visits, his parents had brought in a lawyer who was a longtime family friend. He was there to do a living will. In the will, my daughter was to receive his SUV, which she drove to and from school. I was to get the house and only have to pay property taxes. In the event of his passing, I was willing to raise his kids even though we weren’t married. Shortly after that visit, he passed away. The lawyer was there the day he passed. Within minutes of his passing, my boyfriend’s parents asked that I take the kids and leave the room. The very day after he died, his parents told me that my daughter and I had 48 hours to move out of the house. They had changed the will, which I don’t think was legal in the ensuing days.

They went to my daughter’s school where they took off the license plate so she could not drive it, and took them off my car as well, stating that their son had purchased the car and I had no right to it. My daughter moved into her best friend’s house and I stayed in a motel for 10 days while looking for a place for us to live. My sister gave me her car to use until I could purchase one. They had changed the locks on the house and I ended up having to call the police and show ID so I could pack up as much of our belongings as possible under their supervision. His parents watched my every move. They also told me that at the time they took our husky to a shelter and would not tell me where. I went through a living hell for two years after he died because they totally turned my boyfriend’s kids against me. They seem to take pleasure in leaving threatening hate messages on both my daughters and my phones.

I’m telling you this story because, for anyone that is listening who has gone through death or a traumatic experience, stay strong and take each day one at a time. Time does heal all wounds and life does get better. Thank you, Scott, for listening to my story.

View Details

This is Scott, and this podcast is What Was That Like.

This is the show where I usually have a guest come on and talk about something they experienced, that was extremely unusual. Like crashing a skydive, or getting shot in a mass shooting, or finding a baby in the New York City subway, or winning a showcase on The Price Is Right. The guest comes on the podcast, and tells the details of what happened, first hand.

This episode is different.

In this one, I’m going to talk about a man who lived in Texas, whose name was James Bigby. You’ll learn about his horrific crimes, his bizarre behavior in court, and what eventually happened to him.

This is not a case that you’ve ever heard about on any other podcast.

But after you’ve heard his story, stick around and I’ll tell you exactly why I’m bringing it to you today.

James Bigby mugshotThe Huntsville UnitJudge Don Leonardfirst murder sceneJames Bigby in courtJames Bigby age 61lethal injection chamberFull show notes and pictures for this episode are here:
https://WhatWasThatLike.com/135

Voiceover work for this episode by Kiyana Morgan. Graphics by Bob Bretz. Transcription was done by James Lai.

Want to discuss this episode and other things with thousands of other WWTL listeners? Join our podcast Facebook group at WhatWasThatLike.com/facebook (many of the podcast guests are there as well)

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Episode transcript (download transcript PDF):

This is Scott, and this podcast is What Was That Like.

This episode is different.

This is not a case that you’ve ever heard about on any other podcast – at least not that I know of.

But after you’ve heard his story, stick around and I’ll tell you exactly why I’m bringing it to you today.

Scott

I want to tell you about James Bigby.

James Eugene Bigby lived in the small, north Texas town of Kennedale.

He had a difficult childhood. His mother was an alcoholic, and continued to drink even while she was pregnant with him. His father had left the family early on. James had brothers and sisters, but his mother gave them all away to be raised by relatives – and most of them suffered from mental health issues. James grew up in fear that his mother would abandon him, like his father had.

As a young adult, he was hospitalized multiple times for schizoaffective disorder, and for depression. During one of those hospital stays, he experienced electroshock therapy. He was also arrested and served time for various robberies, and a sexual assault charge.

James dropped out of school after 9th grade, so his options for employment were limited. He was able to get a job as an auto mechanic, and he worked in the body shop for the Frito-Lay company. Yes, the company that makes potato chips. They had large fleets of trucks that deliver their products to regional grocery stores, and James worked, along with several others, in a shop that kept those vehicles running.

James was for the most part an outgoing person who loved a good laugh. But sometimes he took things a little too far. His mother was disabled, and he once played a practical joke on her by removing the screws from her crutches. He had a good laugh at seeing her fall.

At some point, James was involved in an accident at work, and he was injured. Since it happened while he was on the job, he filed a claim for worker’s compensation in order to have the medical bills paid.

One of James’ co-workers was Michael Trekell. Trekell lived in a mobile home in Arlington, Texas, and he and James were friends, both on the job as well as outside of work. Michael lived with his wife, Grace Kehler, and their 4-month-old son, Jayson.

James Bigby suffered from severe mental illness. He was later diagnosed as being paranoid and delusional. For unknown reasons other than his mental condition, Bigby had convinced himself that Michael and some other co-workers were deliberately sabotaging his worker’s comp claim, by trying to get the claim denied. There was no validity to this thought, but he was convinced they were conspiring against him.

On the evening of December 23, 1987, James went to Michael’s house with some steaks for the two of them. Michael’s wife was out at the time, so the only people there were Michael, James, and the baby.

While Michael was preparing the steaks, James approached him from behind and shot him in the head. He then got some cellophane from the kitchen, and went to the baby’s room. He tried suffocating the baby with cellophane, but was frustrated that it was taking too long. He filled the bathroom sink with water, and held the baby’s head under until he drowned.

James left, and drove across town to the apartment of another friend and co-worker, Wesley Crane. He visited with Wesley for a while, then the two of them left in Wesley’s pickup truck to go to the store. On the way back from the store, James forced Wesley at gunpoint to pull over and get out of the truck. He shot Wesley in the head, killing him, and left his body on the side of the road. James then drove the truck back to Wesley’s apartment, and he got a bag out of his car, which contained a pistol and a shotgun. He left his car there, and drove away in Wesley’s pickup truck.

His next stop was at another co-worker’s house, Frank Johnson. He arrived there at 3:20 am and rang the doorbell. Frank came to the door, confused because of this visit in the middle of the night. They had a brief discussion, then James shot Frank three times with the shotgun, killing him. He then fled the scene in the pickup truck. The four killings had happened over a span of about seven hours.

While the last two murders were taking place that evening, Grace Kehler came home to the mobile home she shared with the first victim, Michael Trekell. When she entered the trailer, she discovered Michael lying on the kitchen floor. Initially she thought he was just unconscious, so she dialed 911 to get help. While she was speaking with the 911 dispatcher, Grace suddenly remembered that her 4 month old baby, Jayson, was also at home and went to look for him. She discovered him lying face down in the sink full of water.

Later, when she was being questioned by police, she mentioned that she thought James Bigby might be a likely suspect. She noted that when she got home, she saw the steaks that weren’t there when she left home earlier, and she knew that James was a common visitor there.

At just after 5 am, on what was now Christmas Eve, Officer James Greenwell arrived at the Trekell mobile home. He was there as the crime scene investigator. He took many photographs of the kitchen and the bathroom, and he created a diagram of the layout of the trailer. He also performed gunshot residue tests on both Michael and the infant, and he obtained postmortem fingerprints from Michael. Looking in the trash can, he discovered some beer cans and a wine cooler bottle, which he retrieved and later had them checked for fingerprints.

Autopsies were performed on both victims by Dr Charles Harvey, the Tarrant County Medical Examiner. He determined that the manner of both deaths was homicide. Michael’s death was due to craniocerebral trauma due to a gunshot wound from a .357 Magnum revolver. The infant died as a result of drowning.

It didn’t take investigators long to figure out that these seemingly separate murders had one common factor: James Bigby. With James being named as a suspect and accused of murdering his two other co-workers, a widespread manhunt was underway to find him, before he could kill again.

News Reporter

A national search continues tonight for a Fort Worth man wanted in connection with a Christmas Eve killing spree. Authorities are looking for 32-year-old James Bigby. The former auto mechanic is accused of shooting three former coworkers and strangling a 4-month-old baby. We have more in this NBC report.

The 4-month-old baby is carried from an Arlington trailer. Michael Trekell, the boy’s father, is inside dead from a gunshot wound to the head. The boy was drowned. The body of Frank Johnson was found just outside the door of his southwest Arlington home. He was shot three times. In Fort Worth, Calvin Crane was shot in the head. His body was dumped along the side of the road. Right now, everybody’s trying to find him. The man that police are looking for as a suspect in all four murders is James Bigby. He is 32 years old, 5’ 7” tall, and 170 pounds. He has brown hair and green eyes. Bigby may be driving a 1978 Chevy pickup truck. The vehicle is silver with a blue hood. The Texas license number is 528CF.

Officer

All the patrol units are looking for him as well as the stolen pickup truck out of Fort Worth, and all the detectives available are being used.

News Reporter

The search for Bigby has been intensified tonight because he has stated he would like to go out in a blaze of glory and he would like to kill a bunch of people, and that has police very concerned.

Two days later, on December 26, the Fort Worth police were called to a Tarrant County motel for a complaint about a man in one of the rooms who was threatening suicide. This eventually escalated to a standoff. Ft Worth Police detective Larry Ansley was called to the scene to act as a negotiator. The man inside the motel room was James Bigby.

Detective Ansley made contact with James, and told him, “This is America. You’re an American. You’re presumed innocent until proven guilty. Everything’s gonna be all right.” Soon after that, James opened the door slightly and said to the detective, “I know that I’m guilty, and so do you”. Shortly thereafter, James surrendered to police, and was taken to John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth.

The next morning, Fort Worth Police Homicide Detective Curtis Brannan interviewed James. He first advised him of his Miranda rights, and then asked him a long series of questions about his potential involvement with the four murders. In the early hours of December 27, James provided a written statement in which he confessed to killing Michael and the baby, as well as the two other men. In the statement, he said, “I regret killing the baby, but not the other.” Later, James’ fingerprints were matched to the prints taken from the wine cooler bottle that was found at the trailer crime scene.

James was charged with capital murder, and in court, his lawyers presented a defense based on insanity. They argued that he suffered from paranoid schizophrenia. They enlisted the expert witness Dr James Grigson. At the time, Dr Grigson was nicknamed “Dr Death” because his testimony was usually relied upon to convince jurors about how dangerous a defendant was. In this case, he was testifying on behalf of the defendant. He stated that James Bigby was suffering from a serious, severe mental illness, and was not aware of the difference between right and wrong. The defense team also brought in a different doctor’s report that concluded that James believed that Private Investigators from Frito-Lay were trying to kill him. James’ childhood was also part of his defense, with his lawyer’s claiming that he was raised by an alcoholic mother who breast-fed him up to age seven.

The trial was presided over by Judge Don Leonard. The trial was moving along fairly routinely, until Bigby came up with a bizarre plan to escape.

During a brief trial recess, Judge Leonard was in his chambers behind the courtroom. James stood up at the defense table, as if he were going to go and get a drink of water from the water fountain. Instead, he ran to Judge Leonard’s unoccupied bench in the courtroom, and he found a loaded gun in a drawer, and took it out. The bailiff in the courtroom saw this happen, and drew his weapon, and told James to stop. James pointed the gun at the bailiff, who then ducked down behind a desk. When he looked up again, he saw James running. The bailiff started to chase him, but James turned around and pointed the gun at him again, so he again ducked for cover. By the time the bailiff could get back up, James had run through the door into the hallway.

With gun in hand, James went immediately to Judge Leonard’s chambers. The judge was sitting at his desk. James calmly took a few steps toward the judge, pointed the gun at his head, and said, “Let’s go, Judge”. The judge looked up at James and immediately jumped out of his chair and grabbed the hand holding the gun and slammed it against the wall. The two of them ended up against the wall, struggling.

In the judge’s office at the time was Barbara Hackney, who was also a bailiff. She saw what happened, and immediately ran to get help. Deputies came in quickly and were able to restrain James and get the gun away from him, without any shots being fired.

So James was not successful in trying to escape, but this bizarre action somewhat changed the course of the trial. The defense used it as a reason to move for a mistrial, which the judge denied. James’ lawyers also moved for Judge Leonard to recuse himself, on the basis that the attack on him personally would cause him to be biased against James. The matter was referred to the presiding administrative judge, and a hearing was held for this specific matter. Judge Leonard testified that the assault in his chambers had not prejudiced him against James. The presiding judge came to the conclusion that Judge Leonard did NOT have to recuse himself, and thus, the trial continued.

One thing to keep in mind is this – James’ attempt to escape by grabbing the gun and pointing it at the judge was done during a trial recess, so it was not seen by the jurors. They were not aware that any of that had happened. However, after the defense rested, Judge Leonard allowed prosecutors to introduce testimony telling the jurors about the attempted escape. The state claimed that James’ actions were evidence of his “consciousness of guilt” about the murders he was accused of, and therefore his claims of insanity were not valid.

The trial ended, and the jury rejected his insanity defense. They found him guilty of capital murder for the double homicide. Following that, they determined that the sentence for his crimes was the death penalty. That was in 1991. He was never tried for the murders of the two other men.

After the sentencing, James Bigby was transported to his new home – the Texas State Penitentiary in Huntsville, Texas.

The Huntsville Unit, also known as the Walls Unit, is the oldest state prison in Texas, having opened in 1849. It’s the home of the execution chamber of the state of Texas. The death penalty was reinstated in Texas in 1982, and since then there have been almost 600 executions at this facility. That makes it the most active execution chamber in the United States.

With the death penalty involved, most cases are appealed automatically. And James attempted many times to appeal his case, with a variety of arguments. For the most part, those appeals were unsuccessful. But there was one appeal that did work in his favor.

The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit overturned the sentencing decision of the district court, and granted a certificate of appeal. This ruling did not acquit him, but it did give him the opportunity for a new hearing about what his punishment should be. Of course, he was hoping for anything less than the death penalty that he got originally. The second punishment hearing began in September of 2006 – fifteen years after the first trial. This jury of six men and six women came to the same conclusion as the first jury – and Bigby was once again sentenced to death.

After the sentencing was read, the sister of Michael Trekell, Deborah Jameson, tearfully read a victim impact statement to James.

“James Bigby, what happens to you will be God’s will. Now, keep this in your mind: this court is your authority. May you stop these appeals. May you stop this begging, and heed the punishment delivered.”

She closed with: ““This day will be yet another remembrance in the history that was forever changed by James Bigby for our families”

His further appeals were all unsuccessful, but they did buy him some more time while they made their way through the courts. Eventually, he either came to the realization that he might just be getting what he deserved, or maybe he just grew tired of the seemingly endless process. But for whatever reasons, on August 1, 2016, James Bigby wrote a letter to Texas governor Greg Abbott. In the letter, he requested that the governor set his execution date.

James Bigby

Dear Honorable and Righteous Governor Greg Abbott,

May this letter find you well in Jesus’ name.

Governor Abbott, sir:

My death penalty appeals are finished now for about a full year, yet I still have no execution date set.

This is wasting about $47.50 per day in Texas taxpayer dollars, and furthermore it is wickedness and corruption, which me being a born-again Christian – John 3:3 – cannot be a part of. I have waited and waited to be bench-warranted back to trial court for my execution date, and I in good conscience cannot be waiting in silence like this any further. It is wickedness and a lie to the judicial process in my death penalty case.

I am asking you Governor Abbott, sir, to get my execution date set now, which is not only legally correct to do but binding upon you a true believer in Lord Jesus Christ for righteousness’ sake.

When I heard you were running for Governor of Texas, I prayed many prayers for you in Jesus’ name after I learned you were in a wheelchair, to God the Father, for your success.

My dear mama was on crutches since before my birth, and when I was age 9 had to have her hurt leg cut off. I can clearly remember how some people loathe my dear mama, who taught me about my Lord Jesus, because of her disability. So I prayed many prayers in Jesus’ name for you to be elected Governor of Texas.

I celebrated when you won. “Victory in Jesus” with my arms raised to heaven in a “V”.

I know you are a righteous man in Lord Jesus Christ, and I ask you, even beg you, please please make whoever is sitting on my case go forward now without any further games, and set my execution date.

I do NOT need any attorney to stand with me at my bench warrant to get my execution date. Just get me my execution date now please Governor Abbott.

Thank you kindly in the name of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,

James E Bigby #000997

Scott

On Monday, November 28 of 2016 – a full ten years after the second hearing – and 29 years after the murders – James Bigby was delivered the news. He got what he requested. At 4 pm that afternoon, he was told that a date had been set for his execution. That date was just 4 months away. He was scheduled to die on March 14, 2017.

News Reporter

A convicted murderer who tried to kidnap the judge during his trial is scheduled to be executed tonight. James Bigby was convicted of killing Michael Trekell and his 4-month-old son on Christmas Eve, 1987. During his trial though, Bigby grabbed a loaded gun from behind the judge’s bench during a recess and tried to kidnap the judge. So far, there have been no last-minute appeals filed. Bigby would be the fourth inmate executed in Texas this year.

Scott

On March 14, 2017, just after 6 pm, James Bigby was strapped to a gurney and rolled into the prison’s death chamber. This room had a large window, and on the other side of that window was a room for those who wished to be present for the execution. Seated in that room on that day were six people – relatives of the people James had been convicted of murdering.

Before he died, James looked directly at those six people and said, “I hope this will bring you peace, and I’m sorry for all the pain and suffering.” His voice was cracking at times as he felt the emotion of the moment. “I hope that you can forgive me, but if you don’t, I understand. I don’t think I could forgive anyone who would have killed my children”.

At 6:17 pm, James was injected with the lethal dose of pentobarbital, and the officials waited for it to have its full effect. During that time, James prayed, and he repeated several times, “I promise, I’m sorry”. As the effects of the drug kicked in, he was singing the children’s song, “Jesus Love Me”. He took a few breaths, and then all movement stopped.

At 6:31 pm, 30 years after he had taken the lives of four people, James Bigby was pronounced dead.

Following the execution, Deborah Jameson, the sister of Michael Trekell and the aunt of little Jayson, released a statement about why she was present to witness the execution.

She said that she was there not to judge him, but to “support the completion of what James Bigby began with my family almost 30 years ago when he committed such a heinous crime”.

Why am I bringing you the story of James Bigby today?

Back in the summer of 1995, James had been in prison, on Death Row, for about 8 years. Aside from being a terrible place to live, and often dangerous, prison life is also pretty boring. Time drags by, and there are a lot of hours in the day with not much going on.

James decided he wanted to have some kind of contact with the outside world. This was in the very early days of personal computers and the internet. Most people didn’t even have an email address at that point. So the only way an inmate could communicate with anyone outside the prison was by regular mail.

So James somehow figured out a way to take out a classified ad in the back of some magazine, like Popular Mechanics or Popular Science. And that ad made its way to be listed on some website. He wanted to have a pen pal. Today, a lot of people wouldn’t even get the concept of being a pen pal. This is where you would physically write a letter to someone, and mail it to them through snail mail, and they would get it a few days later and then they would write you back. It’s pretty much unheard of these days, with email and text messaging, but at one time it was a fun thing to do – especially with someone you didn’t know.

I lived in Maine at the time, and I would sometimes read those magazines. I think I even had a subscription to Popular Science at one time. Even as a kid I would look through these magazines and read the articles about the newest tech gadgets and that kind of thing. I remember looking at the ads in the back where they would be selling instruction plans for a single-person gyrocopter. I always thought it would be so cool to have something like that, and the ads made it look so easy – all you need is lawn mower engine and a few other parts, and before you know it, you’ll be flying all over town in your little one-man flying machine. Thankfully, I never tried actually doing that, because I probably would have killed myself on the first flight. But it was fun to think about.

I was looking through those classified ads online one day, and I saw this one in particular that caught my eye. It said, “Texas Death Row inmate looking for pen pal”. And it gave an address to write to.

When I saw that, I was really intrigued. If you’ve been listening to this podcast, you know I have a big sense of curiosity about all kinds of things. And here was a chance to actually communicate directly with someone who was in prison, waiting to be executed? So I had to write to him. And of course, that Death Row inmate was James Bigby.

I wasn’t really quite sure what to put in that first letter. So I kept it pretty generic, talking about my job without naming any specific company. I also used a PO Box, which I already had anyway. I think I also asked him about his background or what his life story was. At the time, of course, I had no idea what he had done to end up on Death Row. I assumed he had probably killed someone but I didn’t know any of his story.

And pretty quickly, he wrote back. He told me about childhood, and family and work – but he didn’t mention anything about his crimes. And I was okay with that. He could tell me as much as he wanted to or as little as he wanted to. I was just fascinated by the conversation.

Eventually he did tell me the story of what landed him in prison. And I was able to do some research on my own to get some of the details.

As I received more of his letters, some were handwritten and some were typed on a typewriter, or on a computer and printed. But it became clear that he was still suffering from mental illness. I have no idea if he was getting any treatment or therapy for that in prison, but I kind of doubt it.

Also, at the time I was operating a business called Celebrity Locators, and I had access to some mailing addresses for a lot of celebrities. So I recall helping him with getting some of those addresses. Not usually a home address – more commonly the address of their agent or something like that. One of the people he wanted to contact was Madonna – he somehow thought that she could help him expose the corruption and the conspiracy that made him kill.

In all, he wrote me 42 letters over the course of 3 years. In one of his early letters, he talked about what he would do on the day they came to get him from his cell to be executed. This is part of what he wrote:

“Scott I talk about things calmly coz I guess it’s my existence here, but if that day ever comes I will NOT go quietly. I am shocked at everybody doing just that, and still have yet to figure it out, coz somebody shows up at my cell door to take me to the death house, they will see a totally different person then has been with em all these years. Death is just that, and I ain’t ready to die just yet, and to hell with what anybody thinks about me not wanting to go.”

I kept all 42 of those letters. Honestly, I don’t know why I kept them. They range from August 1995 to September of 1998. They are a really interesting peek into the dark mind of someone whose mental illness eventually drove him to murder.

And for anyone who’s a Patreon supporter of this podcast, all of those letters are now available for you to read. And this is for supporters at any tier, to read all of the letters I received from James Bigby. But if you do the $5 level you will also get access to all of the Raw Audio episodes and those 911 calls and stories. AND, you get all of the new regular episodes of the podcast without any ads. You can get all of that by signing up at WhatWasThatLike.com/support.

I’d love to hear what you think about this episode. I know it’s different from the typical interview-style episodes I do, but I know you enjoy true crime, and this one definitely fits in that category. I hope you join in on the discussion in the Facebook group, at WhatWasThatLike.com/facebook.

Graphics for this podcast created by Bob Bretz. Transcript created by James Lai.

And even though this is a bonus episode, you know we still have to have a Listener Story. This listener had a surprise while she was out walking her dog. And don’t worry, no animals get hurt in this story.

Stay safe, and I’ll see you in a week with the next regular episode.

(Listener Story)

I was walking my dog the other day in our neighborhood, and I saw a cop car pull up with his lights flashing probably about 20, 30 feet ahead of me and stop in front of a house – not completely unusual, but enough to be like, “Oh, maybe I’ll see something interesting.” As I kept walking towards the cop car with my dog, I saw a big armored car about 15 feet behind him that was camouflaged. I was kind of looking at it, like, “Okay, that’s kind of weird.”

Then, as I was looking at the car, I saw 3 SWAT men run out of the back of the car with their rifles drawn toward a house. Then, I looked back at the cop and he pulled his big rifle out of his car. I locked eyes with the cop and I literally say, “Nope.” I turn around and I started running the other way. I was listening to a podcast as I was walking my dog, which is probably your podcast because I’m addicted to your stories and I love stories. Through my EarPods, I can hear a gunshot. Then, I really started sprinting because the neighborhood is empty right now because it was 8 o’clock in the morning. I sprinted in the other direction.

I saw a car coming up the street and I waved frantically, “No, don’t go. Don’t go.” Then, I explained what cars were down there and, “I heard gunshots. Don’t go down there.” He was looking at me like I’m crazy, but I kept telling him to turn around. Then, he turned his car around for probably another two minutes before he turned around and decides to go down another street.

I’m connected with Facebook and the crime watch in the area and stuff. So I’m looking and thinking, “Surely, this is going to come up somewhere.” I even posted, “Does anyone know what happened?” And nothing. No responses. It’s like I almost imagined it, but I have the image of the SWAT people running out of the back of the SWAT car with their gun drawn burned into my head, so I know I didn’t imagine that. I just had no clue what happened. So thanks for listening.

View Details

On a Friday afternoon in 2022, Lex was at home, just doing some routine work on her laptop. It seemed like just a normal day.

It did not turn out to be normal. In fact, what happened that day started Lex on a journey she never could have predicted.

And by the way – the story you’re about to hear does not include any violence. But there is blood. A lot of blood.

LexMeg (left) and LexSome of the kidsThis is a short documentary that was made by Luke and Jasper (two of Lex and Meg’s sons) about their family and their pet rabbit, Shirley:
https://vimeo.com/642010919

mini-documentaryIf you’d like to Lex’s blog and the amazing photographs she creates, visit
https://LexBeach.com

Full show notes for this episode are here:
https://WhatWasThatLike.com/134

Want to discuss this episode and other things with thousands of other WWTL listeners? Join our podcast Facebook group at WhatWasThatLike.com/facebook (many of the podcast guests are there as well)

Go to HelloFresh.com/wwtl50 and use code wwtl50 for 50% off, plus your first box ships free!

Episode transcript (download transcript PDF):

On a Friday afternoon in 2022, Lex was at home, just doing some routine work on her laptop. It seemed like just a normal day.

It did not turn out to be normal. In fact, what happened that day started Lex on a journey she never could have predicted.

And by the way – the story you’re about to hear does not include any violence. But there is blood. A lot of blood.

Scott

As you listen to my conversation with Lex, you’re going to get to know her pretty well. Even though she was very young, she knew what she wanted to do.

Lex

I grew up with my mom, dad, and two sisters in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I knew from really early on that what I wanted most in life was to be a mom and have babies. Then, I also figured out pretty early that I wanted to be a midwife. Like, I wanted my whole life to be about, sort of, procreation and raising small humans.

Scott

But then as a teenager, things got a little confusing.

Lex

Then, when I was 15 and I figured out that I was gay, the hardest part for me about that realization was wondering, like, “How will I have babies?” That was my focus for my teenage years – so, not a typical adolescence in the sense that I always felt like, if I had been straight, I had, like, high risk of becoming a teen mom because it was all I wanted to do.

Scott

So she graduated high school, left home, and started looking for a life partner, and things happened pretty quickly…

Lex

I met my first wife during my first semester in college. I was 18. She was my first girlfriend. She was older. She was a senior. Somehow, I convinced her to marry me. So, all of my dreams were going according to plan so far. It turned out that I was pregnant with twins. So, I had twin babies right out of college. They were born nine months to the day from my college graduation. Then, a few years later, I had another baby. Then, my wife carried our fourth son. Soon after that was when our marriage started to fall apart.

Scott

And that’s when she met Meg…

Lex

Meg and I actually met at a support group for nursing mothers – her first baby was 4 months old while I had twins who were two at the time – and we became friends. I wouldn’t say we became, like, excellent best friends. There was always some amount of distance, but I was enamored with her from the get-go. We were both married to other people and our friendship grew over the next few years. Then, we accidentally fell completely in love. It wasn’t a conscious choice in any way and it wasn’t something that we really realized was happening until it was already completely established of this, like, intense mind-blowing feeling that I had never experienced, that I didn’t even know was a way a person could feel.

I’d still say that falling in love with Meg was, like, the best thing that ever happened to me, even though it was also incredibly challenging because, at that point, I had four young children and she had two young children. We were both relatively happily married to other people. Like, there wasn’t any fighting or it wasn’t as if we had bad marriages that we were leaving. It was just more like we hadn’t had this intense love with the other with our first partners. Ultimately, we made the decision to leave our marriages and be together. When that happened, our kids were ages 1, 2, 3, 5, and the twins were 7.

Scott

Now, Lex and Meg had to figure out how to make this work including deciding on careers.

Lex

We had both been primarily stay-at-home mothers up until then. We had to figure out a way to support ourselves and navigate sharing custody with our exes and all the traumas of divorce, so the early years were really challenging.

Scott

You work as a lactation consultant?

Lex

Yes. Do you know what that is? I help people feed their babies.

Scott

Right. You see a lot of boobs?

Lex

I do. I see a lot of newborns, a lot of boobs, and talk about milk all day.

Scott

And what does Meg do?

Lex

Meg is a high-school English teacher.

Scott

Overall, Lex felt like she was in pretty good health except for a particular pain that started in the early part of the pandemic.

Lex

I had been having this intense pain on the left side of my torso, sort of, under my ribs that would come and go, and it was very intense. I previously had appendicitis, an ectopic pregnancy, and a burst ovarian cyst. So I had been through some painful – like, going to the hospital for emergency surgery – situations previously in my life. When I was first having this pain on the left side of my body, it felt like that level of pain. Like, I should probably go to the hospital, but I didn’t. It was, like, the early days of the pandemic and going to the hospital wasn’t a thing you’d do. So I didn’t go to the ER. I just, like, lived through it for a few hours and the pain subsided. But when it kept happening, I did go to the doctor about it and, ultimately, I had an upper endoscopy and colonoscopy, and everything looked clear. My GI doctor at the time told me that it was possible that it was, like, in my head and that I was just stressed out, being home with all these seven kids during the pandemic. He suggested that I start taking SSRI, so I felt incredibly dismissed. I did start taking SSRI, which I enjoyed.

Scott

What is that?

Lex

SSRI is, like, an antidepressant anti-anxiety medication. I was like, “Well, yeah. It wasn’t effective. I was still having this, like, probably once a week painful, kind of, spasm that would last a few hours. I felt like I had done everything I could to investigate it by going to a doctor and having these tests. So yes, I thought I was in good health and that it was just something I had to work through. Like, maybe it was caused by anxiety or I don’t know.

Scott

And then it happened on a Friday afternoon. You were at home just doing some work, just sitting at your dining room table…

Lex

Yes. I was sitting at the dining room table. I was doing some charting for my job on my laptop and texting a friend, and I felt fine. I was totally comfortable and wasn’t in any pain. Then, I thought that I just had to fart, so I did, but it felt like what I assumed was, like, diarrhea coming out with the fart. What do the kids say? I sharted.

Scott

There’s a word for everything now.

Lex

Yeah, there is. So I quickly rushed into the bathroom, sat on the toilet, and had diarrhea. I took my underwear off to rinse them in the sink and I saw that it was blood that was coming off of them, but I just assumed that I had gotten my period. It wasn’t enough of a shart to get in my underwear, but I had gotten my period and that’s why they’re wet with blood. I was sitting there just, like, having this really intense cramping and diarrhea – like, liquid diarrhea. Because I had been in such a rush to get to the toilet, I hadn’t brought my phone with me or anything, so I was just kind of on toilet lock and I couldn’t do anything. But I felt this intense sort of heat that started in my head and, like, rushed down through my body like I was fainting and everything. I lost my hearing and everything went sort of black. I had fainted before at a concert as a teenager, so it felt like that. It felt like fainting. But then, I waited for it to end and it wouldn’t really end – like, the feeling of fainting – and I was just still having diarrhea. I couldn’t really come back to consciousness. I really had no idea what was happening. I don’t know how long that has been going on.

At some point, I heard one of my kids got home and I was able to call out to her and say, “Can you get me my phone and just put it under the bathroom door?” And so she did. As soon as I had my phone, I called Meg, my wife. She had been working close by that day, which is unusual. Usually, she would be 45 minutes away at her job, but she had the day off, so she was just at a cafe close by. I called her and I said, “I don’t know what’s happening, but something is wrong. I am having diarrhea and I can’t stop fainting.” She said that she could just tell from my voice that all she needed to do was just get home immediately, and she kept me on the phone.

She had me try putting my head between my legs. Eventually, she suggested that I lie on the bathroom floor. I guess I wasn’t having diarrhea anymore. And I remember the cool tiles felt really good. Like, I felt really hot. She was home within five minutes. So, when she walked in the door, she said it looked like a murder scene. Like, there was just blood everywhere. It splattered, like, in the entirety of the toilet bowl. I smeared it all around. I was just passed out on the bathroom floor and she was saying, “It’s all blood. There’s blood everywhere.” I was like, “I think I got my period” and she was like, “No. You are bleeding from your butt.” I was like, “Oh.” She said, “I think I have to take you to the hospital.” I said, “Yeah but I can’t move.” And she was like, “Okay, I’m calling 911.”

Scott

You were out of consciousness in and out enough that you didn’t even realize all that blood was there.

Lex

No, I still thought it was just like diarrhea. Yeah. I hadn’t looked at it. It felt like having liquid diarrhea. I couldn’t really see.

Scott

So you couldn’t get up and, obviously, that’s the time to call 911.

911 Operator

Where is your emergency?

Meg

(Hidden information)

911 Operator

Is that an apartment number or is that a single-family home?

Meg

Single-family.

911 Operator

Can I have your phone number, please?

Meg

(Hidden information)

911 Operator

And can I have your first name?

Meg

Meg.

911 Operator

Meg. Tell me exactly what happened.

Meg

My wife called. She said she was not feeling well, that she kept fainting and didn’t know why, so I just came home as fast as I could and found her on the bathroom floor. She’s in and out of fainting and she’s pooping blood – a lot of it.

911 Operator

Okay. Is she unconscious right now?

Meg

Not exactly – in and out.

911 Operator

Let me ask you a few more questions. You said you were there right now?

Meg

I’m right here right now.

911 Operator

How old is she?

Meg

911 Operator

Okay. Is she awake or is she unconscious currently?

Meg

In between.

911 Operator

Okay. She’s very pale. She’s not good.

Meg

Is she breathing? Yes.

911 Operator

Okay. Let me ask you a few more questions. Is she breathing completely normal?

Meg

It looks like it.

911 Operator

And you said she’s still unconscious or in and out of it?

Meg

Yeah, in and out.

911 Operator

Okay. I’m going to start the responder. Stay on the line. I have a few more questions. Okay?

Meg

Okay.

(In the background) Keep breathing, babe.

She’s really getting pale.

911 Operator

They’re going to be on their way, okay? Just stay on the line with me. Is your door unlocked?

Meg

Yeah, it’s unlocked.

911 Operator

All right. I’m setting the paramedic to help you. Now, I’ll stay on the line and tell you exactly what to do next, okay?

Meg

Okay.

911 Operator

Are you right by her right now?

Meg

Yes, I’m right here.

911 Operator

Okay. How’s her breathing status?

Meg

She’s breathing, but she’s starting to tremble, getting paler and talking about how thirsty she is.

911 Operator

So she is able to respond to you and talk to you, correct?

Meg

I wouldn’t say it’s responding.

911 Operator

Okay. So is she altered?

Meg

Yeah.

911 Operator

Okay. All right. And you said there’s someone else home with you?

Meg

Yes. Kids, not adults.

911 Operator

Oh, okay. All right. I want you to just keep updating me on her breathing status, okay?

Meg

Yeah. That part is okay.

911 Operator

Okay. Does she have any kind of underlying medical condition that would cause her to do this?

Meg

Not that we know of. In the past, she had a burst ovarian cyst that was very severe and involved a lot of internal pleading.

911 Operator

Was she complaining about anything earlier?

Meg

Not today, no.

911 Operator

Okay. You said she was passing bloody stool.

Meg

Yeah, a lot. Not bloody stool. Just, like, liquid blood.

911 Operator

Hold on one second, please. 41-year-old female, in and out of consciousness, not completely alert. She is currently awake and breathing. Meg, do you have any pets in the residence?

Meg

Pets? Yes.

911 Operator

Yes. Are your kids able to put them away so that, when the responders show up, they won’t run out?

Meg

Yeah, let me call the kids right now. Hang on. Kids! I need you to be right with me on this, okay? An ambulance is literally coming. I need you to put the dogs away and I want to take Edith upstairs. Take Edith upstairs after that. Thank you.

911 Operator

How is she doing?

Meg

Same. Okay.

(Mumbling)

911 Operator

Is that her mumbling in the background?

Meg

Yes, it is.

Yeah, I know you are, baby. I know. They’re coming.

911 Operator

Do you see the responders?

Meg

I don’t know. I can’t stare out the window right now because I’m with her. Hang on.

911 Operator

Okay. They should be arriving now. Are the children old enough to go open the door for them?

Meg

The oldest one is taking care of the youngest. It’s fine. I can go.

911 Operator

Okay. They’re up there pulling down the street now.

Meg

Okay. I’m going to go let them in.

911 Operator

Alright ma’am. I’ll let you go.

Meg

Okay. They’re here. Am I hanging up with you?

911 Operator

Yes, ma’am.

Meg

Thank you. Thank you very much.

911 Operator

You’re welcome. Take care.

Lex

It didn’t take long for the paramedics to arrive. I remember they first strapped me into, like, a wheelchair kind of a stretcher, and then brought me outside down the stairs and onto a regular stretcher.

Scott

The bathroom was upstairs?

Lex

No, it was on the first floor, but there were some stairs up to the front door of our house.

Scott

So I think EMTs often have what’s called a stair chair. They can put you in it – one’s on behind you, one’s ahead of you – and then takes you downstairs pretty easily.

Lex

Yeah. That must be what it was. I remember – I think the first time in all of this was when I opened my eyes – like, seeing that I was in the back of the ambulance and seeing my feet in front of me. They were starting an IV. We lived really close to a hospital, like, half a mile away, but they decided that they needed to go to the bigger hospital, which is more of, like, 15 minutes away. I had been in an ambulance once before with my son. He was transferred from one hospital to another. When he was nine, he had meningitis. So I had been in the back of an ambulance in that capacity. I remember we got into Boston at that time and we were in bad traffic. I remember saying, like, “Well, can’t you just put the lights and sirens on? Like, we’re in an ambulance. You don’t have to be in traffic.” The paramedics at the time were like, “Oh no. We only do that if it’s a real emergency, so we’ll endure the traffic.” So, when I was in the back of the ambulance this time and they put the lights and sirens on, I thought, “Oh fuck. That’s not good. If they’re thinking we need to have lights and sirens to get to the hospital, I know that means they think it’s a pretty big deal.”

Scott

Even though they didn’t say that directly to you, of course.

Lex

No, they didn’t. I mean, obviously, there was urgency. I think they had gotten one bad blood pressure reading. My pulse was high. They had no idea where or why I was bleeding, and we didn’t know if it was going to continue or what was happening. It was just random. I had an experience previously. I mentioned other times I’d been in pain. I had a burst ovarian cyst when I was in college and I lost about half of my blood internally, so I remembered that feeling and this felt familiar to it. I was like, I just need blood. They just need to give me some blood. So I arrived at the hospital being like, “They’re going to give me blood.” Like, that’s what I was thinking – they’ll give me blood and I’ll be okay. They didn’t though.

I remember the lights and sirens all the way to the hospital, I was wheeled in and left in this ER room and left there completely alone. I didn’t have a nurse. The paramedics didn’t stay. I didn’t have any way to reach anyone. I wasn’t hooked up to any monitors. I felt like, “I can’t move and they’ve forgotten me. Where’s Meg during this?” She was trying to secure all the kids and then she drove in her own car. So, she was actually the first person who came in before a nurse had even come in to see me. She arrived and I was like, “Oh, thank goodness. Someone is here. “

Scott

Someone knows you’re there, even if it’s not one of the medical people…

Lex

Yeah. But I was like, “Wait, we light-and-siren all the way here and now I’m just alone in a room. Yeah. That part was very disconcerting.” Then, nurses came in and, eventually, a doctor. I was on an IV, but they did not hook me up to blood. They wanted to see what my levels were first. And then they sent me for a CT scan to sort of check what was going on.

Scott

A CT scan basically creates an image of the inside of your body, right?

Lex

Yeah, right. From the early times, people would come in and be like, “So you had some blood in your stool?” I hadn’t seen it, but Meg had, so she would be like, “No, there was no stool. It was just blood. There was, like, so much blood.” Because they were definitely thinking, like, “Okay, I had some blood in my poop as opposed to like, “Blood had been gushing out of my butt.”

Scott

What really would’ve helped is if Meg took a picture of the toilet when she discovered you. Right? That would’ve painted a better picture for them.

Lex

I definitely had that thought. Instead, I think the first thing she did was flush it. So, I was still bleeding a little bit in the ER. They would have, like, a little commode for me to sit on but, at that point, what I was pooping out was, like, blood clots, so it wasn’t liquid anymore. Every time, a nurse would come in and we’d be like, “There was more.” And she was like, “Yep, okay.” Like, no one was that worried about it.

Scott

That just seems odd. I mean, I know it’s the ER – they see blood all the time – but this has to be somewhat out of the ordinary though.

Lex

Yeah, I mean, I think ultimately it was very out of the ordinary. But at the time, they were still thinking this is the ordinary way where sometimes people have, like, hemorrhoids that bleed. That was definitely the language they were using – like, “Do you have hemorrhoids? Could it be an anal fissure?” Things like that.

Scott

The ER doctor read the CT scan and what did that tell them?

Lex

That was when everything shifted because, in my experience, probably, many people who aren’t in the medical profession know what it’s like to be doctors from watching medical TV shows, right? So it was very much like that where the doctor comes in and has sort of, like, the grave expression, sat down next to the bed, and said, “So we’ve seen your CT scan and you have a large mass on your pancreas. You have other lesions on your liver. You have a dissected celiac artery. Yeah, it is very grave. Most likely, you have pancreatic cancer that’s spread and advanced.”

It just felt like it came out of nowhere. I mean, obviously, I thought about that pain I’ve been having, so I guess that could have been my pancreas all this time. Then, we were like, “Okay, so what? How is this related to the bleeding?” They still were like, “Oh no, probably you have a hemorrhoid or an anal fissure, and this is an incidental finding.” They thought it was totally unrelated to the fact that I had this huge loss of blood out of my butt. I guess they thought that, sometimes, the way pancreatic cancer is diagnosed is an incidental finding on a CT scan.

Scott

It still seems too coincidental though.

Lex

Yeah. To me, it seemed like, “What? I’m not a doctor and this doesn’t make sense unless, like, my whole body is ravaged with cancer and things are just, like, liquefying into blood. I don’t know. But it didn’t make sense in terms of how healthy I was and I didn’t have any systemic symptoms of cancer, but they were very grave. There wasn’t room for, like, “Maybe it’s not a big deal.” In fact, they really wanted to make sure we understood that this is not a cyst. This is a mass. This is a serious advanced giant mass that is, like, squishing all your other organs.

Scott

I know when you hear news like that, you try to – even if it’s reading between the lines – hear some little bit of positivity. Like, maybe it’s not going to be so bad. But it sounds like they weren’t giving you any of that.

Lex

No, they really weren’t. I remember saying to Meg, like, “I don’t want this to be happening. I don’t want this to be this story of what happened next in our life and for our kids. I immediately went, like, “Okay, they’re going to lose their mom.” Then, for their whole life from now, it’ll be like, “My mom died from cancer when I was little.” That’s exactly where my head went. Then, I also felt like, “Get me out of this hospital. I do not want to be in this hospital in Western Massachusetts. I want to go to the big-deal good hospitals in Boston. So I was immediately advocating to be transferred. At that point, it was pretty late at night – I don’t know, after 10, I think – and they were not open to transferring me. The only option, if we were going to leave, would be to sign out against medical advice.

I decided to have Meg call my dad. He had worked at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. He has since retired, but that had been his job. So I knew he was, like, connected to all of that stuff. I felt like I didn’t want to be the grownup. Like, I want to call in the grownups now to make this decision. I don’t want it to be on us. I didn’t want to call my mom because she had our kids and I didn’t want to freak her out. So, we called my dad and he talked it through with Meg and decided that it was too risky for her to drive me for two hours to Boston in my current state. So, we would be admitted and go from there.

Scott

So you stayed in the hospital, at least, for then. What was the dialogue between you and Meg like at that time?

Lex

It felt like we didn’t have to say much. I felt very much like we both were thinking the same things. We held each other and cried. I really didn’t want her to have to leave but, because of Covid, she wasn’t allowed to stay with me. I didn’t have anything. I didn’t have a phone or anything. I had just come in the ambulance. So, I just was then brought up to this room and left alone to, sort of, think about dying. That’s really what I did. Let’s just think about, “Okay, I’m dying. What are the things I want to do? I want to write letters to my kids to open at different special events in the future. Somehow, I want there to be enough information so that my little one–” Edith was just turned four at the time. I was like, “She’s not even going to remember me. What can we do to make something that she’ll remember me and know how much I loved her?” So that was pretty much how I spent the night just thinking about that and feeling all the things I didn’t do that I wanted to – I loved my job so much and the books I wanted to write.

I just started this photography project. I also work as a photographer and I was so excited about it and just thinking like, “I’m not going to get to take any more pictures. Why didn’t I take more pictures? Why aren’t there any pictures of me with the kids? Because I’m always the one behind the camera.” I was thinking about these things. I also did have a moment even that first night of being like, “Okay, but I’ve also lived this beautiful life. I got to fall in love in this way, and Meg and I made it through. We created this beautiful family. Maybe that can be enough. Maybe that can be what I did, what I was here to do and it can be enough. So there was already, like, a little inkling of that coming through.

Scott

A little bit of self-consoling, even though you were only 41 at that time.

Lex

Yeah, I was 41.

Scott

At that age, you don’t really think about your own mortality voluntarily anyway.

Lex

Right. But I guess, when people get bad news, there can be a reaction of like, “Why me?” I feel like, in general, in life, I’ve always had more of, like, “Why not me?” So I didn’t feel like it was unfair or something I didn’t deserve or anything like that. It just felt really sad that this is how it would all end.

Scott

You were in the hospital for a few. Did you get transferred to the other hospital or did you stay in this one?

Lex

I didn’t, no. I was still there at the terrible hospital, as we call it. It was just the way I imagined it would be because I’ve had interactions with this hospital before mostly through my kids, and the communication between departments there is really lacking. So, there was a lot of talk of, like, the tests they were going to do. They wanted to biopsy the mass. They wanted to get an MRI with better images. They had decided I did not qualify for a blood transfusion because my level was 8.0 and you had to have it be lower than 8.0 to qualify because there was a blood shortage. So I felt incredibly depleted. It was hard for me to keep my eyes open because I was so lacking in blood. People had very few questions about the bleeding that had happened. The whole focus was about this mass on my pancreas and also my dissected celiac artery, which, I still honestly don’t totally know what that means, but I know it means that the celiac artery is in poor condition in some way. So they had vascular surgeons coming in but everyone just be, “Yeah, no. We should monitor it, but it’s obviously nothing compared to this mass on your pancreas. So just focus on that.”

Scott

And from a medical standpoint, I guess that kind of makes sense. You have to triage what’s the most important and urgent issue, and that big mass on your pancreas – I mean, pancreatic cancer – is typically not something you’d survive, right?

Lex

Yeah, definitely not. So we had put in for a transfer, but it kept being like, “Well, if they have a bed for you. Because of Covid, a lot of more routine surgeries had been delayed. So all the beds in all of Boston were somehow taken. They kept being, like, “Yes, we’ve approved you as a transfer, but we don’t have a bed for you yet.” So I spent the next few days mostly in that hospital bed waiting for someone to come in and say, “We’re transferring you” or to come in and say, “We’re taking you for the MRI or we’re taking you for the biopsy.” But every day, it kept being canceled – all the things. So, like, the whole time I was in the hospital – I think I was there four nights – no testing ever happened. They were testing my blood, but that’s it. So I didn’t have any more scans. I didn’t have the biopsy. I didn’t get transferred. They wouldn’t let me eat because of, like, all of these things were maybe about to happen. So I could only have ice chips. It was really pretty horrible. I was like, “I’m trapped here. I’ve lost all this blood. I’m maybe dying and this is where I am. The longer I stay there, the less urgent it becomes for them, it seems.”

Scott

So it doesn’t seem like there was any point for you to continue staying at that hospital?

Lex

Yeah, that’s how we felt about it. So eventually, we got them to agree to discharge me because the biopsy wasn’t going to happen until Monday. It was a Wednesday when I went in, and it became a weekend when nothing had happened. So then, I was like, “Well, the people who can do the biopsy aren’t going to be here over the weekend. Well, if it’s not going to happen till Monday, I can go home and wait until Monday at home.” Then, we got one doctor to agree to discharge me, and then his shift ended and whoever came on overnight was like, “No, I’m not discharging anybody.” So, It was a huge battle to get out of there. We were ready to sign the against-medical-advice waiver but, ultimately, they did discharge me and then I went home not knowing anything.

Scott

I understand you had another M R I that gave more information.

Lex

Yes. So what ended up happening after that was really just all of the next steps because of the connections we had. I don’t know how it would’ve been if we didn’t have these connections. I happened to have a lactation client, who was a GI doctor, and she was able to pull strings to get me in for the biopsy, which they then threatened to cancel again. So I think it was on the Monday or Tuesday when I did get in for a biopsy, which involved, like, an upper endoscopy with an ultrasound. So I had to be under and everything. It wasn’t just, like, poke a needle in me. We had the biopsy and the surgeon said, “It’s really good news. I took a couple of blood out of this thing on your pancreas,” which he was now calling a cyst, not a mass. He said, “You have a cyst full of blood. I think it’s just going to dry up at some point. No follow-up needed.” That’s what he said to me and I was like, “Well, okay. So 10 minutes ago, I had pancreatic cancer and now I don’t need any follow-up. We still don’t know about what happened where I nearly bled out.

Scott

That just sounds like good news you want to grasp onto, but those are still not really complete answers though.

Lex

Yeah, exactly. No answers at all and I still felt horrible. I was still, like, way under the blood quantities one is meant to have, but it was good news that he didn’t see abnormal cells and he just saw blood. That’s not what cancer would look like. At that point, we had already started the process of getting in to see specialists in Boston. So we kept that appointment and we went in through a cancer diagnostic services clinic there at Brigham and Women’s in Boston. Because I had this mass, they were willing to proceed and do more diagnostic work even if we had this biopsy that showed, probably, it wasn’t cancer. So that’s where I had an MRI.

The MRI still didn’t show anything really different from the CT scan. It was like, “Yep, there’s this huge cyst we now know coming off the tail end of the pancreas and there’s this dissected artery.” At that point, they thought the lesions on my liver were not something to be concerned about. So everyone was like, “Yeah, you can have follow-ups with this pancreatic doctor in a few weeks and we’ll see if there’s anything more to do about that.” And I just was like, “Okay. But I had this really scary thing happen where blood came pouring out of my butt and I still have this really big bloody thing inside me and we just don’t know what happened and how do we know that it’s not going to happen again.”

Scott

Yeah, that would be a big concern – you living day to day, thinking like, “Oh, is it going to happen again?”

Lex

Exactly, at that point, I already know that my blood levels are as low as they can be, so I was thinking, “If it does happen again, I don’t have the blood to lose and live.” I just really felt like it could just happen and I would bleed out.

Scott

Is there a way to supplement your blood levels or anything you can do on your own?

Lex:

Well, I was taking a lot of iron and blood builders. Because I work at a birth center as a lactation consultant, I work with midwives who are used to seeing people have postpartum hemorrhages. So they were helping me build my blood with supplements.

Scott

Were you concerned at all that you might still be bleeding internally?

Lex

Yes, I was. I was concerned. I think, now, in retrospect, I definitely was still bleeding and pooping out blood, but I didn’t, because– actually, because of the supplements I was taking, a lot of them had a lot of bee powder in them, so I was like, “Well, maybe my poop looks red because of that.” All along, I was getting my blood levels tested every week during this time, and I could see that they weren’t going up. Sometimes, they would go up and then they would go down, and that was like, “Well, does that mean I’m bleeding more?” Then, they’d be like, “Oh, well it’s a different lab. It depends on how hydrated you are when they draw it.” So there wasn’t clear evidence that I was bleeding. But now, in retrospect, I know that I was.

Scott

How were the children handling all of this? You seem like the type that would want to be honest and open with your kids. Like, a four-year-old isn’t going to understand what’s going on. How do you handle this with the kids?

Lex

Well, we mostly tried not to tell them about it, especially at first when we thought it was cancer. I didn’t want to freak them out until we knew. Obviously, I was going to tell them. We had this whole plan. If it had been cancer, then we wanted to rent a big house by the ocean and get all the kids there and just– if I had a few months to live, that’s what we would do – live at the beach with them. So we had that plan, but we wanted to wait and make sure that’s what it really was before we freak them out. I think they were freaked out. I’m not sure that our approach was ideal.

Scott

Even if you’re not saying it verbally, kids can pick up on cues and body language.

Lex

Yeah. I mean, they knew that I was unwell. I was on the couch. I had no energy to do anything because I was really, like, living with the minimal quantity of blood. Like, my blood wouldn’t circulate to my extremity. So, my hands and feet were just, like, white and numb most of the time. I had minimal color anywhere in my body and I was really tired, and they knew that we were still trying to figure it out, but there really wasn’t anything to tell or not tell them because nobody knew what was going on.

Scott

Right. You still didn’t have the answers yourself.

Lex

No, I didn’t.

Scott

At what point do you say, “I’m going to go back to living my life?” Did you go back to work? How soon did you go back to work?

Lex

I was probably out of work for two weeks. Then, I had gone back, but I was doing just sort of, like, a limited day where I would only see a couple of clients a day, but Meg was upset about this. She wanted me to just be home. But the truth is my job is not physically taxing. I’m, like, sitting on a couch watching people nurse their babies. So I felt like I could do that and it would be good for me to be doing that. Obviously, like, we need the money and I don’t want to lose my job and also my mind, so the distraction would be good. So I went back to work and then it happened again. I was at work and I was seeing a client in my lactation office and I remember feeling some intestinal cramping, like you’d have to have diarrhea. At that point, I was still scared to fart ever from that first time, so I didn’t do that. I didn’t fart, but I felt like, “Ugh, that’s not good.” Then I started to feel that fainty feeling coming over me. It wasn’t, like, a moment that was easy for me to step out – it was sort of an intense lactation visit – but, ultimately, I was like, “I have to go. I’ll be right back.” I got out of my office, went to the bathroom, sat on the toilet, and had diarrhea, and I knew the same thing was happening, so I checked. This time, I did take a picture of the toilet full of blood.

Scott

And incidentally, we won’t have that picture on the show notes.

Lex

We will not. I did not send that one to you.

Scott

How long after this was it from the first time?

Lex

It had been almost exactly four weeks. The first time was a Wednesday and this time was Tuesday.

Scott

So 27 days.

Lex

Yeah. I managed to get my pants back on and walk into the office where the midwives work on their laptops between seeing people and it just so happens that my best friend forever from college works at the birth center as the program director. Usually, she’s in there at her desk doing billing and everything. She was not in that day, but what I did was sort of collapse under her desk. There was a midwife there and she was like, “What’s going on?” And I said, “It’s happening. I’m bleeding. It’s happening again.” I called Meg and I said, “It’s happening again. I’m bleeding.” She wanted to talk to one of the midwives. She wanted one of them to take me to the close-by hospital, not the terrible hospital where I had been stuck. The birth center is really close to where we were living, so it was also like half a mile from that local hospital. The midwives were like, “We can’t just drive her. We’re going to call 911.”

911 Operator

What’s the address of your emergency?

Female 1

Hi. I’m calling from (hidden information). One of our employees is having some heavy bleeding and is fainting.

911 Operator

Okay. Bleeding from where?

Female 1

Rectal, at this point.

911 Operator

Okay. And what’s the address?

Female 1

(Hidden information)

911 Operator

Okay. And your name?

Female 1

(Hidden information)

911 Operator

Okay. Can you just verify the phone number you’re calling me from in case we get disconnected?

Female 1

(Hidden information)

911 Operator

And you said this was an employee, not a patient?

Female 1

Right.

911 Operator

Okay. And are you right there with the patient?

Female 1

Yes.

911 Operator

All right. Just a few more questions while I get some help on the way, okay?

Female 1

Yep.

911 Operator

And how old is the patient?

Female 1

How old are you? 41.

911 Operator

Okay. Has anybody tested positive for COVID-19?

Female 1

No.

911 Operator

Okay. And you said it was rectal bleeding. Do we know what caused it?

Female 1

No, she’s got a bleed. We know this. Yeah. The Pancreatic cyst.

911 Operator

Is there a room number there that she’s in?

Female 1

Say it again. I’m sorry.

911 Operator

Is there a room number there that she’s in?

Female 1

We’ll have somebody right at the side door. Just come in the side door to the office.

(In the background) She has Meg on the phone.

She’s awake and she’s breathing as of now. She’s awake. She’s pretty fuzzy.

911 Operator

Okay. So would you say that she’s completely alert?

Female 1

She’s not completely–

911 Operator

Is she breathing normally?

Female 1

Breathing normally, yep.

911 Operator

Any stroke-like symptoms at all?

Female 1

No. She has a low hematocrit. This is another bleed.

911 Operator

Okay. All right. We’ll have an ambulance set up that way. From now on, don’t let her have anything else to eat or drink. It could cause her to be sick or have further problems and just have her run to the most comfortable position, okay?

Female 1

She’s on the floor, under the desk.

911 Operator

All right. They’ll be there shortly.

Female 1

All right. Okay, great. Yep. Bye-Bye.

Lex

Meg was worried that if they called 911, they would insist on taking me to the bigger, farther away terrible hospital. But luckily, when the paramedics arrived, I was in such a rough condition that they said there wasn’t time to take her to the faraway hospital. So that part was sorted out. But meanwhile, when I was lying on the floor of my office, all of the midwives were in there around me and I was like, “Okay, I have to have more diarrhea. More is coming.” They had already called 911, so I knew help was on the way, and I was like, “Can get to the toilet?” And they were like, “We are not letting you get up.” My blood pressure was, like, almost bottoming out and so I just had to poop in my pants on the office floor in front of my bosses, which was hard. Then, I just sort of gave myself over to it, I guess.

Scott

I know – we’ve talked about this – you’re not the type that is easily embarrassed, but this had to be pushing your limits even.

Lex

It definitely did. I mean, it just feels wrong. It feels wrong to ever, like, release your bowels in your pants and then to do that while you’re surrounded by your bosses at your place of employment. I think any feelings I had about that were quickly replaced by just fear that I was going to bleed out.

Scott

Embarrassment takes second place to “Am I going to survive this?” So one of the midwives called 911.

Lex

Yes, they did. At that point when she called, I had reported that I was bleeding and I was lying on the floor, but I wasn’t continuing to bleed at that point. Things got a lot sketchier after that because my blood pressure nearly bottomed out and blood just started pouring out of me. It turns out that being forced to poop in my pants was actually one of the best things in terms of, ultimately, getting me a diagnosis and getting healed because, instead of all the blood going into the toilet, where it was just, hearsay of like me saying, “This had happened” and then being like, “There, there. Maybe you have a hemorrhoid.” All of the paramedics and, ultimately, the doctors could see the quantity of blood and that it was not bloody stool, it was blood. It was just everywhere, I think, spreading out like a big puddle of blood around me. I was lying on my back. One of the midwives was telling me, “Just stay with us. You think of all those kids. You have to stay alive.”

The paramedics got IVs going in both of my arms to try to dump fluids in me, and then it was lights and sirens to the closer hospital. They said, “We don’t have time to go to Baystate.” This time, at the ER, it was like what I imagined would’ve happened the first time where I was immediately surrounded by doctors and nurses. They hooked me up to blood transfusions, basically, as I was wheeled into the hospital. So I was finally getting that blood I’ve been wishing for. They immediately sent me up for a CT scan. The first time, there had been a delay of a few hours, I think, by the time I actually got the CT scan. So this time, I was still basically bleeding while I was in the CT scan, and that is what gave us the diagnosis. They could see on that scan that my splenic artery was connected to this cyst on my pancreas. The artery was pumping blood into the cyst on my pancreas. Then, my pancreas had created a fistula, which is like a little connection into my intestines. So that is how blood was pumping from my artery into my intestines and then out of my rectum.

It was something that, when it first happened, I didn’t understand why everyone was so confused or skeptical about what I reported in terms of how much blood I had pooped out, but that’s because usually there isn’t a way for blood to get into your intestines. If you’ve bled somewhere higher in your GI tract, by the time it would get to your intestines, it would be, like, black and digested blood, but this was fresh red blood. Usually, they would only see someone pooping out fresh red blood if they have a hemorrhoid or an anal fissure or something in their colon, which I didn’t have.

Scott

So this was arterial blood?

Lex

Yeah, it was arterial blood and it was just coming directly from an artery into my intestines by way of this pancreatic cyst fistula.

Scott

It’s ironic that the big hospital couldn’t figure this out. It took the little hospital to kind of get to a diagnosis.

Lex

It did, unfortunately. Once they have the diagnosis in that small ER, they are freaked out. They do not want anything to do with me. They do not feel like they have the capacity. They’re like, “We cannot keep you for one more minute.” Like, basically, I’m a ticking time bomb, which is also frustrating because I had, like, just been at home for a few weeks in this state, and now they’re scared to keep me in the ER because they didn’t have the ability to stop me from bleeding from my artery. What I needed was interventional radiology. Those are sort of, like, the IT people of the doctor world. They go in through your arteries using, like, a CT scan to watch what they’re doing as they like wind through your arteries to fix things.

Scott

Yeah. What amazed me– I know you were in ICU for a week and they went in through your wrist to get to your splenic artery. That just seems like a long way to go. I’m sitting here questioning why did they do that? But obviously, they’re the medical professionals. They knew that’s the best way to do it.

Lex

Ultimately, I got out of the local ER. I felt actually better than I’d felt in a long time because I’d gotten those blood transfusions. I was transferred to a hospital in Boston at last, and I was in the ICU there. They tried to do the interventional radiology. Their goal was to just block off my splenic artery, so I wouldn’t have one anymore by filling it with coils. That was the only way to repair it without opening me up completely, which they said would be a very risky surgery, so they didn’t want to do that. They actually went in through my groin the first night I was in the hospital. They spent five hours trying, but they could not get to the damage. Ultimately, it was an aneurysm in my artery. They couldn’t get to it that way, so I was just in the ICU waiting for them to decide if they were going to try again or if they needed to instead open me up and do this riskier surgery. It was much better than my first time being in the hospital where I was just eating ice chips and everyone was delaying everything and nothing was happening. But it was not entirely different. It was sort of a similar feeling of, “The longer I stay there and don’t bleed out, the less urgent my case becomes.” And the interventional radiologist kept having to bump me because something more emergent would happen.

Scott

But eventually, they did put the coils in your splenic artery…

Lex

Yeah, eventually I bled again in the ICU and then they prioritized me. They went in through my wrist and they fixed it.

Scott

And that resolved the issue completely?

Lex

Yes, it did. I mean, I still had the cyst of blood on my pancreas, and I still have this dissected celiac artery, which I just have to have monitored every six months. I have a CT scan to check on it, but it’s been fine. But yeah, I haven’t bled. I haven’t had any pain. I lived.

Scott

This story is, obviously, partly about the really weird medical thing, but it’s more than that. You went from thinking you were literally dying on the floor, especially the second time at your workplace. From that, you went to thinking, “Okay. Terminal disease.” Then, “Wow, I’m going to be okay.” That’s got to be so stressful – like a rollercoaster of emotions. What did that look like in your mind?

Lex

Well, I really just feel that– ever since I came out of the hospital after they had blocked off my artery and we knew what was wrong and they had fixed it, I just felt euphoric. I feel like I’ve been given the most amazing gift of, like, getting to live – something that I was just taking for granted before, obviously, like most people do.

Scott

Like we all do. Yeah.

Lex

And that is what has stayed with me. So I don’t even have hard, bad feelings about any of it, really. I just feel euphoria about getting to be alive. Every day, I feel very much, like, in the moment in a way that– I think a lot of us try to learn how to live in the moment and it’s really hard with meditation and everything, but now it just happened to me – like, that’s the only way I know how to live right now and it’s delightful. I wish there was a way for people to get to feel this way without nearly bleeding out twice.

Scott

It seems like some people would go from, “Well, we think you’re dying. You think you’re dying. We need to make plans. What’s all the things that you would want to do?” But now, “Oh, I’m okay.” And some people would go back to living their normal life. Like, wow, that was a close one. But you didn’t do that.

Lex

No. I mean, a little bit. I did go back to work and everything like that. I thought a lot about the time of thinking when I was going to die, we were going to rent a big house by the ocean and all our kids would come to be with us, and I felt like, “Why is that only what we were going to do when I had a few months to live? Shouldn’t we live our best life every day not knowing if next week, you’re going to bleed out from your splenic artery? Like, we just never know what’s about to happen. Let’s live our best life right now because we can.” So yeah, that led to me doing some Zillow searching for a big house we could buy somewhere nearby the ocean.

It also just so happened that, during this time, which was last spring, early summer, the housing market was insane in the town where we had bought our house, which has, like, an extreme fixer-upper 6.5 years earlier. The value of our house had more than doubled. So, we had all this money in our house that we could buy a house. That is so much more of what we want, that we would fit in because we didn’t really– with 7 kids, it’s hard to fit in any house. We were so squished that, once the twins had gone to college, we didn’t have beds for them anymore. We had to, like, take over that space because the kids were just stacked in there. So they could come home and, like, sleep on the couch for the night. But mostly, they had to be evicted from our home, which just felt terrible to me, especially in thinking, like, “Who knows how many days we have, ever?” So, it turns out that we couldn’t actually afford to buy a house at the ocean – that part couldn’t come true – but it did just get me thinking about what we could do. So we ended up finding this house that we now live in that is a very giant house. It had been a bed and breakfast for about 40 years, so it has 9 or 10 bedrooms – I lose track. We could afford it because it’s in, like, a less fancy town, but it’s actually more convenient to my wife’s work and everything.

So yeah, right after I survived everything, we decided to sell our house, move, and start living our dream. We’ve always wanted to have farm animals. So, now, we have land. I just feel like, “Why would we ever delay the things we want to do?”

Scott

Yeah, it would be interesting if there was some way psychologically to put yourself in that state without having the big tragedy happen and the big scare, but I don’t know if that’s possible.

Lex

Yeah. I don’t know either because I think you can say the words of knowing. Today is the moment we know we have, but unless you felt it, it’s hard to really believe it.

Scott

From that first incident to when you moved into your new house was five months. You’re an action-taker.

Lex

I am, Yeah. Well, when I want something, I make it happen, which was part of the humbling experience of that. You don’t get to call those shots when you’re trapped in a hospital bed and maybe going to die. Like, sometimes, you just have to surrender, which was good for me. But in my regular life, if it’s something within reach, I try to go for it. I do a lot of DIY stuff because I’m not going to wait for someone to come fix this for me. I’m going to learn how to be a plumber or whatever it is. The other day, Meg put her foot down about me doing some electrical work. She was like, “Yeah, no, you’re going to call the electrician.”

Scott

Speaking of maybe dying, that’s what would happen if I tried to do some electrical work.

Lex

Yeah.

Scott

Going through something like this, you think about all of the things that you wish you would’ve done. What are three things that are on your bucket list today?

Lex

Well, there’s a book I really want to write. For me, creative work is what I want to do. So there’s a book I want to write. There’s a book I want to make with photographs – a few photography projects I have because I also work as a photographer. I want to turn my house into some sort of, like, a retreat center. I want to build a barn and have big parties with dancing and live music. But mostly, when I think about, like, what were the things I felt so disappointed I hadn’t done when I thought it was all over, and it was things that would outlive me like the books I wanted to write or the pictures I wanted to take – something that would have stayed beyond me. So those are probably the things I am now most motivated to be working on whenever I have a free minute because you want to leave something. You don’t want it to be like, “I lived and then I was gone.” You want it to be like, “I lived and then I was gone. But look at all this work I left.” I put my ideas somewhere so that they could stay. That’s how you live on. I love my work so much. I love my job. I love just getting to be with my family. I hope I never lose this feeling of gratitude, euphoria, and gladness for being here. That’s part of why I want to keep talking about it so I don’t forget and get dragged down in the mundane of, like, “I have to take the recycling out.” It’s like, “I get to crush all this cardboard because I’m here and alive!!”

Scott

One way that you are creating your own legacy is through your photography. You mentioned that you do photography and it’s kind of a side hustle for you. That’s one of the things that I was fascinated by when we first met online. I went and looked. You have a full blog that has pictures of your kids and photography projects that you’ve done, and I think people can look at that blog and feel like they get to know you, Meg, and your kids just from the pictures. Looking at those pictures just exudes love and family.

Lex

Oh, I’m so glad to hear that.

Scott

Yeah. If people want to see that, your website is lexbeach.com. And if they want to, they can go through that site and contact you by email. Is there any part of this that we haven’t talked about that we should include?

Lex

I don’t think so. It was a crazy thing that happened and crazy things happen every day that we don’t get to know about. I now walk around life looking at people and thinking about their insides, like, “Gosh, all those arteries just going where they’re supposed to go. That’s lucky.” Go. I hope people can hear this story and feel glad for all their inner workings working.

Scott

If you’d like to see the full transcript of this episode, or if you want to see pictures of Lex and Meg and their family, you can get all of that in the show notes for this episode, at WhatWasThatLike.com/134.

And in the show notes you can also watch a video, made by two of their sons, Luke and Jasper. It’s a mini-documentary about their family – and their rabbit, Shirley. You’ll enjoy it.

And as I was putting together this episode and thinking about Lex’s story, I learned a new word that relates to what happened to her. The word is lachesism. This has to do with disaster interrupting the regular flow of things. Just like with what happened to Lex – everything seemed normal and going along fine, then she went through this terribly stressful time where it seemed like the worst case scenario and she might be dying, and then she got through to the other side. By going through that, her life is better now than it was before. That’s lachesism. There’s another interesting example of that in today’s Listener Story, and I’d love to hear what you think about this. I’m sure there will be lots of discussion about this in the Facebook group, so I’d love to hear what you think – you can join us at WhatWasThatLike.com/facebook.

And now, a voice mail –

Phoebe Judge voice

Hi Scott. My name is Phoebe. I wanted to call in and let you know that I love your show. I discovered “What Was That Like” about a year ago. After hearing a couple of the recent episodes, I went back in and downloaded all of the past episodes. I just can’t get enough of these stories. I especially enjoyed the story about the man who ate his own foot. I’m actually a podcast host myself, and I think I should try to get him to tell that story on my show. Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that I’m really enjoying “What Was That Like” and I hope you never stop. I’m Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal – oh, wait a second. I said that out of habit. Just edit that part out.

Scott

Wow – I can’t believe Phoebe Judge sent me that message! No – I mean I literally cannot believe it. Because it actually didn’t happen. That voice and that audio was all created by AI. Pretty cool, right? It’s just something I’ve been playing with for a while. And it’s a little scary how realistic it can be. If you don’t know who Phoebe Judge is, she’s the host of the popular true crime podcast, Criminal. She also has the best voice in podcasting. So, no, she didn’t actually send that voice mail. But Phoebe, if you happen to hear this, you’re welcome to send me a real audio message any time and I’ll play it here on the podcast.

And one more thing – the newest Raw Audio episode is now live. This is Raw Audio 31. These are extra, bonus episodes, all including 911 audio, that you can access and binge just by supporting the podcast for $5 a month. In this episode, we have a theme – alligator attacks. And of course, these all happen here in Florida. This episode includes 5 different stories. Here’s a clip from one of them:

911 Operator

What is your emergency?

Male 1

Yeah, I’m out at this park over in Davie. I think an alligator got this lady.

911 Operator

You think an alligator got the lady?

Male 1

Yeah.

Scott

You can hear that episode, and the other 30 episodes, by signing up to support the podcast at WhatWasThatLike.com/support.

Graphics for this episode were created by Bob Bretz.

Full episode transcription was created by James Lai. And I highly recommend both of them if you need those services.

And now we’re at this week’s Listener Story. As you might know, this is how we end every episode – with a short story sent in by a listener. If you have something interesting that you can tell in 5-10 minutes, email it to me at Scott@WhatWasThatLike.com. This week, we’re hearing from a friend of mine, Jack Rhysider. Jack is the host of the hugely popular podcast called Darknet Diaries, which I’ve been listening to for years.

Stay safe, and I’ll see you in two weeks.

(Listener Story)

Jack

When I graduated high school, I was 18 and I wanted to see more of the country. I live in the US so I bought a 30-day unlimited Amtrak ticket. It was just me going alone. I got on the train. I was nervous and excited. My first leg was, like, a four-day train ride. I just wanted to get to the other side of the country far away from what was possible right away. I just had a seat on the train – no bed – and I had to somehow figure out how to sleep on the seat.

The guy sitting next to me was writing a book about how to ride on trains, which was like the perfect person to be sitting next to. Right? He knew all the tricks of riding on the train. It was just a fantastic traveling companion. There was a nice family riding in the seats in front of me. Behind me was a sweet couple who was funny and generous – like, they were passing on wisdom to me through stories and parables. Behind them was the porter – the guy who worked on the train and took care of any issues in our car and stuff. Those were who I was going to be traveling with for the next four days.

This was like my little traveler pod. The first day was great. I got to know the train and the people on it, and it was just super. I had plenty of food and things to do. Actually I had a good night’s sleep that first night, which was kind of surprising. So, the next day, I was there feeling more safe and comfortable than I could have ever imagined. I could have easily sat next to someone who was, like, a horrible person, but everyone around me was just so wonderful and the whole experience was great.

But this made me start to worry things were going too well. I started to think, “Oh no. Does this mean something awful is going to happen to me? Why am I being so lucky right now? I don’t want to be lucky now. I want to be lucky when the going gets tough or when I’m in some sort of weird situation. If I exhaust all my luck now at the beginning of this trip, is there going to be any leftover luck from me in the other 28 days that I have on this train? These thoughts swarmed my brain and they started burning into my soul. Somehow, I started getting nervous about it. Then suddenly I felt lachesism. Just recently, I learned what this word means. I didn’t know what it meant at the time, but I saw it and I was just like, “Oh my gosh, that reminds me of this time that I felt this way. Lachesism is a feeling you get when you want a disaster to happen to give you some sort of clarity in life – like when the arc of your life is just going too smooth and you want to be kinked a little bit just to give you a sense of purpose and a new direction that you can focus on.

I was feeling lachesism because my opportunities just seemed unlimited. Whatever I wanted to do, I could do, and that made me start to really worry that maybe I’m not going to make the best choices – if there’s anything I could do, I can do – and I need something to guide me a little bit here to put me in a direction, and a disaster is exactly what I need to happen here because I’ve just been way too lucky on, like, the first two days of my trip. I decided I needed to create my own disaster. I was looking out the window drinking from a water bottle, and I made a split-second decision. I threw the water bottle into my huge backpack upside down with no cap on, soaking everything in my luggage – my clothes, my food, everything I had in there. Then, I acted, like, “Oh no, I just spilled my water and it’s everywhere now”.

And I even got the guy next to me wet a little bit by accident – I didn’t mean to do that. Well, now I had a really big problem that I had to deal with. You can’t just ignore this. I had to figure out a way to dry everything in my backpack when all I had was a seat on a train as my space to do it in. There were no washers or dryers on the train. It was wonderful to deal with this disaster. It was glorious and it absolutely forced me to focus on this problem, which helped me pass the time, and it gave me clarity and it got me over that lackadaisy feeling. Obviously, I have no idea if causing a disaster made me not have any other disasters on that trip or if it gave me more luck in the future – it probably didn’t do any of that. But the rest of the trip did go great and that trip helped shape me into the person I am now with new perspectives and experiences in life.

View Details

Probably the most difficult thing for a parent to experience is losing a child.

It’s often been said that the English language fails us in this area. A woman who loses her spouse is called a widow. If a man is the one who survives his spouse, he’s a widower. A child who has lost their parents is called an orphan.

But why isn’t there a word for a parent whose child has died? Well, it turns out there actually is a word for that.

“Vilomah” is a Sanskrit word that’s been used in Hindu philosophy for centuries. It’s a compound word made up of two words – “vi” which means “against”, and “loma” which means “hair”. The word “vilomah” is often translated as “against the hair” or “against the grain” or “against the natural order of things”.

In recent years, the word “vilomah” has gained popularity outside of Hindu philosophy, and it’s now used to describe a parent who has lost a child. The term “vilomah parent” refers to a parent who has experienced the loss of a child, which is considered to be a violation of the natural order of things.

Ashley lives in Florida, and she knows about that experience. And she’s using her story to help other people avoid what she’s been through.

Ashley with her childrenGabby, on that dayAshley and Gabby – the last hugsketch of Gabby on Jesus’ lapmemorial photo shootGreat resource for learning about infant swimming, and even finding an instructor local to you:
https://www.infantswim.com/

If you’d like to contact Ashley, you can email her at Ashley.elise@hotmail.com.

Full show notes and pictures for this episode are here:
https://WhatWasThatLike.com/133

Want to discuss this episode and other things with thousands of other WWTL listeners? Join our podcast Facebook group at WhatWasThatLike.com/facebook (many of the podcast guests are there as well)

Episode transcript (download transcript PDF):

Probably the most difficult thing for a parent to experience is losing a child.

But why isn’t there a word for a parent whose child has died? Well, it turns out there actually is a word for that.

In recent years, the word “vilomah” has gained popularity outside of Hindu philosophy, and it’s now used to describe a parent whose child has passed away. The term “vilomah parent” refers to a parent who has experienced the loss of a child, which is considered to be a violation of the natural order of things.

Ashley lives in Florida, and she knows about that experience. And she’s using her story to help other people avoid what she’s been through.

Scott

You were actually living here in Florida when this happened, right? Can you just kind of describe what your life was like at that time?

Ashley

I’m a born and raised Floridian. I’ve been here all my life in South Florida. At that time, I was 27 years old with three children, so I was a very young mom. I had my first at 17 and then married her father. We had our son. We were just too young. We wound up divorcing very early. That was Maya and Joshua, my two oldest. Then, after that, I did get into another relationship where I then had my third child, which is Gabriela.

Scott

Or Gabby, right?

Ashley

Or Gabby, yeah. We called her a lot of different nicknames, but yep. I was a single mom of three children, 27 years old out there doing it on my own.

Scott

For me, that’s incredible. Maya was 10 years old, Joshua was 4, and Gabby was just 21 months old – not even two years old. You were working full-time. You’ve got three kids. How were you making that work?

Ashley

Oh, man. I’d say that I was doing it alone, but I really wasn’t. I mean, I have an extremely supportive community. My family is incredibly supportive. Without them, I don’t know what I would’ve done. So it all came down to the amazing support that I had and still have today.

Scott

You were in a small 2-bedroom apartment at that time…

Ashley

Right, yeah. On the third floor, mind you, so that was always a hassle when I had to, like, bring in the groceries. I mean, there were nights that I just got upstairs and cried because it was so difficult just to do the regular things with three small children. It was very, very hard.

Scott

Yeah. With three flights of stairs, you‘d get your cardio in every day.

Ashley

I guess that’s a good way to look at it.

Scott

This was in April. Maya and Joshua’s paternal grandfather died unexpectedly, which meant you had to travel. Can you just tell us about that?

Ashley

Yeah. I think it’s really important to kind of make that distinction of how close I was to Maya and Joshua’s father and his family. Even after our separation and even after I had Gabby, they were just so supportive. They treated Gabby as if she was their own grandchild, so I remained very close with the family. My kid’s grandfather, Edgar, had passed away suddenly, which was just such a blow to the family. I mean, we were devastated. He was like a second father to me. So we drove– it was 2 hours away and we took the drive up there for the funeral. I remember Gabby was running around just being her wild 1.5-year-old self at the funeral. It was a hard time, but we were just in it together.

I’ll try to be clear about the names of the people. It can get a little confusing. Tina was Edgar’s wife – she and I had formed such a bond. Our children were about the same age. We really relied on each other when things got tough. She was going through the loss of her husband, so we wanted to be there for her and for the kids even after the funeral.

Scott

And you spent some time there, right? How long were you visiting with them?

Ashley

The funeral was in April. Then, a month later, we decided to go back up. It was Memorial Weekend, and I said to the kids, “Let’s just go over there and spend time with Tina and the kids.” My kids were so excited about that because it meant a lot of fun. Despite what we were going through, being together was just the best thing for our hearts. So we made the trip up to Lake Placid and planned to just be home and spend time with Tina and with the kids barbecuing, swimming, and all the stuff you do on a holiday weekend in the US.

Scott

It almost seems like that trip would be more important than the trip to the funeral because, when something happens, you’re making funeral arrangements and people are bringing food and all. There’s a lot of activity and things but, after all of that stops, then she’s left there alone. When you come a month later, it seems like that would be really important.

Ashley

Yeah, that’s really true. That’s absolutely true, yeah. We went up there. I guess it was maybe a Thursday or Friday when we drove up. The whole weekend was great. We were surrounded by each other. We had a lot of fun. I think we played– I don’t remember if it was a ping pong table that she had in the back. They made their house so welcoming, so we had so much to do over the weekend. It was just a beautiful weekend. We spent the time cooking, swimming, all that fun stuff and. Then, when Monday, the actual Memorial Day rolled around, we had done the same things throughout the day. Being in the pool – that’s the best way to tire the kids out.

We wrapped up the day. It was towards the evening. It wasn’t quite dark yet, but it was getting there. It was time to start packing up the kids’ stuff and make that 2-hour drive back. That day, my oldest daughter, Maya, had been really sick. Like, she was just vomiting profusely. I mean, she was really, really sick. I was trying to keep Joshua and Gabby entertained with the other kids while also making sure that Maya had the bucket by her. She had fluids. I was kind of torn between the two tasks.

I remember that Tina had told me that she had a camera and that photography is a hobby that she does. She was telling me about some extra equipment that she had or something along those lines. So all the kids had come inside for the day and I was thinking, “Okay, while I’m packing up, Tina’s going to show me this camera equipment that I can take home with me.” So we were in the garage looking through some stuff and trying to find it. When I came out, Maya said to me, “Mom, where’s Gabby?” I remember how my heart dropped because anyone who has toddlers knows that when you haven’t seen them, even for just a minute, they could really be getting into some trouble, but I didn’t think anything too crazy right away. I just felt, like, a short sense of panic because I had not seen her for a few minutes. So in my mind, she’s probably in the room with the kids. Maybe she’s quiet because she got some toys or is making a little bit of a mess. I didn’t go to the room to check which I don’t know why to this day, but I did instinctively go to the back door.

So I went to the back door not really thinking that I would find Gabby back there. It was locked, which gave me even more reason to think, “Okay, she’s probably in the room,” but I still unlocked the door and went out into the patio area. I probably would’ve stopped in that patio area if I had not noticed that the pool gate was down in one corner. I still didn’t panic at the moment, but I cautiously kind of just walked over to that part where the pool gate was down and stepped over it. I started scanning the pool. It doesn’t make sense to me how this happened because of the position of the pool gate, but I started scanning with my eyes from the shallow end to the deep end of the pool. The gate was open at the area where the deep end of the pool is, and it was dark. It was not dark – it was kind of dusk. The sun was setting, but it was not dark just yet.

I scanned the pool. This was all in slow motion for me when I remember it. When my eyes reached the deep end, I saw her floating. It’s so vivid to me because I remember dressing her that day after her bath and brushing her hair because she had big, beautiful black curls. I remember putting on the pink skirt and her pretty little top and brushing her hair into a ponytail, and I told her in Spanish, “Oh Gab, you’re so pretty,” because she loved to hear that. I just vividly remember seeing her in that pink skirt just floating there. She looked like she was asleep, but her face and her lips were really blue.

I let out this guttural cry that any mom or maybe even a spouse that happened to be their loved one in that kind of estate– it sounds animalistic. It’s the only way I can describe it. I let out that cry, scooped her out of the water, and laid her down next to the pool. At that time, Tina heard my cry and ran out, and I was frozen. I did not try to do CPR because I was screaming and frozen. I didn’t know what to do. I started praying and begging God to do something. So Tina jumped in to try to do CPR. I don’t even know how long that happened. I know I picked up the phone to call 911, but when they asked me the address, I blanked. I don’t know. I just couldn’t think of it, and I knew it very well.

Scott

It wasn’t your address anyway. Some people can’t think of their own address in a situation like that, but you weren’t even home.

Ashley

Right. So I handed the phone to Tina’s oldest daughter who gave the operator the address. Tina was still trying to do CPR. Maya was inside and Joshua had been playing with the neighbors, I think, in the backyard next door. So, at that point, everyone’s coming to the patio, to the backyard area, to see what all the screaming was. Thinking back on what my children witnessed at that time – seeing their sister in that state – is really tough, let alone having my own recollection of what happened. But to think about what my children were feeling, and Tina’s children and Tina herself– I mean, it’s extremely traumatic for everyone involved.

After some time – it always seems like forever when something like this is going on – the ambulance did arrive. I remember the EMT running in. I believe he grabbed Gabby up and ran outside with her. I don’t think he tried to perform CPR right there by the pool, but I do remember him stopping in the front of the house, laying her down on the sidewalk, and trying to do CPR there. I’m not sure why that was. Maybe he noticed she wasn’t responsive and wanted to take quick action. I don’t know. But he did try for a minute or so to perform CPR on the sidewalk in front of the house before taking her into the ambulance. I was not placed in the ambulance with her. I don’t remember if they told me I couldn’t. I can’t recall why that happened.

They had shut the ambulance door and were just stationed there, not moving and not driving away. I think they were working on her in the ambulance. I just dropped to my knees in the street and prayed and prayed. I mean, I had scratch marks on my knees in the following days because of how hard I hit the floor. I think someone came behind me and was trying to console me. I don’t even remember who it was and I don’t remember how long I was there waiting and praying.

Scott

Time becomes irrelevant. It’s such a tunnel vision that you’ve got one thing you’re thinking about. It makes sense that they may have refused to have you come in the ambulance because they’re trying to work on her and you would be a distraction even though you would really want to be there with her. She stood a better chance without you there, probably as harsh as that sounds.

Ashley

Yeah I think it makes sense now. I don’t think I was banging down the door or anything. All I could do was just sit there and wait. So, again, I cannot tell you how long that was. It was probably a lot quicker than it felt, but there was another ambulance that came and put me in the front seat. That’s when we started driving to the hospital, and that drive– my recollection can be wrong in some cases, but what I remember is that it didn’t seem like we were in a rush. I don’t remember if there were sirens. I think they probably had the lights on but, at one point, as the ambulance that I was in was following the other one down a winding road – because this is kind of a country area – I turned to the driver and I said, “Why aren’t we going faster?” I don’t remember if he answered me at all, to be honest. We were directly behind the other ambulance. So, to me, it just didn’t feel like we were going fast enough.

A regular car ride from Tina’s house to the hospital would probably only be 5 minutes. It’s not a far drive at all. So we made it to the hospital. They rushed her in. I was just frantically pacing the hall of the ER. I remember a lot of buzzing going around and staff running back and forth. At some point, I did finally hear a code blue being called over the intercom, and I think that was the point where I had to accept that this was really happening and that she had passed away, and that there was nothing I could do about it. At that moment, I remember this. I wished so hard at that moment that I could just rewind time for just, like, an hour – something simple. I just so badly wanted to do the impossible and rewind time, but I couldn’t. I sank against the wall and just sat on the floor and accepted. I tried to accept it. I never went in to see her after that because I think I just didn’t want to remember her. I didn’t want to see her laying on the table, not responding. I didn’t want that picture. Sometimes, I regret it but, at other times, I’m like, “I think it’s probably best that I didn’t.”

Scott

Do you remember your last interaction with her?

Ashley

I remember. I’m sure that I interacted with her in another way, but the most vivid memory that sticks is my last hug with her, which we have a picture of. It’s one that I hold onto because babies just have that smell about them. Even when they’re a little bit stinky, as a mom, you just want to grab your kid and just eat them up. So, in this picture, I was hugging her. I think you can tell – I know what I was doing – I was smelling her and just squeezing her really tight, and just remembering that makes me happy. It’s bittersweet, but it makes me happy. She was very loved.

Scott

I can’t imagine the value that you place on having that picture of your last hug. That’s got to be just the most important thing in the world to you.

Ashley

It’s framed. I think I might have it framed twice. That’s a very sweet picture.

Scott

We’ll have it in the show notes so people can see that picture. Who actually came and formally told you the news?

Ashley

Sometime after the code was called, I was taken into a small room. My mother, father, and sisters had arrived. Maya and Joshua’s father had called my parents to say, “This is what’s happening. You need to get over here.” So my whole family jumped into the car and sped for 2 hours. I mean, they actually got pulled over and got a speeding ticket. For some reason, the cop did not have any empathy, so they got a speeding ticket, but they got there as fast as they could.

They took us all into a small room and asked me what I think. I already knew that they had done everything that they could and she had passed away. My father and one of my sisters did go in to see her, but I think it was actually in that room that I began rocking. I did not stop rocking for probably 2 or 3 days. I also didn’t sleep for, I think, at least 2 full nights. I rocked to the point that my neck was sore and my body was just so stiff, but I could not stop rocking. That was my physical reaction.

Scott

When you say rocking, you’re talking about sitting on the floor and just moving your torso back and forth?

Ashley

Yep. If I was sitting in a chair, I was rocking. That was most of it. I don’t think it was, kind of, like, standing. I think I just spent a lot of time sitting and rocking. I didn’t know what else to do to console myself.

Scott

Have you since learned what the psychological reason is behind that or what caused your body to react that way?

Ashley

I don’t know. I have spoken to at least one other parent who has experienced a similar situation, and they gave me the same recollection. They said, “Yeah, I rocked back and forth for a while too. Sometimes, I don’t know what it is.” I don’t know if it’s just moms but, sometimes, you’ll see someone waiting in the store in line to check out and we just kind of rock. I think I’ve heard it called, like, the Mama’s Rock or something like that. The way you cradle an infant – it may have been something to do with that. That’s the best way that I can connect why that happened – the way a mom rocks her baby.

Scott

A maternal thing…

Ashley

Right, yeah.

Scott

Were you the one to tell Joshua and Maya that their little sister was gone or did somebody else?

Ashley

I can’t remember. I can’t remember if they were in the room. It may have been my parents. So much of that day is a blur. I do remember going into the bathroom because when something like this happens, they do have to do an investigation to make sure that it wasn’t intentional or due to negligence. So I did have to submit a urine test to make sure that I was not on any type of drugs or alcohol. I remember, after doing that, a relative came into the bathroom. She wasn’t even someone I was very close with, but she just stood there and looked at me, and I said, “What kind of mother am I?” and I broke down because the guilt was just overwhelming and it was hard not to blame myself for everything that happened. That was very difficult to get through.

Scott

Oh, I would imagine it took some time to work through that.

Ashley

It did. I had a lot of support but, at the same time, I was still just not feeling like this was real. It was very difficult to get through the next few days. I actually never slept at my apartment again. I paid the rent for another two months until my lease was up. Then, I was staying at my parents’ house the whole time. I was never able to sleep in that house without her again. I would go and start packing things up because I knew that we were not going to stay there anymore. I just remember grabbing her clothes, trying to smell her in her clothes, and holding onto whatever I had left. I laid in her bed and just sobbed for probably hours – I don’t know.

Then, when the funeral came, I remember having to go and pick out a dress for her. My pastor’s wife had said to me, “You just make her the most beautiful that you can. You buy her the prettiest dress and the prettiest hairpiece.” That’s exactly what I did. While walking through a bridal shop where women were shopping for flower girls’ dresses, I was shopping for what my daughter would be buried in. As we were planning the funeral, there was a time when the funeral director asked me, “Do you have any other questions about what’s going to happen?” I was still rocking when I asked, “Can I brush her hair one more time?” They had to set some kind of boundaries because of the way the autopsy works and the way they cut to examine where they did not allow me to really go in and brush her hair, but I was allowed to place a pin in it. I bought a really beautiful headpiece and placed it on her when she was in the casket and I cut off a piece of her hair to keep. I still hold onto one of her little curls.

Scott

I’ve seen the pictures. She had a head of hair. It’s amazing.

Ashley

She did, and it matched her personality. I always like to say that she was very rambunctious. I mean, what 18-month-old or 21-month-old is not rambunctious? But it really matched her personality. She got so much attention when we would go out because people couldn’t believe how much hair she had from birth. She had just a head full of hair.

Scott

It’s great that they let you do that though. What did you do with the lock of hair?

Ashley

I just have it in an airtight bag and kind of placed it with some other little items in a box that I keep. I also have a box of the favorite clothes that I had for her that I swear, one day, I am going to get a quilt made. So there are some keepsakes that we hold onto.

Scott

In the time that followed, did you find that grief tends to come in waves?

Ashley

Yeah, I’ve heard that said before – that grief comes in waves. Actually, it’s more like tsunamis because it’s almost like you’re walking through a landmine. You never know when you’re going to hit something that triggers you. I distinctly remember that the holidays of that year were the hardest when you experience a significant loss. I mean, you kind of pointed out earlier that as time goes on, it gets harder because everyone’s life has to return to normal and the person that has lost someone has to find a normal that just doesn’t feel right. In this case, it never will. I’m always unsure how to answer the question when people ask, like, “How many kids do you have?” I’m like, “Do you want the short answer or the long answer?” because it’s very difficult to tell someone that you’ve lost a child, especially in this way. They don’t know how to react. Then, I’d feel bad for making them uncomfortable, but I don’t want her to be forgotten either.

Scott

Yeah, that would be an awkward question that people don’t even know they’re asking when they do that. Were the other children open to talking about it to work through it? How did they handle it?

Ashley

I don’t know if this is a personality thing or an age thing, but my son is a bit more open with his emotions. He’s a lot like me and he cried a lot. He was very open about how he felt. My daughter, Maya– I still worry for her. She’s about to be 18 years old now, but I still worry for her because I think she’s kind of bottled those things up. For a while, when I was taking them to therapy, my biggest concern was that she blamed herself because she was sick and she required a lot of attention from me because of how sick she was. So, I’ve always had that concern for her.

Scott

Has she verbalized that?

Ashley

No, she has not. I think it could just be the way that she manages emotions, but we do openly talk about Gabby. My kids always remember her so fondly and we laugh about her personality and all the funny things that she did. We’d watch videos of her and say, “Oh, remember that time?” I’ve got beautiful pictures too of the three of them together. So those are the kind of things that we hold onto. I think it’s something that really kind of shaped them because they were so young that these types of things mold us into who we’re going to become.

So, it’s been a journey. This happened a while ago, but it’s still something that affects all of us to this day. It’s a little more– I want to say, I don’t know if positive is the right word, but it was a lot harder on us the first couple of years versus now. When I share about Gabby – I want to share about her although it still hurts – I feel like it’s a lot more purposeful now than in the beginning. I was just hemorrhaging with pain and trying to understand and cope.

Scott

And part of this journey is– like you mentioned, you have a purpose now. What are you doing now that gives this story more purpose?

Ashley

There are 2 real reasons that I share the story aside from just showing off my beautiful daughter. One of those reasons is to spread awareness. I wouldn’t say that I’m like an activist but, anytime that I meet people or anyone that I know that has a toddler, I do try to find the right time to say to them, “Hey, have you ever considered getting your child into infant swimming classes?” I actually had a woman reach out to me after Gabby passed away, and she’s got a foundation out here because her son drowned, and she’s just such a champion of spreading awareness and teaching people how to prevent it. The truth is that Gabby’s death was preventable. There are layers of protection that made me think, “Man, if only I had really understood that, I could have prevented her death.” So there are a lot of foundations and parents that I have connected with and part of their story is to get out there and spread awareness. For me, it’s to do that and hope that people can learn from this. That’s a terrible way to put it, but I have had friends and family say, “Hey, because of what happened to Gabby, my child is in swimming classes.” I mean, as young as 10-11 months old, these babies are learning to self-rescue, and that always makes me feel like, “Man, I still wish I could have Gabby back, but look at all the lives that are possibly being saved because of her story.” So that’s one reason.

The second reason would be to spread hope and encouragement to people because, I think, as parents, our one job or our main priority is keeping our children safe and loved. It’s really easy for me to say I failed at that but, after some time looking back, I can gracefully say, “It was an accident and this happens to good parents.” I would hate for other parents who lose children to just tear themselves apart because I’ve seen it. I hope to encourage other parents to say, “We can only do the best that we can do. If you gave your child a loving environment, you loved that child as much as possible, then you really did do a good job. You didn’t fail, but accidents happen.” I think that’s really important to know.

In the state of Florida, a lot of car deaths happen. Before I lost Gabby, I would’ve been pretty quick to judge and say, “What kind of a parent forgets their child?” Now I can say, “It can happen to anyone. It really can.” There are layers of protection. When it comes to pools and water safety with children, the first one is supervision, but sometimes that fails. I think, actually, statistically, it’s true that drownings happen a lot when there are pool parties because everyone thinks that someone else is watching the child. But that’s one layer of protection. The other is to have pool gates. Another one is to get that child into self-rescue infant swimming classes.

Scott

It’s almost a sure thing that someone is hearing this story right now and thinking, “I got to go check the fence at the pool or get a fence even if I don’t have kids living in the house because relatives or friends might come over anytime. It’s so important.”

Ashley

It is. This is something that, I think, is also important to say. I had been a fan of water wings and puddle jumpers. I think most parents think, “Okay, this is a great thing to keep our child safe when they’re near the water,” but there’s been research done that it’s may be more harmful than it is good for a child to be taught that they can get into the water because I believe that Gabby had the puddle jumper on that day.

Scott

We have a picture of that, right?

Ashley

That was that day, yeah.

Scott

Yeah. She was getting in. It’s, like, lime green – the wings on her arms. That’s what you call them, right?

Ashley

Yep. Puddle jumpers or water wings.

Scott

Water wings. Okay.

Ashley

A lot of people don’t realize that it can be very dangerous to teach your child that instead of spending the time or money to get them into self-rescue classes

Scott

Because by wearing those, they would feel like, “I don’t have to do anything. I’m just going to float.”

Ashley

Right. It teaches them a false sense of confidence with water, which is something that– if you look at these infant swimming websites and programs, they will warn against it. If you don’t know, you think that you’re doing the right thing by putting your child in these devices. They’re actually probably not the best thing.

Scott

I had never heard that before, but it makes perfect sense. Getting through this whole experience, what have you found has helped the most?

Ashley

That’s a good question. I think it depends. I think, sometimes, what works in one season doesn’t necessarily work in the others. But I would say what’s been consistent for me– I am a person of faith, so I do truly believe that I will be reunited with Gabby again one day – that is my personal belief and just having that hope is really what keeps me going. But if you want something maybe a little bit more tangible, like having that community, having that support, making sure that I was ready to share this story so that I could see the little glimmers of hope when other kids get into swimming and finding a purpose in all of the pain. Those are the things that help me get through it because, even to this day, I am always wondering, “What would Gabby look like? She’d be so big now. How would she sound?” I mean, my sisters and I have even kicked around the idea of getting, like, an age progression illustration done. I’ll never stop wondering what she would’ve been. At the same time, I hope for a day that I’ll see her again. So it’s a day-by-day kind of thing. Sometimes, it gets a little bit easier over time, but it never fully leaves you. Grief is the friend that nobody wants to have around – it’ll always be with you. It’s a journey

Scott

For someone hearing this, maybe they’ve gone through it or maybe they have questions. Can people reach out to you? How should they contact you?

Ashley

Yeah, absolutely. I love to hear from people – not that I’m ever happy to hear that someone is hurting, but my heart just really wants to talk to people or just listen when someone has something to share that they’re going through. I’m happy to receive emails and respond that way. I’m very on top of all of my emails. As a matter of fact, after Gabby passed away, I was receiving a lot of messages on social media – I want to say hundreds and hundreds of messages – from people that were offering their sympathy, but also that had gone through the same thing. So I’m absolutely open to hearing from people.

Scott

We’ll have your email address in the show notes for this episode along with pictures so people can go see how beautiful Gabby was. Is there any part of this that we haven’t talked about that you want to mention?

Ashley

Sometime – maybe within a week or two – after Gabby passed away, my daughter, Maya, had a school performance that she wanted to be a part of. So I sat there in the cafeteria while she was dancing on the stage, completely shattered, but trying my best to give Maya some kind of normalcy.

I was speaking with her teacher – I think it was earlier that day – who was such a sweet lady, very caring. We went out into the hallway and I think she said she had lost someone in the same way, so she really connected with me, but she told me something that I didn’t realize, and that was– I was telling her, “Yeah, I found her floating.” And she said to me, “Oh yeah, I know. That happens after they sink for a while and then they float up,” which brought so much pain and things that I didn’t realize because, in my mind, I had only been away from Gabby for maybe 5 minutes, but the possibility that she’d been in the water for a prolonged amount of time just racked me with guilt. I mean, that was very hard for me to get over. The teacher – God bless her – was not trying to be mean or mean-hearted or anything like that. She was just conversing with me about her experience and that was a blow to my knees. That was so hard to hear.

Scott

Yeah. Nobody would intend to bring more pain like that but, sometimes, when you don’t know what to say, you just say something and then it’s not a good thing.

Ashley

Yeah. There were a lot of little instances like that. Grief will really teach you how to have grace for other people.

Scott

That’s a way to look at it. Thanks for sharing your story.

Ashley

Thank you for giving me and so many others the space to do that.

Scott

If you’d like to see the full transcript of this episode, or if you want to see pictures of Ashley and her children, you can get all of that in the show notes for this episode, at WhatWasThatLike.com/133.

After our conversation, Ashley and I were just chatting a bit. To record for the podcast, I don’t use Zoom but it’s a similar setup – the guest and I can see each other, but we only record the audio. And I could see on the wall behind Ashley was a hand-drawn sketch of little Gabby, sitting on the lap of Jesus. I asked her about it, and she said that after Gabby passed, someone heard about the story and drew that picture – then they passed it along to Ashley through a mutual friend. But the person who created the sketch wanted to remain anonymous. Ashley still does not know who drew it, but she is grateful to have it. That picture is in the show notes as well.

Okay – I have to explain a couple of things about a recent episode. This is about the one titled “Jacqueline was attacked by dogs” – which was episode 131. I’ve had several listeners contact me and ask, “What happened to the dogs? What about the people who owned the dogs? Was there a lawsuit?” and of course those are all valid questions. However, we deliberately did not talk about those things for legal reasons. That’s all I can say.

The other thing about that episode is this – you may remember that Jacqueline said she has benefited from EMDR therapy. I mentioned that several of my previous guests have also had a great experience with it, which is true, but I also said that anyone who has been through some type of trauma should check it out. Well, as it turns out, I’m not a doctor. Usually when I say something like that, I include a disclaimer, something like “I’m not a doctor, everyone’s results may not be the same, so consult your own doctor to see if it might be something that makes sense in your situation.” This time I forgot to include that, so there it is. Always check with your doctor first.

And now I have big announcement, which at one point I thought I might never say – I’m back on Instagram. Couple of years ago I was on Instagram, and they decided to just shut down my account, because they said I violated a rule. I don’t know what rule, and they never told me, and no one ever responded to any of my appeals. So that was that. But I’m back now, with a new account, and actually a bunch of listeners have already found me there. Really, I think the biggest value in having that Instagram is that you can scroll and see each of the beautiful graphics for every past episode, all in chronological order. I really love the way it looks, and you can check it out and follow me if you want to, at WhatWasThatLike.com/Instagram.

Graphics for this episode were created by Bob Bretz, and he also did all the posts on the new Instagram account. Full episode transcription was created by James Lai. And I highly recommend both of them if you need those services.

And now we have our Listener Story. If you’re not familiar with Listener Stories, it’s how we end every episode. And if you want to hear a bunch of them, just listen to the last episode – that’s where I put together ALL the Listener Stories from 2021.

This time our story is about a scary encounter on the way to work.

Stay safe – and I’ll see you in two weeks.

(Listener story)

In 1981, I was a high school student with a part-time job working at McDonald’s. I didn’t have a car, so I had to walk 2 kilometers, which is 1.5 miles. If I worked later than 11.00 PM, the managers were required to give rides to anyone not driving to get home safely. But if I worked in the mornings, I didn’t have that luxury. So one weekend, I was scheduled for the morning shift – [6:00] AM to [11:00] AM. This meant that I’d have to get up around [5:00] AM, get ready and take that 2-kilometer walk to work.

The walk to work was pretty isolated. I was walking by the backyards of houses and the last leg of the walk was nothing but high fences on one side and a huge open field on the other. I was on that last leg of my trip around [5:30] AM – it was still dark. Then, a dark Camaro drove by, slowed down, and then idled. The man driving the car looked older than me – maybe in his twenties or early thirties – and I was suddenly mindful of how alone and exposed I was.

Back in that stage, I was a very nonconfrontational person. I went along with whatever was asked of me. I didn’t know how to say no, which is why I was stuck doing that shift. I had low self-esteem and very low self-worth. I was a prime target for what happened next. The driver leaned out the window and said, “Hey, how are you doing?” “Fine.” I smiled back meekly. He said, “Where are you going? Where are you headed? Can I give you a ride?” And I said, “No, thank you. I’m just rolling up a little further.” He started to control me. He was like, “Come on, I don’t bite. I can get you there faster.” And I said, “No thanks. I’m going to be too early and then I’ll be standing outside waiting to get in.”

I don’t know why I felt the need to tell this perfect stranger that – I guess it was part of my placating personality. He said, “That’s okay. We can stop somewhere and go for coffee.” So my inner radar was, like, ding loudly, almost definite. And I started walking faster and I said, “No thanks” a little more forcefully. He wouldn’t stop asking. Now, I was scared. Suddenly, I blurted out, “No! Now F off!” He stopped the car, opened up the door, had one foot outside the car, and said to me, “You can do this the easy way or the hard way. Get in the effing car!” Do you know how fear focuses you in a second, as if a heavy wet, dark blanket just drops out of the sky onto you, buckling ling your knees, that metallic taste that fills your mouth and you stop breathing? This all happened to me in a nanosecond. Part of me – the meek people pleaser – almost took a step forward. I don’t know where or how I got the courage, but a loud, confident kickass voice came out of my mouth and said, “If you take one more step out of your car, I will scream so loud that the entire city will hear me.”

The guy stopped advancing, looked at me, and made one more “Get in the car” comment, but I said, “No.” Then, he got back in the car and drove off. So, the next 5 minutes to work were the longest 5 minutes of my life. I practically flew across the parking lot of the mall and tried to open the doors, but they were locked, so I started beating them frantically. My supervisor let me in and I collapsed crying hysterically. We had the police come in and file a report, but nothing came of it. Needless to say, I never had to work the morning shift ever again. I wonder who that voice was that spoke up that day because it wasn’t the “me” I thought I was, but I thank her for everything.

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This is a bonus episode of What Was That Like.

If you’re new to the show, this is not normally what you’ll hear. What usually happens is I’ll have someone come on the show to tell the story of something that happened to them. Something that was very unusual. At this point we have over 130 episodes, and a huge variety of stories – animal attacks, plane crashes, mass shootings, all kinds of stories.

And at the end of each episode, we have a Listener Story. This is a story that is sent in by a listener. It’s not an interview, just the person talking about something interesting that happened to them.

I started ending each episode with one of these short stories back in 2021. And just about a month or so ago, I put out a bonus episode with all the Listener Stories from 2022. And I got a lot of positive response to that. So I thought it would be good to get all of the other Listener Stories – the ones from the beginning, in 2021 – and put them out as a bonus episode as well. So that’s what we have here today.

And if you have a story like this, I’d love to hear it. It can be funny, or sad, or anything really – as long as it’s interesting and you can tell it in 5-10 minutes. Just record it on your phone and email it to me, at Scott@WhatWasThatLike.com. There’s a good chance I’ll play it in a future episode of the podcast.

I definitely enjoyed hearing these stories from a couple of years ago, and I think you will too.

Full show notes and pictures for this episode are here:
WhatWasThatLike.com/132

Graphics for this episode by Bob Bretz. Transcription was done by James Lai.

Episode transcript (download transcript PDF):

This is a bonus episode of What Was That Like.

And at the end of each episode, we have a Listener Story. This is a short story that is sent in by a listener. It’s not an interview, it’s just the person talking about something interesting that happened to them.

I started ending each episode with one of these short stories back in 2021. Just about a month or so ago, I put out a bonus episode with all the Listener Stories from 2022. And I got a lot of positive response to that. So I thought it would be good to get all of the other Listener Stories – the ones from the beginning, in 2021 – and put them out as a bonus episode as well. So that’s what we have here today.

I definitely enjoyed hearing these stories from a couple of years ago, and I think you will too.

My father was in an accident involving a train when I was a child. He was out late with some friends and on his way home when he came upon an uncontrolled railroad crossing, which essentially means that there are no signals or gates. It’s just a crossing on a country road. He didn’t see the train approaching. It hit him and he died instantly. My family really struggled with it.

To this day, I have not asked where it happened, specifically. We don’t talk about it often. I know that, if I knew the location, I would never be able to cross the tracks again. Every time I cross tracks, I wonder if those are the ones where it happened. I’m still working on healing from it despite the fact that it’s been 17 years now. It’s still prevalent in my mind. Every time I hear a train whistle or see railroad tracks, I think of him. One strange thing about his passing was that, shortly before he died, we went to Six Flags as a family. When we were waiting in line, they had the sweepstakes that you could enter in a little plastic box. He entered us for a free trip to Hawaii. I always wondered if people ever win those things. For whatever reason, after he passed, we got a phone call and we had won. We ended up spending 2 weeks in Hawaii after he died. He was the type of person that loved the beach. In my eyes, it was a gift from him. To this day, I will forever feel that way.

I’m definitely looking for support groups if anyone else has been through something similar, family members lost in car accidents due to a train. You can reach out to me at amberrhasty@gmail.com. Thank you.

Visiting my Uncle Bob and Aunt Margie’s dairy farm was something I looked forward to on our once-a-year family trip to the country. I loved the cows and the cornfield. Their dogs were a pleasure too since we didn’t have any pets. Aunt Margie would cook up a great country supper when we visited. Uncle Bob once gave me and my sister a ride on the tractor that was pulling a corn harvester through the field. It was exhilarating to watch the corn fly up from the stalk and fall into the large container behind the tractor to be brought to the silo. Those were the best days and I wished I could live on a farm instead of in the city.

I had just turned 11 before this visit in the late 1950s. It was getting late in the day and we hadn’t been to the cornfield yet. I wanted badly to stand next to those tall stalks and walk around a bit. The adults were sitting in chairs near the garden and I stood in front of my father and asked, “Can I go for a walk in the cornfield?” He ignored me and kept conversing with Uncle Bob. So I stood in front of my mother and asked the same question. She wouldn’t answer me. These were the days of children being seen and not heard.

I decided it was getting late and we would be leaving soon, so I made the decision to go see the cornfield by myself. I walked past the silo and came to the gate in the fence. I unlatched it and walked through onto a dirt ground. The cornfield was in sight. I took 4 steps toward it and then my feet wouldn’t move anymore. I didn’t understand what was happening. I tried to turn around toward the gate but my feet and legs wouldn’t follow my upper body. I felt desperate and tried to reach the fence for something to hang onto but it was out of reach. I was sinking fast in the mud.

I wondered how I could remedy this. Could I scream? My 11-year-old logic told me that my parents didn’t hear me when I was standing right in front of them, so most likely they would not hear me now. The mud was up to the bottom of my chest and I reasoned that soon I may need to hold my breath. I knew I could hold it for a long time because I practiced at the pool in town. I wondered how much further I would sink.

The mud was up to my neck when suddenly I saw my cousin running toward me. A look of shock was on her face as she spun back around leaving a trail of dust at her feet as she ran with all her might to get help. Soon, the only way to survive was to tilt my head back as far as I could and stare at the sky. I looked down my nose and saw my Aunt Margie running full blast toward me. Then, I felt her hands reach in and grab my arms and pull my muddy body out of that sink hole. My Aunt hosed me off in the cow barn and explained that it had rained for 3 days and caused a sinkhole right where I stepped. When I asked if I would have drowned in that mud, she said, “Yes.” Sadly, we never visited the farm again. It’s no wonder I had nightmares and panic attacks.

Hi, this is James Clattenberg. This story is about a small plane crash in the Turks and Caicos Islands back in 1992. I went to the island with my friend Dave. We first went to Provo and were there for a few days. This big storm came in. We had already planned to go to Salt Caye for the middle of the trip and there was a pilot who was going to take us to this little island where there were less than 100 residents.

It was very stormy. We met the pilot the day before. He said, “Are you sure you guys still want to go tomorrow? It’s going to be very stormy but we should be fine.” We said, “Sure.” We were staying at this small little guest house on Salt Caye and we got in contact with the owner of the inn because he was going to pick us up and take us to the property. We got on the plane that morning and it was very windy. The plane was a 5-seater Cessna with only 1 door on the passenger side. The pilot jumped in and then I got into the back row of 3 very small seats. My friend, Dave, got in the front. It was very windy. Granted it was a small plane, but it was just bouncing all over the place so I was holding onto either side. This was only a 10-minute flight from Provo to Salt Caye. We started to land.

I’m not a pilot but I know that you are supposed to land against the wind, not with the wind behind you. We could see this small little runway that was surrounded by barbed wire to keep out the donkeys and wild bulls that roamed the island. We were landing and the wind was pushing us extremely fast toward this runway. We basically just slammed into the ground and the pilot said, “Oh shit!” and immediately turned the wheel and the landing gear just collapsed. We were scraping along sideways toward the end of the runway. At the end of the runway, there was that row of barbed wire. The propeller flew off. We were skidding. It was like being in a car in the snow – you don’t know when it’s going to stop. We were just skidding along and then, all of the sudden, the plane stopped, probably, 10 feet short of the end of the runway. One wing was through the barbed wire and then beyond that was a ditch.

The pilot immediately unbuckled his seat belt, jumped over my big football player friend Dave, ran down the runway, and left us there. We were stranded thinking, “Oh my god, is this plane going to blow up?” It all happened so quickly. We just slammed into the runway. We both thought, “The plane was going to explode so the pilot ran off.” We got out of our seatbelts and got out of the plane. We saw the guy who owned the inn there to pick us up. He looked at us and said, “I have lived on this island for 15 years. I have never seen a plane come in so fast. I thought you guys were goners. Now would you like a cocktail or do you need to change your underwear?” (laughs) I laughed about it now but it was very scary.

Then there were other things that happened on that island. I was chased by a donkey and sucked into the ocean. In the end, we laughed about it but we called it Death island. Hopefully, nothing like that will ever happen again. Anyways, that’s my little airplane crash story.

Hi, my name is Tristan and this is the story of how I gave my parents their first gray hairs. Before this day, I had no significant health issues as a child whatsoever. This is a story from when I was 6 years old. My parents picked me up from my grandmother’s house and we drove out to a clear lake for a family day of fun in the sun. At this time, my mom was 8 months pregnant with my little brother and looking forward to laying out by the water while she still had the chance before the newborn came. I had been running a fever at my grandmother’s house – a fact she neglected to tell my parents before they allowed me to wade in the cold lake water.

I remember getting my life jacket on and following my dad out into the shallow part of the water where he showed me some tiny fish. I remember getting out of the water, my mom wrapping me in a beach towel, and laying back in one of the chairs we unpacked. I even remember my mom letting me have a sip of her diet coke. “Her lips are turning blue,” was the next thing I remember hearing. I could hear my mom yelling but I couldn’t see her or my dad. I couldn’t see anything. After another couple of seconds, I couldn’t hear anything either. The next thing I remember seeing was an X-ray of my chest on the light board across from me in my hospital room.

Normally you might think, “Ok, an ambulance was called and I was easily helped.” Well, keep in mind, this was 1996 – the days before everybody had a cell phone in their pocket – and we were at a lake in a part of the city where most of the homes were vacation homes, meaning they were empty at the time. My parents knew I needed to get to the hospital but we were somewhere unfamiliar and they weren’t sure where the hospital was.

My dad picked me up and took me in his arms along with my very pregnant mother and ran from door to door trying to get a hold of someone to call 911. They knocked on the doors of 5 or 6 houses until they saw a driveway with an ambulance parked in it. By the grace of God, someone answered the door and it was the wife of the pediatrician who was next door playing darts with the ambulance driver.

Needless to say, they picked me up and I rode with them to the hospital. My dad followed them in the van that was almost out of gas. When I woke up and was clear to go home, we were out of gas in our van, but the doctor who we’d seen earlier had a broken gas gauge and gave us his extra gas can to get home.

When you find out that you’re going to be on Shark Tank you prepare yourself for a lot of different outcomes. You prepare yourself for the euphoria of getting a deal and an investment on live TV from one of your favorite sharks. You also prepare yourself for the possibility of humiliating yourself on national TV and having all your friends see what an idiot you look like. What you don’t prepare for is violence. When my business partner and I showed up in LA, it was after a long flight. Just so you know, they don’t fly you in first class. They fly you in on Southwest on the cheapest ticket they can get. I sat in the center seat and was exhausted when we got there, so we went out drinking.

At the bar where we were drinking, there were a couple of other contestants – one of whom was very obnoxious and insisted on showing us pictures of his cars and watches and bragging about the money that he had made developing apps. Soon, this guy went from being a blowhard to an asshole. He started to harass the bartender. At that point, he said some things that were very offensive and I proceeded to remove him from the bar. I put him in a little arm lock and I threw him out. I’m not a tough guy. He was just a small guy, which enabled me to do this.

I returned to the bar and the nice folks who were sitting around the bar gave me a little ovation, which felt good because I never do this kind of stuff. I sat down and had another drink. Within a couple of minutes, out of the corner of my eye, I see him run out from the kitchen at me. He ran up to me and punched me square in the temple. It didn’t knock me out, but it hurt and it made me dizzy. The first thing I did was put him into a headlock, and I was gonna start to punch him. My business partner said, “Don’t do it! Don’t jeopardize our chance at this show.” The manager of the restaurant came out and said, “Hey I can have the Culver City police out here in 5 minutes.” I said, “You know what? Don’t worry about it. Let’s just get him out of here and lock the door behind him.” The manager took him out and he never came back.

The next morning in the hotel lobby, I ran into the guy. He pretended not to remember what happened, which probably was the best course of action. That way, there were no uncomfortable “I should have kicked your ass” moments. It was just an odd exchange between me and some dude who was pretending to be blacked out. The irony of this situation was that the product that this dude was there to pitch to the sharks was an anti-bullying app. His segment never ended up airing, so he had nothing to do with shark tank so there’s no way anyone could find out who this guy is. The long and the short of it is, anything can happen when you go on Shark Tank, including getting punched in the head.

My name is Matt Franklin, and since my appearance on Shark Tank, I have started a podcast called ‘The Rogue: Retirement Lounge’ and it’s all about retirement for entrepreneurs.

Hi, my name is John and I have this story from when I was a kid. We were driving through the Verde River area in Arizona and it was the middle of spring and the wasps were all flying around. I’m terrified of anything that flies or stings. My dad got the truck stuck, so he got out to unstuck the truck. The windows were down. I was sitting there freaking out that a wasp might fly into the car. My dad got tired of hearing it so he yanks me out of the car and makes me stand in the middle of this swarm of wasps and says, “Face your fears.” Then, he went back to try to get the truck unstuck. I was about as terrified of wasps as I am of my dad. I was just sitting there freaking out and terrified to move with all these wasps swarming around me. My mom decided to come out and try to calm me down, and she ended up getting stung a bunch of times while trying to calm me down. I took this opportunity to run screaming back to the car and cover myself with a blanket until the car starts moving again. Meanwhile, my mom and dad are over there fighting about how she got stung and that’s no way to deal with your kid’s phobia. To this day, I’m still terrified of things that fly and sting, but not nearly as bad as when I was a kid though.

When I was 4, my mother and I lived in a one-bedroom apartment in downtown Vancouver. In the summer, there was suddenly a smell. Then, it was a bad smell. Soon after that, it became unbearable. My mother called the landlord about the smell and they didn’t do anything. The smell got even worse until, one day, my mom had enough and went to examine the cause.

She sniffed and smelled around on each floor of the building until she got to the apartment directly above ours. She knocked, then banged, with no answer. She came back for 2 days every few hours and banged on the door, still with no answer. She then wrote a letter and tried to stuff it under his door, but it wouldn’t squeeze through. The space between the floor and the door was so narrow and the hallway carpet was blocking the way. She went to put it in the unit’s mailbox in the front area of the building. When she got there the mailbox was stuffed full with a sticker on it from the post office, probably saying that mail could not be delivered to the box because it was so full.

When she discovered the mailbox full it dawned on her that something might be wrong. She and I went back to our apartment and she called the police. Within the hour, 2 police officers showed up and started banging on the upstairs apartment door. The building was so old and run down that we could hear everything – every bang, the dispatcher on the radios, every step, and then them coming back downstairs to our unit. They asked my mom where the landlord was. She explained that he lived elsewhere and that she had called to complain repeatedly, only to be ignored. The officer then asked my mom to call the landlord and give him the phone. The landlord answered and the officer identified himself to him and asked for access to the unit, or for the landlord to come to do an emergency inspection. The guy was there in 10 minutes.

As soon as he got to the building my mother grabbed me in her arms and we followed the landlord and the officer upstairs. The landlord banged on the door and announced he was doing an emergency inspection, then unlocked the door. I really wish that my mother would have just left me in our apartment watching TV or something. When that door was opened, directly across from the entrance to the apartment was the guy who lived there, dead. He had slashed his own wrists and taken a bunch of pills while sitting at his kitchen table. He had been dead for weeks and was bloated so bad that his skin was splitting and he had maggots coming out of his mouth and his nose. I saw it all.

Everyone in the hallway was completely stunned. My mother couldn’t even process what she was seeing – never mind what I was seeing. If we thought the smell was bad before, we were immediately proven wrong the second that door was opened. It was such a horrific smell and sight that the landlord ran outside to throw up multiple times. The police called the coroner and they took the body out of the building. After he was out, they were gone and never came back, as it was clear what had happened.

The landlord came to our apartment a couple of hours later as my mother was looking at the newspaper for a new place. He offered her a deal. She could have the next 3 months rent-free if she cleaned the apartment upstairs out and got it ready to be repainted. She reluctantly agreed but got to it that day. She took me upstairs and instructed me to sit in this person’s living room while she started to clean up all the blood and other miscellaneous dried bodily fluids off of the kitchen floor.

After she did that she started going through his possessions to see if there was a family member she could call to come to collect the deceased belongings. She sadly found no such information. She contacted one of the officers that came to our apartment to see if they knew of anyone. Unfortunately, he had no known living family that they could find. She waited a week, just in case somebody showed up before she cleared the belongings and furniture out of the unit.

She eventually got everything out and scrubbed that place as best she could, but the smell just would not go away. We went to a store and bought this stuff called ‘Nilodor.’ It was a spray can that was supposed to remove any odor in the places it was used. My mother used 6 full cans over 4 days. Not only did it not remove the smell, but it mixed it with its own smell and created a whole new level of awful. We went back to the store and explained that it didn’t work at removing the smell. They explained that we didn’t use the right kind and that she should have used the odor drops. She used the entire bottle over a few days and still could not get the smell of rotting corpse out of the apartment.

It now just smelled like chemicals and death. The smell was still so awful and she couldn’t take it anymore. We moved about a week later as it was just too much. She stayed in contact with someone else who lived in the apartment and found out that the building still smelled of the noxious awfulness 6 months later. To this day, if I smell Nilodor, I have vivid flashbacks to that door being opened with me in my mother’s arms, staring directly at this festering mess of rotting death and the terrible realization that his whole life was shoved into bags and thrown in the dumpster and there were no loved ones to remember or mourn him. This was my first experience with trauma that, even 35 years later, still haunts me to this day.

It was early 1986 when my girlfriend and I lived in a very small town in northern Wisconsin. We decided to move to Minneapolis. At the time, we were musicians and Minneapolis was in the Purple Rain phase – it was a global phenomenon and we wanted to get a piece of that action. We moved down there with my sister in south Minneapolis towards the inner city in the Steven’s Park community in a big brownstone building. Steven’s Park was a dangerous area, but we didn’t know that. We were quite naive little country bumpkins with no street smarts whatsoever, but we were bulletproof and didn’t know any better, so we took a lot of risks, as we all do.

In that area, it turns out there had been a couple of murders. What the perpetrator did was ring the buzzer on these brownstone buildings. When he would get in he would get up to his evil deeds which were breaking into somebody’s apartment and then murdering the people – pretty nasty stuff. We moved about 2 blocks away towards the Museum Institute of Arts – a huge museum down there. The apartment complex we moved into was a small affair – only 8 units, 4 on the bottom and 4 on the top. It was the 1920s or 1930s art deco building. The front was all plate glass – quite beautiful. The owner didn’t want to put locks on the doors because they were solid glass. So we were the only building in south Minneapolis without security doors, which was very, very unsafe. As a result of that, the woman across the hall from us – she was a nurse – when she would get home at night, she would knock on the door of the woman that lived below us and they would walk up together. There were two sets of stairs going up to that storey – one in the front and one in the back.

On the night that this event happened, luck would have it that they showed up at the exact time this person who fit the description of the murderer was at our door. It was the middle of the night, after 12 or 1 at night. It was the middle of summer and stinking hot. My girlfriend and I were fast asleep. We had the floor fan on high so we couldn’t hear much. We did hear a very loud pounding on our door. I bolted up, ran to the door, looked through the peephole, and it was the police. I opened the door and said, “Can I help you?” With concerned looks on their faces, they said, “Are you ok? Is everything ok in there?” I said, “Yep. Everything is fine. Why? What’s happening?” They said, “Well sir, there was a gentleman at your door trying to break in.”

As luck would have it, the woman who lived next door came home as he was trying to break in. He had a large screwdriver in his hand with a towel wrapped around his hand so no one could see it. The woman got home and saw him and said, ‘What are you doing?’ He said, “I’m here to see the girl inside.” Then, he turned and took a step toward her. Luckily, she had a friend who had just come up the back set of stairs and startled the guy so he ran off. This event happened 35 or 36 years ago and it’s still fresh in my mind. It actually haunted me for most of my life.

Usually, in the middle of the night, I check the doors and windows. I have lived a pretty paranoid life actually. I’m getting better though. Sometimes, it’s the things that don’t happen to us that can cause the night frights. I think about the event that would have happened. I think about all the things that take about a minute to do that could have been the difference between life and death for me – putting your dishes in the dishwasher, getting caught at a red light, washing your hands, putting on your shoes, talking on the phone, going to a convenience store and buying a coke. It all takes a minute. Imagine if that woman – whose name I don’t even know even though she’s my angel– what would have happened if they hadn’t shown up at that exact moment. We were fast asleep in bed and wouldn’t have heard him come in. We would have been at his mercy and, by all accounts, he didn’t give much mercy. So I’m grateful but haunted by the randomness of that.

Some people have said that it wasn’t blind luck but that it was divine intervention and that I have angels. I think maybe we all have angels or not – who knows? I guess that’s a matter of faith. I want to thank you for listening to this. Please be safe and be well and don’t live in a building without security doors and always be careful.

When I was in my early 20s, I moved back home to my parents in my hometown. I didn’t really know anyone there anymore. I didn’t really have any connections or someone close to me besides family. I thought it would be a good idea to go down to the local mall, just walk around, and see if I could find someone who looked friendly that I might be able to strike up a relationship with. I did come across someone who reminded me a lot of a friend I had in the former town where I’d been living. I thought maybe I could form a connection with this person. So we talked for a while and exchanged phone numbers.

After talking for a couple of weeks he asked me out on a date. The only problem was that he didn’t drive, so I would have to pick him up at his house where he lived with his grandmother. That wasn’t a big deal to me because it’s common to find people who don’t drive in larger cities. So I waited all week and was pretty excited. When the day came, he pretty much ghosted me. I couldn’t get him on the phone and he wouldn’t answer my texts, so I thought maybe he wasn’t as interested as I thought he was. I pretty much let it go because, sometimes, things don’t work out. Then, he got a hold of me a couple of days later and explained that the reason he had not gone out on the date with me was because of his ferret. His ferret had died and he was really very upset and didn’t feel up to getting out and being social. I understood that and took it as a reasonable excuse because anytime I’ve ever experienced something like that it can be kind of traumatizing.

So we made arrangements to go out the following weekend. When that day came, he did not ghost me. He did answer the phone and I ended up over there at his grandmother’s house to pick him up. He didn’t quite have everything in order so I followed him to his bedroom where he could pick up the last few things that he needed just to make sure that he was prepared – make sure he has his wallet with him and all those different things that he need. When he opened up the bedroom door, his bedroom pretty much consisted of just 4 blank walls, a blank mattress in the middle of the floor with no sheet or blanket or anything, and probably 200 empty soda cans all around the bed in little towers and stacks.

That wasn’t the main thing that I noticed. The main thing that I noticed was that suddenly my eyes started burning and then the smell hit my nose. It coated the inside of my nose in a way that makes sure you’ll never forget the intensity of the stench. It will be burned into your memory. He said, “Oh don’t mind that. That’s just my ferret.” I looked over in the corner and there was indeed a ferret cage with a dead ferret in it. Obviously, I was completely shocked that he had been coexisting with the corpse of his dead pet ferret that had sat in the corner of his room for over a week at this point. He was really disappointed that we didn’t get to go on that date. I wasn’t that disappointed when I went home. That was enough of a red flag for me.

So about 20 years ago I was working as a security guard in the mall. The funny thing is I wasn’t even supposed to work that night. I was covering for someone. I got a call over the radio saying that a female fainted in the restroom. I ran towards the restroom down the corridor. When I opened the restroom door, I didn’t see anybody, but I heard someone crying. I walked in and looked under the stalls, and then I saw somebody sitting on the floor of the handicapped stall. I introduced myself, knocked on the door, told her I was going to come in, and that I was security. The door was locked so I had to crawl under the door to unlock it.

When I stood up we were both facing each other, I stood up to her pointing a gun at my forehead. She was just crying. My radio kept going off. I kept telling her that I could help her. It must have been a minute but it felt like a lifetime. She just kept crying. The last thing I said to her was, “I can help you.” She just said, “You can’t help me.” She took the gun, pointed it at the side of her head, and shot herself. She fell back and landed between the crack between the toilet and the wall. Half of her head was missing. She was still gasping for air. I was a 20-year-old kid that had no idea what to do. I ran out of the restroom freaking out.

One of my good friends was also working there at the time. He ran to me and I just held him and told him not to go in. Long story short, this lady was a 24-year-old female who had just lost custody of her kids and decided to end it all. I was trying to get into law enforcement at the time but I couldn’t do it after that. I still see her struggling and breathing for air. I just figured I couldn’t help her. I was pretty lost after that and really took a different career path. That’s my story.

Hi, my name is Elizabeth and this is my story of ‘What Was It Like’. When I got out of bed on May 12th, 2017 to walk my 2 German Shepherds, I could never have imagined in a million years what was about to happen to me. I live in Arizona. Because of the heat, I get up at 5 AM to walk my dogs. It is my routine every day to walk them on a pathway next to a desert wash behind our local library, a few miles from my home. I love the remote quietness of the area.

As I drove into the parking lot that Friday morning, just as the sun was starting to rise, I noticed a car and thought it was odd. Usually, no one was there. I leashed up the dogs and began walking down the path I usually walk down. We hadn’t gotten very far when I started hearing a loud rasping sound. I looked down to my left where it was coming from and I saw a man sitting on the ground with his legs crossed, slouched over, and leaning against a brick fence pillar. I approached him and said, “Sir, are you ok?” I asked him again, no answer. He continued taking deep labored breaths. He still did not respond. He was dressed very neatly in blue jeans, a light blue striped long-sleeve shirt, white tennis shoes, and wearing a gold wedding band on his ring finger.

Then I noticed the front of his shirt was covered in blood and blood was pouring out of his right temple. I saw what looked like a flashlight near his leg and I thought that, maybe, he fell. As I got closer, I realized it was the barrel of a gun. I fumbled in my pocket for my cell phone and called 911. I told the dispatcher there was a man covered in blood near the library. Strange things started going through my head like, “I was probably going to be late for work. Who’s going to believe that I found someone shot in the head?” So I took a picture. Within a few minutes, police cars started showing up. I directed the first responding officer to the location. The officer leaned over and picked up a .22 caliber black revolver handgun laying next to the man’s leg and placed it in a bag.

As I stood there with my 2 dogs, more and more police officers kept arriving until the parking lot was full of red and blue flashing lights. Several officers cordoned off the area with yellow crime scene tape. It felt very strange standing inside the crime scene tape. An ambulance arrived and transported the man to a nearby trauma center. There was an officer assigned to stay with me and my dogs. Finally, the lead officer came over to talk to me. He asked me some questions about who I was and how I came to find this man. I said, “I was just a complete stranger out walking my dogs.” Several hours later, I was finally cleared to leave the scene. I learned from the police that the man passed away 4 days later. To this day, I don’t know his name. I always wondered if I had shown up maybe 20 minutes earlier, would I have been able to stop him? I don’t know. I think about him every day when I pass by the spot where I found him

My first relationship out of high school was abusive and I almost died. Very early on, he told me the typical “all my exes are crazy” bit. For no good reason, I just believed it. Occasionally, he would yell at me and scream if I couldn’t hang out with him and I justified that as being ok because I thought he was hurt and I felt like his actions weren’t his choice. Obviously, this just got gradually worse. It went from yelling to throwing things to shoving and raising fists very quickly in under a year’s time.

The time he almost killed me, we were house-sitting for my mother while she was on a trip for her birthday. We had gotten into a nonviolent fight. I decided that I was going to sleep on the couch. Before I went to sleep, I texted a friend of mine the phrase, “I don’t think I’m cut out for romantic relationships.” While I was asleep, he read that and it sent him over the edge. There was a lockbox in the room. Because my mom’s house was a rental, that’s where she still kept the spare key. Lock boxes are sturdy solid metal and heavy. I had kind of woken up when he entered the room.

I’d hardly looked at him when he threw this lockbox at my head. He was only a few feet from me so it was pretty close range. I remember it as just a sudden white flash and my body felt bad. I fell off the couch and started to crawl. That’s when he picked it up and hit me again. It was another white flash and my hearing was really muffled. All I could hear was my heartbeat in my ears. That was my, “Oh shit!” moment because tunnel vision started kicking in and my body felt like it was underwater. All I could think was, “Fuck, I’m hurt. I’m hurt. I have to get help.” I somehow was able to crawl to the bathroom with my phone before he could catch me. I have cuts in my memory here. I only remember shutting and locking the door. I don’t actually remember grabbing my phone or anything else.

While I was in the bathroom, I was really dizzy and it was hard to move. I don’t know how long I was in there or how long he was outside of the door. At some point, I realized he was just pounding on the door and screaming to be let in. I finally came to the moment where I thought, “Ok I have to call 911. I have to call for help. He’s gonna kill me. I’m gonna die. I have to call for help.” I picked up my phone and was trying to dial, but the screen was black. I was really disoriented, but it wasn’t working. Then I realized that the battery had been removed from my phone. So before he hit me, he had taken the battery out of my home and then returned my phone to the same spot so I couldn’t call for help. I remember feeling sleepy and scared.

When I finally felt my head, it was just this burning hot lump behind my ear. The swelling felt like it was as big as my hand and I didn’t know what to do. So I got into the bathtub, turned on the cold water, and sat there holding my head against the cold faucet hoping it would help somehow. Eventually, I fell asleep and he got in. At that point, he was just doing this thing where he was crying and saying,” Oh my god my life is ruined. My life is ruined.” He just kept saying that. I couldn’t talk. I just felt dizzy and sick. He was trying to get me to follow his fingers with my eyes and I couldn’t do it.

The next day I had work and I was still really woozy and in pain. The girls at my job could see the swelling under my hair. Halfway through my shift, I went home to go into urgent care. By that time, he had calmed down and was in the reconciliation phase. He agreed to take me. For some reason, at the urgent care, they just let my boyfriend come in with me to see the doctor. Despite putting down a head injury on the check-in, I had to lie to the doctor about what happened. The doctor looked at him, then looked at me for a really long time before explaining that I had an internal contusion affecting my face, eye, and neck. I also had a temporal lobe concussion. He looked at me and told me that if my injury was just one inch forward, I would’ve had internal bleeding in my brain and died, but I was lucky I didn’t. He told me to go to an ER immediately if my symptoms got worse, and that was it.

So we went home and I was ok enough at that time. A week later he slammed that side of my head into a door frame repeatedly when I was trying to run from him during another violent incident. Another time after that, he almost killed us both in the car driving 90 miles an hour. The abuse didn’t really end until I was finally able to move without telling anybody where I was gonna go. Now, a lot of time has passed. He completed schooling to be a social worker now. It terrifies me. I still have residual effects from the concussion like brain fog and issues with facial blindness. The scariest thing for me is that he worked up to being that violent. I wasn’t the only victim. I think about what could happen to someone else all the time especially because he faced no repercussions. I also think about how many others like him there are.

This happened to me a few months ago at my current workplace. Occasionally, my wife will be a very kind soul and will actually make my lunch for me for work if I don’t end up having time the night before. Sometimes, when she does this, she’ll include a note that she’ll write on a napkin or paper towel. Usually, it says something like, “Have a great day” and such. This time, she wrote a note that said, “I love you – Love, me” in Sharpie and on a paper towel. I work in an office and it has a small break room where I eat my lunch. On this particular day, I sat down in the break room and began to eat my lunch – a normal situation. On this table, there happened to be a black Sharpie and little paper towels. I set them aside to give myself a little room to eat. I set up all my things and began eating and watching a video on my phone.

As I was eating, one of the department heads came in and, a few minutes later, so does my boss. I chat a little with them both. While talking, the department head happened to look at the note my wife wrote me on the paper towel in Sharpie, next to the roll of paper towels and a Sharpie – the same note that says, “I love you – Love, me.” He then proceeds to ask, “Dave, did you write yourself a note?” I had to look at the note, the Sharpie, the paper towel, my boss, and the department head. They seemed to have a growing sense of concern for me. I quickly realized how it must appear to both of them. My mouth was stuffed with food, so I had to very quickly explain to them that I’m not in need of serious emotional help. It didn’t help that I was also laughing at the time since this was a very hard situation to believe. Luckily, they both laughed and believed me and they haven’t brought it up since. So, hopefully, I’m doing good there. Thank you very much for listening and have a great day.

I remember most of this story, but some parts are hazy because I was only 6. It started when me, my mom, my 3-year-old sister, my mom’s friend, and my 15-year-old aunt went to the lake near us. We started packing up. After swimming for a few hours, my mom took a cooler to the car while my aunt watched us pack up. My little sister started saying she didn’t want to wear her life jacket to swim, but my mom already told her she had to keep it on while my mom was away packing up. While my aunt wasn’t looking and was packing up towels, my sister ran off angrily screaming, “I don’t want my life jacket on!” I didn’t pay any attention to her because I didn’t really do that when she was throwing a fit. We weren’t paying attention for two seconds.

When my mom came back and asked where my sister was, that’s when it hit me. I looked down at my feet and her life jacket was on the towel. Everybody started running around like crazy calling out her name. We just heard nothing for what felt like an eternity. I started crying because that is what any 6-year-old would do in that situation. All of the sudden, I heard my aunt screaming my mother’s name. I looked over and there was just a group of people. I walked over to the group of people and saw my 3-year-old sister laying there, not responding, and she was blue. That is the scariest thing that I have probably ever seen in my entire life. My mom was in shock when she got over there, of course. My aunt kept trying to do CPR. There was a nurse there. She had no pulse, but then they started doing CPR. Then, a team of firefighters and police officers got there and they were able to bring her back to life. She was probably dead for about 4 or 5 minutes, but she is alive and ok now. I’m so happy that she is alive and that she pulled through. She is one tough fighter

Hello everyone, my name is Natalia, I’m Brazilian and I work as an English teacher here in Brazil. The story I’m going to tell you happened a couple of years ago when I was starting out in a new job in an English course. During one of my classes, I had a very bad belly ache. So, in the short break between the two classes, I ran to the bathroom to relieve myself. The bathroom was connected to the teachers’ room where all of my colleagues were gathering and waiting for the next class to start. I was really embarrassed of opening the door and letting everybody smell the remaining odor of my diarrhea, so I had the idea of opening the bathroom window to let the wind circulate a little before opening the door, but the window was stuck – it was, like, glass made. As I tried to force it, it fell and broke into a million pieces on the ground and everybody heard the noise. They knocked on the door to ask if I was alright. I opened it and they not only could smell it but they could also see that I was trying to get rid of the smell by breaking the window. It was really, really humiliating, but I didn’t get fired.

My whole life growing up, my mom had debilitating ocular migraines that would leave her crying afterward. During one of these migraines, my drunken stepdad, at the time, was screaming at her to shut her fucking mouth and a bunch of other nonsense. He ended up freaking out, running outside, getting a shovel, coming back in, and throwing it toward me. Then, he went into the spare bedroom and got a shotgun. He aimed it at my mom’s face and said, “If she doesn’t shut the fuck up, I’m gonna shoot her” and that I was supposed to go dig her a grave. So I went outside at 10 to 12 years old, probably, and started digging a hole in the woods. Sometime later, I heard a gun go off coming from my house – I wasn’t that far away – so I ran off into the woods.

That night, I came back and got my dog who was always chained up out back and went further into the state game lands that were way past our property line. I stayed there for 3 days and 2 nights. Sometime later, I heard a 4-wheeler on the third day and heard my mom yelling for me – I guess she was stopping every once in a while and calling out my name – so I ran up to her. I never really talked to her about it, ever, from that point forward. It was just something that I dealt with. I blocked it out for a really long time. Years later, in therapy, it triggered back into my memory. I just want to let everybody know that shit might be rough sometimes, especially as a kid. I promise it will get better. I’m 24 years old now, so this was probably 12 to 14 years ago. I have an amazing family, a beautiful fiance, and 2 amazing kids. One of those kids is my stepdaughter. I can promise on everything that she will never ever be treated the same way I was. So keep your heads up and enjoy life as it is now.

Hi Scott. I’m pretty much addicted to your podcast. I binge-listened to it until I was all caught up and I can’t wait for each episode that comes out. So keep up the good work. You had asked recently if people had stories about regrets that they have. My regret involved a young man – I’m going to call him Joe. I heard a rumor in the community that he was kind of a reckless driver. Not long after that I heard that Joe was dating my friend’s daughter. We weren’t close friends – kind of, acquaintances/ We knew each other’s names and each other’s children. I’m going to call the daughter, Sue. Joe was dating Sue. I thought about saying something to Sue’s mother about Joe’s reputation of driving recklessly, but I thought, “I don’t really have any facts. It’s just rumors. I’m just going to try to mind my own business.”

Not long after that, Joe and Sue were in a car together. Joe ran a stop sign and Sue was killed. The other car involved in the accident had 3 people in it and 2 of them died – Ii was a father and his teenage daughter. They were killed in that accident. Ever since then, if I’ve had an opportunity to speak up for someone or try to advocate for them, I am just compelled to do that. The accident happened very close to my parent’s home and the family put up a little cross and memorial near that intersection. So I think about that every time I visit my parents. I’d just like to encourage other listeners to follow those little nudges or that inner voice that says, “Hey something isn’t right here.” You never know, if we speak up, we may be able to impact someone’s life for the good. We may be able to save a life. Keep up the good work. Thanks.

I had a very unique childbirth experience with my second. I was in my first semester of nursing school. I was going to be due a month after the end of the semester which is in the summer. So I was going to have a little bit of time with my baby before I went back to school. I had one teacher, in particular, and she was teaching “The Fundamentals of Nursing” – a very beginner core course. She specialized in geriatrics. She would joke with me all the time, “You’re not contracting, are you? Because if you are, I’m calling an ambulance because I don’t do babies.” So there were a couple of times throughout the semester that me and some of my friends pranked her and made her think I was going into labor just to make her nervous. It kind of became this joke.

Well, I was walking into my last final of the semester, which just happened to be her class. As we were getting ready to go in, my water broke. I just kind of stopped and I turned to my sister-in-law – who was also taking the class with me – and said, “My water just broke.” She looked at me and later she said that she knew I wasn’t joking because she could see every single freckle on my face. I was so pale because I was scared. This was about a month before my due date. Some of the girls ran into the teacher’s offices to get my instructor and they were saying, “Her water broke!” She took a little while to come to me because she said, “You guys. I’m not doing this”, thinking that it was a prank again. They finally convinced her to come out. So she came out and she kind of looked at me. I was wearing a dress, so she slightly lifted it up to make sure there wasn’t a big bag of saline in there or something that I was using to trick her.

Once she realized that, yes, I was in deep and was serious, she said to my sister-in-law, “Go ahead and take her to the hospital. I’ll figure out another time for you guys to take your finals.” So we went to the hospital and were kind of laughing and joking about it. I was told later that I did my fellow classmates a huge disservice because now they couldn’t think about the answers on their tests. They were so surprised and couldn’t stop thinking about what had just happened.

Anyway, I got to the hospital. I had planned on not getting an epidural, not because I disagree with them, but simply because I just wanted to see if I could do it. I labored for about 24 hours and was not progressing. I was up and walking around, and I passed this really large blood clot. Even though I had not taken OB in nursing school yet, I thought, “I don’t think that’s supposed to happen.” We called my nurse in. She came in and checked, and discovered that my baby’s cord was coming before the baby. It’s called a prolapsed umbilical cord. It is a medical emergency. It is very, very dangerous because, each time you have a contraction, it cuts off the baby’s blood supply.

The doctor came in and he was talking to the nurses about what was going on. I said, “What does this mean?” He said, “It means you have to have an emergency C-section right now.” They started getting me prepped to go into the OR. My husband was starting to get on a suit that you have to wear to go into the OR. The doctor said, after looking at the baby’s vital signs, “No, I’m sorry. You can’t come back. This is dangerous. We have to take her right now.” So they wouldn’t let my husband come back with me.

I remember them rushing me into the operating room. I had worked in an operating room for several years. When I saw all those people and how fast they were setting up I thought, “Oh, something bad is happening. This is very serious.” They put me under general anesthesia since I didn’t have an epidural in place, so I wasn’t even awake for the C-section. I was terrified. I went to sleep with tears rolling down my cheeks because I was sure I was not going to survive.

When I woke up and asked my nurse if my baby was ok, she said, “Yes, she is but they have to take her to a different hospital.” The hospital I was at didn’t have a NICU. I was told that she had lost about 75 percent of her blood volume because, along with the prolapsed cord, I also had what’s called an abrupted placenta where the placenta begins to tear away from the wall. The doctor said the placenta did not look healthy and looked like it had been abrupted from days to weeks.

My baby was taken to another hospital and I started to recover from my C-section. The next day, they allowed my husband to drive me over to the hospital even though I was still a patient, and let me see my baby. She ended up being in the NICU for 11 days. She had to have a blood transfusion along with some antibiotics. She was on oxygen for 3 months after she came home and then, again, for a month when she was 8 months old after contracting RSV and bacterial pneumonia. She is 9 years old now and she is as healthy as can be. We are so grateful to have her in our family. It’s definitely a memorable experience, I will never forget it.

I’m choosing to keep myself anonymous, but this is a story for kids or teenagers who struggle in high school, who struggle just as much as me. When I started high school, my father had just passed away – on my first day of high school. I was really beaten up. I was obviously sad and really mad. It was about 3.50 in the morning so I still had school that day. I decided I was gonna go to school and maybe get my mind off of it, talk to some friends, and hopefully not think about it. I headed into my Biology class and went to talk to my friends. I asked them, “Hey, let’s hang out.” The room went completely quiet and everyone was looking at me. I didn’t think anything of it. Obviously, I was already struggling so I didn’t really like the attention on me. I thought, “That’s weird.”

Then I asked them one more time, “Hey do you guys wanna maybe hang out this weekend? Just do something fun?” One of them said, “I’m not gonna hang out with no little bitch who’s complaining about his dead dad.” My heart instantly sank. To be honest, I was broken. I thought those were my friends. Everybody looked at me and the room went dead silent. I sat there in silence with my anxiety and stress and I was really broken. I left the classroom and I instantly started bawling. I started crying and bawling. Then, I heard the class getting loud and everybody started talking and stuff. I decided I wasn’t going to show up for that period. I was going to head to the nurse’s office and pretend I was sick. I went to the nurse’s office pretending I was sick. Then, I headed off for the rest of my day hoping to forget about it. Obviously, they weren’t friends.

I sat at a table and I was all alone just sitting there with my hoodie on. I thought, “You know what, maybe I just don’t want to be bothered today.” I didn’t want to miss class, so I sat there and then heard all the freshmen talking about me, talking about my dead dad, talking about how I was a pussy for being sad over my dead dad, and how their life was much harder. I was broken. I already had severe bipolar at the time and it didn’t make anything better. Every day, I struggled with waking up, having to go to the same school, seeing the same people, and hearing the same things. It hurt me – it really did. I’m 18 now. I just graduated and I’ve never been any better or happier in my life now that I’m done with high school.

Back in 2015, I was 16 years old. On a weekend, my dad decided to take me, as a treat, to go see the new Terminator movie. Everything was fine until about halfway through after a pretty big car chase scene. At the beginning of this scene, there was a jump scare – we didn’t know it at that time, but this had actually caused an elderly woman in the audience to have a heart attack. When this happened, the lights in the theater came on and the movie paused. This caused everybody to kind of stop. We only had a second to realize what was happening before we heard her husband start yelling for help. He said that she wasn’t responding. She had just sat there and stopped moving. He said that she gripped his hand really hard and then just lost consciousness.

My dad was the only one in the theater that actually had CPR experience, so he went down there, helped her husband take her, and carried her to the bottom row of the chairs. Once they did this, my dad just started going to work. He started doing chest compressions. He started doing mouth-to-mouth. While he was doing this, we realized that she still wasn’t responding. My dad actually got me to go out and get the attendants to re-call the ambulance and get a proper ETA on how long it would be for them to get out to us. While this was happening, my dad was still back in the theater doing mouth-to-mouth and chest compressions. Later, he told me he was doing them so forcefully he could actually feel her ribs crack, which is actually a pretty normal thing to happen in CPR. She still wasn’t responding after a certain amount of time and we noticed she had actually urinated herself and she had very glassy eyes. My dad was pretty sure at that point that we had lost her.

At this point, the ambulance showed up and I was able to direct the people to the theater where my dad was still working on her. They were able to go to work. They had a whole machine that did chest compressions for us. We were only there for a little bit longer before they took her out on a gurney. The last thing my dad did was give his business card to the husband and told him to call us when she recovered, but we never got that call, so we are pretty sure she passed away that day and it was a very unfortunate event.

The scariest thing though, to me, is that no one else in the theater did anything at all. That is something that I think could easily be fixed if people just took the time to educate themselves and took the time to take a simple CPR class. If it had been my dad that day that actually had the heart attack, he would probably be dead because there was no one else who knew anything besides him. I just say, educate yourselves and be sure to have a little bit of medical knowledge so that, in instances like that, if it is your loved one, you can do the things you need to do to help give them a fighting chance.

Brandon

Hi, my name is Brandon. This is a story about how I had to defend someone else with a gun. My main job is a 911 dispatcher. You can imagine what kind of stress happens day to day with that. I also have a second job doing rideshare with companies like Uber and Lyft. I enjoy doing this most nights because it’s a huge contrast with my regular job. At 911, everyone is calling because something bad is happening to them. With rideshare, especially here where I am, most of the people are tourists. They’re just here to have a great time and I can help them out along the way by taking them back to their hotel or AirBnB when they’ve had a little too much to drink, or just giving them tips about local sites and attractions, good food, etc. On the weekends, I like driving very late and I like going until after the bars close up here, which is around 3 a.m.

During the night this happened, it was during the summer of 2019. I was pulling up to one of our many streets that have several bars on it and was waiting for my passengers who were on the side of the road by a hot dog stand. There were about 15 or so people hanging out around the stand outside one of the bars that had just closed. While sitting there, one person came over to my car and got in. We were waiting for his friend to get in as well. Luckily for me – and for you listening – I, like many other rideshare drivers, installed a dashcam on my car. The one I have records in front of the car for potential collisions and reckless drivers. It also has an interior camera that records everything going on inside the car along with sound. I’ll play the actual audio of what happened so you can get an idea of what happened. But keep in mind, because of the time of night and where this was and what was going on, there’s quite a bit of cussing at the end of this, and you’ll hear why.

Brandon

Is that your address?

Passenger

Yeah, that’s me. Ok. Jake! Jake!

(Gunshot is heard, woman yells)

Passenger

What the fuck?

Brandon

Hang on. Stay here.

Passenger

Jake! Get the fuck in here! Jake! Get in here now! Jake!

Brandon (in the distance)

Put the gun down now! Put the gun down!

Passenger

Jake! Get in here now! Get in the fucking car! Get in the fucking car! Get in the fucking car!

Brandon

Put the gun down!

Passenger

Jake, what the fuck!?

Jake

I didn’t do shit, bro.

Brandon

So you heard the person there that was in my car. What was happening outside the car with the second passenger – his name was Jake – he was waiting for his order to be filled at the hot dog stand. Jake was smoking a cigarette while waiting, and some random guy went up to him and asked Jake to have a drag from his cigarette. Like anyone with half a brain, Jake declines since he has no idea who this person is. At this point, the random guy grabbed Jake’s cigarette, pulled it out of his mouth, threw it on the ground, pulled out a gun, and shot right next to Jake’s head. I wasn’t sure if he was just trying to scare Jake or if he was actually trying to shoot him in the head, or what else had happened. I was afraid someone else might get shot.

So, after that, I told the passenger who was in the car to stay put. I drew my gun, walked outside, and ordered the guy with the gun to put his gun down. It was a little bit hard to hear, over all the yelling of the person inside the car but, if you listen in the background, you can hear me. The suspect in this thought he was the only one with a gun. He was waving it around and cussing really loudly. When he saw that a gun was pointed at him, he quickly turned and ran off. I could’ve easily just sat there and not intervened at all, but I’m not that type of person. If there was a chance to help someone that needed help, I was going to go ahead and jump in.

Police were called to the scene and a report was made, but from what I know the suspect in this was never found. I’m just glad that I happened to be there to run him off before he could hurt one of those other people standing around, wanting to wash down their booze with some hot dogs. If you want to hear more about that incident or want to hear much more about my other job as a 911 dispatcher, feel free to check out my podcast as well. It’s called Music City 911 where I play real 911 calls and go over the details about the crimes. It’s available to listen to on your favorite podcast app.

My father was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 1990. By 2004, the situation was becoming too much for my mom to handle alone. I’m one of 4 children – the 3rd in line. Because we lived in the same town, I guess I felt more responsible for them. To make a long story short, we sold our home, built on to theirs, and I became a caregiver for the next 13 years. My parents were not the overly lovey-dovey type. Yet, here I was – possibly the least favorite kid, which is a whole other story – set up to take care of them for the rest of their lives. When I knew my dad was actively dying, the thought of even asking for Hospice help and then calling my siblings to tell them paralyzed me. I was so afraid of his death, the emotions, and all of it.

My family all came. We surrounded his deathbed and had the most beautiful send-off. 12 years later, my mom had a stroke and was in bed for 2 years. Again, I didn’t know how I was going to do this. I just knew it had to be done. Caregiving is a really really hard job. Changing your parents’ diapers is just something you don’t expect to do in life. Fortunately, my family was great. My kids would keep my mom’s spirits up and mine. One night, I remember listening on the baby monitor to my daughter singing her heart out and my mom jokingly telling her that she was really good. My siblings would also come whenever I needed them and I was graced by their gratitude.

Inside, I was still so scared of my mom dying. Her death was just as scary to me as my dad’s. Giving her the morphine that was prescribed by Hospice felt like I was aiding in her death somehow. Again, calling all the family when I knew it was the end was the worst feeling I ever had. I held it together until a car ride to the hospital behind an ambulance carrying my mom where I think I just scream-cried for about 20 minutes. We took her home from the hospital so she could die in her house in peace surrounded by her family. I miss my parents terribly. I miss the life we had when we were all living together and making the best-of-their-health struggles, but I’m at peace with the death we were able to give them.

Hi Scott! I love the show. In response to your prompt on Facebook, something I did that was incredibly difficult and that I never thought I would do was a CrossFit competition. Growing up, I wasn’t super athletically inclined. But, in my 30s I was diagnosed with high blood pressure and the weight was creeping up, so I knew that I needed to start some kind of physical activity consistently. I knew that, as I got older, the harder it would be to start. On a whim, I joined a gym. Unbeknownst to me, they did CrossFit style workouts as well as HIIT type workouts, and I absolutely loved it. It was the first time I had ever consistently gone to the gym. After about a year of going there, a group of members decided to do a CrossFit competition and actually asked me if I would join them. I said, “Yeah, ok let’s do it!” My goal was to not place last. I actually placed 8 out of 11, so I considered that a success.

Hi Scott! Thanks for letting me be on your show. It’s about my daughter. We had a wonderful relationship. Then, in 2016, I found out she was an IV drug user. Heroin was her drug of choice. Our relationship went downhill from that. I’m a tough-love kind of mom. I could not be an enabler and watch my daughter kill herself. So she was homeless for quite a while. Then, in 2017, she found out she was pregnant and she got arrested. While she was in jail, she had to go to the hospital. There, she found out she had necrotizing fasciitis in her arm, so she went for several surgeries and skin grafts – all of this while she was pregnant. It was just crazy.

When she was released from the hospital, I brought her to my house. She went on a maintenance program that would keep her from having withdrawal symptoms so that she would not lose the baby. She did wonderfully and the baby did wonderfully. We knew that he was going to have to withdraw at birth, and he did great. It was easy and we were at a wonderful hospital that took great care of him. Now, he is just a healthy, wonderful, energetic 3-year-old boy. But when he was 3 months old, my daughter relapsed and I had to take him in. It was very scary because I’m 50-ish. When you’re handed a 4-month-old baby, it scares you. It’s hard. There’s a lot you have to do. You have to find daycare. You have to do this. You have to do that. I wouldn’t change it for a million dollars.

This year, about 75 days ago, my daughter decided she wanted to get clean. She is doing absolutely wonderful. She’s in a great program in our town. She’s going to meetings. She’s working on that program. She’s helping others. She’s been working out of a sober living house. She’s back living with us and we are gradually working her back into his life. He absolutely loves having his mama home. So there is a light at the end of that tunnel, and you can do it if you want to do it. I’m so proud of my daughter. She will never know how proud I am of her and what a good mother she’s becoming. I just want other people to know, “If you’re struggling, if you have to take in a grandchild, do what you need to do. You will not regret it for one minute. Be there for your child when they say they’re ready to get help.” I would walk on water to help my baby and I’m so proud of her.

Hello, my name is Devon. I’ve always had a dream of owning rentals, flipping houses, and being involved in real estate. In the beginning, my wife and I started dating at 15. We ended up getting married, had a kid at 17, moved out, and finished our senior year on our own. As you can imagine, the place that we found was not ideal. Not a lot of people want to rent to 17-year-olds. We didn’t have a stove or microwave. All we had was a hot plate and a pot to cook our single meals in.

The car we had was a 5-speed. It didn’t have a starter in it, so we had to push it down the road and pop the clutch to get to work every day – the same thing on the way home. We learned pretty quickly that this was not going to be the lifestyle for us, so we worked really hard to build our credit. At 19, we were able to buy our first home. We spent a lot of time fixing it up and working on it. After we bought it, we found out that the people actually had pet raccoons, so the house was a mess.

We lived there for about 5 years. During that time we had another child and decided it was time to move on to another house. So we converted that into a rental and upgraded our life a little bit. Then, we repeated this process to the point where, just before the pandemic, I was able to have 3 rentals. The property we live in now has 25 acres and two ponds in a very beautiful area. Shortly after that, after the pandemic started, unfortunately I found out that I was diagnosed with cancer.

Although I had been working on the real estate stuff, our focus went to family stuff. So during this time all of our focus, all of my energy, all of our money pretty much went all in on the real estate thing to follow my dreams. My family was fantastic in supporting me during this time, which, by the way, totally cured me, definitely going to live many more years. Anyway, during that time I put in everything I had and was able to flip a home. As of now, we’ve got 9 rentals and we’ll probably be able to retire by the time I’m 40. I was able to purchase the car of my dreams, which was a Tesla Model 3. We’re very happy.

My name is Megan. This November 1st marked 5 years off of opiates for me. I used different pills and dabbled in heroin but my drug of choice was fentanyl. There had been a drug epidemic around the world and a large increase in deaths from fentanyl. I started drinking around the age of 11 and progressed to cocaine when I was 14 when I was hanging out with my older sister. Unfortunately, she is still suffering from her addiction. The next year was when I first started using opiates. First, OxyContin– doctors used to overprescribe so they were everywhere. When that started happening less, I progressed to heroin and hydromorphone and, eventually, I tried fentanyl. Actually, the first time I tried it, I was with my boyfriend and I overdosed. I had to be rushed to the hospital and revived with Narcan. You know what I didn’t do after overdosing? Try to get sober. It wasn’t until over a year later that I would decide to finally try to get off of drugs, but that boyfriend wasn’t ready, so we had to go our separate ways. This January, he was shot and killed by police. I’ve been living with a lot of guilt. I know you can’t help someone who doesn’t want help, but it’s hard.

So, onto the good though. At the end of 2016, I made the decision to try to better myself but it was just physically unbearable. I won’t go into too much information or details, but after being so dehydrated from withdrawals, I started medication-assisted treatment of Suboxone. The doctors and nurses at the clinic were absolutely amazing. Seriously, they saved my life. I was able to taper off of the Suboxone, just in time for me to get pregnant unexpectedly. My ex left me as soon as I told him, and it was a really hard time physically and mentally because I was really sick with hyperemesis gravidarum. But I pulled through and I have a sweet 3-year-old son. Now I’m in school full-time for child and youth care. I have a great boyfriend and we’re planning our future together. In my Facebook memories, I see pictures of me and you can see in my eyes how high I was. It’s a good reminder that I’ve come a long way and I have a lot of things to look forward to in the future.

We wanted to always frame his story in as positive a light as we could, given the circumstances of being abandoned. We didn’t want it to be focused on that he was left, or that he was abandoned, but that he was found. That we found each other. We wanted it to be a source– I mean we always wanted him to know his story, we never hid anything from him. He knew from the earliest of times about the creation of our family and how that all happened. We would even tell him bedtime stories. Pete put together a very rudimentary picture book telling the story of how we became a family. It was just like clip art and telling the story in the voices of the trains. They were animated trains that told the story of Danny, and Clara the C train carrying Danny down the subway line to the station to find baby Kevin. Using all of our names and telling in a very simple way how we became a family, that’s what we read to him for a few years when he was really young.

Probably when he was about 5 it finally clicked; even using all of our real names and even going through the station, it happened one night where he was sitting on the couch. He had the book in his hands, and he wanted each of us to sit on either side of him and he wanted us to read the story to him. It was a frequent bedtime story we would read. As we’re reading it, at the very end he pauses and asks, “Is this about me?” We paused for a second wondering where this is going to go. We said, “Yes this is your story. This is how we became a family.” He had this BIG grin on his face, and smiling he said, “Let’s read it again!” It took on a different meaning for him and because of that he then took it into school for show and tell. He told the story with such pride.

I think this was probably in 1st or 2nd grade, we got a call from one of the parents that said, “Your son brought in a book about your family and shared your family’s story.” We were thinking it was going to be bad news, that this parent was going to have a very strong negative reaction. She said, “I just want to let you know that this had a really big impact on our daughter. Our daughter is adopted, and she has been struggling with that. Kevin was so comfortable, confident, happy and had such pride in being adopted and about his story. It’s helped my daughter feel better about her being adopted, that she has a friend that is also adopted that she can talk about this with.” That’s just a wonderful thing. What a gift that is.

Oddly enough, in my headphones, I was listening to some courtroom analysis of a high-profile shooting case when the commotion started. Three consecutive bangs and then a fourth. Immediately. I knew there were gunshots and they sounded very close. So I went to the window and I appeared out on the street in front of my home. At first glance, it looked like a pile of laundry spilled onto the road because I didn’t expect to see a body. A man had been gunned down and was sprawled out on the asphalt and his legs were still on the sidewalk. He wasn’t moving.

I ran down the stairs to get a better look at what was happening and I wasn’t the only one. My landlord had just come down as well and we spoke on the porch. People poured out into the fast food restaurant parking lot across the street. Some were frantic and others were calm. From my porch, I’ve briefly remarked about the dire situation with my landlord as we watched a passer-by administrating CPR. Suddenly, I realized, “Perhaps, I could help.” So I ran upstairs to get the towel. Then, I ran back down and I darted across the street between the cars stalled in the traffic. I stood over the dying man and handed somebody a towel.

When I looked down, I didn’t see any obvious wounds but he did have blood on his face. While one person on the ground was pumping his chest, others were gathering around. Background voices were making emergency calls and asking each other questions, like, “What happened? Did you see anything? I was just inside. I heard shots.” Most clearly, among the voices, a very distraught woman – evidently from inside the restaurant – pleaded and cried to no one in particular, “Over an order?! Over food?!”

I returned home and watched for another 20 minutes before an ambulance finally had him loaded up and drove away. My own vehicle is still stuck inside the yellow tape that marked off the crime scene. It became clear from the witnesses inside the store that an argument had broken out between a customer and an employee, and when they took it outside, the worker pulled a gun. Unfortunately, the man was pronounced dead at the hospital. I don’t know what happened to the shooter – over food, over an order.

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It’s hard for me to imagine not loving dogs. But that’s the way some people are, and it’s usually pretty easy to spot someone like that.

I remember one time we were visiting my parents and of course we brought our two little Yorkies with us because they like to go everywhere we go. They are Lilly and Fenway. And Fenway is a little guy, only about 7 pounds, and he is the social one. He just loves to meet new people, and of course he just charms everyone with his cute little face.

Well, not everyone. This time we were at my parents’ house, and they had some friends of theirs over at the same time. The man was sitting on the couch, you know, everyone was just chatting. And Fenway just goes over and jumps up on the man’s lap, like he does with everyone. Now, if that happened to me, I’d love it, because “oh cool, this dog likes me!”. But this man didn’t have that reaction. He kind of froze, he pulled his hands back, and the expression on his face was “um, okay, what do I do now?”. I just found it kind of amusing that someone could react to a friendly little dog that way. But I went and picked Fenway up, and he was probably a little confused because that’s not the typical reaction. But I understand, not everyone loves dogs like we do.

My guest today is Jacqueline, and she’s like me – a big fan of dogs. In fact, she was working as a dogsitter, and she loved doing that because she got to meet new dogs all the time. So dogs were a big thing in her life.

But there was one day, when the thing she loved so much almost cost her her life.

Jacqueline (2nd from left) with her family, before the attackJacqueline with Nathan, a few months after the attackJacqueline and Nathan, more recentlyIf you would like to contribute to her recovery expenses, she has a GoFundMe:
https://www.gofundme.com/f/dog-sitter-jacqueline-durand-nearly-killed-in-ca

You can follow Jacqueline on her Instagram or her YouTube Channel.

Full show notes and pictures for this episode are here:
https://WhatWasThatLike.com/131

Graphics for this episode by Bob Bretz. Transcription was done by James Lai.

Want to discuss this episode and other things with thousands of other WWTL listeners? Join our podcast Facebook group at WhatWasThatLike.com/facebook (many of the podcast guests are there as well)

Episode transcript (download transcript PDF):

It’s hard for me to imagine not loving dogs. But that’s the way some people are, and it’s usually pretty easy to spot someone like that.

But there was one day, when the thing she loved so much almost cost her her life.

Scott

How have you always loved dogs?

Jacqueline

I have – since I could remember. I would basically just say that I was born to love dogs because, when I was young, my dad had a golden retriever and I was told that I would just sit up, stare at her, and lay on her. I was about a year and a half when she passed away. Ever since I saw her, I was mesmerized by dogs.

Scott

I think a lot of people are that way. I’m a dog person too. My listeners may get tired of hearing me say that, but it’s just true. I love dogs. So let’s talk about when this happened. What was your life like at the time? You were almost 22, right? What was going on?

Jacqueline

I was just finishing up another semester of college at UT Dallas – I was studying supply chain. I was actually looking for an internship because it’s required to graduate and it would be great to get that hands-on experience. I was really just focusing on school. My side job was dog-sitting and I’ve been doing this for seven years.

Scott

Was that as an employee of a company or just a side hustle that you started on your own?

Jacqueline

No, I actually started on my own.

Scott

How did you find clients for your dog-sitting business?

Jacqueline

From the word of mouth around town to the recommendations on the local Facebook group that we have. People would post, “Hey, I’m going out of town. I need a dog sitter. Get me recommendations of someone you know,” and someone would either tag me in the comment and say, “She’s great,” or I would just take that step and message that person, “Hey, I saw your post. I’d love to help you out and dog-sit for you.”

Scott

Yeah, personal recommendations for that are incredible because, I mean, you don’t want to just hand your dog over to a stranger who you don’t know anything about. But if someone has used you before and they can recommend you, that makes all the differences.

Jacqueline

Exactly.

Scott

You were hired for a dog-sitting job for these people. You went over and met the dogs previously. How did that go?

Jacqueline

I did. This is just something I always do with every client – it was what I call the “required meet and greet” – and it went well. I met the dogs and the owner, and we discussed the routine and everything. I was set to start on December 23rd.

Scott

And what kind of dogs were these?

Jacqueline

One was a Boxer mix and the other was a German Shepherd mix. There was another that I’m not sure of the breed, but that was not one that was attacking me.

Scott

So, two pretty big-sized dogs then?

Jacqueline

Yeah.

Scott

When you were there, did you have any concerns at all about their temperament or anything?

Jacqueline

Absolutely. That’s what surprises me because they were so friendly and just sitting on the couch while I was talking to the owner. They weren’t doing anything that would stark a concern at all.

Scott

Yeah. If there was a concern, I’m sure you would’ve probably brought it up.

Jacqueline

Absolutely. For sure.

Scott

You said this happened on December 23rd. As we record this, we’re in January of 2023, so it’s only been a little over a year since this happened. So the job that you were going to go back and do to dog-sit for these people– was it just for a few hours or was it going to be overnight?

Jacqueline

It was going to be a whole week.

Scott

Oh, okay. What happened on that day?

Jacqueline

On December 23, I had just gotten back from a vacation with Nathan, my boyfriend, and his family. We were discussing what we were going to do that night. We were going to do an early Christmas celebration with his family that evening after I checked on the dogs. So I left my house, went over to check on the dogs, and that’s when everything happened. When I opened the door, two of the three dogs immediately attacked me. My glasses were thrown on the floor. My purse, my phone, my keys, and everything was knocked out of my hand. I was actually trying to call anybody on my watch, but I couldn’t because the dogs were on top of me.

As things were happening and I was being attacked, I realized that they were literally tearing off my clothes. Every piece of clothing was off of me, probably, within three minutes – I’m not sure exactly how long but It was pretty quick. Then, they dragged me through the house from the front foyer to the living room. I was really in and out of consciousness and I do remember being attacked. I remember the day, for sure. But what I remember the most is just losing all hope of survival. What I was feeling while laying on that rug was, “I’m not going to see my family again. I didn’t even get to say that I love them.”

I don’t know how much time had passed when I saw emergency lights reflecting on the wall as I was lying there. I suddenly stopped my excessive breathing and tried to conserve my oxygen. I heard a commotion outside. Officers or paramedics– I didn’t know who it was. I just knew that, after seeing the lights, I was going to be rescued because, before they arrived, the neighborhood was completely quiet and I did not think that anyone was going to find me.

Scott

Did the attack continuously happen or did the dogs stop or get distracted by anything?

Jacqueline

They did get distracted once, I think. Because the front door was left open, the alarm was triggered and the owners got notified that the door is open. They were concerned about the dogs, so they called their neighbor and she went over to check on the house. Well, I guess, when she went to open the screen door, kind of, one of the dogs attacked her and that hurt in two places. The other time they were distracted was when the paramedics and police arrived. They were barking out the front door and were less involved around me, I believe – I’m not sure because, at that point, I was losing a lot of blood and I just wasn’t sure what the timeframe was.

Scott

With two good-sized dogs like this, it would be difficult for anyone to defend. I mean, you had nothing in your hands – you had nothing to fight with or anything. You are somewhat of a petite person to start wit, so it was definitely an unfair fight at all. How did you try to defend?

Jacqueline

I was trying to scream. I didn’t know how loud I was screaming because there was blood in my ear canals. It was like I was wearing noise-canceling headphones because I couldn’t actually understand how loud it was with everything going on. I think I tried to fight them off with my arms and tried to pull them away from my face because once, they were tugging at my face, I was really concerned. They were tugging at my ears. I didn’t realize that they ripped off my ears, but I remember them messing with my ears, for sure.

Scott

In a situation like that, there’s a lot of adrenaline and, sometimes, adrenaline kind of shuts out the pain. How much pain were you feeling while this was happening?

Jacqueline

I was in a lot of pain. I remember, when they were attacking my left arm – which got a lot of damage – I thought my arm was broken. Little did I know they actually punctured an artery. So I was just lucky to still hang on to my arm and not have bled out. So I did another thing in pain, especially when they did certain places on my body that was very sensitive.

Scott

So the neighbor was able to get away and she called 911? Or did the alarm system alert the police when she ran back home?

Jacqueline

Luckily, she could get away. She told her husband to call 911 immediately for a dog bite. I’m not sure if she knew whether or not I was there. I think the owners might have said the dog sitter could be there. So when the police and paramedics arrived, there was an investigation of getting me out and dealing with the dogs. So yeah, the neighbor’s husband called 911.

Scott

Once police arrived, it was another 30 minutes or more before they could get into the house because of the dogs. How did they finally get in or how did they finally rescue you?

Jacqueline

I believe they were distracting the dogs in the front, and I think they found a way to corner them – maybe put them in the kennel – I’m not certain. I know two or three of the paramedics were out in the backyard trying to get in from the back patio – that’s how they were able to drag me out – through the back door.

Scott

And you were awake at that time?

Jacqueline

I was in and out of consciousness but, yeah, I think I understood that I was being put onto the gurney. I remember them talking to me to keep breathing. The last thing I remember before waking up in the hospital was being in the ambulance.

Scott

When you were taken to the hospital, you went straight into surgery, right? What was the priority surgery to save your life?

Jacqueline

They were trying to close up my face. They reattached my chin. There were a ton of wounds. I know that they did a ton of stitches and staples and probably did a lot of MRIs and x-rays, making sure that I didn’t break anything, and that there was no brain damage. The main thing was just keeping me alive and stable because I was actually resuscitated four times.

Scott

How much blood did you lose from this?

Jacqueline

I believe I lost 30% of my blood. They put me in a medically-induced coma to help with the pain and also keep me stable, especially because my face was so messed up. I don’t think they wanted a risk of causing an infection, somehow, by messing with my face when I was in pain. I was in for 8 days. When I woke up, I could barely see and I couldn’t hear very well. Because I knew what had happened to me – I did not forget – I thought that the dogs messed up my eyes, my sight, and also my hearing, so I was really concerned. I think my nurses and my mom were telling me that you’re okay. They were afraid to tell me what happened because they didn’t know that I remembered. It was kind of a rollercoaster of events at the beginning because my family really didn’t know how to handle it – knowing what had happened, knowing the severity, and not knowing how I would handle it.

I came to realize that my ears had sponges in them because my ear canals were messed up. There was scarring and contraction involved. What that means is, when something contracts, it tightens and closes up. They were trying to prevent my ear canals from closing up. However, my ear drums were not messed up. So the main thing was just keeping my ear canals open so that I could still hear. There was no issue with that regarding my eyes. There is no damage to my eyes. They had to continuously put gel and antibiotics in my eyes. My eyes were very swollen. I could barely see because they were swollen. The gel did not help because it caused blurriness and I did not have my glasses,

Scott

So they were still swollen 8 days later.

Jacqueline

Yeah.

Scott

What’s it like to wake up and realize that more than a week has gone by? Was that pretty freaky?

Jacqueline

Yeah, it was because I was still convinced that it was still 2021. I had no idea that it was January. I think I was trying to tell my mom– I couldn’t talk because I was on a ventilator. I was signing because I took sign language in high school for 2 years. So, ironically, I took a language that was actually helpful during this time. So I was signing to my mom, “Is it December 27th?” or something like that. She was like, “No, it’s January, 2022.” I was like, “No, it’s not.” It was just crazy to realize that I lost over a week since that happened.

Nathan

I got the news about the attack when I was at my aunt’s house. We were planning on having an early Christmas dinner to celebrate with them.

Scott

Jacqueline’s boyfriend, Nathan.

Nathan

I hadn’t heard from Jacqueline in a while, so I was hoping that it was just that her phone had died. But when her sister called and told me that she hadn’t heard from Jacqueline in a while, I began to be more worried because that meant that she wasn’t at home or with her sister. When we had all sat down to eat dinner – my family and I were about to start – I received a call from Jacqueline’s mother. She told me that she and John had just been visited by the Coppell police and was told that something had happened. She was on her way to a local hospital. From there, I got the address and went there that night. I went to visit Jacqueline in the hospital several days after she was admitted. When I went in, she was still in a coma, so I wasn’t able to interact with her.

When I went in and saw her, her entire head was wrapped in bandages and claws, and it was really hard for me. I only knew what the plastic surgeon had told us at the time of her admittance on the night of the 23rd. Going in and seeing her– I was distraught, but I went in, took her hand, held her hand, talked to her, and read to her. I think I spent about 1.5 or 2 hours in the room with her. The memory is still very vivid to me. I remember how she was laying. I remember the sound of the EKG monitor – hearing the constant beep of her heartbeat. It was a very difficult experience, but I’m glad that I went in when I did and saw her.

Scott

As far as the extent of your injuries, you lost both ears, your nose, and your lips. How did they break that news to you?

Jacqueline

Once I was away from the coma, they had already created the foundation of my new nose, and that was bandaged up.

Scott

How did they do that?

Jacqueline

They took a skin flap from top of my forehead, turned it around, placed it where my nose was, and they created the foundation of it. It was a very flimsy piece of skin, so there was definitely work to be done there. I had no idea that had happened. So, to answer your question about how they broke the news to me, I don’t think I processed it right away that I lost my nose. I thought that it was damaged, so I don’t think I realized I actually lost my entire nose until I was probably in rehab in the hospital. So, that was the last two weeks of my stay. Once my nose was uncovered and everything like that, that’s when I realized, “Okay, that’s new and different.” So I think that’s when I processed it.

Scott

Knowing that you had so much damage to your face and your head, were you nervous looking in a mirror for the first time?

Jacqueline

I was because I knew that I lost my ears, I lost my nose, and my cheeks and top lip were gone. I had no idea what I was going to look at – what was damaged and what was still there – so I was nervous. My family had discussed that they were all going to be in the hospital room when I decided to look. So they were all in there. They gave me a mirror. It was funny because I kind of made it comical. There was a yellow bandage on my nose – that’s the first thing I noticed – so I said, “Wow, I look like I’m from Sesame Street because of that yellow character from Sesame Street.” They just started laughing. I think that’s when they knew that I was okay because I was still trying to be witty and funny, and trying to make light of things.

Scott

Is that how you often deal with serious situations – through humor?

Jacqueline

I think so. I think I kind of lean on that probably a little too much, but things happen.

Scott

Well, it’s a good coping mechanism, I think. So they were able to take some skin from your forehead and put it on your nose to start the rebuilding of that. What’s the plan for your ears?

Jacqueline

We talked to an NF-tologist that my surgeon recommended. We met with her and we found out that we didn’t just have to start from the beginning, from scratch with a random ear lobe or something that looked more like nine years that they looked at pictures. So I think my dad had the idea of molding my sister’s ears. In that initial appointment, we actually molded my sister’s ears that day. So that’s how we came to start the process at the ears.

Scott

So you and your sister are twins, in a sense?

Jacqueline

Yeah. We call it ear-twins.

Scott

Ear twins… I never heard of that before. I didn’t even realize that is one of the options for dealing with something like this. That’s a good idea though.

Jacqueline

Yeah. I mean, there are a ton of medical things that I had never known in the last 20 years that I was alive, but things changed in the last year. I definitely learned a lot and I don’t regret learning any of this because it’s very good information. I just wish this wasn’t the circumstances.

Scott

You’d rather learn it from a textbook, right?

Jacqueline

For sure.

Scott

How has your sister helped you with this?

Jacqueline

she and I are really close in age, so that helps a lot. She has been through a lot of it. We laugh and hang out a lot and we just had this special dawn that I don’t know how to explain. It’s really just– what I call it is sisters by chance and best friends by choice because I’m just so lucky to call her my sister and be related to her. But the main thing is she is my best friend and I probably couldn’t have gone through this as well as I did.

Scott

Now you have her ears too.

Jacqueline

Yeah. I’m really excited about that.

Scott

Can you talk about what’s the plan for the reconstruction of your lips?

Jacqueline

They already did the surgery in July, 2022 for the foundation of my top lip and cheeks. In December, just last month, they also did the debulking surgery on one side of the skin flap. What that means is taking tissue out that is no longer needed because they added a lot more than they knew that they needed just to have something to work with. So the next step is to debulk the other side. Then, there will be shaping and contouring involved that comes a little bit later. The problem is, right now, I cannot connect my bottom lip to my new top lip at the moment because of the way I had to get my chin reattached – it kind of tie down my bottom lip, if you will.

So they’ll have to go in the next couple of surgeries and kind of fix the bottom lip as well as, at the same time, helping with the top lip to kind of go further down. So eventually, I’ll be able to seal my mouth shut again and close it. But he told me that the muscles in my chin and bottom lips need to be used a lot and exercised so that I can focus on making sure I can still do that once that surgery is done.

Scott

Yeah, it seems like the priority would be function and then, once that’s taken care of, appearance. Is that kind of the way they’re looking at it?

Jacqueline

Yes, for sure. And my surgeon is so good. He is a head and neck surgeon. He dealt with a lot of face cancers, so that’s why he’s very qualified to do reconstructive face surgeries. So I was very fortunate to meet him and be able to work with him because, just a side note, my initial surgeon who was there for over a month of my hospital stay actually passed away after one of my surgeries a week later, so I had to get a new surgeon.

Scott

I want to ask you about your boyfriend, Nathan. When you first learned about your extensive injuries, were you worried that he was going to leave you?

Jacqueline

I was, and I was actually upfront with him. I was like, “Do you want to still be with me after all these changes and everything that I’m going through?” His response, which I’ll never forget, was, “I’m not going anywhere. There’s no place I’d rather be.”

Scott

He had some health issues of his own and you stuck with him through that. Can you talk about what happened there?

Jacqueline

In 2020, he realized that he had a mass near his hip area and he told me about it. I said, “Okay, we need to get this checked out.” So he went to his doctor and got surgery to get it removed, and kind of found out it was a synovial cell sarcoma, which is a rare type of cancer. That was a really hard diagnosis because, at that time, he was 22 years old. We had been dating for almost 2 years at that point. That was a lot to take in. I didn’t know the prognosis. I had no idea what was to come. He started with radiation. Then, in 2021, he started chemo and I was there, basically, in every appointment that I could. I was doing online school because of the pandemic, so that helped me be able to be there for him. I think that our relationship has just taken to a whole new level of comfort and support for each other.

Scott

What intense loyalty you guys have for each other…

Jacqueline

Yeah.

Scott

And not just Nathan, but your parents – both your mom and your dad – and your sister have all been pretty big supporters throughout this

Jacqueline

For sure. My mom– I’ll start with her. She was basically my 24/7 nurse when I didn’t have my home health nurse come because the problem was– the home health nurse was great because I had a qualified nurse coming out and everything, but my mom had learned and kind of learned in the hospital how I need to be taken care of – my wound care, everything. I already felt comfortable with her – she’s my mom. It just felt really good to be able to get taken care of by her because I’ve been taken care of by her for 23 years now. So it was pretty great. She is the most down-to-earth person in the world. My dad is a great support and he’s been such a great help with everything. We’ve always had a really special bond and I really cherish that.

Scott

How many surgeries have you had now in the past year?

Jacqueline

I’ve had 18.

Scott

Have they given you any idea of when this will all be completed?

Jacqueline

In the very beginning, they said 1-3 more years. So, at this point, I would assume 1-2 more years of surgery.

Scott

Have you lost any friends because of this?

Jacqueline

Yes. I lost one of my closest friends that I had since high school, and it really breaks my heart because we were so close. We would laugh all the time. We had a bond that I just didn’t have with anyone else. I don’t know what happened, but the main thing is I don’t blame either of us for the fallout. I think it was hard on both of us in different ways through the trauma and I think there’s just room to grow. Maybe, one day we will reconnect.

Scott

I’ve heard people talk sometimes about– if someone gets diagnosed with serious cancer – like terminal cancer – sometimes, they never hear from their close friends again, which just sounds incredible. But I think people just don’t know how to deal with it. They don’t know what to say, and it’s easier just to be absent. Does that sound like, kind of, maybe, what happened?

Jacqueline

For sure. It’s just so unfortunate that’s the reality of things when something really traumatic happens. I mean, even with what I went through with Nathan, he was afraid that I was going to leave too. When you have such a bond with somebody, whether it’s a friend or a partner, you know whether or not you’re going to be there to support that person. I think I would just always want to stick by that person’s side.

Scott

That’s when you need people the most.

Jacqueline

Exactly. I knew that I didn’t always have to be strong for him, but being strong for him was also being strong for myself. I felt that if I could help him through it, I can help. We can all help each other through it. So I feel that’s how we got through it – just pushing together.

Scott

What’s it like when you go out in public now? How do people react when they see you?

Jacqueline

A lot of people – at least, around town – kind of recognize me. They’ll either come out to me and say, “Hi, how are you doing?”

Scott

Because they’ve seen you on the news…

Jacqueline

Right. And there was a local fundraiser earlier last year, so our community came together and people got to meet me and talked to me and everything. The people who connected with my story and got to meet me keep a close eye on my story and how I’m doing, which I really appreciate in this community. Another thing is, when kids around, like, maybe, 12 and younger see me, they don’t really know how to be sensitive, so it’s a little difficult to deal it with because I’m an emotionally sensitive person. I don’t blame the kids for being insensitive because they’re still learning and they need to grow and everything, but I’ll be asked something like, “What happened to your face?” or “What’s wrong with you?” It just kind of catches you by surprise when someone says something in that way. I don’t blame the kids for that.

Scott

When a child asks you that, do you have a standard response? How do you handle that?

Jacqueline

I stay very generic and I just say, “I had to have surgery on my face.” The main reason is that if they have a dog at home or any pet, I don’t want them to be afraid of that animal. I’d rather talk to the parent of that kid and be like, “Hey, this is what happened to me if you didn’t know. I just want you to be able to explain that to your kid the way you want to so that I’m not the reason that they’re scared of something.”

Scott

Really, a parent should see that as an opportunity. It’s a teaching moment on how to handle dealing with people in public – to be sensitive about that – because that’s how kids learn.

Jacqueline

For sure.

Scott

Have you gotten therapy or counseling to help you deal with this psychologically, mentally, and emotionally?

Jacqueline

Absolutely. I am a huge advocate for therapy. I was already diagnosed with depression and anxiety before all this happened, so I was already seeing a psychiatrist, taking medicine and everything. Before that happened, I was more in the boat of, “Why do I have to take medicine? What’s wrong with me?” Things like that. That’s a lot of people’s mentality. But I came to realize that, just because I have some type of chemical imbalance, that doesn’t mean that there’s something wrong with me to the point of people don’t want to be around me and I did something wrong. That’s the main thing. You can’t blame yourself for something that you are born with or that you developed. So, after the attack, I continued going to therapy and I gained a lot of support because it was a certain type of therapy called EMDR. It’s a way of processing emotions.

Scott

You’re seeing me smile. I’ve had several past guests who have been through trauma, and they’ve all benefited greatly from EMDR therapy.

Jacqueline

That’s great news.

Scott

Yeah. For anybody that hasn’t tried it yet, give it a try. It’s amazing.

Jacqueline

Absolutely.

Scott

December 23rd, 2022 was the 1-year anniversary of when this happened. And you made a YouTube video. Now, a lot of people who are thinking, “Okay, what should I talk about in this video?” could talk about all of the things that happened to you and how your life has changed and all of that. Your theme was gratitude. You thanked the first responders, the surgery teams, and everyone. That really says something about your outlook on this.

Jacqueline

I really just wanted a way of showing my appreciation. There are other ways that I was showing it. On my Instagram lives, I’ll talk about it and everything. The main thing is I wanted something permanently out there to explain how I feel a year later and everyone who’s helped me get through the last year. That was the main target. Who helped me in the last year get through this insane year of my life, and so I think that was the best way to tell everyone.

Scott

Your outlook is so positive. Have you always been like that or did you learn that from this experience?

Jacqueline

I was personally never this positive. I feel like I definitely dwelled on the negativity surrounding me. My brain was telling me, “That’s how things go.” Your brain tells you certain things that you don’t want to hear that you believe, and you kind of just don’t really want to believe what other people say, like compliments or something better than what you’re telling yourself – whatever it is.

What I’ve learned from this past experience is I’m just so lucky to be alive and I got a second chance at life at 22 years old. I just want to live to the fullest because I don’t feel like I was living to the fullest before. I feel like I was kind of dwelling on something that I shouldn’t have and realizing that I could focus on much more important things. It has really helped my mental health because I’m happier and I’m helping others and it makes me happier to see that other people are learning from this as well.

Scott

Your nickname is “Tiger”. How did that come about?

Jacqueline

I was still in the hospital. I actually still couldn’t talk at that time. My dad and my sister were in my hospital room. My dad was talking to me and I would sign back, so my sister was kind of interpreting for my dad because he didn’t pick up on any sign language. He was saying that I had the heart of a lion. After I heard that, I kind of gestured too, “No, I had the heart of a tiger.” When I signed, I kind of put up a notion like a claw and I signed “Tiger”. He knew exactly what I was saying when I put up that claw. So, ever since then, it was just kind of our thing of calling me “Tiger” once it was established that I had the heart of a tiger. So my dad’s best friend would text me every day and say, “Hey tiger, how are you?” and everything. So it just kind of became a thing. So, then I was “Tiger” Durand. So now, I don’t really go by that publicly. I mean, people can call me Tiger and I’ll answer to it. That’s really just, like, a way of seeing me – like, my logo has a tiger and it says “Tiger” Durand and stuff. So I think that it’s really just sending a message of, “I want you to know who I kind of am as a person without talking. “

Scott

Someone that doesn’t give up. When faced with a challenge, you’re going to fight.

Jacqueline

For sure.

Scott

What’s next for you? Finishing school career? What do you have in mind?

Jacqueline

Actually, as we speak, a week from today, I will be starting school again after a year. I’m really anxious and really excited because I haven’t really used my brain in an educational way in a whole year, so I’m really just excited to feel normal again being a college student and getting through it the way everyone else does.

Scott

Do you have plans for what you want to do after college?

Jacqueline

I definitely want to get my supply chain management degree back on, but I want to be a therapy dog trainer.

Scott

What’s involved with that? ,

Jacqueline

It kind of starts out as obedience training. If a dog needs to be certified as a therapy dog, it has to pass the obedience training, which is ironic because, before this happened, that’s kind of what I wanted to do – train for obedience and the basic stuff. So it made me feel really good when I found out that was the first step of becoming a therapy dog. I actually came in contact with a dog trainer who wanted to help certify me, and so I’m currently getting certified to be a dog trainer.

Scott

That would really be full circle from being attacked by dogs to now working with dogs as a job. But that sounds like it would be your dream job.

Jacqueline

I’ve always loved working with dogs. I’ve worked at kennel and training places before I was never able to be a trainer there. Now, I just get to follow my own path. My main goal is to do in-home training. I’ll definitely be mindful of the breeds I come in contact with, but I plan on either breeding dogs or adopting dogs and sending them out to people who need therapy dogs.

Scott

Any plans for doing any public speaking about this or, maybe, writing a book?

Jacqueline

I do plan on writing a book. I’ve actually drafted a couple of chapters here and there. I do plan on doing that because I think that’s the best way to tell my story and a way that people like to hear stories regarding public speaking. I would say that I could start doing that because my main goal, when I’m doing Instagram lives, is to help motivate people, tell them that it’s going to be okay, and I’m there for them. Things like that. I would love to say the same thing, explain my story and how far I’ve come to a bigger audience. So, I do believe that I could start public speaking from this experience.

Scott

Well, you’re starting with a big audience right now, that’s for sure. What’s the main message you want to get out from this story to everyone that hears this?

Jacqueline

There are a lot of things. The main thing is, “Whatever you’re going through, you’re not alone. I would love to be a person that supports you. No matter where you are in the world, no matter what you’re going through, just know that I’m in your corner. If no one else, I’m in your corner. I hope that with all the strength you have in you, you’ll fight through your pains and your issues that come up in life.”

Scott

You’ve mentioned Instagram. You’re on Instagram. That’s probably your primary social media – is that right?

Jacqueline

For sure, yeah.

Scott

Okay. You’ve also got a YouTube channel. We’ll have links to those in the show notes for this episode. The other thing is 18 surgeries. I mean, a lot of times, just one surgery is incredibly expensive, but 18 surgeries and still several more to go is just incredibly, unbelievably expensive. You’ve had a GoFundMe set up for you, so if anyone would like to contribute to that, I’ll have the link for that as well and people can help and be part of your story.

Jacqueline

Yeah. Thank you so much.

Scott

If you want to see pictures of Jacqueline, before the attack and after, you can check out the show notes for this episode, at WhatWasThatLike.com/131.

And I want to thank Rachel, a What Was That Like listener, for contacting me about a year ago and letting me know about Jacqueline’s story, because she thought it would be a good fit for the podcast. And she was right! So thanks, Rachel.

One of the questions I asked Jacqueline was if she had lost any friends because of the dog attack. And that might have seemed like an odd question, but as you heard Jacqueline say, that’s what happened.

And it’s unfortunately a common reaction. Jacqueline was injured so badly and her life was changed dramatically – if something like that happens to someone you know, what do you even say? How can you possibly help them with this huge problem they’re facing?

Well, the fact of the matter is, they’re probably not expecting you to solve their new problems. They know you’re not going to fix it. They just want you to be there. You don’t even have to say anything. Just the fact that you’re there is enough. It’s your willingness to listen.

That’s really what I do here. A lot of the guests I have on have been through something really tragic or traumatic. And many of them have told me after our conversation that it was really helpful for them to tell the story. And what do I do? I just listen to them. I’m just another human who wants to deliberately sit and listen to them tell the story of what they experienced. And that’s really all you need to do. That’s what they need from you.

So if you have a friend who goes through something really terrible, don’t just be absent. Listen to them. That’s when they need you the most.

If you liked this episode, I’ve actually done several episodes about animal attacks. We’ve done stories about attacks by alligator, rattlesnake, grizzly bear, a shark, and even a monkey. Just look through the past episodes and you’ll see them all there.

Graphics for this episode were created by Bob Bretz.

Full episode transcription was created by James Lai. And I highly recommend both of them if you need those services.

And now we’re here at this week’s Listener Story. If you have a story that you can tell in about 5 to 10 minutes, record it on your phone and email it to me. You just might hear your story in a future episode! My email is Scott@WhatWasThatLike.com.

And guess what – I have another bonus episode cooked up for you, so I’ll see you back here in one week.

(Listener Story)

My boyfriend wets the bed almost every night – he has a kidney disorder – and he can’t help it. But he also doesn’t do anything to lessen the damage besides wearing adult diapers at night that don’t work for him. We almost had to get rid of our couch and my mattress from a month’s worth of damage. He’s a great guy and everything’s perfect except for this.

He had this problem since he was young. He doesn’t seem to mind sleeping in his own urine or going places smelling like it, let alone having me sleep in it and smell like it. I’m almost always the one to clean it up, even after asking him to do it. All of our clothes smell like pee even after washing. I had to beg him to get the diapers, and he’s too stubborn to buy a different brand even though the ones he has isn’t so great.

When he doesn’t sleep on the couch, 9 times out of 10, I would wake up soaked in his pee. Every time I mention it, he gets defensive or embarrassed. I thought I could handle it because, when I was spending the night at his house, it was only a few times that happened, but when he recently moved in with me, I realize it was almost every night. I don’t know what to do and I feel like I can’t tell anyone about this because I don’t want anyone to see him differently and I love him. But this issue is putting me in a really tough spot.

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You know, there’s just something about Friday night.

For a lot of people, it’s the end of the work week, and you can just sort of chill out. You don’t have to worry about getting a good night of sleep, because you don’t have any particular reason to get up early on Saturday. So Friday night is often when many people just kind of exhale, maybe order some food to be delivered, see what’s on Netflix or Hulu, and just kind of zone out. Maybe even fall asleep on the couch – because who cares, you can sleep in tomorrow.

That was the plan that Anika had on a Friday night. Have some dinner and put her daughters to bed, and then her best friend was coming over for a glass or two of wine, and they would just unwind. It was going to be a nice, quiet evening to end the week.

That’s not what happened.

where the car crashed in – on the right is one of the teen boys who helpedinside the apartment after the crashArrie and Addison, sometime before the crashAnika with her daughters todayFull show notes for this episode are here:
https://WhatWasThatLike.com/130

This episode is sponsored by Better Help online therapy – get 10% off your first month at BetterHelp.com/WHATWAS

This episode is also sponsored by the Profoundly Pointless podcast – amazing conversations with interesting people! ProfoundlyPointless.com

Graphics created by Bob Bretz.

Transcription done by James Lai.

Want to discuss this episode and other things with thousands of other WWTL listeners? Join our podcast Facebook group at WhatWasThatLike.com/facebook (many of the podcast guests are there as well).

Episode transcript (download transcript PDF)

You know, there’s just something about Friday night.

That’s not what happened.

Scott

Who was home when this happened?

Anika

It was me and my two girls, Arrie and Addison.

Scott

So you had a three-year-old and a one-year-old and they kind of require a lot of attention. What was your life like at that time?

Anika

At that time, I was in college. I was doing my undergrad degree in psychology and I was a single mom, of course, with 2 toddlers. They are very busy.

Scott

A single mom with 2 little girls. Were you working also? How were you paying the bills at that time?

Anika

Yes. I was a Carhop at SONIC, actually. I was working a lot of hours and going to school, so it was kind of rough.

Scott

Wow. That is a busy life, for sure. You guys were in an apartment. How was the apartment laid out?

Anika

It was a 2-bedroom with just 1 bath. There was a closet right in front of you as you walked in, and then a bar. To the right was a living room area. To the left was the little bar – it had a little cutout you can look into the kitchen area. Then, as you walked up, past the living area was the dining room area. There were 2 sliding glass doors that led out to a patio. Then, as you walked a little bit further past the living room, there was a bathroom straight ahead and then 2 bedrooms, one on each side – the right and the left.

Scott

The critical part of that is that the sliding glass doors, kind of, faced a street, right? What was behind that?

Anika

Yes. Okay. So the patio doors faced a busy road. Directly across from my patio doors was an entrance to a neighborhood and it had a stop sign there. Coincidentally, when I moved in, I voiced my concerns about being across the stop sign and my fear of a car driving through or an accident. The apartment lady, kind of, said, “Oh, well, what are the odds?”

Scott

Didn’t she say it had happened once before?

Anika

Yes, a very long time ago. “So what are the odds?” She basically brushed it off.

Scott

When she was telling you that – when it happened before – was it your apartment?

Anika

I think I remember her telling me that it was the apartment next to mine that had the issue – that had the accident.

Scott

Yeah, I mean it is a concern. I mean, people come out of that neighborhood. Of course, if it’s a neighborhood, they shouldn’t be coming at a high speed to a stop sign. But still, it’s a car that’s coming in your direction and you’re counting on that driver to stop at the stop sign.

Anika

Exactly.

Scott

I could see where it would be a little bit of a concern,

Anika

Yes. It made me very nervous.

Scott

This was a Friday night and you had just picked the girls up from daycare. Can you just take us through what happened?

Anika

I had picked them up from daycare. I had been on the phone with my best friend and we were going to have a little hangout at my house, so I stopped off at the store to get a couple of things for dinner, head home, and wait for her to come over and hang out. Most nights, we would just be in the living room until bedtime because I had my TV out there and the living room was big enough that the girls could rip and run the way they wanted to and I could keep an eye on both of them. We could just kind of play and spend time with one another until it was bedtime.

This night was different because my youngest was very sleepy and she was the type to put herself to bed when she was tired. I could tell she was tired, so I went ahead and put her in her crib so that she could go ahead and go to sleep for the night because she would’ve stayed asleep for the rest of the night.

Arrie was in my room relaxing and watching TV as I was getting ready to put some food on the stove and, kind of, chat some more with my best friend until she came over. I was making a stir fry that I had wanted and just some little snacks, I guess. But yeah, stir fry – very simple at that time. I needed something quick and easy.

Scott

Quick and easy, but I bet the place smelled good though.

Anika

Oh yeah, it definitely did. It was fantastic. I was cooking and I had opened the blinds to the sliding glass doors. I always did that when I got home and I would just stand, look, and stare out of the road and watch the cars go by if I was on the phone. I had done that when I came home. I got the food on the stove, walked back and forth between the kitchen and the dining room area, and looked out the glass doors. As I was on the phone with my best friend, I was just kind of keeping an ear out for either of the girls in case the baby woke up or my oldest needed something – something like that.

I was walking back and forth on the phone with Anna and I kind of stopped in front of the glass doors and saw that an SUV was coming up to the stop sign from inside the neighborhood. I didn’t really think that much of it – this is something that happens every single day. So I was going back and forth checking on the food. The next time I came in front of the glass doors, I stood and stopped for a moment, watched the SUV, and I noticed that they didn’t seem like they were gonna slow down as they approached the stop sign. So I was thinking, “Oh wow, they’re going a little bit fast to be approaching a stop sign. Whatever.” I continued talking. Then, I noticed that it’s almost as though they sped up as they were approaching the stop sign, and I thought – something just told me – “Oh my gosh, she’s coming in here. You need to get back.” I firmly believe that that was God telling me to get out of the way. So, I took maybe 2 steps back from in front of the glass doors and into the kitchen area. As soon as I did, she came crashing through.

I still can hear how loud the sounds were of this car just barreling through because, at the speed she was going, she had to go up on a curb, she had to crash through the fence that enclosed my patio, through the sliding glass doors, and through my dining room table that was in the dining room. So, all of those sounds at once – it felt like a tornado had whipped through. There was so much wind. There were things flying. I could feel glass particles and things like that, kind of, hitting me in the face. Worst sound ever. I will never forget that. The sound of that car driving through there – that horrible sound. I was still on the phone with Anna, of course, and I just screamed. “Someone just drove into my apartment! Please get here!” And I just talked to my phone. I didn’t even know what to think at that point. I was terrified.

Scott

You said you felt the little shards of glass hitting you. Was that from the sliding glass door or was there some other source of shattered glass?

Anika

I’m assuming It’s definitely from the sliding glass doors. My dining room table was also glass, so it’s definitely coming from both of those – I’m assuming. I also had a fish bowl in the middle of the dining room table, so that got the ax as she blew through.

Scott

Mr. Fish did not survive this?

Anika

No, Mr. Fish did not survive. I had literally just bought that fish the day before this occurred, so that was very sad.

Scott

Was the car coming right in front of you or to your side? How far were you from where the car came in?

Anika

I would say not more than 2 feet right in front of me. I literally took 2 steps back.

Scott

You would’ve obviously been seriously injured if you had not seen this thing coming.

Anika

Yes. In hindsight, that was one of the things that really got to me later on – if I had been standing there and had my back turned to those doors, that probably would’ve been it for me, especially as fast as she was going. I had thrown my phone and it seemed like time was just so slow at that moment because I was looking around. Of course, as a mother, your first instinct is, “Where are my kids? How are my kids?” So I was briefly scanning around the apartment, which wasn’t hard because she had taken out the entire room that connects the living room and my daughter’s room, so I could see straight in.

Then, I realized my oldest was screaming and crying for me – I couldn’t see where she was at immediately – and I looked towards my girl’s room and saw that my 1-year-old was still in her crib, but I couldn’t really see the rest of– I just saw her legs at that point and she wasn’t moving, so I knew I had to get to her first. It was then that I kind of took a second to look around me, and saw that everything was demolished. The dining room table was all the way across the living room. The recliners that I had in the living room were by the front door area, just on their sides. The entertainment center that I had was a giant wood entertainment center – super heavy, tall – demolished, gone. I had just bought a new flat-screen TV the day before, and that was demolished. All I saw was the screen part of that just haphazardly on top of rubble – like, wood drywall boards. A lot of glass and a lot of nails were sticking up out of these boards. Things from my girl’s room seem to have been kind of sucked out of their room and into the living room, I’m assuming from the force of wind and all of that. It was like a tornado just, kind of, like, opened up that wall and sucked a couple of their things out into the living room.

I knew that I had to get to the baby. I could hear my oldest screaming, so I figured she’s, obviously, I guess, “Okay.” So the next thing I thought was I need to get to the baby. I realized that the car had finally come to a stop. It almost went through the other side of my apartment and into the parking lot, but, It was stopped by the brick. So that’s how you can get an idea of how fast she was actually going because the living room window was shattered. She would’ve gone straight through it had it been any faster, I’m assuming.

Scott

So that living room window was on the opposite side of the apartment from where the sliding glass doors were?

Anika

Yes. And that was completely shattered.

Scott

So she almost went all the way through?

Anika

Yes. That’s how fast she was going.

Scott

You could see Addison’s legs, but she wasn’t moving. That’s got to be terrifying.

Anika

It was. I can’t even describe it, honestly. My brain was just telling me that I needed to get to her immediately no matter what it takes. I’m sure the moms out there can tell you exactly how absolutely terrifying it is. I don’t think words can really describe it as a mother. It’s unlike anything.

Scott

You’ve got all this rubble and you’ve got a car – not just a car, but an SUV – in your living room. Were you able to get to her?

Anika

I was starting to get to her. I had turned first to see if the people in the SUV were getting out because they hadn’t gotten out of the vehicle. At that point, rage was kind of setting in a little bit. So I started to walk over– I say “walk”, but I guess I shuffled over some of the debris to get to my youngest. She sat up in her crib and she had drywall and debris all over her. She sat up and, kind of, looked at me, like, “Hey, I was napping.” She had no clue what had just happened. She was just wondering why she got woken up from her nap.

Scott

Yeah. That’s kind of annoying.

Anika

Yeah. She wasn’t impressed. So immediately, that relief set in for me – “Okay, she’s up. She’s okay. I could see her. She was covered in drywall, dust, and whatever else, but I could see that she wasn’t bleeding. She was okay, surface-wise. It was then that genuine rage set in for me. I was incredibly angry.

Scott

Because at that point, you knew the girls had survived this because you could see Addison – she was up – and, at least, you could hear Arrie yelling in the other room or something. What did you see about Arrie at that point?

Anika

Yeah. I could hear her screaming, but I couldn’t see her. I noticed that she was pinned behind a little slab of the wall that connected the dining room to my room, and the only thing left of that wall, kind of, was my door to my room. It had been knocked off of its hinges so badly that it was kind of wedged into the carpet. She was behind that door and in between the dining room wall, just wedged there in a little pocket. People say that miracles don’t happen or God doesn’t exist. That was God. For her to be standing there like that untouched, I knew that she was okay for that time, even though I couldn’t see her. She was screaming, so she’s there.

Scott

You still had this car in your living room with people in it? Were they starting to get out or what?

Anika

Yes. They were not getting out and this really pissed me off. At that moment, I was wondering why hadn’t they gotten out and asked if we were okay. Obviously, I was being selfish at that moment and not thinking, “Hey, are they okay?” All I could see was, “This person drove through my living room. They could have killed me and my kids and they’re not getting out of their vehicle.” I remember approaching the driver’s side and screaming for them to get out and banging on the driver’s side window, but they just sat there. In hindsight, they were probably in shock but, at that point in time, I wasn’t thinking like that.

So I got even more angry that they were just sitting there. I was banging on the driver’s side door, telling them to get out, and asking them, “What’s wrong with you?!” Every other 4-letter word was probably coming out of my mouth at that point in time. They still weren’t getting out and I ended up punching the driver’s side window just out of pure anger. Right when I did it, I heard something. I felt something snap in my hand and I figured, “Okay, well I just broke something.” Obviously, I didn’t care. I wasn’t feeling any pain. I just felt the snap. I just knew that I wanted these people out of the car so that I could get to them. I didn’t break the window, obviously, but that’s kind of where I was at that point.

Scott

Yeah. When you’ve got so much adrenaline going through, you don’t feel that pain like you would, normally.

Anika

No, nothing. Just felt the snap and that was it.

Scott

You couldn’t call 911 because you threw your phone somewhere or did you know where your phone was?

Anika

Oh no, I didn’t. No clue. I had just thrown it to the left and hadn’t even thought about it at that point. At that point, I just knew I was wasting time trying to get these people out of their vehicle. Let me just start getting to my kids. I wasn’t looking down or anything. I had that tunnel vision view – just let me get to my child. I was, kind of, stumbling because these heaps of debris and everything were pretty tall.

I just heard a voice out of nowhere, “Ma’am, ma’am, over here.” I turned and there were 2 teenage boys. One of them had their hand out and was waving for me to come toward him. I told him, “I need to get to my daughter first.” He said, “Ma’am, you don’t have any shoes on. Your feet are bleeding.” That’s when I looked down and realized that I kind of had cuts on my feet. My feet were bleeding, but I wasn’t feeling that at that point in time. I would’ve told you that I was wearing shoes had I not looked down – I had totally forgotten. I said, “I need to get to my daughter,” and shuffled over. It felt like walking through– like, when you’re in the ocean and there’s a bunch of seaweed wrapped all over your legs and things like that. It’s like you’re just trudging. That’s what it felt like. It felt like I just couldn’t get there at the speed that I wanted to get there. It was very frustrating.

Eventually, I did. I grabbed Addison and proceeded to turn back so that I could get to where the boys were. I realized that I was stumbling a little bit too much. I was very shaky at that point. I saw how many nails were sticking up through these boards and how much glass there was, and realized, “I need to hand off my daughter to one of these boys so that they can take her safely because I didn’t want to fall with her in my arms and have something injure her.” So I handed off my daughter to one of the boys who was on the phone calling 911 for me, and I allowed the other teen boy to grab my hand and I said, “I need to get to my other daughter first, please.”

There was a little bit of a pathway for me to get to Arrie. I got to her. She was untouched. She didn’t have any cuts or bruises – nothing. She was just pinned in that little pocket, scared to death. I reached her and was like, “Okay. I’ve got my kids. I’ve got my kids.” I think my head was just spinning at that point. I was still trying to figure out if I was dreaming or if it was real. It was like this weird dream state that you’re in when something like that happens. You’re kind of touching yourself, looking around, and just, “Is this happening right now?” That’s the feeling that I had. Like, I just couldn’t grasp the moment. It was unreal – that feeling.

Scott

These boys that stopped to help– were they from the neighborhood? Did you know them?

Anika

No, I had never seen them. I was assuming that they had seen what happened and were the first people to run over as quickly as they had gotten there. They are a-OK in my book – 2 teens. You wouldn’t really expect them to immediately spring into action and help someone, even an adult.

Scott

If you see something like that happen, some adults would not go toward that situation. They would run away because, when you walk into that apartment, there could be dead bodies there. Some people just can’t handle that or they wouldn’t know how to deal with it, but these guys ran up and wanted to help. That’s quite a thing.

Anika

Yeah, it was amazing. Honestly, I am so grateful to them for that. My room was the only room that didn’t have a bunch of debris or wasn’t compromised. We were sitting on the bed. First responders showed up and they were asking me all these questions. They asked me what my apartment number was, and I couldn’t even tell them. I was so frazzled. I couldn’t even tell them where I lived – nothing. I just said, “I don’t know. I don’t know.” And they said, “Okay. It’s fine.”

Scott

Do you have any idea why they were asking you that? Because they were already there…

Anika

I don’t know, honestly.

Scott

Maybe they had to direct EMS there or something?

Anika

Maybe it was for the ambulance. I don’t know. I thought it was very weird myself, but I couldn’t tell them. I didn’t even know my name at that point. They were asking me – I couldn’t even remember – a whole slew of questions and my brain was swimming. They eventually said that we needed to go ahead and exit the apartment because the support beams in the living room were compromised and they weren’t sure if there was gonna be any kind of collapsing or issues with that, so they wanted to get us completely out of the apartment, just to be safe, and have us checked out, obviously, when EMS got there.

Scott

Obviously, you were on the first floor, but there were apartments above yours?

Anika

Yes. Apartments above and next to me.

Scott

So there would be concern about the people in those places as well if the whole building collapsed, somehow.

Anika

Yes. I remember they did have to have the lady directly above me temporarily leave her apartment so they could make sure that they secured support beams and things like that, so that there was no collapsing for her. We made it outside. By that point, there was a sea of people just, kind of, gathered outside and on the sidewalk. Cars were just whizzing by and I was still just trying to figure out if this is really happening. Anna showed up and I just kind of lost it a little bit. It was good to see a friendly face.

Everybody up until this point was strangers. I hadn’t really let go of any emotion at that point either. I was just in that “mama bear” mode – making sure I take care of my kids and just get out of there. So she showed up. People were asking questions of each other. I remember people weren’t realizing that it was my apartment. As more people started showing up and questioning each other, I remember telling someone, like, “This is my apartment. It’s me. I’m the person that this happened to.” And people started coming over and trying to comfort me. I thought it was really awesome to see people – who didn’t know me at all – coming together and just, kind of, reassuring me like, “Hey, it’s gonna be okay. You guys are okay. Stuff can be replaced. You guys can’t.” They just kept telling me because I started to realize at that point, like, “We don’t have anything now. All of our stuff is ruined. We have nothing.” So that was kind of setting in for me at that point, but people just kept telling me, “Stuff can be replaced. It’s okay. You’re gonna be okay.”

Eventually, at one point, as we were standing there, a news crew showed up. I wasn’t paying any attention to that. I felt like I had tunnel vision and my hearing was just not even. I was flustered, so I didn’t notice that they had shown up. Anna was the one that noticed and she said, “Hey, you need to come over here and tell them what happened.” So, I went over to the news crew and they kind of asked me a few questions. I don’t even remember, honestly, Scott, what I even said. It was probably a bunch of jumbled nonsense at that point. I couldn’t tell you what I said.

Scott

Wouldn’t it be interesting to watch the video?

Anika

Oh my gosh. I wish so bad because, later on, my dad mentioned that a coworker had seen me on the news. I looked and searched for weeks after to see if I could get any kind of clip and I never found one. I would just really be interested to see, like, what I said and how I was acting because, at that point, I was still pretty angry at the driver as well.

Scott

Talking about the driver, they eventually got out of the car, right?

Anika

Yeah. The first responders still had them, kind of, exiting the apartment. When I saw them get out of the vehicle and kind of come out, I just lost it. I wanted to know why they did this. I started screaming obscenities. I’m pretty sure I said something like, “I will kill you!!” It was rough. I was very angry. I don’t know what it was. Like, a switch flipped when they got out of their vehicle and I saw that they were okay, and all of our stuff is gone and we have nothing now. That was it for me. I remember a lady standing next to me and trying to calm me down. She just said, “Your stuff can be replaced. It’s gonna be okay.” And I just wasn’t hearing it. I wanted to get at that driver. If there hadn’t been people there, I can guarantee you that I would’ve done some damage, most definitely.

Scott

When you saw that woman, did she appear drunk or disoriented? Obviously, disoriented – yes, but–

Anika

Yes, she was disoriented. She was just, kind of, standing there. In hindsight, obviously, she was in shock. She was just, kind of, standing there. I guess what made me even more angry is that she wasn’t coming over and asking me if we were okay. She just stood there just, kind of, looking around. It was weird. It was very weird.

Scott

Out of this whole incident, the only injury was your hand.

Anika

Right. When the ambulance showed up, they got me and the girls into the ambulance so that they could check us out and everything. Then, as I sat down in the ambulance, I noticed the pain in my hand almost, like, instantaneous. I mean, it was super swollen at that point and the pain was horrible. I told them, “I think something’s broken in my hand. My hand hurts really bad.” They asked, “Did something hit you in the process of the car coming in?” I just flat-out told them, “No. I punched the driver’s side window.” The EMT just kind of looked at me in shock. I think he was kind of scared at that point, like, “Oh, okay.” I didn’t have any shame at that point.

Scott

He was thinking, “I don’t want to make her mad.”

Anika

Right. I’m almost positive that’s probably what he was thinking. “I’m not even gonna press this lady. I don’t want any of that.” Yeah. He looked fairly young if I remember correctly, so he was probably scared. Poor guy. They asked me if I wanted them to take me to the emergency room to get checked out. At that point, my mom had shown up. I told him that I would get to the emergency room on my own. I just needed to be with my mom. Like, I just wanted my mom – 26 years old and I want my mommy. That’s what I wanted at that point in time. I didn’t want to go. I wanted to be with my mom, so I told him that I would get there on my own, which I did.

I went to the ER and the ER doctor seemed to not believe, I guess, that I had a serious injury in my hand because he said that I was typing on my phone at that point in time. I was thinking, “I’m trying to get a hold of family members to let them know what happened and that we’re okay. Can you come help?” and things like that. I was pretty much typing one-handed because that hand was not gonna be able to be used at that point in time. Like, it was just way too painful. So that added to my anger at that point.

Scott

Did they do an X-ray to determine what was actually the injury?

Anika

Yeah, they did an X-ray. It turned out that when I hit the driver’s side window, it had chipped off a large piece of bone along where your pinky and your palm meet together and connect to your wrist. There was a chunk of bone missing. I don’t even know where the chunk of bone went because we couldn’t find it in the x-ray. They were kind of baffled. It was very visible that there was a large chunk missing and that’s what was causing all of that pain. So it wasn’t broken per se in that sense of the word broken, but there was a large piece just gone.

Scott

So there’s really nothing that they could do about that.

Anika

No. It had to heal on its own. I think, later, I had a small little cast on it to kind of, I guess, shield it from any further injury, but that’s about it. I mean, they can’t do anything about that.

Scott

So what do you do now that you’ve got no place to live?

Anika

That was a rough realization. We got back to my apartment complex. They had a model apartment that was fully furnished, so they offered for me to stay there until we could get into just another same-sized apartment in the same complex as I was working out everything with the insurance because, at that point, it’s about taking pictures of everything, listing everything that you’ve lost, and contacting the insurance of the vehicle owner for all of that.

Scott

Right. Because that’s who would have to pay for everything.

Anika

Right. So basically, that was what I spent the next couple of days doing – taking all of the pictures and listing everything. They wanted an itemized list of every single thing that was destroyed for compensation purposes, so that’s what I did for the next couple of days until my apartment offered to move us into another unit that was the exact same as what we were in. They wanted to charge me a hundred dollars more in rent for it, which I thought was just the icing on the cake for the shit show. That whole entire deal wasn’t our fault, so that was rough.

Scott

Did the driver’s insurance come through and pay everything?

Anika

It was rough dealing with the insurance company because, of course, they don’t want to. They want to pay out as little as possible. They want to nickel and dime you down to the very cent so that they don’t have to fork out as much money. But in the end, I ended up going back and forth with them. At first, they only wanted to offer me, like, $3,000 to $4,000 for everything, which is obnoxious, considering we had literally nothing after that. So, after a brief phone conversation with them, I just simply told them, “You know what? That’s fine. I will have my lawyer contact you and we can discuss things further.” And I hung up in their face and, five minutes later, they called right back with a much larger number and I said, “Yes, that will work this time. Thank you.”

Scott

Did you miss any of your college classes?

Anika

I am not a quitter. I’m a go-getter and I’m very hard on myself when it comes to education, schooling, and that kind of thing. This was my first semester in my undergrad, so I was not going to go out like that. My professors actually offered to let me turn in my assignments whenever I could. They encouraged me to go ahead and drop my courses for that semester. They felt that it would be completely understandable if that’s what I wanted to do. I declined because I wanted to finish out that semester. I wasn’t gonna let this be something that held me back from succeeding in the goal that I wanted to succeed in my education, so I decided to stay in for that semester and I ended up with a 3.8 GPA at the end of that semester. So that is something I hold very dear to me and something I frequently tell my girls about, that you can still do it.

I was not gonna give up. I was a little handicapped with my hand, but I still showed up to my classes. I still turned in my work and that was the result of that, so I’m super proud of myself even now for getting through that because I could have just given up. I could have just said, “I’ll take the rest of the semester off. It’s fine. I have an excuse.” But I’m not like that. Anyone who knows me knows I’m not like that.

Scott

And your girls know they’re never gonna have any excuse that matches what yours would’ve been.

Anika

Oh, no, sir. Absolutely not. No, I don’t play that, and my girls know that. I’ve raised them that way. Hopefully, I’ll see the fruits of my labor as they grow and get older, but we always look back on this story and I just tell them, “If it had been any other normal day, we would just have been in the living room like we usually were, I don’t think that we would’ve been here today. There’s no way that we would’ve come out of it, especially with as fast as she was going.

Scott

There are so many scenarios. You could have all been sitting at that glass dining room table, or you could have been hit and the girls could have been fine, but now they don’t have a mother. I mean, you had to have gone through all of those possibilities in your head.

Anika

Yeah, and that was one of the things that hit me like a ton of bricks that night. After I had gotten the girls down to sleep, I got in the shower and I just lost it. I just broke down sobbing because I realized what we could have lost, how things could have ended up, and it just broke me. I couldn’t believe that we were okay and all that happened was I had a bone fracture, but we were okay. My girls were not injured – not a scratch on them, nothing. Yes, they were traumatized at that point, but I’ll take that over having a funeral for one of them or for myself or all of us, and that hit me so hard that night. I think I cried for about 15 minutes just in the shower with that weight on me.

I think that was the roughest part of it because, at that point, the adrenaline has worn off. Of course, I was in a lot of pain as I was washing my face. There were glass particles embedded in my skin and my face, so it was super painful to wash my face and my feet. Also, glass shards were on my feet for several days after that and it was just unreal. Even going back into the apartment the next day to take all of the pictures was rough – because we had to take a bunch of pictures for the insurance. Anna came and helped me with that.

I remember the insurance adjuster coming in and I warned her beforehand, “You may want to wear some type of close-toed shoes or boots because there’s a lot of debris, nails, and glass.” When she showed up, she took one look around the apartment and said, “Oh wow. Well, it’s a good thing you guys weren’t here, right?” I said, “No, we were.” And she was shocked – like, her jaw dropped. She couldn’t believe that we were actually present. I couldn’t even still believe it walking around, taking all of the pictures, seeing that mass destruction, looking at my daughter’s crib, and looking at Arrie’s bed – where she could have possibly been laying – turned over and had debris on it. She could have been in that bed.

So going through and taking all of these pictures was very rough. That was a doozy as well. Even in the kitchen– I guess the fireman had come in because the food was still cooking when the car drove in. I didn’t have time, obviously, to take the food off of the stove, so the pan was completely charred and burned. I don’t know if it had, maybe, caught fire. It looked like it had in the short amount of time because it was just, kind of, thrown in the sink, completely charred and black. Seeing that too was, like, “Wow.”

Scott

Yeah. To have a fire on top of all that… Okay. Here’s the big question. I’m wondering why did this driver ended up crashing into your place?

Anika

Oh my gosh. She told the first responders and the police that she had blacked out, and that’s why she crashed. I found that odd because it was 6 o’clock at night. What were you blacking out from? When you think of blacking out, you think of alcohol or drugs. That was my first thought, but they didn’t do a field sobriety test on her. All she got was a ticket for running the stop sign. I got a subpoena a few weeks later to appear in court for that because she was trying to contest it and say that she didn’t run the stop sign. I showed up to court for that and was waiting to be let into the courtroom, and I looked up and saw her enter the courthouse. As soon as she saw me, she turned heel and left. She didn’t come back in.

Scott

She thought, “I’m not winning this case.”

Anika

Yeah, she knew. We made eye contact. A) She knew that she wasn’t gonna win because I had shown up. B) She might fuck around and find out because I probably would’ve laid hands on her – sorry, mom, for the curse word, but I probably would’ve laid hands on her at that point. So I’m sure it was a mix of those things. She didn’t want to lose her life that day and she didn’t want to lose in court because I was definitely gonna get up there and tell them what happened.

Scott

It’s better for both of you that she left because it would’ve caused a whole lot more headache for you if you had gotten into a fight in the courthouse.

Anika

Oh gosh, yes. I definitely didn’t want to leave my girls high and dry with a mom wearing an orange jumpsuit, so it was better that she skedaddled out of there. I ended up leaving as well. There was no way I was gonna stay. It was just gonna get dismissed either way. I had already taken off work for that day, so if she’s not staying, I’m not staying. So I left.

Scott

Fast forward to today. How old are your girls now and how’s everybody doing?

Anika

Fast forward to today, I have a husband that I met in 2019. We got married. He’s been awesome for the girls. Arrie is 15. Addison is 12 and soon to be 13. They are thriving wonderfully in school and they have a lot of their mom in them, so I know they’re good. Of course, Addison doesn’t remember anything about that. Arrie remembers very little. She just remembers being very scared because, after that, they had a bit of PTSD and couldn’t sleep that well for the first couple of weeks after they had nightmares and would wake up. Of course, I made sure that the next apartment that we moved into was upstairs and not near a busy road.

Scott

Do you still live in that area?

Anika

Yes.

Scott

Have you ever seen that place?

Anika

I drive by it every single day, Scott.

Scott

Have you ever thought about stopping and talking to the people that live there and saying, “Hey, you might want to keep an eye out this back door here”?

Anika

I thought about doing that, actually, after everything happened, but I thought, “Let me not scare these people into moving out of their apartment.” But I noticed that, after our incident, there is a big rock in front of that patio area. There is a giant rock there. So, if somebody else decides they want to blow through a stop sign, they’re gonna crash into that instead of the actual apartment.

Scott

If you want to see pictures of the inside of the apartment after it was demolished by that car, as well as pictures of Anika and her girls, you can see all of that in the show notes for this episode, at WhatWasThatLike.com/130. And of course you can also read the full transcript of this episode there.

I wanted to let you know about a minor change that you might notice coming up in future episodes. I’m about to change to a different media host and ad agency – this is the company that handles the ads and ad placement in the podcast. Currently, I usually have couple of ads during my conversation with the guest, and maybe one just before that. Each of those is usually like a minute and a half to two minutes, which is actually kind of long for an individual ad. Going forward, it will probably be two different ads at each ad break, but they’ll be shorter. So it might seem like you’re hearing more ads, because there’s gonna be different sponsors, but still the overall time should be about the same. I just wanted to let you know so you understand what’s going on. And of course, you can always get the new episodes without ANY ads, if you want to sign up to support the podcast.

And you know what else you get as a supporter, for $5 a month? You get all the exclusive episodes of Raw Audio. These are 911 calls and the stories that go with them. In fact, Raw Audio episode 30 was just released. In this episode, a man stops taking his medication, and gets in a fight with his dad –

Male 1

Come lock me up.

911 Operator

You said you killed your dad?

Male 1

Yeah.

911 Operator

How did you do that?

Male 1

With a fucking hammer.

Scott

A man calls 911 and invites the police to come and get him –

911 Operator

Where’s your gun right now? My officers want to know.

Male 2

It’s on top of my tailgate, right by my right hand.

911 Operator

Okay.

Male 2

And I am right-handed.

Scott

And a woman calls from her car, because she’s being followed –

Female 1

I’m on Cypress right now.

911 Operator

Okay. And he’s still behind you?

Female 1

Yeah. I’ve been making turns and he’s been following me. Every time I turned, he followed me.

Scott

You can get that full episode, and you can binge all 29 previous episodes, by signing up to support the podcast at WhatWasThatLike.com/support.

And, I have to mention another review that has a little misunderstanding. I recently saw this review from a user named USA Mknitter – it says:

I like your podcast – you have great stories. I don’t like Facebook and other forms of social media, and am not a member of any of them. I am disappointed that one has to be a member of Facebook to see photos or any other information. I have listened to you a couple of years but gave you 4 stars out of 5 because of the Facebook.

Mknitter, this is not true! I’m really glad you’re a long time listener to the show, but you definitely don’t need to be on Facebook to see all the pictures and other information from each episode. You can get all of that at the podcast website, which is at WhatWasThatLike.com. And for a specific episode, you just add a slash and the episode number. For example, today’s episode is number 130. So you would just go to WhatWasThatLike.com/130. It’s all there, no Facebook required!

Of course, if you want to join in the conversation with other podcast listeners to talk about an episode or other things, THAT’S when you need to be in the podcast Facebook group. There’s something like 4500 people in that group. Anyone can join at WhatWasThatLike.com/facebook.

This episode was produced and edited by me. Graphics for this episode were created by Bob Bretz. Episode transcription was created by James Lai. And I highly recommend both of them if you need those services.

And now, this week’s Listener Story! This is your reward for listening all the way to the end of the episode, because we always end with a story that was sent in by a listener. If you have an interesting story you can tell in about 5 to 10 minutes, record it on your phone and email it to me – Scott@WhatWasThatLike.com.

Stay safe, and I’ll see you in two weeks.

Rachel

Hi Scott. My name is Rachel. I just wanted to call and thank you for all the wonderful work you do. I love the show. I love all the interesting stories. I just wanted to call and share one of my stories from when I was 2 years old – this is one of my first memories. I was 2 years old – almost 3. My brother and I decided we were going to go sledding on a cold, snowy day and decided the perfect place was this school across the street that had some little hills behind it. So we headed over there.

In the parking lot, there were a few cars coming and going because there were some basketball games going on that particular day. It was a Saturday, so it was REC league basketball games. As we were walking through the parking lot, all of a sudden, I was knocked and pinned down to the ground. I had no idea what had happened, but a truck had been pulling out of a parking space and didn’t see my little tiny person, and ran me over – I was two years old. This truck had backed up over me. Then, my brother started to scream, “Bloody murder! You killed my sister! You killed my sister!” And the truck driver stopped.

Seeing and hearing my brother, the driver got scared and didn’t know what to do, so he pulled back forward. Well, the truck knocked me down onto my belly. The tire went up my leg, onto my back, and then he stopped and pulled forward again. So the tire went back down my back and down my leg again. But if he had kept going, he could have possibly run over my head. So what ended up happening was probably better.

So, an ambulance was called and I was taken to a small local hospital a few minutes away. We just lived in a small town. This rural hospital just said, “We are not equipped to care for her injuries,” so they Life-Flighted me. I remember taking off in that helicopter. They Life-Flighted me to a children’s hospital in the nearby big city. There, they discovered that I had no broken bones, miraculously – kids that age are kind of rubbery anyway. So I had no broken bones, but I was internally bleeding. I had what they called a “cracked liver”. My doctor was a very good doctor and he said, “The liver is a very resilient organ. If she could just hold still for a few weeks, I bet it will heal itself and we won’t have to do surgery.” So, not an easy task for a 2-year-old to hold still for a few weeks.

I was in the hospital for 10 days. Then, when I returned home, my parents had set up just a steady stream of entertainment – movies, books, friends, neighbors, and family coming in to play with me and to read stories to me. Tons of people brought toys and activities, coloring books, and all kinds of things just to keep me entertained and still so that I could heal. I recovered fully and I haven’t had any lasting effects. Physically, I have been great my whole life.

Surprisingly, although this was one of my first memories, I haven’t been very traumatized by it. I think I was so young that I didn’t quite grasp the magnitude of it. But now, as a mother, my heart just breaks for my parents – what they must have gone through. Anytime I hear of a child getting hit by a car or run over by a car, oh, I’d try to reach out to them, try to reach out to the family, and try to give them some hope because it turned out so well for me and I feel very, very blessed. Someone was definitely looking out for me and I’m so grateful for that because it’s been a wonderful life and it could have been cut very short.

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Content warning: this episode includes discussion of suicide.

I had a scary experience with fire when I was a kid.

I grew up in Ohio, in a little town called Westerville. At the time I was probably around 12 or 13. This was on a Saturday, and I was hanging out with some of my friends from around the neighborhood. We were just doing stuff that kids do, mostly setting up ramps and jumping our bikes over them.

At some point we were walking around, in kind of a wooded area. Not the deep forest, but we were kind of off by ourselves, out of the sight of any adults. One of the guys had brought a lighter, and he was just flicking it, finding little sticks to light on fire. I guess as a pre-teen boy this is pretty fascinating. And it also had that little element of excitement, because we all knew this was something we really weren’t supposed to be doing.

Eventually he had a few sticks on fire, which he was holding, and when the flames got big he kind of panicked and dropped them. Of course, that meant the dry grass on the ground caught fire and all of a sudden things were starting to get out of control.

But fortunately, the rest of us didn’t panic like he did. We all got together and stomped out the flames before they got very big. We were just stupid kids and we were lucky the situation didn’t turn into a huge problem.

My guest today is Sally. She experienced a house fire when she was young, and it was a scary experience that changed her life. Because on the day of the fire, Sally lost more than just her house.

Sally age 8 with her dadSally and family, 2 years before the fireSally with her friend, the night before the fireBubbaFull show notes and pictures for this episode are here:
https://WhatWasThatLike.com/129

This episode is sponsored by the Women’s Meditation Network – guided meditations specifically for women. More details at womensmeditationnetwork.com.

This episode is also sponsored by the Jordan Harbinger show – really interesting discussions with amazing people. Find it on any podcast app, including Spotify.

This episode is also sponsored by the Deep Cover podcast – a show about people who lead double lives. Season 3 is now live! More info at https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/deep-cover

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Episode transcript (download transcript PDF):

Content warning: this episode includes discussion of suicide.

I had a scary experience with fire when I was a kid.

My guest today is Sally. She experienced a house fire when she was young, and it was a scary experience that changed her life. Because on the day of the fire, Sally lost more than just her house.

Scott

What kind of work did your dad do?

Sally

He was an electrician. He was actually, like, working different jobs throughout his life. When I look back on things, the main idea of his job was always electrician – whether it was, like, maintenance or whatever.

Scott

How would you describe your family when you were a child?

Sally

In my immediate family, it was me, my parents – my mom and my dad – and my older brother who is five years older. We lived in a small house in the Bay Area. It was a Christian home. My mom’s family was actually super involved in our lives and super close in proximity. Everyone lived within, like, five minutes of each other. I think that really played a big part in my upbringing too because my grandparents were always around. My aunt and uncle were always going to church. I mean, it was a loving home, for sure. It was just the four of us.

Scott

So it was a very family-oriented atmosphere…

Sally

Yes, very much.

Scott

You did a lot of things as a family…

Sally

Yes. When I look back, I think it’s probably just because of the dynamics, as I got older. We’d always go camping and things like that with my dad, especially when I was small. As I got older and stuff changed, I remember going on more outings with my mom, her parents, her sister, and that kind of thing. They’re just very close, very loving, and very encouraging.

Scott

Now, I understand that family dynamic, kind of, began to shift around the time when you were about 9 years old. What happened then?

Sally

My dad worked as an electrician for a pretty large company. Again, it was in the Bay Area. It was called NUMMI, which stood for New United Motors Manufacturing Incorporated – I think I could have gotten that very wrong, but it was something to that effect. They manufactured Toyotas. It was this huge plant that brought a lot of jobs to the Bay Area and everything like that. One day, I remember coming home from school and he was home, and that was not normal. They told me that he had fallen and hurt his back. As a child, I didn’t really think much of it. I just thought, “Oh no. I hope you’re okay,” and not thinking that it was gonna carry on for years and become such an impactful moment in my life too – especially for my dad. I mean, both my parents and everybody were affected by this,

Scott

Because it caused him to not be able to work anymore, right?

Sally

Correct, yes. He had fallen, I guess, off of a platform at work just onto his back. At that point, I guess it had done something to his discs. I don’t fully understand. He had, like, a herniated disc or something – I don’t know all the medical terms. Basically, they had diagnosed him as being, like, 70% disabled after that took place. So it definitely prevented him from returning to work anytime soon.

Scott

That’s always difficult, especially back during that time and that era, perhaps. The man was the breadwinner and it’s kind of something that men would identify with. “Wow. I can’t provide for my family anymore…” Did he indicate that he felt that way at all?

Sally

Oh, 100%. Especially our family dynamic – I would say it was very much more on that “traditional” side. My mom stayed home with us. My dad worked and he was the sole provider pretty much in the financial aspect of things. Even then, I knew that it was hard for him. Of course, looking back and being able to really think about it, I know that was a huge portion of his struggles mentally and emotionally. Like, what good am I now that I can’t do anything, for the most part?

Scott

Not to mention– was he in pain from his injuries? Did that continue?

Sally

Yes. Generally, he couldn’t sit for a long period of time. He couldn’t stand for a long period of time. He had lots of medications to try to cope with that, which led to more issues too. I was speaking with my brother recently, just, kind of, going over things, and how he remembered different times that we had. He had brought up something that I had forgotten too that, like, at one point, my dad couldn’t even stay awake. You’d be talking to him and he’d just fall asleep. I was like, “Wow. I totally forgot how many medications and everything that he was on to try to just, like, mask the pain.” It was a lot.

Scott

Yeah. That’s a lot to deal with, not just for him but for the whole family.

Sally

Right.

Scott

What happened when you were 11?

Sally

Obviously, it had been a few years since he had fallen. Within that time, again, he was prescribed lots of medication and there were lots of emotions and uncertainties. I think my mom was working – doing some kind of, like, decorating business – I believe at that time to bring in money. Things were just stressful. My dad’s sense of purpose– all of that was, kind of, slowly but surely crumbling away. Again, I was a child. I knew things were tense at home, but I didn’t truly think much of it.

I also do want to point out too that, as a child, I was a daddy’s girl – if you could ever know one. He would help me set up my Barbie toys and things like that. So I always grew up loving my dad and wanting to hang out with him and things like that. It’s kind of off-topic, but I remember walking– it was, like, an open house at my elementary school. I was probably in, like, first grade, maybe. I remember walking down the hall with my dad and I was holding his hand. I remember one of our very loved janitors whom everyone knew and everyone loved had walked by us and he told my dad, “You better soak up these moments. One day, she’s not gonna want to do that.” I remember thinking, “What is this man talking about? I will never feel that way.”

So yeah, going back to where we were at that time– it had been a couple of years since he had fallen. Things were rocky and he wasn’t stable emotionally. He was always, like, in his bedroom. He’d watch tv. The TV was on all hours of the night. He just wasn’t comfortable. Yes, I was 11. He had gotten to the point where, I guess, my parents had gotten into a disagreement about something and he was done and decided that things would be better without him.

I was actually across the street at my best friend’s house. She was my neighbor. We were playing or something. I remember my mom hollering from my house. She was hollering my name. My brother wasn’t home at the time. She was frantic, so I went back over to our house. Again, I guess my parents had gotten into a disagreement and my mom found his pills. He had just taken all of his sleeping pills and locked himself in his bedroom, so she was panicking. That’s the moment when I came back. So she called 911. I remember speaking to 911 for a minute. Again, my brother wasn’t home, so it was just me and my mom at that moment. I remember very vividly, at that time, kind of, like, shutting off my own panic and feeling like, “Okay, got to stuff it down right now. Like, got to take care of this. Mom needs me. I got to handle this. No one else is here.”

Scott

I find it so incredible that you took on that role when you were only 11.

Sally

Yeah, I don’t know how. I can see us in the living room and feel that, and I really think it had been just everything leading up to it really. I mean, my mom also struggled with anxiety. So I was very keen as a child and still am to this day. I’m very aware of people’s body language and, like, the slightest change in mood. I’m like, “Uh-oh. What’s wrong? Tell me. I know something’s wrong.” I think that’s also due to trauma. I think that is, like, the effects of it.

Scott

I’m just thinking from your standpoint as a child – what a heavy burden to know that your two parents are at home, but you’re the one that has to, kind of, be the calm one in this situation.

Sally

Yeah, it’s a lot, I guess. I did take on the role of, like, caretaker too. I was very wanting to make sure everything was okay, especially after this. It was a lot just trying to keep that family peace. As a child, wanting that easy, fun time but it wasn’t really there, so–

Scott

You said your dad was locked in the bedroom…

Sally

Apparently, he wouldn’t let my mom in. I was able to go in, so it wasn’t locked, but they were at it. When I say “They were at it”, I think they had gotten into an argument. It wasn’t physical. They had never gotten into, like, physical abuse or anything like that. They just argued. They weren’t saying eye-to-eye. Again, the stress was high overall.

Scott

When you came in the front door, when you came into the house, your mom was already on the phone with 911. Obviously, you knew something was really wrong here before she even told you.

Sally

Yes.

Scott

What did you do at that point?

Sally

I just remember standing there at that moment. “Okay, I’ve got to get it together and be strong” kind of came over me. Then, the dispatcher told her to ask me to check and see if he was trying to end his life. So my mom passed on that information to me. Of course, I was in that mindset of like, “Okay, we got to take care of this.” So I just went on into his bedroom and it was dark. I remember it was dark in there. He turned off the lights. All three of our dogs at the time were in there. The TV was off. He was just laying. The fan was on. I remember I walked in and I was like, “Dad.” He was laying in bed and I was like, “Are you trying to end your life?” I just remember that he was already drowsy at that point and he nodded “Yes.”

The next thing I remember is my grandpa, actually. My mom must have been able to contact her parents. My grandpa came in and had to, like, pull me off of my dad because I was, like, shaking him on top of him, kind of, not like CPR. I was just 11 and trying to wake him up. So I just remember him pulling me off of him. Then, the paramedics came in and took him away. They were able to give him, like, charcoal – I guess that’s what they do to, like, pump his stomach to help him vomit up everything. So, I know they were able to do that. The one thing that stood out to me, though, is the feeling of– I had that strong feeling of needing to get it together and, like, be strong.

Then, after, I remember a very strong sense of, “Okay, I can’t trust him.” I put that wall up so quickly. I no longer felt like a daddy’s girl. I was scared. I loved him, but I was hurt and like, “Did I not do something good enough for him to want to stay? What was it?” So, yes, he survived it, but there was a lot of questioning and pain afterwards as well.

Scott

From a psychological standpoint, it kind of makes sense that if he can so easily make this decision to leave his family, how could you trust him after that – right?

Sally

Right.

Scott

Did any of your friends know that this happened? Did the neighbor-friends see the ambulance come or anything?

Sally

Actually, that’s a good point. I’m sure they did, but I don’t really remember. I know I never said anything. It was, like, silence after that. It was like my big dark secret. I remember going to school and it was nothing. I didn’t speak of it even to my cousins who were, like, my best friends. I don’t remember telling them anything – none of us did. It wasn’t a sad thing to not speak of it, but it was almost just like this family shame – like, “Let’s try to save name and keep it here. We’re trying to deal with it. No one needs to know.” Obviously, my grandparents knew my close family, so I’m sure my cousins might have known – I don’t know. I never said a word. Even to my friend across the street– who knows what I said? I imagine just brushing it off and being like, “Oh, my dad got sick.” I don’t know.

Scott

Boy, if there’s ever a situation where family counseling for all of you would’ve helped just to talk about it…

Sally

Yeah. Well, we actually did. Again, it wasn’t really pleasant because, I mean, obviously, my dad was in a state of mind where he had wanted to end his life. Now, he’s living with life after that and still struggling and still dealing with all these things. Now, all of us are also struggling with the fact that he wanted to do that. The whole situation– you couldn’t get out of it. Our home just felt like it was so chaotic inside, even though there was so much love. Obviously, we wanted to make it work, but it was hard.

We did go to counseling. I remember, all the time after that, if anything happened, I’d be like, “Mom, can we call Dr. So-and-so so he can talk to dad?” And she’d be like, “Well, Sally, I think your dad needs to talk to him.” He was, like, my savior at that time. Like, “Okay, maybe he’s gonna make it better – this doctor, this psychologist.” I think it helped us probably process it a little bit, but it didn’t last very long.

Scott

That’s a pretty big dark secret for a preteen or teenager to carry around all the time.

Sally

Yeah. It really makes you think, like, “You never know what kids are going through or what anyone’s going through or just trying to get through day by day.”

Scott

The teen years are stressful enough without adding something like this into it. So that story was really, kind of, just to set up the story of what we’re talking about today. If we fast forward a few years, you’re 18. What was your relationship with your dad and your mom like at that time?

Sally

My mom and I are so close. We’re, like, very similar as well. We talk the same. I just loved her to pieces. At that time, it kind of felt like she was almost like a single mom. She did everything with my brother and I. She would take us to places and all of that. So we were very close. We leaned on each other a lot. Again, things were still stressful. I was also a teenager. So during those years leading up to being 18, I was not only, like, dealing with our home life and trying to deal with being a teenager and “rolling my eyes” – like, my dad would love to lecture me. Now, I look back on those with a smile, but “Oh, it was so annoying. Oh my gosh. Why are you telling me these things like, ‘Okay, be careful out there.’?” Just being a dad in that sense. So I just did not want to really be around him all that much.

At one point – I don’t know how old I was – he was like, “I don’t know how to – I don’t know if he said – talk with me or connect with me. You’re getting older.” I remember thinking, “Oh, you’re just so annoying. Like, stop.” At 18, again, I loved him and I wished things were different, but it just felt like he was always there. That was actually something I spoke with a pastor when I was younger, and he was like, “Well, tell me something you know about your dad.” I was, like, getting some counseling from him and I was like, “Well, he’s always there. He never leaves because he couldn’t go anywhere. He’d just be in his room on the bed, he was always there, but he wasn’t emotionally or mentally– I think he tried but I feel like I needed more time being a teenager.

Scott

It was a Saturday night when you were out with your friends, and you were out pretty much all night…

Sally

Yes. Again, I was 18 – just turned 18. I turned 18 in September and I had just graduated high school. I was working at a grocery store and I still remember, like, getting off of my– I think I was bagging. The “Courtesy Clerk” is the name. I was, like, the bagger. I bagged groceries. So I got off of that job and went out to my best friend’s house. We were finally hanging out with these guys that we thought were the coolest thing. They were having, like, a house party. We didn’t really do a whole lot of party kind of things at that age. So we just drove around most of the time and just had fun. So that felt like we were being, like, cool. So we went there that night, hung out, and I never, like, went back to sleep. We might have gone back to her house, but I never changed out of my clothes from that day. Like, we were just out.

From my house to her house was kind of a drive – I think it was, like, 40 minutes – so I went to her house, like, every weekend. We always hung out and we still always hang out. She’s like my sister, basically. I remember leaving that morning in my same outfit, of course. I was leaving because I was gonna go to church. Church was every Sunday. I didn’t want to miss it but I was, of course, exhausted.

Scott

I got to ask you that. It seems like a weird contrast that you are out all night Saturday partying, but then you felt obligated to go to church on Sunday morning. It’s like, “Okay, I’m gonna be a rebellious teenager for a while, but now I’m gonna go to church.”

Sally

Yeah. I will say, though, us “partying”– I don’t think it was literally us just being somewhere – like, we didn’t drink anything, but we felt like we were.

Scott

You were Christian partiers?

Sally

Yeah, yes. We were just trying to be cool and whatever. I mean, it was that sense of like, “Okay, I need to, like, get back to my roots” kind of thing – like, back to church. I loved church – I really did – but, again, I think it was that dynamic of, like, being a teenager as well. Like, it was very much ingrained in me and still is – that my faith is, like, so important to me. But also, I was a teenager and I wanted to, like, have fun and to hang out with these guys that we thought were the coolest things.

Scott

So you got back home early in the morning on Sunday…

Sally

Yes. I would say it was, like, around 8. It was, like, the most beautiful morning – I don’t know why I remember that, but I do. I solely remember, like, driving, the sky was so blue, and it was so beautiful. I got back home around 8 o’clock. My mom was getting ready. My dad, of course, was still in his bedroom. The TV was going. We actually had just gotten a puppy, so I said “Hi” to the dogs. We had one dog – it was a Basset Hound named Bubba, and he had one eye at the time. He was an older dog and we had just gotten this puppy. Anyways, I had gotten in. My mom was getting ready. I remember thinking, like, “My actual eyeballs were, like, burning because I had not slept. I am so tired. I just want to go to bed.” But I felt like, “No, I’ll go to church.” I want to go but I played with the idea of just staying home and sleeping. My mom ended up leaving and so I was the last one there, aside from my dad. Again, he was still in his bedroom. I think he was sleeping. I closed all the doors because, again, we had this puppy and we wanted to make sure that he wouldn’t get into anything.

I had that moment of like, “Ugh, should I say bye to my dad?” because I was driving my own vehicle. I actually had his– it was, like, a 91 Ford Bronco, and that was my favorite vehicle I have ever had. It was so fun. It was actually his. He had gotten it new. Anyways, I was driving that. So I had to drive myself to church and I had that moment of like, “Should I say goodbye?” And I was like, “No, I do not want to hear it. I don’t know if he’ll know that I was in the same outfit from the night before.” I still hadn’t changed at that point, so I was like, “No, I am not in the mood.” So I left and went to church with my mom.

Scott

Just a practical question, were you able to stay awake during the church service?

Sally

I remember that my eyes were heavy. I was a sleepy person to begin with – oh, I could sleep anywhere, anytime – so yes. That day, I was tired. I just couldn’t wait to get back home and, like, crawl into bed after church. I got through church. I think we had gone to the early service, so we were done a little bit before, like, lunchtime for us. So we headed back again. My church was really, really close to where I lived. I would say it was, at the most, a 10-minute drive, so it wasn’t very far. I remember I was kind of following my mom – like, not directly behind her, but she was ahead of me – and we were heading back home.

My brother was married and his wife was pregnant. My sister-in-law was pregnant at the time, so he wasn’t living at home at that time. So it was just me and my mom that was living there. I was following her home and I still remember where I was when she called me on my little flip phone. She called me and she said, “Sally, our house is on fire! Our house is on fire!” And I was like, “What?! What are you talking about?!” I remember my stomach, like, dropping. I was on this residential street and I was next to this one church. I was behind this man where I just needed to turn left at the stop sign. I was waving my arms. I was honking. He probably thought I was a lunatic. Like I was in such a panic at that moment, thinking, like, “What is going on? Our house is on fire? It’s not something you really think happens.”

So, I went down. I finally was able to turn left. There was a street that ran parallel with these railroad tracks that our street was off of and the speed limit was 25, maybe 30, but I was going 70 on that road in my Bronco. I think my brother had called me at some point in that small time and he was like, “Sally, you need to just drive carefully. Be safe.” Again, it wasn’t a long drive. I was going so fast, so I got there pretty quickly. My house was probably four blocks away from the end of the street.

When I arrived at the street that we lived on, it was already blocked off by tons of police cars. People were all outside of their houses – all the neighbors and people I didn’t really know because they were so far from our house. Everyone was outside of their houses and I couldn’t turn down that street, so I remember just slamming my Bronco into park and it, like, lurched forward. I jumped out of the car. I don’t even know if I turned off my Bronco. I just jumped out of the car and I started running down the street towards my house. It was, like, 4 or 5 blocks of running and I dropped something. To this day, I don’t know what it was or if a neighbor picked it up. Like, I dropped something I don’t know. I have no idea if it was, like, a key chain. I was just running. You could see all the fire trucks. There were about 5 firetrucks. Our house was on a corner, so they were, kind of, all around there.

I finally made it to where I saw my mom and she was standing on another block. It was, like, maybe, a block away from our house. She was standing with a police officer. As soon as I got to them, I collapsed. I think, maybe, my adrenaline was going at that point. The cop helped me, kind of, like, walk across the street. My mom was crying. All the neighbors were outside. By that time, I believe my brother and his wife – my sister-in-law – were there. The firemen were doing their thing but the house– I knew the fire had been mostly put out by the time we arrived because there was no longer any dark, thick, black smoke. It was now mostly, like, a light gray turning into white. So I knew, “Okay, fire’s out, but my dad wasn’t there.”

Me and my mom were taken to the house directly across the street from ours – they were good friends and good neighbors too. They had brought out a couple of chairs for me and my mom to sit on. I don’t know if I was crying. I think I was really in shock. My sister-in-law was, kind of, hunched down next to me in the chair and she would be trying to, like, keep my gaze. She’d be like, “Sally, look at me. You’re okay. It’s okay. We’re together.” I just was so not there mentally – like, I was in shock. I don’t know how else to explain it. It was a different experience. I never felt that.

Scott

Your dad was still in the house this whole time…

Sally

Yes. We were very close. We were across the street, so I’m sure there were firemen or officers that were around, probably, like, relaying information as to, like, the status and stuff. We were just basically just sitting there waiting. They ended up carrying our dogs out because, on the weekend, we had Bubba, our one-eyed Basset Hound. We had him and then we had Charlie, our puppy. They had laid them. The firemen were able to get them out and lay them on the front lawn.

I remember seeing Charlie and he was as stiff as could be, as sad as that is. I mean, that’s what it looked like. I could tell there was no life in him. Actually, Bubba, the dog, just lived through everything. They gave him oxygen – the firemen gave him oxygen – and were able to save him. So, he was not, like, back to normal. I remember seeing him and being like, “Okay, Bubba’s alive. It’s okay.”

Scott

I can’t help but wonder– this just seems so odd. The firemen are going to rescue the dogs. Did they even know your dad was in there?

Sally

They did. They were able to make contact. Like, they were able to find him again. We had a really small house. I think it was, like, 900 square feet, so everything was right there. We just had, like, a kitchen, a living room, and then the bedrooms were right there. The fire had started in the kitchen, so that’s where the flames were. The flames were in the kitchen in that area. My parents’ master bedroom was on the backside of the kitchen, so the wall between their bedroom and the kitchen was a shared wall. They were able to find him. He was in the bedroom on the floor. But at that time, my dad had been – what, almost 10 years of him being disabled – not able to do anything. He had gained a lot of weight, so he is a bigger guy. He was probably around, like, 400 pounds at that time. Our house was really small and the furniture in their bedroom was really large – like, heavy wooden furniture. So I guess the firemen were just struggling. They couldn’t get him physically out. The fire was out at that point, but they couldn’t move him because of the placement of where he was. He was in between the bed and the window on the floor, but there were, like, dressers that were in the way and couldn’t fit him through. So they had to move furniture, I guess, and make room so they could actually lift and carry him out.

Scott

You were watching this happen. Did you see them bring him out of the house as you were across the street?

Sally

Yes. We saw them carry him out – couldn’t really tell much. It took about– I don’t know how many of them. There were a lot of them because, again, he was a bigger man and he wasn’t conscious, so he wasn’t moving. He couldn’t walk.

Scott

But was he still alive at that time?

Sally

Yes, he was still alive when they found him. He was still breathing, but he wasn’t conscious at all. He was breathing and he had a pulse, so they literally, like, put him in the ambulance and they were off. The next thing I remember was going to the hospital. We weren’t told anything prior. They were just like, “Yeah, we probably need to go there and see how he is doing, and then we would come back to the house and deal with that stuff after.”

We got to the hospital and I remember having a gross feeling just because it wasn’t our normal hospital. They took him to, like, a different one. I was like, “This is weird,” because I feel like my grandparents, my aunt or my cousins always need to go in for something when something is always happening. We were a close family, so anytime anybody went to the doctor, we were all there. So I remember thinking, like, “Ew, why is he at this weird hospital that none of us know? I don’t like it.” Again, that wasn’t my main concern, but I just remember slightly having that feeling of, like, walking in and being so unfamiliar. It felt like such foreign territory and didn’t feel, like, safe.

It was just my mom, my brother, my sister-in-law, and my grandpa – my mom’s dad. I believe a nurse took us to this one portion of the hospital. I remember it was very empty in that portion. There were, like, some exam rooms to the side, and then they had these other very small private waiting rooms. They had our family go into that. I mean, it felt like a closet. It was very tiny. There were just, like, maybe, 4 chairs in there. It was just a very small square – no windows, just a small box of a room. So we all just sat in there. Eventually, a doctor came in and they had someone else with them. Of course, now, I know it was probably a social worker. They told us that they tried everything and they weren’t able to save him – she didn’t say it in those words specifically. There was a moment – a millisecond – where I thought she was saying that he was okay. From however she worded that, I was thinking, “Oh, he’s okay.”

But then they said, “No, he died.” I just remember everyone, kind of, wailing. I immediately, like, threw myself on the floor. I didn’t even think twice. It just happened suddenly. I was on my knees on the floor just crying and in disbelief, basically. It was just so, so surreal at that moment.

Scott

Yeah. It’s a whole flood of various emotions when you get news like that.

Sally

Yeah, definitely.

Scott

Do they know how the fire started?

Sally

Yes.

Scott

Was this another potential suicide attempt again? What happened?

Sally

That was something that I had, kind of, thought about, but they actually did do an inspection, of course, as they would, and they had found that there was some kind of – I don’t even know what to call it – like, a connection blew or something in the wall. It was an electrical fire. Apparently, my dad – which kind of made me wonder because he wasn’t really a big coffee drinker – but decided to make a pot of coffee that day. Again, he was on tons of medication and could fall asleep at the drop of a hat just from everything he was on. I think he was even given methadone at one point just for his pain and everything and, that’s very strong, from my understanding. So he had put on this pot of coffee. I guess, the water was running – something was said about the water running – and he had gone back to the bedroom and fallen asleep.

He never put any water in the coffee pot or anything, so that sparked a fire because, I guess, it was running without anything in it. My mom had shared with me that, I didn’t realize, three weeks prior, they had just gotten our house rewired. Of course, my dad’s an electrician, so he could have done it, but his health was not allowing him, so they hired somebody to rewire our house. Everything was in proper working order. Like, it shouldn’t have happened, but I guess it was due to him not filling up that coffee pot and falling asleep – I will say the fire alarms too. We did not have working fire alarms in our home.

To this day, if I hear or notice anybody talk about, like, “Ugh, we need to put that up?” I’m like, “No, you really should.” I don’t know how much that would’ve helped, but I imagine it would’ve done something to help wake him out of his sleep. But we didn’t have that so he was able to just sleep through it. He was never burned when they did the autopsy. It was found that he died of smoke inhalation.

Scott

In the months and the years that followed, how did it affect you and your family?

Sally

It was hard, I will say. After they told us, we were let in to see him that day in the hospital, and then they’d let us go back and see him. Of course, he was just lying on the operating table, I guess. I remember leaving that room and going to one of those empty, like, exam rooms and I just remember sitting on the bed. It was dark in there. It has nothing – just a very empty portion of the hospital. I remember thinking, “I was the worst daughter.” Like, the voice in my mind was like, “I was a horrible daughter. I didn’t say goodbye. I didn’t treat him the best that I could have treated him.” Also, it took me years to be able to admit it, but I had a sense of relief. It sounds horrible for someone who maybe didn’t or hasn’t gone through anything like that. It might be very hard to understand, but there was that complex amount of feelings that I was able to feel this great sorrow and guilt, but also a sense of relief as well because our lives had been so chaotic and he was in so much pain. I was also scared. I remember driving over to the hospital thinking like, “If he makes it, what’s it gonna be like as he’s already in such a bad place?” It was definitely hard. We actually ended up moving into my grandpa’s house – me and my mom. Again, my brother and his wife were living in an apartment at that time, but me and my mom stayed with my grandpa, who was also living with my aunt, uncle, and cousin in a small house that was five minutes from our house.

Scott

Well, you said you were very family-oriented.

Sally

Right. Yeah. Honestly, at that time, there were six of us in that house and one bathroom. I never remember any issues with, like, sharing the bathroom or anything like that, and it was really special. I mean, of course, like everything, we had just been, like, uprooted from our home. We had to, like, go pick up clothes that day. We were living out of, like, bins that we could fit in the bedroom we were staying in, but it was a really special time to be together, have that healing time together, and have just the support and the love. I think that really was a huge part of getting through it.

Scott

There’s something about a group of people, whether it’s a family or even any other group. When you have a shared big experience, it bonds people in some way.

Sally

Yeah, for sure. I definitely think so because you’re able to lean on each other and there’s this just, like, common bond, really.

Scott

I understand you were diagnosed with PTSD at some point after this.

Sally

Yes. The healing process – as I feel like for everyone that goes through anything – is definitely not a straight line. It’s years of ups and downs. Initially, right after the fire, I did not go to therapy. I actually ended up just getting, like, counseling through my pastor at that time, which was a huge help for me. I mean, that’s like therapy in a sense. I was able to, like, voice my pains, my fears, and all of that, so that was very helpful. I eventually ended up in college. They offered free counseling and therapy, so I would say that is when I really started my deep dive into understanding myself and getting healing from all of that – my childhood and the different traits that I had picked up along the way. Eventually, I would say I was probably in therapy for at least 5 years. I mean, often on, I would say, maybe, like, 7 years or maybe more.

I think a lot of stuff came up after I graduated college. I think, maybe, I was so focused in college – it was so structured – and I was able to keep my mind busy and it was, like, my main focus for 4 years. I think, after that was when things, kind of, came to a head. I was in my twenties and I was just really, like, learning who I was and understanding why I was the way I was. So, yeah, I was eventually diagnosed with PTSD, and that was really hard for me. I never wanted to tell anybody because I was like, “Oh my gosh, that doesn’t happen to normal people. That’s just for, like, a soldier overseas.”

Scott

Yeah, there’s a stigma.

Sally

Yeah, for sure. It’s not normal, but it’s a common diagnosis. I now work in a mental health field and I see it all the time, and it’s awful, but your body has to process things somehow. Sometimes, it comes through traumatic situations in different ways.

Scott

You indicated that you felt guilty because, that Sunday morning, you thought about opening the door and saying goodbye to your dad, but you decided not to. How do you think your life after the fire would’ve been different if you had opened that door and said goodbye to him?

Sally

I don’t know. I will say that I did think about that and have thought about that a lot over the years – just thinking about all of the what-ifs. What if I had stayed home and taken a nap? Could I have helped him? Would I have been able to get us out if I was more awake than him or whatever? I think, of course, the thought of like, “Always tell your loved ones you love them comes to mind.” is so true. I say “I love you” to my fiance all the time. I say it to all my friends and my family because I want them to know, for sure, without a doubt that I love them and, kind of, just like making sure I know that I do my part and not regret it. But that day– I don’t know that it would’ve changed a lot because I think I still would’ve felt guilt for our relationship at the time and the pain that he was experiencing.

I think I still would’ve dealt with everything in a similar way, but maybe just not have that initial guilt of, “Oh, I didn’t say goodbye.” It’s given me a lot of grace for myself. If anybody is, like, regretting how they acted in a certain situation or how a relationship went or something, I’m like, “You’ve got to remember that you–” Like me, for instance, at that time, I was surviving. We all were surviving. My dad was doing the best that he could in the ways that he thought he could. I was doing the same as a teenager. There was a lot on all of our plates. To have grace looking back on my 18-year-old self knowing, like, “Hey, you were okay. You were doing okay. You just can’t beat yourself up for what happened because you have to remember the situation too.” Like, yeah, I wish things had been different, but I don’t want to carry that shame or that guilt because, again, we all were doing the best we could. It was just an unfortunate and hard situation that I’m sure my dad did not want any part of, but this is the saying, “The cards that were dealt to him…”

Scott

That’s just life.

Sally

Yeah, exactly. As unfair as it can be.

Scott

Is there any part of this that we haven’t talked about that you want to mention?

Sally

I do. I was thinking, kind of, a cool, weird thing – I don’t know. I guess, like, a lot of times, people say that after they lose someone, there might be, like, a bird or a butterfly that they see that reminds them.

Scott

It’s always a butterfly, right?

Sally

Yes. And again, I did years of therapy and finally came to a place where I was no longer angry with my dad. I felt like if I saw him, I truly, truly, truly believe that there would just be love there, no guilt and no shame for both of us. I’m sure. I can’t speak for him, really, but imagining what he felt throughout his life– I’m sure he held a lot of guilt as well from not being able to be who he wanted to be. I feel like there’s just so much healing there. My dad was a very stoic kind of guy. Like, he was serious. He had his goofy side, but he wasn’t a loud person. He was very quiet.

I just find it funny because the date of the fire and his death was October 22nd. Again, I was 18. I had just graduated high school, so I had started going to our community college in the area. It was actually my first visit there. Again, it was probably the next few months after the fire when I was at the library. Outside of the library at this college, they had police officers just to help with theft and stuff like that, I’m sure. I walked up and it was the same officer that had helped carry me across the street. I didn’t know if he remembered me, but he did. I talked with him and he was like, “Well, here, you need a locker to put your purse and belongings in before you go into the library.” So he gave me a locker, and the locker number was 1022. So it was at 1022, and I was like, “It’s so weird.” I remember, like, going home and telling everybody. Throughout my life, since then, if I pick up my phone – it happened this morning – I won’t have my phone with me, I’ll pick it up. What time is it? It’s 10.22 right on the dot. Every time I see 10-22, whether it’s a locker number, the time of day, or an address, I’m like, “Okay dad, I love you. You’re there.” Yeah, it’s just like a cool little thing, just kind of, like, me showing the redemption of the situation, I guess. Yeah. It just reminds me of God’s faithfulness.

Through this, just being able to be on the other side – unfortunately, my dad isn’t here – I rest in the fact that he is no longer hurting, his life still had purpose, and he was still so loved and so worthy of love. I’m grateful that I had the 18 years, even as rocky as they were in those last few years. I’m thankful I had them. A lot of people don’t even have a dad from year one, so I’m thankful for that and for just the whole experience. I wouldn’t have said that right after the fire. I remember wishing and praying, and was like,” I can’t wait till it’s three years later because, maybe, by then,I’ll feel better.” Now, it’s been 16 years and the pain is still there. I still miss him. I still think about the what-ifs, but there’s been healing and there’s hope after trauma. I truly believe there’s always somebody that maybe you don’t know yet, but that has been there too and understands to an extent, and I find a lot of comfort in that myself.

Scott

I wanted to tell you about a couple of things before we close out this episode.

At this point I have lots of guests and stories in the works. In the beginning, in the first couple of years doing this show, I had to always go searching for stories. Well, not anymore. I do still keep an eye out for crazy stories that might be in the news, but most of the stories I get now actually come from listeners. This podcast has been downloaded more than 6 million times now, so the listening audience has grown really big, and so I get new story submissions all the time from people who listen to the show. Which is great! Now I just need to figure out how to have 36 hours in a day so I can keep up with it. But believe me, there are some great stories coming your way.

There is one guest in particular who I’ve been looking for, for a couple of years now. This is a young lady who appeared on a TV show called The Carbonaro Effect. All I know is that her first name is Genesis, and she probably lives in the Chicago area. If you have any ideas about how to track down this person, I’d love to hear from you. You can email me for more details.

And if you happen to be a Reddit user, you’re welcome to join the What Was That Like subreddit. We just hit 500 people in that group. There’s usually some discussion about each episode of the podcast. But for the more in-depth conversations about the show, where everyone talks about what they were thinking as they listened to the story, that happens in the Facebook group. LOTS of discussions over there.

And we do talk about things other than the podcast. I recently posted this question in that group. A very simple, seemingly innocent question, I just asked: Do you wear socks to bed? And wow, do people have something to say about that. For some people, it’s “yeah, I always wear socks in bed.” But other people were like “Socks in bed? No way, I’m not a psycho!” I never would have thought this would be such a lively topic, but it’s definitely fun seeing the responses. So come on over and join us – WhatWasThatLike.com/facebook.

All right, it’s Listener Story time! If you’re new to the show, every episode of What Was That Like ends with a story that’s been sent in by a listener. It can be happy, sad, funny, it just needs to be something interesting that happened to you that you can tell in about 5 minutes. If you have a story you want to tell, record it on your phone and email it to me at Scott@WhatWasThatLike.com.

In this story, we hear about a scary experience in Hawaii.

Stay safe, and I’ll see you back here in 2 weeks.

(Listener Story)

In the early 1990s, I lived in Hanalei, Hawaii on the island of Kauai. One day, I was foolish enough to let a friend talk me into going boogie boarding with him when I had no business going out there at all. I had no experience with boogie boards or surfing or anything ocean related, and the waves were enormous that day. I mean, these waves were huge. I didn’t understand it at that time, but this was also a very, very dangerous shore break. My first clue should have been the fact that we were in Kauai, Hawaii and there wasn’t a single surfer out there, but I didn’t pick up on that for some reason. My friend explained to me how we could paddle out in the channel and position ourselves perfectly to catch a wave. My decision to go out there with him turned out to be one of the stupidest decisions I’ve ever made, and it almost cost me my life.

In any case, we paddled out in the channel. Pretty soon, we were out there with these giant waves rolling underneath us. I was facing toward the beach when, suddenly, I heard my friend yelling from 15 or 20 yards behind me, “I’m getting out of here! It’s too late for you! You’re caught! Paddle as hard as you can and try to ride one in! Hurry!” I looked back and saw him paddling frantically away from me, leaving me out there alone. Then, I saw what looked like a tsunami headed straight for me and I knew I was in serious trouble.

Terrified. I began to paddle as hard as I could toward the shore, hoping I would somehow be able to ride it and come out of it okay. When the wave got to me, the first thing I remember thinking was how high it was. It felt like it lifted me a hundred feet. I panicked and let go of my boogie board – I was not wearing a leash – and it went crashing down in front of me.

When I came over the falls, I got driven headfirst into the sea floor and was tossed around like a raggedy ann doll. The pain was so intense. I thought it broke my neck. I couldn’t figure out which way was up and I couldn’t hold my breath for much longer. When I finally came to the surface and got my head above water to take a breath, I was horrified to see the face of an even bigger wave bearing down on me. I was caught in the impact zone and could not have been in a more dangerous situation.

As I got pulverized into the sea floor and tossed around again, I thought I would die, for sure. After getting hammered by a third wave, the whole thing finally ended with me getting washed up on shore, bruised, battered, and crying like a child. Needless to say, I didn’t get in the water again for a long time.

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Jayna was excited – she was about to get married.

She works in the wedding industry, so she knows how to handle every detail. She also hired a wedding planner. Shayna knows from experience that on the day of the wedding, there are lots of different things happening, and you have to anticipate problems and avoid surprises.

She never could have predicted that the events of that day would include a fire alarm, a gunman, and having her wedding story featured on the national news.

Fairmont Pacific Rim hotelJayna (top left) and her bridesmaids, the night before the weddingJayna and her bridesmaidsIf you’d like to contact Jayna, all of her social media, podcast info, and other contact information is on her website at https://www.hellojayna.com.

This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp – professional online therapy. Get 10% off your first month by visiting BetterHelp.com/WHATWAS.

This episode is also sponsored by the I Need Blue podcast – a place for trauma survivors to tell their story. Find it on any podcast app, or at https://ineedblue.net/

Want to discuss this episode and other things with thousands of other WWTL listeners? Join our podcast Facebook group at WhatWasThatLike.com/facebook (many of the podcast guests are there as well)

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This is not a regular new episode Friday. And that’s because this is not a regular new episode. This is a BONUS episode.

If you’re a regular listener to the show, you probably know that we end every episode with a Listener Story. I started doing this about a year and half, maybe two years ago, and it’s become a really popular segment.

The Listener Stories are just short stories, like 3-5 minutes or maybe a little longer, that have been sent in by a listener. Everyone has a story they could send in, and that includes you – yeah, I’m talking to you right now. You have a story that would qualify as a Listener Story. Because the Listener Stories aren’t the big crazy ones that we do a whole episode about, like getting attacked by a monkey or winning prizes on Wheel of Fortune.

No, the Listener Stories are more like a little interesting slice of life. It could be really happy, or really sad, or really funny. Just something interesting that you can record on your phone, and just email it to me at Scott@WhatWasThatLike.com.

So what we’re doing today is, we’re going to hear all of the Listener Stories that came at the end of each episode in 2022. That means that just in this episode, you’re gonna have like 2 hours of stories.

So let me know what you think of this. If it’s a popular thing, I’ll probably do the same thing at the end of 2023. Maybe it will become a tradition.

I hope you enjoy this episode with all the Listener Stories from 2022.

This episode is sponsored by the Profoundly Pointless podcast – you’ll hear a huge variety of interesting guests, and a great host! Find it on all podcast platforms, or at ProfoundlyPointless.com

Want to discuss this episode and other things with thousands of other WWTL listeners? Join our podcast Facebook group at WhatWasThatLike.com/facebook (many of the podcast guests are there as well).

Episode transcript (download transcript PDF):

If you subscribe to the show , you might be saying, “Hey, this is not a regular new episode Friday!”. But that’s okay, because this is not a regular new episode. This is a BONUS episode.

If you’re a regular listener to What Was That Like, and you listen to each episode all the way to the end, you probably know that we end every episode with a Listener Story. I started doing this about a year and half, maybe two years ago, and it’s become a really popular segment.

So what we’re doing today is, we’re going to hear all of the Listener Stories that came at the end of each episode for all of 2022. That means that just in this episode, you’re gonna have like 2 hours of stories.

So let me know what you think of this. If it’s a popular thing, I’ll probably do the same thing at the end of 2023. Maybe it will become a tradition.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy this episode with all the Listener Stories from 2022.

My workplace had a gym with it. The gym costs a lot of money. It was like $60 a month. Well, I’m cheap. I don’t pay for stuff like that. I’m just, “Nah, that ain’t for me.” Well, one week, they were like, “Hey, we need some more members, so we’re going to make it free for anyone who works at this company.” I’m like, “Okay, but because I like working out, trying to stay in shape, and stuff.” So, this gym is nice. They’ve got a pool. They’ve got a whole decked-out weight room with dumbbells that I can’t even wait to pick up. They had a punching bag area. They had a track. It was dope. So, I was getting my workout, getting my pump, working up a sweat, and getting a sore. I know that this gym has a steam room and I’m like, “Oh boy, this is gonna be nice. I’m gonna go chill in the Steam Room.” I was going to, kind of, just cool down which I find is hilariously ironic because it’s a steam room. So, I went into the locker, I’ve stayed in my shorts because I’m not a weirdo, and I’m like, “Alright, cool. We’re gonna hit this steam room.” So I hit up in the steam room and I’m by myself, which is even better because that means that I don’t have to make any awkward conversation with people. Then, lo and behold, a guy decides to join. I’m like, “Alright, that’s fine, whatever.” This dude comes in with nothing but, essentially, a loincloth of a towel around him. This is like a big old swole dude – like, the dude’s got muscles on muscles – and I’m like, “Okay!” Then, that guy gave a little head nod and sat on the other side. I didn’t know what day this guy was having, but this guy was just fuming and throwing random swear words. I’m like, “Okay, that’s a little crazy but that’s fine. You stay on your end, I stay on mine, and we’re gonna be good.” This homeboy – out of whatever pocket he had – pulled out shake weights and I’m like, “Bro… what?!” Ooookay then.” Then, he’s getting all the poses – he’s hitting it from the back, he’s hitting it from the front. If he wasn’t in a steam room, this dude would be looking like Opal Silhouette. It felt like an eternity up in there and I was sitting there like, “Oh, this is kind of weird because he’s grunting. This is really weird…” Eventually, he slams the shake weight down, drops a major F-bomb, grabs his shake weight, grabs his towel, and walks out stark naked. I’m like, “Bro, what just happened? Was that a mating ritual?! Does this guy want me to go home with him? Is he the alpha now?” I don’t know how to feel about this. So, the next day rolls around and I’m like, “Alright, man, that was a statistical anomaly. Worst case scenario, I’m gonna hit these weights and I’m gonna hit the steam room. I might have some weird old guy with the saggy everything hanging out, and it’s gonna be a good time. It’d be fine. It’s gonna be fine. That ain’t gonna happen. Again, that is just a statistical anomaly.” So, I’m in the locker room getting ready, again, and wearing shorts because I’m not a weirdo. I opened up the door to the Steam Room and it was like putting cheese on a mousetrap. The shake weight was sitting there by itself catching all of that steam. Then I said, “No. Nah, fam. It’s a trap right there. That ain’t happening.” So, I never went into that steam room again.

This is a story of my first experience calling 911. It was frightening. It was a beautiful day in New England. The colors of fall had just started to turn to a gentle shade of gold throughout the backfield of my parents’ home up in Massachusetts. It was a day when the idea of making cookies just sparked into my head and it was something that I actually love doing. The night before, Mom had made a beautiful broiled steak for dinner. It was one of her favorite go-to recipes. I guess in those days, the boiler was, sort of, like, the microwave today in our household. It is fast and easy to use to produce a decent meal. As habit prevailed, nobody typically took out the broiler to actually clean the pan because it was a job that all of us hated. So, that night, the pan stayed in the oven. The next day, as I had finished making all the dough for the cookies, I turned on the oven to preheat it to a nice warm temperature of about 375°F. Within minutes, I noticed a smell that was just not quite right. As I turned around and looked into the window of the oven, I saw an amber glow which is definitely something unexpected when you’re preheating the oven for cookies.

Panic struck and I knew that those were flames shooting up inside the oven. It was something that I didn’t expect that day. Within seconds I had called mom and said, “Please help me! Something’s wrong! Call 911!” She came running into the kitchen and immediately dialed our local emergency fire department. Our 911 team was a local volunteer group which is very typical of New England rural communities. The dispatcher was good enough to explain what to do and what not to do. We followed her instructions to a tee and waited outside for the fire department to arrive. When they came, we followed them into the kitchen and flames had started to come out of the back of the oven. Within seconds, they had quickly put out the fire and calmed us down.

Honestly, our nerves were rattled as we sat in the cool air on the back step of the kitchen door, just thinking what might have happened. Our dogs were in hand, our hearts were calmed, and our fears were put at ease. Thankfully, the oven remained intact and in good shape, as did the rest of our house. Thank you 911 team in Rochester, Massachusetts! You taught me a lot that day. Mom, you always taught me to always clean the broiler when I’m done with it.

the cookies were great.

Hello, this is Nancy May the author of “How to Survive 911 Medical Emergencies: Step-by-Step Before, During, After!” This book is available on amazon.com. In addition, I’m the host of the podcast ‘Doing It Best with Eldercare Success’ where we bring more joy and love in the times that we spend taking care of our elderly parents or perhaps a frail spouse or loved one. So, come on over to ‘Doing It Best with Eldercare Success’ or search for ‘Eldercare Success’ on any of the major podcast platforms including Spotify, Apple, iTunes, and Castbox. Thanks, we’ll see you soon!

This is Mary from Southern California. I’m fairly new to your podcast. I find that first-person accounts are so interesting. It gives dimension to the stories – some of which made headlines. Your recent episode of Karen Runge’s encounter with poachers and their dogs in South Africa made my heart race because of an experience I had with my dog. This happened in March of 2020. My dog, Mila, was 11 at the time. She’s a rescued mixed breed – she’s black and caramel in color – and our best guess is, maybe, she’s a mix of Doberman, Beagle, Shepherd, or Boxer. She has short hair, ears that flop at the tips, and she can smile. She has 40 pounds of energy, athleticism and curiosity. She’s super smart and friendly. She and I walk daily about 4 miles on a fairly consistent route through our suburban quasi rural neighborhood. It’s not unusual to encounter other dogs and even horses on our walks. Most of my neighborhood doesn’t have sidewalks so we typically walk in the street or on the horse trails.

On this particular march morning, Mila and I had set out on our usual 7 o’clock walk. Our route took us by a number of houses where dogs would bark as we walk pass them. Being mindful of the early hour, I would do my best to walk on the opposite side of the street so as to keep the barking to a minimum. We were in the last half of our walk heading south down at the side street that wasn’t heavily traveled. The only people who uses that particular street live in one of the dozen or so houses on the street. For that reason, I usually walk down the middle of the street and occasionally check behind me for any improbability of a car approaching.

We had just turned down this street when I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. When I looked behind me, I spotted two Rottweilers approaching at a slow trot. I held up my hand and said “stay”, which they did. Instead of looking curious like most dogs we’ve encountered, I can only describe them as being watchful. To go directly home, I would have to walk in their direction. I decided to pull Mila closer to me and continue walking away at a leisurely pace, so as not to encourage them to chase us. I said “stay” one more time, and turned to walk away. In no time, they were right up next to me. My dog didn’t seem alarmed. I was hoping that they would all just sniff and move on. But before I could even comprehend what was happening, the larger one of the two dogs clamped his mouth down on the back of my dog’s neck and dragged her to a front yard that we were in front of. He proceeded to press her down with his mouth off of her neck. The most ungodly screaming was coming from her. I was screaming for help too.

The second Rottweiler was standing next to my dog. I was afraid that if the larger dog was able to flip me over, the second dog would go for her belly. A friend who has many dogs once told me, “If two dogs are fighting, you don’t grab them by the collar because you don’t want your hands that close to their mouth. Instead, you should grab their back legs and pull them apart.” I grabbed the dog’s back legs in an attempt to do just that. He shifted position in such a sudden jerky motion that it knocked me down on my back. I tried again to grab anything that I could get ahold of to get him off my dog, but he was so muscular – there was just nothing to grab. I remember realizing that these dogs were killing my dog right in front of me and that I couldn’t stop them. The home I was in front of was occupied by an older resident who was likely reluctant to come outside even if she heard me. The house to my left was unoccupied as it was for sale. The house behind me was newly remodeled and I doubted that I could be heard through their new windows. Plus, in March, not many people were leaving windows open, so the chances of anyone hearing me screaming were minimal.

Then, I realized that a car had approached. The driver stopped and came running over. I heard him say, “What are you guys doing out?” as he proceeded to kick the larger dog. As soon as my dog was freed, I asked if he would, please, drive me home. He said, “Yes.” So, I managed to get my dog into his car. Her eyes were wide with terror and she was trembling uncontrollably. It took him a few minutes to return to his car which he used to drive us home. I managed to get his first name – Andrew. I learned later that he recognized the dogs – they belong to his neighbor. He had called the neighbor, whose wife came out and got the dogs. Once we got home, I took Mila into the bathroom where I could wipe her off. Her neck was wet with what I had thought was slobber, but the washcloth turned out to be bloody. So, I knew that she was more seriously injured than I originally thought.

I took her to our vet who irrigated and cleaned her wounds. They said that they generally didn’t do deep cleaning as the tissue was already so damaged and they didn’t want to do further damage. They sent her home with antibiotics and cautioned me to watch for infection. As it turned out, the wounds became infected and she had to undergo another surgery with stitches and drains. To give you an idea of how large the Rottweiler was in relation to Mila, the wounds stretched from punctures next to her right ear across to her left shoulder. She was a pretty pitiful sight.

I was able to track down our guardian angel, Andrew, who said that he had left for work a little later than usual that morning. If he left for work in his normal time, it’s unlikely that any other cars would have driven past. I was able to track down the owner of the Rottweilers as well. He admitted that it was his fault that his dogs were out. His automatic gate closer had bumped into his truck bumper as he had left for work. Unbeknownst to him, the gate had reopened, allowing his dogs to get out. He took full responsibility for the attack – covering all of our vet bills which were quite extensive. Mila’s fully recovered. She’s more wary of loose dogs than she used to be. She’ll be 13 next month. We still walk every day – not always – for miles. She determines our route and duration these days. She has severe arthritis in her back legs, but she’s still game for walks every day. In so many of your guests’ stories, there’s a turning point when something just happens at the right time. If I had been able to get the larger dog off my dog, I’m not sure how that would have unfolded. I can’t imagine those dogs allowing my dog and I to just retreat. In my case, a guardian angel named Andrew arrived at just the right time.

We don’t remember the fact-checkers, but we remember the storytellers. Just look around. Think about the people that you quote. Think about what you can’t wait to tell your friend. Think about when you go to an event. I don’t come back and say here are the stats that I learned. Here’s the order in which they presented it, I’d say, “Check out this story that I heard. There are facts and lessons within those stories.” So many people get this backward. Storytelling is how you stand out and storytelling is how you’re remembered. I’m going to wrap this up with a story from my career that allowed us to stand out and expand our reach, our influence, and our income. It’s not only about being able to tell stories but bringing stories together, and knowing when to do it. Photography stories are not part of my career because there’s so much meaning to it – so many hard lessons were learned during those times. The two things I did were shooting sports and shooting weddings.

My wife and I Elizabeth did the weddings together, but I did sports on my own. They don’t sound much different except they’re both, kind of, action-packed. You would think that someone that shoots the brutal blood-spitting, hard-hitting, and board-crunching game of hockey would have little connection to the pristine world of weddings. Weddings are what little girls have dreamed of – that perfect romantic day – since they were seven. You would also think that the brides want to see nothing but the beautiful details of their perfect wedding day reflected back at them by the photographer that they chose. Deep into our wedding photography career, I met with a bride and her dad about our upcoming nuptials. Our approach to meeting with the bride was, kind of, simple. I brought two briefcases – both of them were beautiful, modern, and custom-designed wedding albums. Those albums allow us to show 2 full weddings from start to finish, displaying not only our storytelling abilities but the way we capture moments, the way that we saw light, and the quality of our albums.

One evening, before I was to meet with a potential client, I picked up a copy of a magazine that I had been impatiently waiting for a few days. It was an issue of Sports Illustrated, but not just any issue of Sports Illustrated. It was the issue that, after years of trying, I had one of my images prominently displayed. A few months earlier, I shot a picture of Pittsburgh Penguins’ Superstar, Sidney Crosby. That picture was selected by their editors to be the main photograph for the 2-page wide feature story that they wrote about him. I couldn’t even contain my excitement because Sports Illustrated was one of my favorite magazines growing up. It was probably the most favorite magazine of mine. As a photographer, it was one of my biggest dreams to get a prominent spot in that magazine. When I got that copy in my hand, I stared at it way longer than I should have.

I thought back about all the years when I made no money in the industry. I made a grand total of $20,000 in my first 6 years of shooting – including my time at school. So many emotions flooded my head as I stared at that paper. I wanted to show this to my friend later on. I put 1 of the copies in 1 of the briefcases that held our albums. So, I was at this meeting that night with the bride and her family. Her parents were there, and she seemed to really enjoy our work. The conversation was good but I didn’t get the vibe that they would absolutely book me. Sometimes, we can tell this by their language. They just need to meet us in person just to make sure that we’re not total lunatics before they sign the check and the contract. This meeting wasn’t the case. She made it clear that they’ve met with a handful of photographers, and they would make their decision once they evaluated all the options.

At the end of the meeting, as I was putting the album back into the case, I saw the Sports Illustrated at the bottom, then I had an idea that was completely unscripted. I said, “Hey, would you like to see something cool?” They all agreed. I reached in, pulled out the magazine, and showed them my image. The bride asked, “You shot that?” I went into full storytelling mode. I told him the entire story, including how I had such a bad back problem that I almost didn’t even make it to that game. I could hardly walk and was awaiting a possible surgery, but I couldn’t turn down this assignment because it was for a new agency, and I wouldn’t get future work if I said ‘No’. Then, I told the story, “Because there’s back pain. I got no sleep the night before. I showed up at the arena realizing that not only did I forget to bring my camera batteries, but also 1 of the 2 cameras that I brought was a broken 1 that was supposed to be sent into the shop. The entire afternoon was a comedy of errors on my part and it kept leading down a darker, more painful path.

There was a period of time when I didn’t think I was gonna be able to shoot anything. I had to go back to this agency and tell them this embarrassing story and, obviously, never work again for them. Even though the picture turned out right, they were hanging on every word that I was saying. I made sure I took my time and let them feel what I was feeling. They couldn’t get enough. I’ve described the end of the game when that image was made. Usually, if I’m in good health, I would leave my spot to rush back with the photo, transmit the images as quickly as possible, get out of there, and beat the traffic, but I was in so much pain that I just sat there, so I let the crowd fell out and I just waited. While I was sitting there, the team announced that 3 stars – it’s when they say who the 3 top players in the game are – and the players come back on the ice. The house lights were shut off and there was nothing but a spotlight on them. It’s a pretty cool visual. Sidney Crosby was awarded the top star for the game with nothing but a spotlight on him. He skated on through the ice, spun around, and waved his stick towards the crowd. He happened to look right at me when I fired one frame.

A month later, Crosby got hit in the mouth, had a tooth knocked out, and went out of commission. But after that, he came back better than ever. Sports Illustrated did a cover story about Sidney Crosby. My picture was a 2-page picture inside for that story. Also, that night, when I went to transmit, I didn’t even think that much of the image. I was contracted to send 20 images to the agency and I had sent 19. I chose that one for the 20th and that was the photo they selected. The bride and her parents sat with their mouths wide open. They looked at each other. Then, they looked at me. Then, they looked at the photograph again. “We want you for our wedding,” she declared. Not surprisingly. I kept that image and that magazine in the briefcase. It became a routine that, near the end of the meeting, I would say, “Do you want to see something cool?”

One night, during a meeting with the bride and her dad on the second floor of the Galleria Mall, I asked the same question again. By now, I had this story down and I knew all the details. I figured out what made people gasp and what words to emphasize – it was almost like it was part of a show. The dad is a highly successful attorney who was really hard to impress. He looked towards his daughter and gave a mafia-like nod. “If you’re good enough for the Penguins, you’re good enough for my daughter,” he declared while reaching into his pocket and pulling out his checkbook, then he handed me a $6,000 check. It took me 6 years to make $20,000 in photography. It took me less than 2 weeks to make more than $20,000 with one photograph! That’s the power of storytelling – to convey a feeling that allows you to stand out in a sea of sameness.

When we went into those meetings, our company was just one of many. After hearing that story, we immediately formed a connection that won them over in a way that they were so excited to not only have us as a wedding photographer but also someone who used the same camera to photograph their sports heroes. Those were the words that one bride used to her parents, literally, moments before they walk down the aisle. They wouldn’t have known that without these stories – we would have been just like everyone else. So as we end this, I want you to think about that for yourself: What are the stories that make you stand out? Not facts, not figures, not numbers. What are the stories that you can tell even if it’s just one that shows why you’re different than everybody else? If you can convey and connect with that, you can open up worlds that you never thought is possible. Thank you as always for listening to the “Total Life Freedom” podcast. We are here to make you better every day because this is your life on freedom.

This is about a time I felt the most scared in my life. It was 2019 when I had booked a work trip to Istanbul with a director friend. We wanted to film this documentary about the most historic monumental places related to the Turkish Ottoman Empire. One of our filming spots in our list was this historic landmark called the Galata Tower, which was the tallest building during the Ottoman Empire – it also showed a bird’s eye view of the whole city of Istanbul. When we arrived at our location to film – we were quite late – the queue of tourists surrounding the tower was insanely long, so we decided to call it off.

We had supper at this nearby cafe where we came to learn that right next to the Galata Tower is supposed to be this beautiful remote hotel, which was a 400-year-old rickety building and was supposedly the most haunted building in the area. Tourists would avoid spending the night at this hotel, so it immediately caught our attention. We went inside this haunted hotel with my director friend and we went to the front desk to inquire further. There, we came across this rather beautiful concierge in his early 20s – a very timidly, shallow look alike if anything – and there is a reason I’m mentioning his appearance. Anyway, we told him that we didn’t want to stay at this hotel, but if he can tell and confirm with us about the hauntings, which he did, that it indeed was a haunted building, supposedly – the third floor of this hotel is especially the one that scares people away. He kept insisting that he will give us a very good discount if we booked a stay in this hotel with his quite charming smile. Obviously, we were not into this. My director friend wasn’t keen to talk about this, but I was very keen to film this 3rd floor because, obviously, it caught my attention.

So the following day, I decided to go ahead – my director called it off. I mean, I always had a thing for the haunted McCobb places so I went ahead solo. I thought I could film it on my iPhone and edit it in a documentary somehow. It was around sunset when I checked in at the front desk with a new concierge acquaintance. He offered me the high tea menu which came with a booking. So I had that high tea. I mean, obviously, it was dark outside now when I asked this concierge to guide me to the dreaded 3rd-floor suite that I was there for. The floor itself looked like an ordinary restored old hotel. I mean, the big suite bedroom, which was supposedly the most haunted bedroom – this building was already ajar with a very beautiful ambiance lights on and everything. I mean, I was definitely nervous but the concierge had this warm, charming smile and I wasn’t alone. So I went inside, immersed myself in filming everything I could about this room, and took selfies. It took me about 10 minutes to realize that the concierge man wasn’t there so I had a mini heart attack, obviously. I mean, I didn’t know when the hell did he took off, so I decided to take my leave as well. I mean, obviously, I didn’t want to be alone in this room. At that point, I realized that the door of the room was locked. I tried to push the door open with all my force. I mean, I was having a mini heart attack. I naturally started shouting and hammering at this door.

At the very far end of this room, the bathroom door opened, and out there came the concierge. I mean, I started laughing rather relieved because, I mean, obviously, I wasn’t alone. I had assumed that he had run off and locked me inside as some joke. When he came out to the bathroom, he wasn’t laughing anymore. I mean, he had a poker face or, rather, a stern expression. In a way, he had quite a strange expression on his face – it was, sort of, robotic. He came to me and quickly took my phone away from my hand. Then, he forcibly thrust me towards the bed. It was this insane blur. I mean, it was this mental lapse of things as my brain was unable to acknowledge what was happening at that moment. So, I wasn’t even fighting back. I mean, he was on top of me on this bed and was trying to untie both his and my clothes. So, I was frozen, both mentally and physically. I mean, I don’t think that this sort of fear can be categorized. I mean, I lost my voice. Obviously, my attempts to push him away weren’t working on his violent physical force on me. All I could muster was, “Please, please, please, stop, stop, stop.”

In a passing moment of trying to think my way out, I stopped struggling when he was on top of me and started getting him back which, kind of, took him by surprise. I mean, my minor cooperation shocked him and his strong physical force on me relaxed. He looked into my face with, like, a surprised look, like, “Okay, so this girl is into this assault. She’s like consenting to it.” I mean, obviously, I had already planned this mentally. So, I asked him if I can go to the bathroom and he was fine. He gestured ‘Okay’. So, when I had locked myself in the bathroom and started shouting like a maniac, he realized my getaway plan. I think it probably took him 10-15 seconds to make a run for it out of the room before anyone came to my rescue. Thus, I saved myself from this horrible incident. I mean, in hindsight, I kind of realized that the devils who are malevolent are mostly in human forms rather than 400-year-old specters of the haunted building.

I was stationed in Schofield Barracks, Hawaii on the island of Oahu. On the morning of January 13, 2018, my son and I got up for what we thought was gonna be a normal morning. We had some breakfast. He wanted to play some video games with me, so we played. My wife and kids just happened to be on a vacation back in the states in Florida, so it was gonna be a nice, quiet morning. So I got up, made breakfast, ate, and then got on the Xbox to play some video games. I looked over saw and my phone next to me. I was sitting on the island in the kitchen looking into the living room when I saw a bunch of messages on my phone, so I unlocked it. The first thing that pops up isn’t even those missed calls or messages. What is it? It’s an emergency alert. I’ve never received any of those. The first thing it said was, “A ballistic missile threat inbound to Hawaii. Seek immediate shelter. This is not a drill.” Being an active-duty military member, you see “This is not a drill”, it sets off a little alarm in you because, obviously, that means they’re not playing, this is real.

So, I called my wife, ran outside, looked towards the western side of the island – being where we are in the Pacific – that’s where you would make an assumption that this is where this is going to be coming from. I didn’t know what I was going to see obviously, but you’re not really thinking at that point. All my senses were heightened. I was, kind of, freaking out. So, I called my wife and asked her if this is real. I was asking what she heard. I was freaking out, grabbed my son, and hopped into the car. I’m like, “Alright, where can I go? Do I need to go over to my unit? Do I need to just seek shelter? What am I going to do? On post, we have shopping areas and grocery stores that we call commissaries, and the PX is that shopping area. Like, let’s go into one of those big buildings.” So, we started driving towards the PX. On the way there, we saw MPs passing us with megaphones saying, “Seek shelter. This is not a drill. Get to safety.”

So, we finally parked, ran inside, found a place behind one of the portable ATMs, and started calling my family. Nobody was picking up. I got a hold of my brother and said goodbye. I got to talk to my wife and, again, I said goodbye. It was just one of those times in my life when I felt like I was never going to see my wife and kids again. It was real because there was something that was telling me this is not a drill. This is real. There is a missile inbound. There are not that many military locations that are in our area so, obviously, it’s going to be us if they’re aiming for a military central to the island. We’re freaking out. So, making our phone calls and making all of our plans to say our goodbyes. About 38 minutes from the original text, we got one that said “Emergency alert. There is no missile threat or danger to the state of Hawaii. False alarm.” So, a bunch of people was walking around inside the store going, “It’s a false alarm! Everybody, it’s a false alarm!” By this point, it doesn’t really matter who was saying that it’s a false alarm. You’ve already, kind of, thrown your emotions for a loop. That was probably one of the worst scares that I’ve been through in my life – having to sit there, holding my son, and wondering if I’m going to be able to make it through the rest of the day to see tomorrow.

My story happened on August 19, 2009. I was living in Minneapolis. On that day, I was driving home from a friend’s house in a rainstorm that very quickly turned into a severe thunderstorm with high winds and very bad visibility. I was driving southbound on 35W. All of the sudden, I saw this gigantic tree sailing sideways hundreds of feet through the air along with all of this other debris. I realized that, “This is very dangerous. I need to get off the highway. I need to get pulled over.” So, I found an exit and pulled into the off-ramp. As I was pulling off, another tree branch had slammed into my windshield and cracked the full width of the windshield. So, I slammed on my brakes. I was still at the exit and not on the other road that I was trying to merge on. It’s not the best place to stop, but I didn’t really know what else to do. Then, maybe, just a second later, I felt my car begin to lift up off the ground – just lurching upward like in a vacuum. For the next second, that just stood still for an eternity. I was terrified… There were no more thoughts, no more words – just the feeling that I’m about to die. Suddenly, it was over as quickly as it had come. My car was on the ground. There were debris and tree branches everywhere. All of the windows in all the shops around me had been shattered. I was just screaming my head off, “What the fuck!” I was screaming to myself as I continued to drive home. Then, as I got home, the tornado sirens started, and I hadn’t really put everything together yet. I thought, “Oh, well. The storm was already so crazy. There must be something worse coming.” So, I took shelter in my bathroom for hours and just watched the news. Then, I finally figured out that the tornado had already passed. When I saw the path of where the storm had gone, I realized, “Oh, it went right through where I had been driving – that moment that I felt the car had been lifted up.”

I attended a Christmas party at the White House. I received an invitation in the mail – there was calligraphy on the outside. The return address said “1600 Pennsylvania Avenue” and I immediately thought that someone was playing a prank. Inside was an invitation that directed me to call the Social Secretary. I had to leave some personal information there for me and my guest so that they could vet us beforehand and make sure that we weren’t a security risk. I told my girlfriend, “Last month, I brought you to Olive Garden. Next month, I’m bringing you to the White House.” At the East Wing entrance, it’s a lot like the TSA checkpoint at an airport. There were tons of Secret Service agents – some were in uniform, some were not. There’s a long list of things that you can’t bring in. The people who had accidentally left a lighter, car keys, or whatever in their pocket, they still allowed them in because we were reminded that we were guests, and that was pretty cool.

Once inside, we walked up some stairs. Then, we were on the first floor of the White House. Immediately, you start recognizing things that you’ve seen on TV – like, the long hallway where I remember Reagan walking down to a podium to address the nation, or the East Room where they’ve held concerts, press events, and even funerals there. We took a million pictures and it really didn’t seem like there was much security. There was a guard or two that was stationed at the staircase, which led up to the President’s living quarters – the bedrooms and stuff – but other than that, we had, kind of, run of the place, at least on that floor. Every president gets to decorate the White House as they choose. At that time, the President had a dog named Bo. So, there were little Portuguese Water Dog figurines of Bo everywhere. There were pictures, stuffed doggies, and stuff that’s all mingled in with portraits of Abe Lincoln and John F. Kennedy on the walls. They were 2 buffets filled with shrimps, finger sandwiches, champagne, and stuff to munch on. I learned later that these types of parties are paid for by the president himself – not the government – because a Christmas party isn’t considered official business. Our favorite room was the red room. It’s a small parlor area that was painted in such a rich deep maroon color. I googled it later and found out that it was Nancy Reagan’s favorite room too. That’s also where my girlfriend spilled red wine on an antique couch.

The President had an event in North Carolina that day. Halfway through the party, he landed on the South Lawn. I was looking out the window as he left the helicopter, walked into the White House, and gave us a short speech in the foyer right behind the front door that you see on TV, which you never see open. It was just really informal – it’s his home after all. The First Lady said, “Hello”, told us to clean up before we left – which was a joke – I thought that was kind of cute. The President mingled with us for a bit and then said, “I gotta get back to work.” So, we wound up staying for another hour – just 200 folks all meandering throughout the people’s house, the White House. We felt like the luckiest people in the world for just a little bit. Shortly afterward, I married my girlfriend. I think the White House Trip really sealed the deal.

I got pregnant with my husband who is 6’5” and built like a linebacker – he’s really, really thick and strong. So, we knew we were gonna have a big baby. I am 5’7”. I was a little overweight, so I tried to do exercise. I had pregestational diabetes. I had an amazing pregnancy with no depression or anxiety, which is what I live with on a daily basis. During my pregnancy, everything stabilized and I was like, “Oh my God, I need to be pregnant for the rest of my life. It was absolutely amazing!” So, we got to the end of the pregnancy. I passed my due date which was on the 28th of August, 2007. I was with the doctor at my regular appointment. There was a long weekend coming, so I asked the doctor if he could induce me on Friday, so that I didn’t have to stay pregnant during the long weekend because I was, like, big – the baby was big. My stomach did get hard, but I wasn’t feeling any pain – that was going on for about a week. So, when he checked me, apparently, I was in active labor but I was fine – my water hadn’t broken. So, we just stayed there.

On my father’s birthday on Friday, the 31st of August, we went in for an induction. They broke my water at 1.30 o’clock. The pain I didn’t feel before – I felt that now. I’ve never felt pain like that before. It was really bad. I was hungry, so my husband went and got me a wrap. I ate it. Then, it was time for the epidural to come. While they were putting it in, apparently, it looked like he had to try 2-3 times. My husband was looking at the doctor. I was leaning onto my husband. Every time he lifted his fingers up, there would be blood on them. My husband was like, “Oh my gosh, just get it done.” While he was doing this in my back, I threw up. So, my husband ran and got a little pail. Then, I threw up in the pail. He was so good. He ran to the bathroom to rinse it in the sink but then realized that there was a grid in the sinkhole, so he had to scoop up the chunks and then flushed them into the toilet. Once I had the epidural, I felt great.

Then, I started pushing at 7 PM. As I was pushing, everything was going really well. My mom was on one side while my husband was on the other. They were holding my legs to help me push. Sometimes, they forget to put my legs down after because they were chatting with each other. Then, the head came out. Right before the head came out, the doctor saw hair and was like, “Oh my gosh, the baby has a lot of hair!” My ex-husband – who was my husband at that time – was born the same way, so we kind of knew that the baby was going to have hair. We didn’t know if it was going to be a boy and a girl – we wanted to keep it a surprise. Then, what happened is that the doctor had actually told me to stop pushing because he needed to work the baby’s shoulder out of my canal, but I didn’t listen. I just want to get the damn thing out, so I pushed and it ripped to the fourth degree. So, I had to have surgery after.

When the baby came out, I started hemorrhaging and lost about a liter and a half of blood. We have about 6 liters of blood in our body. So, I was hemorrhaging was really bad. I could feel liquid running down my leg. Apparently, there was just blood gushing out of me – it was pretty dramatic. They put the baby on me but I was losing blood, so I was kind of out of it. They took pictures. Thank goodness. They were going to stitch me up right there and then but, first, they had to get the bleeding to stop. They had to get my uterus to contract again. So, I had one nurse pressing down on my stomach and I had the doctor with his arm – all the way up to his elbow – inside of me trying to contract the uterus. It was so painful – it was worse than having the baby. I guess, when they stopped the bleeding, they were going to stitch me up, but I’m like, “No, I don’t want any more pain.” They were like, “It’s not going to hurt.” “Everything hurts!” They were going to take me into surgery anyway to make sure everything was okay – they ended up doing the stitching there. So, I didn’t get to see my daughter – like, truly see her – because while I was gushing blood, they lost me for about 10 minutes. I was unconscious. I didn’t die there, but I was unconscious. I woke up and I’ve got my parents who were divorced for a long time – one on one side and one on the other. I woke up and I didn’t know if it was, like, real-life because it was weird to see them together. They’ve whisked me off to surgery.

My ex-husband was taking care of the baby. We came to find out later that he had to feed the baby with a tube with his pinky finger because they didn’t know if I wanted to breastfeed. When the baby came out, my husband was looking and realized that the absence of a penis meant that it was a vagina. So, we were all excited. It was a girl and we named her Mia.

I was in surgery, and I didn’t get out till 11.30. So, I didn’t have the baby in my arms until 11.30. The whole family had been there. So, I came in, held her, and tried to breastfeed her. My ex-in-laws were sitting there and I’m like, “They’re not getting the hint to get the hell out of the room so that I can, like, pop my boob out.” Anyways, we tried that and it didn’t work. So, we decided not to breastfeed. I had a breast reduction, so we knew that this could be a possibility. He gave me Mia and put her in my arms. I have pictures of it and it shows how yellow I am because I was anemic and it was pretty bad.

For a whole day and a half, I did not connect with Mia. I was, like, crying to my mom in the middle of the night, “Give her back. I don’t want her. Take her away.” I got it all out. My mom is a tough mom. She’s a nurse and an amazing woman. She looked at me and said, “Okay, that’s enough. Suck it up. You got this. She’s your baby!” So, after that, I started connecting with Mia. Before that, I didn’t have any energy. So, I got out of bed, took a walk with her, and really bonded with her during that walk – it was absolutely amazing. The morning after I gave birth, my husband came back – he couldn’t sleep at the hospital. He still has the bloody jeans and the bloody shoes on. He just wanted to get back there – he’s a very loving father – so he came back and we have a beautiful girl.

Now, she’s 14 years old and she’s 5’11” – much taller than her mama. She’s built like her dad. She plays hockey. That thick hair never went away. A lot of people would comment on her hair when she was a baby. She was just a really happy and funny baby – big smiles, always giggling, and always smiling. Watching her grow those first 3 years was absolutely amazing. We got a divorce after 3 years, so it changed the dynamic, but it was just amazing to watch her grow. I know people say this all the time, “Oh, it goes so fast.” It used to annoy me and I was like, “Yeah, yeah.” Well, it does. She’s 14 and in grade 9 in high school. It’s just unbelievable. It really is a miracle that we can form these little creatures in our tummies. I forgot to say that she came out as a 9-pound 1-ounce and a 21-inch baby – she was very long and very big. Thank you for listening. And Scott, I love your show.

This incident happened at the west coast of Canada where I was being held captive by human traffickers who also traded weapons and drugs. The traffickers had taken my shoes, my ID, and my jacket and, most of the time, kept me confined to a single room. In trying to gain my compliance, the traffickers used food deprivation, sleep deprivation, sexual assault, and other violence. There was always someone directly guarding me and, usually, 4 or more traffickers in the residence at any given time. When there are people around to witness psychological sexual or physical violence, those people did nothing to stop or object to the infliction of harm. That makes that mistreatment even more intimidating and brainwashing. I had 3 things that helped me navigate through that situation. I knew how to disassociate from pain in my body. I was determined to do whatever it took to survive. I had escaped human trafficking before.

On the night of this particular incident, no amount of disassociation or determination could save me. One moment, I was being tossed around the room and beaten. The next, I was being strangled on the floor. Fighting back was inefficient. My limbs became sluggish and, then, lost function. I watched my arms fall to the floor and thought, “Oh, my arms aren’t working. I couldn’t move my legs.” I knew what that meant, but couldn’t do anything about it. My head rolled to the side. I saw a piece of lint on the carpet – just a wee fluff of carpet lint – and thought, “I’m going to die looking at this carpet and no one will know what happened to me. Mom’s gonna be so disappointed.” I felt more sad than I was scared. My vision went red and, then, Black. The last thing I remember feeling was that sadness and his hands around my neck. I woke up on that same carpet with the culprit watching me to find out if I was dead.

Waking up, I was very disoriented. I didn’t know where I was or have any recollection of what happened. I remember looking around the room and trying to remember who had brought me into this strange place and if I was on drugs because my body felt so strange – it wasn’t moving properly. My thoughts were mushy. When I could finally move, everything hurt. Then, I remembered. That was when I realized that resistance wasn’t going to build my escape, that I had to feign subservience until the traffickers got sloppy. So, that’s what I did. Luckily, the plan worked. After I escaped, I started studying martial arts and learned how to defend myself and how to avoid being in that kind of situation again. But I warn you this – it can happen to anyone. Human traffickers are scum.

This story is true. It happened about 2 years ago when I bought a new house and got, kind of, lucky because the market dipped during the pandemic. The house was a total wreck. I don’t know for sure, but I suspect the woman who lived here before was an alcoholic and she lived alone. There were plates and silverware on the front lawn. The grass was growing up to my shoulders, almost. It took months of cleaning and repair to get it livable. I’m pretty lucky that my dad is a contractor and he was trained as a carpenter. So, one of the things we did together was remodel the kitchen. We tore out all the old cabinets, and the tiles, and put in a new sink. It was a couple of months of putting in 40-50 hours every week, but it paid off – the kitchen looks great now. I want to tell you about what happened when we were right in the middle of the kitchen remodel. I rent the house out now to a couple other roommates to help pay the mortgage. But at the time, I was living here alone. When I woke up and opened my bedroom door on the second floor, I heard the sound of someone taking a shower downstairs – that’s impossible because I was the only one there. As I walked down the stairs in, kind of, a half-awake state, I noticed that the living room looked like a sauna or a steam room – there were water droplets pulling on the ceiling and dripping down, and all the walls were also covered in water, and there was thick fog. So, you could almost not see 5-6 feet ahead of you. When I turn the corner at the bottom of the stairs and looked into the entryway to the kitchen, what I saw absolutely shocked me.

We had taken out the sink and all the cabinets and we had the new cabinets ready to place where the kitchen sink was. The 2 water lines – hot and cold – were sticking straight up. When we had left our work for the day the previous night, the knobs were turned firmly off but, on this morning, when I looked into the kitchen, the hot water line was fully opened and spraying a fairly thick stream of water directly into the ceiling, about 10 feet overhead, which was then cascading down like a fountain. It looked like something you’d see at a waterpark. The floor was flooded with water. Since it was hot water, it was putting off massive amounts of steam. I immediately panicked. I don’t know anything about plumbing. So, I called my dad right away – I’m sure I sounded, kind of, insane – and told them what was going on. I hung up the phone and went over to the waterline to see if there was anything I could do to shut it off. All I did was turn the knob, then the water turned off – I probably turned it, maybe, 2 good rotations.

Over the next 24 hours or so, with a wet vac in the basement, we vacuumed up, probably, over 100 gallons of water. It was a good way to clean the basement floor. Luckily, only a couple of the cabinets were ruined, so we weren’t out that much money. It actually could have been much, much worse. The thing that I can’t figure out is how the waterline got opened in the first place. I know I didn’t do it. I have been known to sleepwalk, but I would say that the chances of me doing this is, maybe, 1 in 1000 or 100,000, I guess – it’s possible. I know no one else was living in the house. I know that my 2 cats don’t have the necessary dexterity in their paws to turn a handle like that. There were no signs of anybody breaking in. Plus, it was an empty house with nothing to steal, unless it was a kid playing an elaborate prank with basically no motivation. To this day, we have no idea who did it. As I said, my dad works in construction and came up as a carpenter. I asked him, “In your 40 or so years of practice in the trade, have you ever had a situation like that or something similar?” He said, “Never.” He’s never seen a waterline just open.

Well, that next weekend, I got some sage from my sister in even though I don’t necessarily believe in ghosts. I saged every room of the house and also prayed whatever kind of prayers I could think of. Knock on wood, to this day, about 2 years later, we haven’t had anything except a few noises in the attic – nothing like that has happened again. So, if you enjoyed this story, if you enjoyed my voice, maybe you would like my podcast where I tell true crime stories. I mainly stick to ones you haven’t heard before – the more fringe bizarre ones. If you do want to check us out, go to tapesfromthedarkside.com or just search for “Tapes from the Darkside” in your pod player, including Spotify and Apple. Maybe, I’ll see you guys on my feed.

Last year, I went out climbing with a friend – just her and I. I was going climbing with her and another friend – never just the 2 of us. She’s been spacey. She warned me that she wanted to do a climb that had this hard part that I will potentially have to extend my rope to get through, especially if I fall away from the wall, dangling mid-air, and unable to reach the wall again. Well, that happened. I found myself with some gear on my harness 200 feet off the ground. I tried to figure it out. This was right in the middle of COVID quarantine, so I was about 20 pounds heavier than I usually am, hence why I fell off the climb. It was August, so I was in direct sunlight well above the tree line baking in the sun. I had no idea how to ascend my rope. I didn’t have my phone on me because I didn’t have pockets, naturally, but I did have my watch on. So, I paid attention to the passage of time and how long I was in my harness. I couldn’t hear my belayer and she couldn’t hear me. We were screaming each other’s names the entire time but we couldn’t hear each other because there was a sound barrier.

So, I was dangling for a long time before that was addressed. Until then, I was trying to set up a self-rescue system and I was, like, most of the way there, but I didn’t have a way to capture my progress. So, when I took slack out of the climbing rope, I would just stand up and there was slack. I wasn’t actually, like, making the rope tight where my new position on the climb was. I didn’t know what I was doing. I was really just flying by the seat of my hands and making up a way to self-rescue myself out of this. A climber came up the route next to me. I was able to get his attention. He was trying to help me set up my rescue system. At that point, I’ve been dangling for over an hour in direct sunlight. My hip flexors were definitely starting to get damaged at that point. There’s something called harness trauma that can kill you after 20 minutes of dangling on a harness. I had made it this far an hour and a half still trying to rescue myself.

I ultimately couldn’t get myself to ascend the rope because I was just so busted from dangling in the sun. We had some other friends that were at the cliff that day that did have their phones on them. So, my belayer called them over and I was yelling to them. They were on the phone with my belayer, so they were able to communicate to lower me to the belay ledge where those other climbers were – which was only about 10 feet away from me – and I repelled down with that party.

So, I got to the ground safely after about 2 hours. My hip flexors were really, really messed up for 2 weeks after that. I couldn’t climb. I couldn’t work out. I was walking kind of funny. I could have died in a fraction of the time when I was dangling there. The weird part about this whole story is that it ends with sirens. There were sirens that we heard when we got to the base of the cliff. My friend eerily said, “We don’t like to hear that around here because that usually means a climber died, which unfortunately happens at the Gunks a lot because of its proximity to New York City – there’s just a lot of climbers that go up there. Like myself, a lot of them don’t know what they were doing, but they’ll go on and climb. I was just following someone. I was on the top rope, which is generally much safer and less scary, generally.

So, we heard sirens when we got to the ground. You don’t like to hear that around here. It turned out to be another climber – a female climber my age – whose gear had ripped out of the wall. She fell while trying to set an anchor. She was guiding the group. She was a well-known member of the community. She fell to her death on a day that I almost died as well. So, I have a lot of survivor’s guilt after that. It definitely got me in the mindset to improve myself as a climber to learn rescue, get my strength back, and lose that quarantine weight. Now, I go back to the Gunks myself and do the routes that I want to do and won’t get my followers stuck on. So, if you ever go out climbing, make sure you cover everything that could go wrong with your partner – wasps, snakes, falling rocks, dangling in midair, you name it. Cover that, please.

Hey, this is Scott.

Since we’re talking about weddings today, I figured I’d tell you about when my wife, Jeanne, and I got married. And what went wrong.

Actually, it started before the wedding. At some point, Jeanne happened to look at her engagement ring, and she was quite surprised to see that the stone was gone. It just wasn’t there. It turns out this was due to it being improperly mounted. So we took it back to the jeweler and explained what happened. They put another stone in. But of course now she’s kind of paranoid, always looking at it, wondering if this one’s gonna fall out too.

So we get to the day of the wedding. The actual ceremony was scheduled for the afternoon.

Jeanne had made prior arrangements with a local beautician to have her hair done that morning. It was all set up – the hairstyle she wanted, the appointment time, all of that was arranged in advance. So she goes to the salon that morning, and the stylist is not there. The manager calls her, and the girl’s response was, “Why would I be there today? It’s my day off!”

So Jeanne is kind of upset and she tells the manager, it HAS to be today, because of the wedding. And the manager is like, “Oh, you’re in the wedding party?” and Jeanne says, “I’m the bride!”. Fortunately, one of the other stylists there stepped up and did a great job. But it was kind of a stressful start to the wedding day.

For the men in the wedding, which was my dad, my two younger brothers, and my best friend Tim, we spent the morning getting fitted because the tuxes were all late in arriving. So we had to go and try them on, and have some alterations because there were some things that just didn’t fit right. The worst of that was the tux for my youngest brother, Shawn, who was about 13 at the time. He ended up with a shirt that had sleeves that were WAY too long. But of course, no time to order another shirt. So the fix was, the shirt sleeves were actually just sewn to the jacket sleeves, with just a little bit of shirtsleeve showing. So it kind of looked normal. The downside is that he couldn’t ever take off the jacket, which itself was too small. That comes into play a little later.

My wife’s family is from Maine, and we’re getting married in Florida. So they all flew down, and one of her sisters came in with her husband, and they rented a car while they were here. Well, traffic and driving here in Florida is very different than the country roads of rural Maine. On the way to the church, her sister was driving the rental car and crashed into the back of another car. No one was injured, but the car did sustain some damage. Her sister still visits Florida every year, but has not driven a car here since then.

Anyway, we all made it to the church, and the ceremony begins. All of the groomsmen and bridesmaids are at the front, and Jeanne and I are saying our wedding vows.

Now the funny thing to keep in mind is that this was a small country church, and the air conditioning just wasn’t powerful enough to keep the room cool. This is Florida in July, and it was terribly hot outside, and uncomfortably warm inside.

So while we’re saying our vows, my little brother – the one with the poorly fitting shirt, and the jacket that he can’t remove – well, he’s getting overheated and he’s standing there for that extended period of time with his knees locked. And he passed out. Just dropped like a rock.

The videographer at that moment had his video camera focused on Jeanne and I so in the video you don’t see Shawn fall – you just see the expression on our faces when we realize what happened. You do hear the fall though, because he hit a bench on the way down. He wasn’t out for long, and he wasn’t injured, just embarrassed.

But the ceremony went on, and we got married, and we headed off to Daytona Beach for our honeymoon. And while we were there, the stone actually DID fall out of her engagement ring again. And this time the jeweler wouldn’t replace it because it looks like we’re just trying to scam them for more diamonds.

In the long run, it all worked out. On July 7, just a few days from now, we’ll celebrate 38 years.

For some stories, you just have to experience them to believe that they actually happened. This is definitely one of those stories. I was at a favorite client’s house of mine. This family used to be home every time I visit. Now, they’re traveling the country with the husband’s new role as a consultant. So, I cleaned an empty big house – 3,000 square feet – at a very nice suburbia. It has a 3-car garage. I would park my vehicle just outside the garage on the driveway. Then, I would go and grab the key from the front because they would leave it in a little dish for me. Then, I would go into the garage, open the back door with the key, type in the combo on the padlock in the kitchen to turn the alarm off, and then I would commence my cleaning. Normally, I would bring all my gears in and do that process. Well, on this one particular visit, I did not get all my gear in – I forgot a few things, but I got most of my stuff in. Obviously, I got the key from the front porch. I walked around the back. I let myself in, opened up the back kitchen door, turned off the alarm, and started to work.

I realized I forgot some paper towels, a filter back from a vacuum, and a couple of cleaning supplies. So, I wanted to go back outside to grab the pieces that I needed to clean the house. If you can imagine this large kitchen with an Eden, there’s a side door that goes into the garage – the family uses this door. Most households don’t use their front door – let’s be honest. They use their side door and this side door opened up into the garage, which was the main entrance in and out of the house for the family – it’s the one that I used. When I opened that door, I walked down the steps. As I was walking down, I pressed the button on the garage door and the door started to open. I was walking down the steps across the concrete. I looked out the side windows. I noticed there was a squad car sitting in the driveway. I was thinking, “Well, that’s interesting. What’s a cop doing there?” My first thought was, “Oh gee. I’ve had half a dozen times where, maybe, I’ve tripped the alarm.” There are all different ways that you can trip alarms and the cops would show up, ask me for ID, and make sure that I was supposed to be there. I’ve been through this before, so my first thought was, “Oh look. A squad car. I must have tripped something.”

I didn’t realize where the cops were and I didn’t know the background of what was going on, so I’ll just take you from my angle. So, I proceeded to walk in, like, “The Matrix” slow-motion. The garage door was opening. There were my footsteps. I saw the squad car. I got closer to the garage. The garage door was opening 10 feet away. I saw a pair of black boots at the bottom of this garage door. It keeps going up. Then, that reveals a pair of grey pants with a blue stripe on the side. I immediately recognized, “Oh, that’s a policeman, I suppose”. So, I walked closer to the door. The door got to waist level. I saw his bottom end. I saw the side arm being pulled up. At that moment when I saw that, the nice man in blue said, “Get on your knees!” I’m like, “Yeah, yes sir! Hell, yes sir!” I got down on my knees as quickly as I could. The door kept going up and revealing the rest of the cop and the patrolman that was with him – his partner.

Both of them had guns pointing at the cleaner in the garage. Why? I don’t know what I did wrong. Did I not flush the toilet last time when I was there? I don’t know what did I do wrong. I was just on my knees waiting for my instructions. He said, “What are you doing here?” “I’m just the cleaner, sir.” He looked at me. He saw that I have a cleaning shirt on. He said, “Is that your vehicle?” I said, “Yes, sir.” He said, “Don’t move”. He sent that partner over, “Hey, go check out his car.” He went over, looked at the car, and then I heard back, “Yup, he’s a cleaner. I see a vacuum cleaner stuff. I see some other things. Unless he got a really good ruse or he’s a con man, I think it really is a cleaner.” “All right let me see what you got in your pocket. I said, “Sir, all I have in there is my wallet which doesn’t have much money in it, and my keys”. He was like, “Do it slowly”. I was like, “I’m being interrogated like I’m a criminal. This is crazy!” Guns were still pointed at me.

Eventually, he lets off of the tension and he said, “Okay, you can stand up now. It looks like you’re good. I need to see your license and your ID”. I said, “Yes, sir”. I got my wallet. I gave my ID and he did a check. I just kind of stood there at that point. The partner was running a full-scale background check on me to make sure I am who I say I am. Of course, my name probably showed up as a cleaner. I’ve been background-checked 5 times in the past year for tripping other alarms. So, I finally talked to the officer who had cooled down and his gun back in his holster.

Only moments before, my heartbeat was fluttering like a butterfly and freaking out. Now, I just started joking around. I don’t know where the jokes came from. I really don’t know. “Why do you think this was funny?” “I don’t know. I guess I spent too much time alone cleaning houses, but I did think it was funny.” So, here’s what I asked him, “Officer, why did you point a gun at me? I’m just a cleaner.” He says, “We had reason to believe that this house was being burglarized”. I said, “Okay, that makes sense. I can understand that. Sir, why would you think that I was burglarizing the house?” “We got a tip”. “Okay, what kind of tip did you get?” They said, “Well, one of the neighbors called and saw suspicious activity”. I said, “Suspicious activity like vacuuming and cleaning a bathroom? Was that suspicious to them?” He was like, “Alright, wise guy”. Like, I need to shut up sometimes – I really do. He said, “No, they said that they saw an unidentified man go to the front of the house looking all around trying to break in. Then, they saw him disappear to the back of the house looking around and trying to break in. Then, suddenly, he wasn’t in the back of the house or the front of the house. Somehow, he was in the house with the lights on, so they immediately called the cops to report it”.

So, of course, I explained my situation. “Let me explain this, officer. I went to the front of the house because that’s where the homeowner leaves the key for me. Then, I went to the back of the house because that’s where the door that the key works for. Then, I went into the house to clean. So, I am very sorry for any misunderstanding. May I go now?” He said, “Let me just check a few more things out here”. After a few more moments, at that point, I was, kind of, goofing around with the partner and asking him if he did this before – if he’s ever pointed a gun at a cleaner or a roofer a plumber”. Of course, I was just being a “wise guy”. Then, I finally got let go. They took off and wrote the report. I went back in to clean.

I called the homeowners and let them know what happened. I said, “Mister, Missus so-and-so, I just wanna let you know what happened”. They were freaking out. They’re not happy with the situation. They went as far as to call the police station and the neighbor to report everything and to let them know that, in the future, there is a gentleman that comes to our house once a month. “He has this car. He cleans for us. He is not a burglar.” That’s a crazy thing that happened. I’ve never had a gun pointed at me. In my days of growing up in the Philadelphia suburbs, doing dumb things as a teenager never had a gun pulled on me until I was cleaning a house in suburbia.

Hi, my name is Alex. This is how shoveling snow as a kid got me a job later in life when I needed it the most. During snow days and weekends, when we would get a lot of snow in upstate New York, I would go around and shovel people’s driveways and walkways, and shovel their cars out. But instead of asking for money first, I would just do the job. I had a little business card that I would take to their door with how much they owed me if they wanted to pay. Some people didn’t. Most people did – I’d find it in my mailbox or they would call and have me come pick it up. I did this when I was about 10 or 11. I grew up super poor with not a lot of money. I just had to find things myself. That’s how I bought my PS2 in, I think, the year 2000. Years and years later, I experienced a long bout of homelessness, which is what it is. It was an experience that I now know gives me strength and you something I always look back on knowing where I came from.

After years of homelessness, I finally got the strength and be like, “I need to find a better job”. So what I did is– I had a gym membership to Planet Fitness at the time. I took the best clothes I had, washed them in the sink as best as I could – I used hand sanitizing soap to wash them to make them as clean as I could – and hung them outside, and they dried after a day or so. Then, I went and applied to a big box hardware store. The day came for my interview and I was so nervous. I assumed that they would know I was homeless because I was scraggly. I sat down in the interview. A guy walked in, sat down, and looked at me strangely. I first thought, “Oh, he knows immediately. I gotta leave” but I stayed because I really wanted the job.

After maybe 10-20 minutes of interview, he said, “Did you used to live on the road that I used to live on?” I went, “Oh yeah. I lived down there when I was a kid.” He was like, “Did you use to shovel my driveway?” I was like, “I’ve shoveled lots of driveways. I assume that I did.” and his face lit up and he said, “I always wondered who did it. I always wondered what happened. I love the drive.” He wanted to say that he was so busy working and he didn’t get to see his kids as much as he wanted to, me shoveling gave him just that little time to spend with his children before they went to school. So I was like, “Oh, that’s really great!” The emotion in his face– He didn’t even interview me anymore. He just gave me the job on the spot. He was like, “If that is the same worth ethic you have now, then you’re gonna be perfect for this job.” I’ll never forget that man and what he did for me because, now, I’m married with children and I have a home of my own – that all started from that. I can just think back that it all started from that one day of when I started shoveling snow to where I ended up today.

My name is Kathy and this is a story about the time when I got lost in the Mojave Desert as a little girl. I grew up in Southern California. My family spent a lot of time camping in the Mojave. On one trip, when I was about 11 years old, I wanted to tag along with my dad, my brother and a friend of my dad’s while they went out to hunt rabbits. I had a hard time keeping up with them. I tried to take a shortcut to catch up. When doing so, my foot slipped off a rock and it was punctured by the thick sharp point of a century plant. Since I was only wearing canvas sneakers, the point went through the side of my foot and I was bleeding quite a bit. My dad came back to find me. When I showed him my foot, he told me to go back to camp. I guess he assumed I knew how to get back. Well, I didn’t. Before I knew it, I was hopelessly lost as I kept walking and found myself atop some huge boulders – some as big as a car. I started climbing down. This time, I was getting worried but not too much. I found myself on a boulder that was too big to jump off to the next one, so I laid on my belly and started sliding down. I thought I was touching the next boulder, so I let go. Well, I wasn’t touching and I fell hard under that rock. That was it. I started crying and screaming, “Mom! Mom!” I had no idea if she could hear me, but she did. After a few minutes, she kept calling my name so I could find my way back to camp. Needless to say, my mom was fuming mad. She called my dad an SOB, and said, “I hope he doesn’t get any rabbits.” I was just relieved to be safely back at camp

I always love to play soccer as a kid. When I was 13, I started to notice that running was a lot harder than it used to be. One day, I could run the mile at practice with no problem. The next, I was short of breath, lightheaded, and on the verge of passing out. That year, I was diagnosed with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy or HCM. Living with HCM just kind of became my new normal. As crazy as it sounds, one of the primary risks for people with HCM is sudden cardiac arrest. While no cure exists, a preventative treatment option for this is something called an implantable cardioverter defibrillator – or ICD for short – and it does exactly what an external defibrillator can do. It administers life-saving shocks to a heart in the event of a cardiac arrest. As you might imagine, if my heart ever needed a shock from the ICD, chances are I would be out cold unconscious and wouldn’t feel a thing. But Just in case I ever received what the medical community calls an “inappropriate shock”, I was given a magnet to carry with me at all times. These aren’t ordinary fridge magnets – they’re heavy doughnut-shaped magnets powerful enough to turn ICDs off simply by placing one on your chest over the device.

In 2010, I was 18 years old living at home and pregnant. One night, in early January, I was laying on my parent’s bed talking to my mom. Out of nowhere, I was hit by a wave of pain so intense – it felt like an invisible force had exploded inside my body accompanied by a loud bang that only thing I could hear. I instinctively cried out as my body twisted in pain. Before my mom and I could figure out what was going on, it happened again and I let out another blood-curdling scream. My whole body felt nothing but crippling searing pain. Whatever was happening only lasted a second but it was coming from an unseen and unknown source. I was terrified. That’s when I realized that my ICD was firing and I was receiving inappropriate shocks. This wasn’t supposed to happen. I was awake and conscious. I wasn’t in cardiac arrest. I felt fine. There’s no reason why my ICD should be firing.

I frantically yelled for someone to grab my magnet off the kitchen fridge. Relief washed over me when I placed it over my chest – I thought the nightmare was over – but my sense of relief was abandoned seconds later when I was shocked again. At that point, most of my family was in the room trying to figure out what the hell was going on.

We only lived a few blocks from the hospital, so they lifted me up from the bed to help me get dressed before leaving. As I went to put on my coat, I was shocked again. At that point, I had placed 2-3 magnets over my chest but something was wrong and the magnets weren’t working. I knew this probably wasn’t going to stop and we needed help. My siblings watched in horror as my parents walked me down our sidewalk to the truck. Each time the ICD went off, I let out a toe-curling scream and my body would crumble. I remember trying to step into the backseat, but the sheer force of another shock pushed me face-forward on my stomach. The pain was so intense that I started to black out. I was shocked a few more times on the way to the hospital and almost lost consciousness with each one. My dad drove like a madman to the emergency room where we were greeted by two nurses with a gurney.

As they rushed me inside, I was begging for relief, saying, “Please just put me to sleep.” But a nurse turned to me and said, “I’m sorry. We can’t do that because you’re pregnant.” However, it didn’t take long for the staff to realize I needed something to make me drowsy – something to help with the pain. Then, they called the only defibrillator technician within a 50-mile radius who had the ability to turn the damn thing off. While we waited for him to arrive, the shocks continued every few minutes – each time, I would cry in pain and my body would bend and flex out of shape. I bit my tongue several times and remember tasting the blood in my mouth. I had never felt pain like that in my entire life. I just wanted relief so so badly.

When the ICD tech arrived, he opened what I call the “suitcase”. They used that system since I was 13 to read the data on my device, adjust settings, turn it on and off, check battery life, etc, but even the tech couldn’t seem to get a reading on it. By the time he gained control of my ICD, the battery was nearly depleted and I had been electrocuted dozens and dozens of times. After the ICD was shut off, I was taken by ambulance to a different hospital.

The next morning, I woke up confused and disoriented. Panic set in when I looked to my left and saw this purple log attached to my body – it was my arm swollen and discolored as a result of the electrical shocks. I could barely move it. I couldn’t even clench my fist. I suddenly realized it wasn’t just my arm that could be injured. What about my baby? I called for the nurse anxiously to know if my daughter was okay. I had just been shocked by a defibrillator inside my body and I had no idea what that might do to an unborn child. The nurse let me listen to her heartbeat, reassuring me that she was alive and well.

Soon afterward, the cardiac team came to speak with me about what had happened and how that was even possible. They disclosed that had I not been pregnant, I would likely not have survived the incident – my heart would have been irreversibly damaged by the electrical shocks. However, because I was pregnant, I had a nice protective cushion of water weight surrounding my nerves and organs. This tiny badass had, in a way, saved my life. They still didn’t know why my ICD did what it did, but there was a recall on my particular model and the damn thing needed to come out, which meant a new one had to go back in. So, that was incredibly difficult. I lived in fear every day of something like this happening again. I’m glad I didn’t refuse a new ICD simply because, later in life, I would experience cardiac arrest more than once and the ICD save me each time.

I was discharged from the hospital a day or two later. I wanted to be home so badly. As soon as my dad pulled into our driveway, my body started to shake. I felt dizzy and I choked back tears at that time. I didn’t understand why this was happening. Later, I learned that this was PTSD. When the front door opened, I saw my mom and sister standing there, which pushed my emotions over the edge. I let go of everything I had been holding in and melted into my mom’s arms.

Over the next several months, my body was recovering beautifully. However, it didn’t take long for me to realize I was letting fear keep me from living my life. I didn’t want my trauma to have control over my happiness. So, I started EMDR therapy. After a handful of sessions, I was already doing much better. I felt guilty because I knew that night had left my family traumatized as well. They were all affected by what they saw and felt. I will never really know what it was like for them, but I do know they’re incredibly strong, resilient people and I’ve been privileged to hear their experiences anytime they’ve been willing to share. I don’t necessarily know if I believe that everything happens for a reason, but I do believe in the strength and resilience of the human spirit. By telling this story, I hope it helps my family further process what took place, I hope it helps those listening who may have suffered trauma and are considering EMDR therapy and, lastly, I hope it reminds people that trauma doesn’t deserve to control our happiness and it most certainly doesn’t have to.

For my entire childhood, I was the only child of a single mother growing up in Birmingham, Alabama. At the age of 16, my mother found my father’s family in Orlando, Florida, but discovered that he had died of testicular cancer four years earlier. Nonetheless, I got to know cousins and aunts and uncles. Through them, I got to know what my father, Joe, was like – kind of vague ideas of what life could have been like had he met me and been a part of my life. So, for the next 30 years, sometimes, with large gaps in between, this was my extended family down in Florida.

Fast forward to Christmas 2018, which was the first holidays I had with my new husband, his mother had given us both the gift of an AncestryDNA kit. This was so we can find out our ethnic national heritages, particularly for my husband, to see how Native American fit into his ancestry. Now, after my first test failed, I tried it again. Finally, I got my results back in April of 2019. One of the features of AncestryDNA is the ability to see genetic matches and reach out to people who could be family members. Well, I started receiving messages from a particular woman down in South Alabama, whose name I didn’t recognize at all. I brought this up to my mother, who went silent. She recognized that last name. Back in 1972, she had dated two men – one named Joe, and the other named Leroy. In her own mind and timeline, Joe seemed like the correct pick when it came to being my father. However, this DNA results indicated it was Leroy instead. I came to find out that both men had actually visited me as a baby but at separate times, but neither wanting to take on the role of a father at that time.

One of the most surprising stories my mother told me was that a favorite panda bear doll that I had as a kid actually came from Leroy’s toy shop. The woman who had messaged me on AncestryDNA turns out to be one of 3 half sisters I now have on my father’s side. Now, he is alive and well. It’s been quite the adjustment to no longer have a dead father or the need to worry about testicular cancer. But as of yet, Leroy has no interest in meeting me. So we’ll see where that goes.

Hi, Scott. My name is Samantha. I was just listening to your bonus episode of childbirth stories, and one thing was missing – my story. My second child, my son, was extremely healthy throughout the pregnancy. There were no indications of any health issues at all. The labor was fairly quick – I wouldn’t say easy, but he came out with no problem at all. I looked down at him and I said, “Oh, he has Down syndrome.” I remember very vividly the midwife shushing me. I looked back at her and said, “Look at him. Look at his eyes. They’re all in shape. They’re beautiful. But he has Down syndrome.” I have to say that, at that moment, it was probably the most frightened and unsure I’ve ever been. I had so many questions about what this child would be like, “Would I be able to take care of him? Would he love me? Would he be able to speak?” So many ridiculous thoughts came through my mind. Today, he is 9 years old and the greatest blessing of my life. I have grown so much as a person just being able to be his mother. He is smart. He is funny. He is mischievous. My favorite part of his birth story is when I asked him, “When you were born, what was the first word that you said to mommy?” And he said, “Surprise!!!”

My name is Caroline. I was listening to podcast number 110 – Jen is a professional bridesmaid – which was really a fun lesson. That shows that there’s a niche for everyone. My attention was drawn to the listener story at the end of the podcast, which was about Scott’s own wedding. My husband and I share the same anniversary date – July 7. It brought up some memories for sure. We were married by the Justice of the Peace in Maine on July 7, 1977, which makes our anniversary date very easy to remember 7/7/77. The truth is we really didn’t pick that date.

We had arrived in Maine on a vacation in early July. At that point, we had been together for two years and we had been talking about getting married. So, we thought, “Wouldn’t it be great to get married in the quaint beautiful town of Bar Harbor, Maine?” So, we went to the town hall to get our license and figured that we would get married that day – July 6. However, Maine has this quirky law that a couple must wait a day after getting a license to actually get married. I guess it gives couples a chance to change their minds. So, the next day was July 7. Obviously, we didn’t change our minds – we did get married – but that wasn’t the end of the story.

On the way back home, we stopped by my new in-law’s cottage in New Hampshire. Out of the blue, my husband’s father blurted out, “Isn’t it about time you two get married?” My poor husband was taken off guard and stammered, “Well, yeah. That’s a good idea.” So right off the bat, again, the family’s plans for a wedding. We didn’t have the heart to tell him that we were already married. They wanted a full church wedding and all that goes with it. One problem was I didn’t have a family. I grew up in foster homes and there was no one to help me. I was on my own. I had to make decisions the best I could and be my own support system. I knew nothing about the protocol and planning a wedding. Also, we didn’t have much money and I had schools to pay off. So, finally, I spoke up and insisted on a simple wedding. I found a pretty dress off the rack and the reception was in my husband’s family’s backyard. Fortunately, the wedding went well and his family was happy. We were happy. It costs us only $2,500.

So, that wedding date is September 3, 1977, which was two months from our first marriage date. I can’t believe that it actually took us only two months to plan this wedding. Anyway, we have two marriage certificates and 2 dates. Later, we heard through the grapevine that there were some who thought our marriage would never last, probably, because I’m 13 years older than my husband, but they were wrong, of course. 45 years later, our marriage is still alive, well, and going strong. We’re truly suited for each other. What we do know for sure is that we have each other and a soft place to land when things get tough. It’s been a wild 45-year adventure. I say good luck to all those who are planning a wedding. I know, for sure, that plans don’t always go as planned. So, be flexible and accept that change of plans and go with the flow.

Hi, Scott. I’d love an opportunity to tell you about my pregnancy in 2018. It was our first wedding anniversary when my husband and I found out that we were pregnant. We were thrilled. Unfortunately, our excitement didn’t last. At our 18-week anatomy scan, we learned that we were having a boy and that something was wrong. Our baby was measuring, like, way too small. At 21 weeks, I developed a potentially life-threatening maternal complication. So in order to continue the pregnancy, I would have to remain hospitalized until delivery.

A few days into my hospitalization, a resident doctor walked into my room with the paperwork necessary to obtain an abortion. She explained to me that, in our state, there was a 24-hour waiting period between filing this paperwork and obtaining the abortion. Due to the nature of my condition, I could go from stable to unstable very quickly. My doctor didn’t want any red tape delaying my treatment, so it was best to have this paperwork on hand in the event that we needed it. Of course, I did not want an abortion. I wanted a baby. But I also knew that it was important for my doctor to practice medicine within the confines of the law. So I begrudgingly signed the paperwork in tears. The resident then told me that she was also required by law to show me a booklet meant to educate me on normal fetal development. Of course, the baby in my body was not developing normally. She very mercifully held the booklet out in front of me, flipped through it as quickly as one of those animated flipbooks, said “There. I showed it to you”, threw the booklet in the trash, and walked out of the room.

One morning, about 5 weeks into my hospitalization. I was taken from my room for an ultrasound, which I had been doing bi-weekly throughout my hospitalization. This ultrasound was different. In the middle of it, the ultrasound tech put down her wand and said, “I’m gonna go call your doctor. I’ll be right back.” I knew that couldn’t be good. I still had no idea what was going on when the door to my hospital room opened and my husband walked in after less than an hour. My husband was in his first year of an internal medicine residency at a hospital across town, so I hardly saw him at all. Nonetheless, at 9 AM on a weekday, just a few minutes later, the door opened again, and a pack of about 10 people walked in – many of whom I had never seen before. One of them was my maternal fetal medicine (MFM) doctor. She told us that our baby had developed an additional complication in utero. This complication was exceedingly dangerous for the pregnant person and it was no longer reasonable to continue the pregnancy. It was time for the pregnancy to end.

A man from the group then introduced himself to us as the hospital’s neonatologist. He explained that, because our son was so growth-restricted and so small, they didn’t have instruments small enough to perform the procedures on him that would be necessary in order to save his life. They didn’t have breathing tools that are small enough for his windpipe. They didn’t have IVs small enough for his blood vessels. Trying and shove a tube down his throat that was too big for his throat would be akin to torture. Due to this new complication, his chances of survival were very slim even in the best of circumstances. With him being so small, he stood no chance. He would not and could not resuscitate the baby. The NICU team then left the room and we were left to absorb the information that all hope for our son was lost.

My MFM then explained to us that my baby was likely too weak to survive labor. So, in order to avoid an “abortion”, she would need to deliver the baby via cesarean. That way, she could pull the baby out alive. After the baby came out alive, they would give the baby comfort care and allow the baby to die on the outside while I was being sewn up on the operating table. This plan was appalling to me. It was incredibly invasive and unnecessarily dramatic for both me and my son, but I thought I had no choice. I was 26 weeks pregnant in a state where, at that time, my choice has ended a few weeks earlier. Now, it’s much earlier. So I took a shower and washed with a special soap intended to disinfect my belly before a planned cesarean.

As I stepped out of the shower, I decided that there was no way that this was how it was going to go down. I wanted to be induced. Well, obviously, what I wanted was a healthy baby and a healthy pregnancy. Given my circumstances, I wanted to be induced and deliver my baby vaginally even if that meant he came out dead, even if that was against the law, even if it meant putting my very wonderful MFM medical license at risk. I wanted my son to have as peaceful of a death as possible. I wanted him to be warm, to hear my beating heart, and to be held inside of me as his little life slipped away. He was my son and I was his mother. If this was my one and only chance to protect him, so be it.

I told my OB that I refused a cesarean. She agreed that a caesarian was not medically necessary and that, ultimately, the outcome for my son would be the same. Many hours of brainstorming, pleading and phone calls followed. I was on my hospital bed. Eventually, the hospital agreed that if my case was reviewed by another MFM from a separate practice – I was interviewed by another doctor – and the doctors agreed, I could be permitted the induction. 14 hours after that morning’s ultrasound, the induction began. I quickly had to change my mindset, from fighting with the bureaucracy to preparing myself mentally and emotionally to do what I was about to do. I just prayed and prayed and prayed that I would be brave enough to do it. I labored for 26 hours and he came out dead. He was so incredible to look at. I was just overwhelmed with this duality of meeting my baby for the first time he was finally here but he was also gone.

I kept his body in my hospital room with me for 2 nights. On the third day, when the funeral director came to pick him up, I had to hand him over to him. It was honestly one of the most painful experiences of my life. Much of what happened to me and to my son was nobody’s fault. God’s will is a mystery and Mother Nature can be cruel, but it was made so much worse by the politics that surround pregnancy. My son’s name was Alex. He was so wanted and so loved. Being his mother is one of the greatest honors of my life, and I will mourn him until the day I die.

In the year 2000 – which sounds like the future, but it’s really the past – I was a young kid who had no money but wanted to travel around all the time, of course, like many young kids. So I went to Israel and there was an uprising. My parents were freaking out every day, so I went backpacking in Egypt for a while and they freaked out even more because I couldn’t go back. I finally left in the middle of a college semester. I couldn’t just rejoin my university, so I headed down to Mexico to take some Spanish classes to kill some time until the following semester. Of course, I had nowhere to stay, so I found a place through friends of friends of friends, literally, on the roof of these old people’s house in Mexico City. This wasn’t in a normal neighborhood. A lot of the houses were unfinished cinderblocks. There wasn’t a whole lot of public transport around. There were these buses that would take you somewhere for a buck. Occasionally but very rarely, a taxi would drive by.

One day, about 7-8 PM, I was going to meet a friend of mine down in the center of Mexico City. I decided, “I’m dressed nice. I’m going to take a taxi. I don’t want to take the bus and walk and be all dirty.” So I flagged down a taxi. It took me a while but I got kind of lucky when one drove by. I didn’t have any cash, so I told the driver, “Hey, I need to go to the ATM. I only have a credit card.” He said, “No problem. No problem.” This is Mexico City, I wanted to go directly to the center, right near the presidential palace – it’s called the Zócalo. Every driver knows what this is. Well, the taxi driver was driving further and further away from this, and that was weird to me. Mexico City is shaped like a bowl. If you go up, you’re going further away from the center. If you’re going down, you’re going towards the center. Essentially, the whole city is sinking, so it’s really easy to navigate by sight when you’re going to the center anyway.

I knew we were going the wrong way so, finally, I asked him, “Where are we going?” I thought maybe there’s traffic, maybe there’s an accident. He said, “I’m going to ask my friend for directions.” This was a major red flag because this is, like, a cabbie in Washington DC saying that he’s going to ask for directions when you want to go to the White House or a New York cabbie having to ask for directions to take you to Times Square – it just didn’t add up. It didn’t make any sense. This is before mobile phones, so I wasn’t scrolling Instagram or social media and distracting myself. I was looking out the window and worrying if I was about to get kidnapped. My brain was thinking, “Well, you’ve never been kidnapped before, so why would you get kidnapped now?” I realized that was a logical fallacy and I started to think, “What if I am getting kidnapped? What if this guy has taken me to the proverbial place where nobody can hear you scream? I don’t really want to do that to myself. I got a whole life ahead of me. What is going to happen?”

I told him to just let me out. He said, “No.” I told him to drive me back to where I was and I would pay him. He said, “Hey, I thought you said you didn’t have any cash on you.” I was like, “Damn, of course. I should have played that one closer to the vest.” That’s when I realized that I’m either going to get robbed – people are gonna get in the car and take me around – or I’m gonna get chopped up into little pieces or something like that in the basement. I don’t want to find out which one of these it is. I tried to get out but the door locks actually sunk below flush with the door handle, and I couldn’t get the door open. I thought this is actually a kidnap mobile, intentionally or not. The doors won’t open. I can’t get the door open at all. I can’t unlock it myself. The driver kept going. I kept trying to finagle and figure out ways to get out. He kept sort of acting friendly, but a little agitated because he knew I was agitated, and I knew something was up because if somebody wants to get out of your car that bad and you’re not up to something, you’ll let the creep out of your car, but he would not go for it.

Finally, he stopped in front of this cinderblock house and it’s really looking bad. This is a really rough area. There’s no street lighting. The roads are really awful. I was thinking that this was sort of a bad neighborhood. This is not a place where happy, productive people live and work and play. I was sitting behind him. He didn’t really notice that I slid from behind the passenger seat to behind the driver’s side. I put my arm between him and the door quietly and I said, “Don’t get out of the car. Keep driving. I don’t want to get out here. Go back to a place that has better lighting.” He said, “This is my friend’s house. Relax. I’m just going to ask for directions.” Remember, again, pre-mobile phones. He couldn’t call anyone to ask for directions. He couldn’t get directions online. He also couldn’t warn anyone that he was coming in advance. So, I figured he’s going to run out, go to the house, get a couple of thugs to get into the car with me – that’s the best-case scenario. The worst case is they drag me out of the car and nobody ever hears from me again. So I told him again in no uncertain terms to get out of here.

We are leaving. We are not getting out here. Instead, he made a fast one for the door. Again, remember I had my arm between him and the door. He didn’t make it out of the car. I was 20 years old. I worked out twice a day and I ate carne asada nonstop. He was 50-something years old or even older and he sat in a cab all day, maybe, eating the occasional burrito or rice bowl – he was not in good shape. There was a physical altercation. He ended up losing that physical altercation. He got choked out basically by me from the backseat and still couldn’t get the car door open. I pushed him out of his driver’s side door and tried to drive the 1968 stick shift. Not only can you not drive that if you don’t know the trick with the clutch and the shifter and all that stuff, it’s an old car. Even if you can drive a stick, you’re freaking out. You’re vibrating at about 1000 RPM or whatever your wrists and hands are doing at that point with all that adrenaline. No way was I going to figure that out at that moment, so I took the keys, threw them – 2020, in hindsight, I should have kept the keys so nothing ever came of it – and ran until I couldn’t run anymore.

I got to the main road and a couple stopped and picked me up. They didn’t want to pick me up – I looked like a crazy person – but I was wearing Banana Republic chinos and a nice blue dress shirt that I had soaked through with sweat. I had fake blonde hair. I was 20. I had fake blonde hair. Finally, someone stopped and said, “What’s going on?” I said, “I got kidnapped.” They said, “What are you talking about?” I said, “Get me out of here.” They’re like, “We’re not letting you in the car, you sweaty gringo.” Finally, I offered to ride in the trunk of a car, but they didn’t make me do that. They let me sit in the backseat and offered to take me somewhere. I said, “Take me to the police,” which was when I got a nice, sort of, tongue-lashing about how the police are probably in on any kidnapping scheme that’s going on in the area. “Also, where’s that cabbie? Is he still alive? If he’s not, you could be in deeper trouble than you think.” I thought these are all very valid points. So, the guy wouldn’t take me home. He didn’t want to know where I lived, so he took me to a metro station. That night, I packed up all my crap in the middle of the night and got the first bus really, really early. I spent most of the time at the bus station, moved to a different city, and never went back.

This is interesting and traumatic, but I love it – anything traumatic that’s happened. I recently moved. I know that you’re actually located in Florida, and I just moved to a small town called Dunedin – a really small, cute, quaint, safe town right outside of Clearwater. I had gotten into an argument with my boyfriend. We were at a brewery. We lived about a mile down the road. I said I was gonna walk home, which is something that I normally do. I have a dog. Less than a mile down the street, it got a little dark than I had anticipated. I was just walking down a couple of blocks.

Then, this guy pulled up, jumped out of his car, and shoved me into his car. It was terrifying. The guy kept trying to touch me – my legs – and I was just pushing them off me. Eventually, we got to a parking lot – I guess it was some bar. Clearly, he was trying to assault me. I was able to get out of the car. I said that I needed to pee, so he actually took my shorts off of me, which is just absolutely insane. I hid behind a dumpster and I was able to text my boyfriend where I was. My boyfriend came and saw a strange man. He even hit me behind a dumpster. I didn’t even have my pants on. I was terrified. I was crying. My boyfriend stopped the guy, got me, and really begged me to call the cops. Unfortunately, I’ve been a victim of sexual assault in the past and it has not turned out very well – it’s just more traumatizing. Since I wasn’t actually hurt, I would say “Attempted abduction and attempted assault,” but nothing actually happened to me. I felt like, “It’s fine. I’ll just continue with my therapy.” The interesting part is that I lost my phone. After I realized that, I canceled it. My phone was taken. The next day, it was inbound to Louisiana. So, I think I dodged a trafficking attempt – not really sure. I’m very lucky to be here. Just to put things in perspective, that’s kind of what happens even in the safest town. So, be safe.

Hi, I’m Bill Mitchell. Back in 1972, I was an art student at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Today, they call that school “MICA”. It’s in Baltimore, Maryland. I was a graphic designer – at least, I was working my way into becoming one. Way before I went to art school, I was very much into the work of the paintings of Norman Rockwell. Some people would refer to Rockwell as an illustrator. Fine artists didn’t see him as a fine artist or even an artist. He was an illustrator, which was their way of saying, “He got paid for what he did.” I was very much into him.

In the summer of 1972, I was 21 and I had to go to pick up some things at a store. There was a rack of paperbacks there, and I saw a book called, “My adventures as an illustrator” by Norman Rockwell. So, I picked it up because I was curious to see the backstory on Norman Rockwell – I just couldn’t put it down – his story all the way back to being a little scrawny boy growing up in New England. It kind of takes you through his time working as the top art person at “Boys’ Life” doing paintings and drawings for them. Later, there are his work with The Saturday Evening Post and the paintings he did for World War 2 and on and on and on. I mean, just thousands of paintings, I guess

I thought, “Well, wait a minute. How old is this man?” I found out that he was 78. When you’re 21 or 22, somebody who’s 78 seems like, “That guy could leave us at any moment.” I thought, “Well, wow. I’d really love to meet this man.” I didn’t know where he lives precisely, so I sent out some letters and I tried to find out through the library. Of course, in 1972, you had no access to the internet – you didn’t have Google. I found out that he lived in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. I thought, “I got to meet this guy. I got to shake his hand. I need to make contact with him.”

All I knew was that he lived in Stockbridge. On a map, of course, I could see it’s going to take me a while to get there, and I thought, “I’m doing this.” Around the corner lives my girlfriend who is currently my wife all these years. Anyway, the deal was I’d pick her up at about 3 AM and we would just go to Stockbridge. I didn’t have an address. I didn’t have an invitation. We’re going to meet this guy. So, off we went in my little Volkswagen and got up there somewhere around, I’d say, 9 o’clock in the morning,

I didn’t have an address, so I thought I would just meet people and ask, “Where does Norman Rockwell live?” Well, they didn’t really want to tell me. They looked at him as, kind of, this treasure of theirs, and they’re not going to have some guy from out of town just go and bother this man. I actually stopped, saw some guys getting ready to tee off on a golf course, and ran up to them. They looked at each other and said, “Well, we really don’t want to say.” I couldn’t get it out of anyone until I bumped into some guy who was mowing a lawn. I walked up to this young kid and asked if he knew where Norman Rockwell lives. He said, “He lives around the corner here. Just go down the end of the street and make a right. Take a look down a gray gravel driveway, and you’ll see his studio.”

I’ve seen pictures of the studio. I’ve read his book. We kind of drove down that way. My wife and I got out. I was very nervous. I started walking up this short driveway and could see through the side window, which was like the northern window because artists or illustrators know to have the northern light coming in through the window because it doesn’t change much during the course of a day, so their paintings won’t change colors as much because of the light. I could see this white-haired man inside and I just said, “That’s got to be him!” So we started to go up the driveway a little bit.

Then, a door opened. I thought it was him, but it wasn’t – it was some man who looked like he was probably more than 50 years old, who walked up and intercepted us. He’s kind of a big guy. He walked up and he said, “What’s this all about?”

I told him who I was, “I was an art student.” I introduced my wife-to-be, and I said, “I just wanted to come up and meet this great man. He has influenced me so much.” He said, “Look, I really appreciate the fact that you came up here, but Mr. Rockwell has been traveling. He just got back yesterday. He has things to do in the studio today. So I’m just sorry. It’s so nice for you to come up, but I can’t.” I thought about the book “My Adventure” and asked, “Are you Louie Lamone?” He said, “Well, yeah, I am.” I turned to my wife. I said, “Wow, this man is Louie Lamone!”

Back in 1954, Mr. Rockwell had projects to do and he needed photos taken as reference for his paintings. Then, as it turned out, he found out about Louie Lamone here. He was an amateur photographer – darn, if they didn’t strike up this relationship. I turned to him, and I said, “I guess it’s still going strong.” He said, “Well, yes, it is.” This man was pretty impressed that I had done my homework and I was really into this. I wasn’t just some pesky tourist. So he said, “I can’t really make any promises, but I can go and talk with him. I’ll let you know what happens.” The next thing you know, he went into the studio, came back, and said, “Well, it turns out Mr. Rockwell said, ‘You can come in for a few minutes.’ You can meet him.”

We must have spent the better part of an hour in that studio with Norman Rockwell with Louie Lamone. I didn’t even ask, but he started to give me a tour of his studio. He showed me where he kept his brushes and where he cleaned them. He showed me his easel which was set up there. That was it. That was our meeting with Norman Rockwell and it was just this perfect day. It was August of ‘72. I’ll never forget it. To me, I usually use that story as one of these things where if you really have your heart set on something, you should pursue it. I didn’t really think that I would meet him and have that happen like it did. It was just a perfect meeting – just long enough, just great enough. Anyway, I just wanted to share that. Thank you for listening.

Hi, Scott. When I was an emergency dispatcher back in the early 2000s, I was working on Christmas Eve. My officers were out searching for a parolee at large who was armed and dangerous. They had the helicopters out shining lights on the streets and neighborhoods where he was last seen. The search lasted for hours and he got away. The next night was Christmas. I was also working when I received a call from a young mother thanking me for the helicopter and the lights in her neighborhood the night before the commotion woke her toddler up. When she saw the lights out her window, she started pointing, jumping up and down, and screaming, “Santa Claus! Santa Claus!” The mom was so happy that we helped her child believe. I love it. I love your podcast. Thanks so much.

Hi, my name is Mark from Shorewood, Illinois. I worked in minor-league baseball for 5 years. My assigned job was the marketing department but, in the minors, everyone wears a lot of hats and pitches in wherever they can. This meant I spent a good amount of time in a mascot suit. The majority of my time in a suit was with a team in South Florida called the Stone Crabs. You can imagine the heat of being in a thick furry suit at noon on a July day in Florida. If you can get through the sweat though, being a mascot can be a pretty magical job. People constantly call your name, want to take pictures with you, and even have you sign things – cards, baseballs, and programs. I even had a kid give me his shoe and another give me his bare arm to sign. I also got to dance in the dugout in front of a sellout crowd of 4,000 roaring fans.

The one story that captures the true power of a mascot, however, is this. One night, I did my laps around the park. A few kids started following me. I turned around, gave them high fives, posed for pictures, did all my usual routine, and then turned to walk elsewhere. The kids kept following me. I noticed that there were more kids than there were last time. I decided to see how far they would go with this, so I started marching and swinging my arms dramatically at my sides. They copied it. I began marching my way around the entire stadium, and they followed. As we approached the third base feeding section, fans were starting to clap in time with our march. We continued on through the bowl. I led, the kids followed, and the clapping grew. Here was this mascot leading a band of children around the ballpark which is really quite incredible. We must have made 2 or 3 laps before the kids finally grew tired and went back to their families, but not before a few group photos were taken by grateful parents. It’s amazing how much power a shag carpet with a funny nose can have.

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The concept of guilt is an interesting thing to ponder.

Sometimes it’s justified and rational to feel guilty. If a young child breaks a rule but doesn’t want to admit it and get in trouble, the look of guilt might be all over their face and easy for a parent to read. They did something wrong, and they know it.

Adults are often the same way. If you do something to offend someone, or you knowingly break the law, you feel guilty. Because you are guilty.

But sometimes we feel that way, even if we HAVEN’T done anything wrong.

This is often the case with veterans who have been in war. They’re fighting shoulder to shoulder, on the front lines, and one day their buddy right next to them gets shot. One person dies, and the one who gets to go home feels intense guilt about that.

Or it might be a case where a person is drowning, and a stranger jumps in the water and saves their life, but the stranger ends up drowning. The person who was saved is left to wonder how to deal with the fact that they’re alive because someone else died.

My guest today is Hayley. When she was a teenager, she found herself in a dangerous situation. In the end, she was the only witness to two people getting murdered, right in front of her. And those two people were killed while they were trying to help keep her safe.

Hayley (left) and daughter in 2018Holly and JohnnyForrest prison photo in 2019If you’d like to contact Hayley, you can send her an email:
kattannie@yahoo.com

Full show notes and pictures for this episode are here:
https://WhatWasThatLike.com/126

This episode is sponsored by The Compulsive Storyteller podcast – short stories told by host Gregg LeFevre. Listen on any podcast app, or at TheCompulsiveStoryteller.com.

This episode is also sponsored by the Obscura podcast – the darker side of true crime. If you like the gritty details, listen on any podcast app, or at itsobscura.com.

Want to discuss this episode and other things with thousands of other WWTL listeners? Join our podcast Facebook group at WhatWasThatLike.com/facebook (many of the podcast guests are there as well)

Episode transcript (download transcript PDF):

The concept of guilt is an interesting thing to ponder.

Adults are often the same way. If you do something to offend someone, or you knowingly break the law, you feel guilty. Because you are guilty.

But sometimes we feel that way, even if we HAVEN’T done anything wrong.

Scott

You were a teenager when this happened. Were you kind of a rules-follower or were you more of, like, a rebellious teenager?

Hayley

Short answer – I was pretty rebellious at that time. To be honest with you, I hated my teenage years. I absolutely hated it. The only thing that really helped, I feel, at that time was just partying and drinking. That’s the only way that I could really have any kind of enjoyment.

Scott

How old were you when this happened?

Hayley

I was 17.

Scott

I know there were multiple people involved in the situation. Who was there or who was part of this?

Hayley

It was my sister, Holly, and her fiance, Johnny. They had 2 roommates, Robert and Robin.

Scott

So there were 4 people living in the house…

Hayley

Correct.

Scott

And then there were a few other people that came into the story a little later. We got Virgil, who’s a friend of Robert, and Forrest, who’s Virgil’s cousin. Then, Gary was a neighbor. So, a lot of names to keep track of here – we’ll mention them as they come in as part of the story. So, Holly and Johnny – your sister and her fiance – were having a 4th of July party at their house, but it really started, kind of, the day before.

Hayley

Correct.

Scott

What happened on July 3?

Hayley

Well, I had gone over there and ended up staying the night. It’s the typical 4th of July celebration. You start shooting fireworks on the 3rd and it carries on through that weekend. Usually, I would be over at their house just partying and drinking.

Scott

And so the next morning – late morning or midday – the group started drinking again?

Hayley

Yeah, almost as soon as everybody had gotten up and was getting around eating breakfast, out came the beer. At that time, it was just 2-point beers, so it was like water, or we were drinking it like water. Then, Virgil and Forrest showed up probably between 10 and noon.

Scott

Again, Virgil is a friend of one of the roommates, Robert. So they were just coming over to join the party?

Hayley

Correct. I think Robert had a friend who lived in some apartments that invited us over to go swimming. However, we were told to leave by the management because Virgil was so belligerent. He was throwing lawn chairs into the swimming pool and just causing all kinds of chaos. We were trying to calm him down. So he was the one that really made me the most uneasy at that time.

Scott

So you’re in a group. Obviously, you know your sister and her fiance. How well did you know these other people?

Hayley

Well, I didn’t know Robert for that long. I had gone out with Robin on a date that was kind of set up by Johnny. I believe they work together at a glass company. I probably knew them for a couple of months.

Scott

So not close friends, but sort of acquaintances.

Hayley

Right. We went back to the house. They were sitting around the dining room table playing cards and drinking beer for a little while. Later that evening, we had made plans to go down to Riverside Drive which runs alongside the Arkansas in Tulsa. We were going to watch the fireworks show from there. My mom had dropped my brother off – he was 6 years old at that time, so we were babysitting him. We ate dinner. At some point, we were going to watch a firework show that they have, like, every year. I remember we were fighting to find a place to park. We ended up standing on a sidewalk along some apartments. There were just so many people down there to watch the firework show. Forrest had picked up my brother at one time and put him up on his shoulders. Even as we were leaving the event, I remember him carrying my brother on his shoulders.

Scott

When your mom dropped your little brother off – like you said, he was only 6 years old – do you think she had any concerns about the group that she was kind of entrusting your little brother to – with the drinking, drugs, and stuff like that that was going on at that time? Or did she know about it?

Hayley

I think she knew that we had been drinking beer. She didn’t think that I was, of course. She probably knew but I was trying to hide it because I was underage. I think my sister convinced her that everything was okay there. I think there might have been some fireworks that we shot off there for a little bit. But for the most part, everybody was kind of winding down. We had been drinking since noon, so everybody was getting kind of tired. Somewhere between 11 and midnight, Gary showed up at some point after we had gotten back from the firework show.

Scott

And he’s a nearby neighbor?

Hayley

Yeah, he lived up the street at some apartments. We talked for a little bit. Then, I agreed to run up to the corner store with him and get some more beer. So we bought beer. Instead of going back to my sister’s house, we went to his apartment. We ended up just sitting around talking at his apartment for a little bit. Then, I told him, “I’m getting kind of tired. I wanted to go back to my sister’s house and make sure everything was okay.” For some reason I felt responsible for anything that might have happened if they went to bed or whatever.

Scott

Was your little brother still there?

Hayley

No. Sorry. We dropped him off at my mom’s house on the way back to my sister’s house – Holly’s house.

Scott

Yeah, pretty late night for a 6-year-old.

Hayley

Yeah. By the time we got out of the traffic and everything, it was pretty close to midnight. So we had dropped him off already. We went back to the house. Whenever I walked in, I noticed that Robert was asleep on the couch right next to the front door and Forrest was sitting up. There was no sign of his cousin, Virgil. Someone asked, like, “Where’s Virgil?” He said, “He took off. He was tired.” I thought he was kind of odd that he would stick around after– I mean, him not really meeting everybody for the first day although we did spend, like, the entire day with him. I was like, “You don’t really know anybody here.”

Scott

His connection to the group had left. Yeah, that does seem a little awkward.

Hayley

Yeah. But I think you’re just kind of trusting that he’s not shady. Me, Gary, and Forrest sat over the dining room table, which was just after the living room, of course. We sat there talking. At one point, Robert got up from the couch and went to his room. We were laughing loud because I know Johnny asked us to keep it down at one point. Gary, at some point, mentioned going to Keystone lake and I thought, “This is not a good time to be in Keystone Lake in the middle of the morning.

Scott

How far away was Keystone Lake and why would he want to go there?

Hayley

It was in West Tulsa, so it was probably a good 30-minute drive out, if not more, from where we were. Again, I thought it was kind of odd that he would mention that. Hindsight, I believe that he was trying to get us out without causing too much suspicion because, through the conversation that we were having, I didn’t think anything of it at that time, but Forrest would kind of separate me from Gary and he would say stuff like, “I feel really close to you. I feel like we’re connecting. You’re like a sister to me.” I just figured, “Okay, you’re drunk. Go home now.” I would just, kind of, “Yeah, yeah,” and try to walk away real smooth. He tried to kiss me a few times and I turned my head or, kind of, leaned back away from him – not allowing that connection. As it got later and later, I knew that Gary was picking up on his odd behavior. He kind of waited for Forrest to walk away and he said, “I really think that you need to come to my apartment and stay because I don’t feel you’re safe with him here.”

Scott

Right. Because Gary was probably thinking about leaving anyway – right? He lived nearby.

Hayley

Yeah. I mean, the sun was coming up at this time. We’d been up all night. He had kind of quit drinking throughout the conversation. I was tired. I’d been up all night. I was really tired. I thought, “Well, okay, if this solves the problem and gets me some sleep, well, do it.”

Scott

Were you comfortable with Gary going and sleeping at his house? Are there any implications in that offer?

Hayley

He said that I could crash on his bed and that he would sleep on the couch. There was nothing that he expected out of this. Again, he just reassured me. He said, “I really don’t feel safe leaving you here with this guy because of his odd behavior.” So I felt safer with him with the fact that he was looking out for me than what I would have staying there.

Scott

Yeah, you’re both kind of creeped out by this third guy.

Hayley

Yeah. I mean, we were having a good time and then, all of a sudden, it just started getting weird. As we were getting ready to leave, I was facing Gary. Gary’s back was against the front door, and all I noticed was Forrest coming up behind him. Then, all of a sudden, he swung his arm up over his head. I thought, “What has he got?” About the time I was thinking this, he was bringing this hammer down on the back of Gary’s head.

Scott

Then, just really quickly, he just threw it down on the table, grabbed a hold of me by the neck, and took me around the corner into a very small kitchen. I mean, my mind just disconnected. As soon as he hit Gary and Gary just crumbled to the floor, I couldn’t think. I don’t think I had a thought. My mind just went blank. I just kept on saying, “You hurt Gary. We need to check on Gary.” as he was taking me around the corner. At that point, I thought, “I’ve got to get away from this.” I thought if I could get him to focus on Gary, he would let me go for some strange reason. Not thinking logically, I thought that he would care. Now, I thought that he would want to check on Gary.

Scott

Well, it seems like it’s something that just happened so quickly and unexpectedly that you didn’t have time to process everything.

Hayley

Yeah. I think I was just kind of detached at that point. I must have been yelling. He punched me a few times on the left side of my face. He had me pressed up against his counter and he held this knife up to my face, which he got out of a butcher block that was right next to us. He pulled this knife out, held it up to my face, and said, “I want you.” Then, he set it down on the counter and just slugged me a few times in the face. I was yelling at that point. I remember saying something. The words were incoherent – like my brain and my mouth wasn’t connecting. Right as he started to take his third swing, Johnny walked around the corner and I thought, “Okay, everything’s okay.” He grabbed Forrest by the arm and the last words that Johnny spoke was, “Hey man, be cool.”

As he was grabbing his arm, Forrest brought his hand down, grabbed the knife, and then just stabbed Johnny in one motion, and it went in so deep that I couldn’t even see the blade anymore – all I saw was the handle. I really didn’t know the extent because it didn’t make sense – what I was seeing. Then, he just slid it across his midsection. At that point, Johnny jerked his hand, pushed Forrest, and then he just grabbed his stomach and went out the kitchen door. At that point, my mind was like, “Get away.” So, I guess, with the adrenaline and everything that I had, I pushed Forrest off of me.

Scott

How big of a guy was Forrest?

Hayley

Forest was over 6 foot and close to 300 pounds, if not 300 pounds. I mean he was a big guy. I think it was desperation. I knew that Gary and Johnny were hurt. I just followed the path that I figured Johnny went. Whenever I ran out of the kitchen, I ran directly into the front room past Robert. Robert was standing outside his bedroom door at that time because of the commotion. I saw Johnny laying on Robert’s bed. So I grabbed Johnny by his hand and yanked him into the bathroom which was joined between the two bedrooms – Johnny and Holly’s bedroom on one side and then Robert’s on the other end. I locked both bathroom doors with these little hooks, propped Johnny up on the toilet, and just cradled his head in my hand saying, “It’s going to be okay. You’re going to be okay.” I kept assuring him – I think I was trying to assure myself too – that everything was going to be okay. I can remember looking down at his stomach and his intestines were out of his stomach. I thought if I could just push them back in, that would make him better.

Scott

It sounds like – after all that happened – you sort of had a continued sense of denial, like, “If we just do this, it’s all going to be okay.”

Hayley

Yes, I was in complete shock. Yeah. I was trying to minimize everything that happened. My mind was, I think, trying to reason but, at the same time, like, minimizing what was going on so that I can make sense of it, I guess.

Scott

So you’re trying to hold his intestines in…

Hayley

Yes. I was trying to push them back into his stomach. Then, my sister came and knocked at her side of the bathroom. She was in her room. She knocked at the door and she said something to me. I said, “Forrest is still out there.” We were whispering through the door. She said, “No, he’s gone.” So I let her in and I went out. At that time, my dog started following me around the house. I picked up the hammer. I was angry and I was also afraid that Forrest was still around.

I know Robert had been on the phone calling the police. I went out on the front porch and I was looking. I could hear the sirens but there was no sign. There were people walking up the sidewalk. I was like, “Where’s the police? Where’s the police?” They just looked at me like, “We don’t know.” They had no clue what just happened in that house. So I went back in and checked the back door to see if I could see Forrest. The back door had been opened while the inside door was standing open. The screen door looked like it had been hit or something – it was cracked. I went back to the house. The police finally arrived. Whenever they came in, they said, “Ma’am, you’re gonna have to put the hammer down.” So I remember putting the hammer down.

I went over and shook Gary. I was like, “Gary, Gary. Get up.” The policeman that was standing beside him said, “Ma’am you can’t do anything to help him.” I know that Gary was on his side whenever I shook him. He just kind of rolled over to his back and his eyes went up to the back of his head. I remember seeing the puddle of blood that was beside his head as I got up but, again, it wasn’t alarming. I mean, at that time, I think I had been detached from all our feelings and all emotions. I was freaking out. I was mad. I was raging, but I hadn’t had a really good time processing it.

The police said, “Ma’am, you’re gonna have to pick your dog up” because every time I was pacing back and forth and went by one of the police officers, my dog would growl at him and stay right by my side. So I put him off in Holly’s room. They told my sister, “You’re going to have to calm her down.” So she got me and she said, “We need to come over here and sit down for a minute.” I was just really upset – cringing almost, if that makes sense.

The police wanted to take us downtown to get statements. So Robert, Holly, and myself were loaded up in the police car. While we were sitting in the police car, they brought Johnny out and loaded him up in the ambulance, but they had to get him stable before they could move him. I don’t know what that meant at the time because I don’t think he was ever stable. He went to Hillcrest hospital and we went downtown to give police reports. I was the main witness that saw everything. I was involved in everything. I kept on getting Gary’s name wrong. I kept on calling him Cary – maybe, that’s what they heard because, again, I was so hysterical.

Scott

I can’t imagine your state of mind at that time. I mean, you were running on adrenaline. I’m sure that, for a certain amount of time, you had no sleep at all that night. Now, you’ve got to try to remember everything for a police statement. That’s just got to be so stressful.

Hayley

Right. Again, the only way I can describe it is that I detached – my mind quit working. So it just felt like I was just one step behind everything. It came out later, like, from the police station. They took us home and I got a little bit of sleep. My sister woke me up to go and see Johnny in the hospital. When we were sitting in the hospital, we were kind of talking over a little bit of what happened. She had made a comment to me and we were getting a lot of the information of what was going on with Johnny secondhand – like, they would tell his mom, and then she would tell us. By the time we had gotten there, he had already been through surgery. In fact, I think he was still in surgery. My sister had made a comment. She said, “Well, if you hadn’t moved him off of the bed, he wouldn’t have lost as much blood.” So that kind of stuck with me. It was my fault that he was losing blood.

We started comparing what had taken place. When I ran out of the kitchen, I ran past my sister. She was standing right at the doorway. I said, “I didn’t see you.” I don’t remember running past her. She said, “I was standing right there. Then, Forrest came to the doorway and still had the knife in his hand. He was talking to the knife. He said, ‘I told you not to mess with me.’ And he just turned around and went out the back door.” Honestly, I vaguely remember running past Robert. So, I feel like, at that time, my mind just could not catch up with everything that had taken place. Everything was so surreal. It seemed like I was in a haze for the next week just trying to make this a reality.

Scott

Garry died at the scene. Is that right?

Hayley

Correct.

Scott

The other kind of odd aspect of this is that there was still another person in the house, which is the other roommate, Robin. He slept through the whole thing. When did he realize? Did he just walk out his door in a house full of police and a crime scene?

Hayley

Yeah. In fact, we had actually forgotten about Robin. I mean, with everything that had gone on, we didn’t realize that he was still up there. He lived off of the dining room up some stairs – like a second-floor room. He had his own bathroom up there, I believe. We forgot that he was up there when the police took us. So, from his account, he came down the stairs and opened the door in a house full of policemen and investigators. I remember watching it on the news. He got so upset because the news report was him being brought out of the house, escorted by police, and put into a police car, and it looked like he was the one that did it. I remember him being upset about that.

Scott

What a way to wake up.

Hayley

Yeah.

Scott

One of the things you found out later was that, at the time of the attack, you were pregnant.

Hayley

Yes. I had started having symptoms but couldn’t figure out what was going on. I thought somebody – I believe it was my mom – at that time, said something about stress from this incident. So she took me to her doctor and found out then that I was pregnant. I was probably about 3 months, maybe. So, know that Johnny saved this baby and didn’t even know it.

Scott

And you didn’t even know it at that time.

Hayley

Yeah, I didn’t. I just had a brief relationship with this person – his name is David – and I wasn’t really crazy about the guy. It was just a fluke thing. But when I found out I was pregnant, I thought that I had to have this baby. I mean, Johnny saved this baby. He saved me. He saved the baby. I mean, that was my mindset at that time. My mom asked me, like, “What are you going to do?” She gave me very little support and no options. So the only thing that I saw doing was, “Well, I need to tell the dad that he’s going to be a dad and go from there.” I think, at that time, I was dealing with PTSD. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a name for it at that time. No one really consulted or talked to me about seeking help. I think any kind of counseling at that time was for people who could afford the out-of-pocket expense because it wasn’t really covered by the insurance. I didn’t have insurance. I was dealing with a lot of things that no one would really talk to me about.

My mom asked me, at some point, exactly what had happened and I didn’t know if I was really ready to talk about it with anybody, but I gave her a kind of summary of what had taken place. Her comment at that time was, “Well, if you came home with me, this would not have taken place. It wouldn’t have happened.” Then, she just kind of made this motion with her hand and like, “Oh, well what is done is done.” It seemed like people wanted to talk about it less and less. Maybe they saw that it upset me somehow. I just didn’t get a lot of support.

Scott

At a time when I really needed it.

Hayley

Yeah.

Scott

I mean, you were dealing with a lot of stuff. Not to mention the fact that Forrest was still out there, right? He hadn’t been caught right away and you were the only witness that would be able to testify about what he did.

Hayley

Correct. I was so hyper-vigilant. It’s not even funny. I was afraid to leave my house. If I did, I would constantly check over my shoulder. Not too long after that, I moved out of my mom’s house to move in with David. I told him I was pregnant. He assured me, “Well, we’ll just have this baby. We’ll take good care of it. We’ll raise it together. Everything will just be peachy king.” This probably wasn’t his words, but just I was just following along with ever I could feel good about at that time. I was like, “Okay, that sounds good. We’ll have this baby.” But it was a very toxic relationship and I think it just heightened the anxiety that I was experiencing at that time. He was not a very compassionate person.

Scott

How long before Forrest was actually found?

Hayley

It was early 1988. We got word that he had been in jail in Virginia. The funny thing about this was that it had aired on America’s Most Wanted. I guess it was probably around the end of ‘87 because it was still a manhunt for Forrest. So, in early 1988, we got word that he had been found in Virginia and that they were holding him in jail.

Scott

So this was two years later.

Hayley

Yeah. Two years later, I was a mom and I was trying to figure out how to be a mom and how to deal with PTSD. Again, I didn’t know everything that I was going through at the time. The irritation, the irritability, the anger, the rage, the hypervigilance – everything was a symptom of PTSD. The person that I was with was David. He loved to argue – that’s why I say it was a very bad toxic relationship. First of all, I don’t think I was in the right mindset to have a baby and to try to raise this child in a healthy environment, along with somebody who fought and argued constantly. Two years after, right before my daughter turned two, they subpoenaed me to start these proceedings. They were going to extradite him back sometime in July. So it was most of ‘88 that was dealing with this rehashing of this event.

Scott

Obviously, he was charged with murder.

Hayley

Yes, 2 counts of murder.

Scott

And how did he plead?

Hayley

Well, he pleaded guilty. In fact, one of the news articles of his defense was, “Nobody’s saying that he did not do it.” He admitted to killing 2 people, but his defense was, first of all, to say it was due to all the drinking, alcohol, and drugs that were involved. I remember them wanting to shut that down really quickly because the prosecuting attorney had said that he had made a bullseye with both victims accurately. I mean, he hit with the hammer and stabbed with a knife – there was contact both times. They also tried to say that he could contribute to society through his art and his poem writing. So those were the two defenses that he was going on.

Scott

Both sound pretty weak.

Hayley

Yeah.

Scott

Did you find yourself in a courtroom with Forrest being in the same room?

Hayley

Yes. I think it was the preliminary hearing when they brought him into the courtroom. Me and my sister were sitting side-by-side holding hands. I gripped her hands so hard whenever I saw him. I noticed that he had lost a lot of weight – like, he was down under 200 pounds. It was shocking to see that. That was one of the things the attorney had told me – we’re going to have to remind the jurors of his weight loss and how big he was because this little man could not press me up against the counter like that and then proceed to stab somebody too.

Scott

Being on the run and looking over your shoulder for 2 years– I’m sure a lot of that weight loss was just from the stress.

Hayley

You do lose weight on the run. That’s for sure.

Scott

You found out more about him, right?

Hayley

During the trial, yes. One of the things that they had pictures of was knives that he had put in the furniture. They had a cushion raised up and they had a picture of a knife that he had planted in the couch, which Robert was sleeping on. There were other knives that they had taken pictures of, strategically placed around the front room.

Scott

And this wasn’t even his house…

Hayley

Right.

Scott

Did he do that without anyone noticing?

Hayley

I guess when everybody when me and Gary had left to the store, he started doing this as people were going to bed because Holly and Johnny went to bed shortly after. Gary had left to the store to get beers and Robert was passed out on the couch. Robin was upstairs in his room. He had just taken it upon himself.

Scott

He certainly can’t deny premeditation when he planted knives all around the place.

Hayley

Exactly. That was the other thing. With the drugs and alcohol, they were saying that there was no way that he could plan this out and that it could be premeditated.

Scott

And he had been in prison before…

Hayley

He had. That was the other thing that we found out during the trial. Well, actually, we found that out in the newspaper clippings that he had been in prison for the rape of a woman. He was supposed to be serving a 20-year sentence, but he got out on good behavior.

Scott

He was serving a 20-year sentence but how long was he actually in?

Hayley

8 years.

Scott

How long have you been out when you met him?

Hayley

Two. He was out for two years. So when we were doing the trial, the jury was given 2 options or sentencing. They were given life – which I believe would have given him the possibility of parole – and death. So those were the only 2 sentences the judge gave to the jurors there. There was another sentence, which was life without possible parole. They weren’t given that because the crime had happened before it had been voted into legislation. The jurors thought that there is no way we can allow this person out on parole again due to his past record because he would just do it again. So, they had to give him death. I had to give my testimony two times – the preliminary and the actual hearing – in front of the jury and I could not make eye contact at all with Forrest. I had to sit there with my head down. I can’t look at him.

Scott

So he was sentenced to death…

Hayley

Yes. I thought it was the end. I thought I gave Johnny justice and he is going to serve his consequence, and that would be that. From there, I was just trying to get my life back in order in the best that I could. Then, they contacted us again and said that they had ordered a rehearing/retrial because of the sentence that the judge did not give the jury at that time. That was his first appeal. They found that technicality and contacted me. I went down and talked to them. They said, “We just need your testimony. You’re the only one that matters.” I just couldn’t do it. I had another baby, so I was a mom of 2. I was just trying to get my life back into order and I just didn’t think that I can remember everything that was crucial at that time. I had started repressing a lot of memories of it.

Scott

So you just declined to testify.

Hayley

I declined to testify. He did get removed from the death penalty and they gave him life without possible parole.

Scott

So he’s still in prison today…

Hayley

He’s still in prison.

Scott

Holly commented that Johnny lost more blood because you moved him and your mom reminded you that if you should have gone home with her that night, none of this would have happened. On top of that, what about survivor’s guilt? I mean, these two people that were murdered were just trying to help you. All of that guilt must just have been crushing.

Hayley

It played a big part in how I moved forward. I carried a very, very heavy load of guilt. Every time, I thought about the fact that he saved this baby without even knowing it – it seems so irrational due to the fact that I just hated life so much at that time. Yet, they saved my life for some reason and I just didn’t understand why. I was able to walk away and they weren’t.

Scott

This was obviously an extremely traumatic event. Did you ever get counseling that helped you process that?

Hayley

I did not. I think, whenever I was going through a divorce, I went to counseling for that – because I felt like a lot of what I was dealing with at that time was because of the divorce – and I just briefly mentioned that this is something that happened to me in my past, and my counselor at the time never touched base on it. So I developed a lot of anxiety, depression, and poor coping skills, which led to bad decisions and everything down the line. I never got counseling for it.

Scott

As we speak now, we’re toward the end of 2022. How do you feel you’re doing now?

Hayley

Well, I know that time isn’t always a healer. Well, for me…

(Long pause)

not dealing with something is probably just as bad as going through it almost because, whenever it does resurface, it seems like it resurface with a vengeance. There’s a lot that I have thought about in the last couple of weeks that I hadn’t really thought about in years. I feel like since I was able to forgive Forrest early on– it has helped me move on from trauma. I never reached out to him. I’ve never personally sent him any acknowledgement of forgiveness. But in my own heart, I know that I can forgive that – not so much that it releases him from any kind of consequence that he has to deal with because it didn’t take away his punishment, but it gave me peace. I can only say that I found that because I know that we are in a very broken world and that people come from circumstances that sometimes they have no control over. One of his defenses was that he was abused by his father. I could relate to that. Of course, I never wanted to go out and kill anybody or hurt anybody, but I think we deal with things differently. He had demons that he was fighting just like me. So, I can say that it was more for me. I could justify forgiveness for him.

Scott

When the Fourth of July comes around now, everyone thinks of fireworks and celebration. Is that what you think or does it always take you back to that time?

Hayley

Wow. That was one of the things that I felt. Yeah, it always brings that around. And if I didn’t think about it, I felt bad for not thinking about it because of Gary and Johnny losing their lives. If I didn’t think about them, then I wasn’t honoring them. I have found more peace with it lately. I still think about it. There were a couple of 4th of July’s that went by, but it wasn’t until, like, the next day when I was like, “Oh yeah, this marks the anniversary of– you know.” I had to do the math when my daughter turned a certain age. It was always, like, “Well, that was one year marking” because she was born directly after it. So I always remember, like, “She turned 35 this year, so it was 36 years ago.” So it still comes up as a memory. It doesn’t hold as much weight. I stick close to the house. I don’t like to go in large crowds. I feel okay celebrating it with my family here, but it does have some bad memories attached.

Scott

It’s not like you could ever forget it.

Hayley

Right. It might be a little bit easier every year, but I still have so many symptoms that are caused by that. I’m working through this PTSD workbook and it just shows me everything that I was going through that I was dealing with at that time. It wasn’t because I was a horrible person. It was because I had experienced this trauma, this stress, and I needed help. Everything was a cry for help.

Scott

You have mentioned to me that people – if they wish to – can contact you by email. We’ll have your email address in the show notes for this episode. Thanks for sharing your story.

Hayley

Thank you, Scott. Thanks again for listening.

Scott

Hayley was eventually able to meet Gary’s sister, and she told her that Gary died trying to protect her.

If you liked this episode, you might like episode 62. In that one, my guest Terri had just moved in to her new place in New Orleans, and had only been there for a couple of hours. Then, something happened in the street right outside her window.

Terri

I was sitting next to a window. I was sitting on a chair next to a window. I pulled the curtain back, looked out the window to the side, and I saw this man being assaulted.

Scott

That’s episode 62, titled “Terri witnessed a murder”.

And if you’re someone who enjoys actual 911 calls, the newest Raw Audio episode has just been released. This is Raw Audio 29, and in this one you’ll hear about a man who gets attacked by his neighbor, because of political differences –

911 Operator

What’s your emergency?

Male 1

My neighbor just shot my dad.

911 Operator

Your neighbor shot your dad?

Male 1

Yes.

Scott

A convenience store clerk calls because a man comes in the store with a gun

Female 1

He just asked me to call the cops. He’s walking around with a gun.

911 Operator

Does he know you’re calling 911?

Female 1

Yeah, he asked me to call. He walked behind the counter and asked me to call.

911 Operator

He asked you to call us?

Female 1

Yeah.

Scott

And a man calls after an early-morning argument with his wife

911 Operator

What’s going on there?

Male 2

A murder has been committed.

911 Operator

A murder has been committed? By who?

Male 2

By me, ma’am.

911 Operator

By you?

Scott

You can get Raw Audio 29 – and all OTHER 28 episodes – by becoming a supporter of the podcast at $5 a month. So if you want to support the show, you can do that at WhatWasThatLike.com/support.

At the end of this month, I’ll be in Orlando at the Podfest Multimedia Expo. That is January 26-29, so if you’re a podcaster, or thinking about a podcast, and you’re planning to be there, let me know so we can connect.

And now, we end this episode like we do every episode – with a Listener Story. If you have a story that’s interesting, and you can tell it in around 5 minutes, record it on your phone and email it to me at Scott@WhatWasThatLike.com.

This week’s story is from someone who was taken to one of those weird wilderness programs for kids.

Stay safe, and I’ll see you in just one week – because I’ve cooked up a BONUS episode for one week from today. See you then –

(Listener story)

Hi, my name is Sinead. I’m 33 years old. My name is spelled S-I-N-E-A-D. I know it’s weird. When I was 17 years old – in about 2007-2008 – I was sent to a wilderness program for juvenile delinquents in Idaho. I was woken up in the middle of the night at about 3 AM prior to strange people I’d never met before in my life. They had handcuffs. They showed me their IDs and they said, “Hey, you need to come with us.” They wouldn’t tell me where we were going and I didn’t know what to do – I really didn’t. I asked them where my parents were and they wouldn’t tell me. They’re just like, “They know we’re here. They let us in.” I was like, “Alright, whatever.”

So I got in the car with them, went to the airport, and flew to Spokane, Washington. From there, we drove to Bonners Ferry, Idaho. Like I said, I had no idea what was going on this whole time. There, I was stripped-searched. I’ve never been stripped-searched before. I had never been to jail. I didn’t even have a felony. So this was all very new to me. I was given a bunch of things like a backpack, hiking boots, water bottle – a bunch of stuff. From there, I was shown the community area. It kind of looks like a clock – I don’t really know how else to explain it. At 6 o’clock, you’ve got the mess hall. At 1 o’clock, you’ve got the wood-cutting area. At 4 o’clock– whatever. Anyway, there are all these areas around the circle. We sleep in teepees. Yes, actual teepees. One for the boys. One for the girls.

Few of the responsibilities that we were given– we had to clean the outhouse, which was absolutely fucking disgusting. We also had to saw logs. When I say that, I mean we actually saw logs. The boys would carry over these big ass logs from the forest. We didn’t chop them down or anything. They would somehow pull them all over to the wood-cutting station. Me and my partner would saw this big log with a giant saw. Also, we did a bunch of, like, self-improvement exercises, getting-to-know-you games, and all that bullshit. Then, we also had to clean up after ourselves after dinner. We had to take the trash to this dumpster that was about a mile away. Me and another person were on each side of this trash can that was, like, 80 pounds of liquid trash. We have to haul it all the way to this dumpster. I can recall many times feeling like my arm was gonna fall off at any point.

Also, in order to graduate, there were a couple of things that we had to do. The first part was we had to do this thing called “ticket to ride”. If you’re familiar with AA or Recovery or Fourth Step, basically, we just had to write down all the things we’ve done wrong in our life and then they would mail it to our parents for them to read every single last horrific detail. As soon as that was completed, we were allowed to go on this hike, which was required in order for us to get out. It’s this week-long hike through Montana. Aside from the fact that I absolutely hated it, it was beautiful. It was the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen. At night, they let us sleep burrito-style at one time. We got to see the entire night sky. There was no light pollution out there, so we saw everything – satellites, the Milky Way. You name it, we saw it.

We were traversing across this very steep hill. I was walking across the steep incline and I lost my footing. I rolled all the way down this damn hill. The only thing that stopped me from rolling any further was my face hitting a tree, and I woke up from that. Well, not woke up – I didn’t pass out – but I came to from that with blood running down my face thinking, “I’m dead. This is it. This is the end.” Sadly, no, it was not the end. After that, I realized I had sprained my ankle. So, I had to basically finish the rest of the hike with a sprained ankle with crusted-out blood on my head. We came back and we were done, basically.

There was only one more thing we had to do. We had to climb this giant tower structure. I was terrified of heights. I refused to do it. I still did it, but I was like, “No, I’m not gonna do it. Fuck this.” The thing was, like, 40 or 50 feet high. I’m terrified. That was done. Our parents were basically there. They showed up, I think, maybe the next day or something like that. Of course, I saw them and I was really glad to see them but, at the same time, I was just like, “Die! Fuck you for doing this to me!” So we got home.

For about 2 weeks – I think, roughly – I was an angel. You know what I mean? I did anything my parents asked me to do. I cleaned my room. I did the dishes, took the trash – just normal shit – and then I’m done. I didn’t want to do this anymore, so I left and I ended up getting involved in drugs really badly. Actually, I did heroin for about two and a half years. I was shooting it and snorting it. I did go to rehab. The very last time I used heroin was May 23, 2010. I have not touched it since. I’m extremely fortunate because I stopped using it when the Krokodil and the Carfentanil stuff was coming out and people were dropping like flies. So, needless to say, I’m really grateful to be alive today.

Today, I am a nurse. I have a child of my own. I’ve done it. I beat the statistics. I don’t mean to sound like I have control because I don’t. But at the same time, I don’t use heroin on a daily basis anymore. I live a good life today. I was angry at my mother and my parents, but we’ve learned to get through our issues. So I’m really grateful that I got this opportunity to share my story and I’m really glad you all got to hear it. Thanks for sticking along.

View Details

This episode comes with a content warning. The story includes discussion of sexual assault, addiction, and suicide.

Stephen Covey is a popular author, and he wrote the best-selling book titled The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Great book, highly recommended.

In that book, Covey tells a personal story that has come back to my mind many times in the years since I first read that book. This is what he wrote:

“I remember a mini-paradigm shift I experienced one Sunday morning on a subway in New York. People were sitting quietly – some reading newspapers, some lost in thought, some resting with their eyes closed. It was a calm, peaceful scene.

Then suddenly, a man and his children entered the subway car. The children were so loud and rambunctious that instantly the whole climate changed.

The man sat down next to me and closed his eyes, apparently oblivious to the situation. The children were yelling back and forth, throwing things, even grabbing people’s papers. It was very disturbing. And yet, the man sitting next to me did nothing.

It was difficult not to feel irritated. I could not believe that he could be so insensitive as to let his children run wild like that and do nothing about it, taking no responsibility at all. It was easy to see that everyone else on the subway felt irritated, too. So finally, with what I felt like was unusual patience and restraint, I turned to him and said, “Sir, your children are really disturbing a lot of people. I wonder if you couldn’t control them a little more?”

The man lifted his gaze as if to come to a consciousness of the situation for the first time and said softly, “Oh, you’re right. I guess I should do something about it. We just came from the hospital where their mother died about an hour ago. I don’t know what do think, and I guess they don’t know who to handle it either.”

Can you imagine what I felt at that moment? My paradigm shifted. Suddenly I saw things differently, and because I saw differently, I thought differently, I felt differently, I behaved differently. My irritation vanished. I didn’t have to worry about controlling my attitude or my behavior; my heart was filled with the man’s pain. Feelings of sympathy and compassion flowed freely. “Your wife just died? Oh I’m so sorry! Can you tell me about it? What can I do to help?” Everything changed in an instant.”

I’ve never forgotten that story. All the people we encounter while we’re just going through our day to day lives…they’re going through things that we know nothing about. It’s easy to judge someone or form an opinion based on what we observe, but there are always other factors that we can’t see. I think, in a lot of cases, if we knew what was really going on, our anger or impatience might be replaced with empathy and compassion.

My guest today is Kylie. She’s been through some trauma, and you’ll hear it in her voice as she talks with the 911 dispatcher. I think her story can help all of us to perhaps see things from a perspective other than our own.

Kylie at 18 – around the time she met AmberAmberAmberResources:
If you or someone you know is having thoughts of suicide, you can get help immediately by calling the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. Just dial 988 anytime day or night.

Kylie used the AFSP (American Foundation for Suicide Prevention) website to find a support group for people who have suffered loss. You can get more information about this at:
https://afsp.org/find-a-support-group/

Full show notes and pictures for this episode are here:
https://WhatWasThatLike.com/125

This episode is sponsored by The Jordan Harbinger Show – great interviews with amazing people – find it on any podcast app, including Spotify.

This episode is also sponsored by The Compulsive Storyteller podcast – a show that has a great story in every episode – TheCompulsiveStoryteller.com

Get the full transcript for this episode and ALL previous episodes in a single digital download:
WhatWasThatLike.com/transcripts

Kylie is in our podcast Facebook group. If you have a question for her, join the group at WhatWasThatLike.com/facebook (many of the other podcast guests are there as well).

Episode transcript (download transcript PDF):

This episode comes with a content warning. The story includes discussion of sexual assault, addiction, and suicide.

Stephen Covey is a popular author, and he wrote the best-selling book titled The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Great book, highly recommended.

In that book, Covey tells a personal story that has come back to my mind many times in the years since I first read that book. This is what he wrote:

Then suddenly, a man and his children entered the subway car. The children were so loud and rambunctious that instantly the whole climate changed.

My guest today is Kylie. She’s been through some trauma, and you’ll hear it in her voice as she talks with the 911 dispatcher. I think her story might help all of us to perhaps see things from a perspective other than our own.

Scott

For the story to make sense, we need to have a little bit of background on Kylie and how she first met Amber because the way they ended up together was unexpected and not typical. Kylie was 18 years old at that time. She’s also bisexual. She had a group of friends, but she was starting to feel left out, sometimes.

Kylie

This was a group of – I don’t know – I’d say, maybe, a core of 6-8 people. There would be people coming and going, and there was kind of growing pains with that. It sort of made the relationship between me and the core 3 struggle a lot. I started feeling like they were excluding me a lot from things, and I just sort of felt like I was being pushed out.

Scott

Kylie’s best friend at that time was Jordan. Jordan’s boyfriend was Sky. When Sky turned 21, they all got together to celebrate,

Kylie

It was Sky’s 21st birthday party. So, of course, there was a lot of alcohol. I was underage at the time, but I was still drinking with them because they were my friends. At this party, there was the main core group. There were also a lot of people that I didn’t necessarily know that the rest of the group had known for a long time. When most of the party was outside doing God knows what – smoking cigarettes or whatever – who was left inside was me and this girl who I didn’t know – she introduced herself as Amber.

Scott

Kylie and Amber found that they had some things in common.

Kylie

I had never met her before, but she had known these guys since middle school. They all went to school together. She went to a different high school than us. She was a little bit older than me. She was 21 at that time. We talked a lot about, sort of, our relationships with the people that were at this party and our friends and how we both, sort of, were feeling this exclusion happening – like we were getting pushed out. That was something that we had in common with each other, so we sort of bonded over that.,

Scott

But Kylie soon discovered that the alcohol kind of turned Amber into a different person.

Kylie

She got drunker as all of us did. As I would come to find out, she had sort of an issue with alcohol and she was being really handsy with me in front of people – touching me, putting her hand under my shirt, trying to, like, take my bra off, and just being like really on me, which makes me uncomfortable because I don’t know this person. I didn’t really appreciate that she was doing this in front of people. I kept telling her to kind of back off and that I was really embarrassed by this. I was not really scared yet at that point because nothing super bad had happened yet at that point. A good number of people had taken their Ubers home. I had planned on crashing on the couch and she apparently had the same intention. She was quite drunk. Jordan and Sky went to their room or to Sky’s room. So we were left alone in his house in his living room.

She began getting worse with the physical contact – really rough and really painful. So, when she grabbed, it was, like, done forcefully. She would bite when kissing, so she was biting like she was trying to bite through my skin. There was no restraint. It hurts a lot. It was really painful.

When I told her to stop, she kind of backed off for a second, and then she’d go right back into it as if she forgot that I told her to stop. She was very, very belligerently drunk at this point. It was like she couldn’t understand what I was saying or she was just ignoring me. I didn’t really know what was going through her head, but she undressed me and bit my chest like she was going to bite through the skin. All of this was extremely, extremely painful. At one point, I started crying. So I mean, I gave her plenty of notice that this was not okay. And she kept going. Finally, I was able to get myself up off the couch and go to the bathroom. I was like, “I really have to pee. I really have to pee.” That was, like, the only thing that could get me off that couch to where she would stop hurting me. I looked in the mirror in the bathroom and I just wept to myself because I realized, like, “What the hell has happened?” because it wasn’t necessarily rape. It was like, “I didn’t want it. It hurts a lot. I feel like I gave plenty of notice that it was not okay and she just didn’t care.”

Scott

Kylie figured this was her opportunity to make up an excuse to leave and just get out of the situation.

Kylie

After I left the bathroom, I just made a beeline for my bag and my keys. At this point, it had been at least a couple of hours of just this awful treatment, so the time had sobered me up and, surely, the adrenaline had sobered me up to where I felt comfortable trying to drive home. As it was Christmas Eve, I didn’t have a family to get back to – it was actually going to be my parents. My parents and I spent last Christmas together. Because we were going to separate pretty much in the next few months, that would be our last Christmas together. So, I told her, like, “Hey, I really have to get home.” That was enough for her to, kind of, back off, let me get in my car, and leave the situation.

Scott

So their first interaction was obviously not a pleasant one. Kylie told some of their mutual friends what happened and they were kind of shocked by it. Some of them wanted to all get together as a group and talk about what happened, but Kylie wasn’t really on board with that. She decided she could handle this on her own as an adult, so she messaged Amber and asked about getting together to discuss what happened.

Kylie

I said, “Hey, would you be willing to talk about what happened? I just want to understand what was going through your head.” At first, she was like, “Well, what the hell? What do you mean? You want to come over? You said that I raped you. Why would you feel safe coming over?” So I said, “Well, I definitely didn’t say that you raped me because that didn’t happen.” I explained to her that people are twisting my words around that, I didn’t say that, and that I felt pretty confident that the trouble that this had caused her would prevent her from doing anything to harm me. She agreed and said, “Yeah, this has caused quite a bit of an issue.”

Scott

So Kylie went over to Amber’s place, and they talked but, this time, with no alcohol.

Kylie

Oh, yeah, she was sober. We were very sober during this. We actually talked about it for only about an hour. I basically just explained, “Hey, this is how I perceived what happened. This is how it affected me. I don’t think you’re a horrible, awful person for it. I just think that you should really be careful when you’re drinking because you did this.” She didn’t blame the alcohol. She did actually take accountability, like, “Hey, I’m really sorry that I hurt you. This is really going to change – like, how I interact with people in the future.” She apologized. I let her know, “Hey, if anybody gives you any shift for this, going forward, there’s really no reason for it because it happened to me, it happened to us, and if the two people who are involved in this situation have resolved it, then there’s really no reason why anybody else should get a say.

Scott

so they worked it out and got that issue resolved. But the conversation continued and they were both enjoying getting to know each other. Kylie was there for another 4 hours.

Kylie

We were just hanging out and getting to know each other, like, before she got too drunk. She told me about her family, what music she likes, our dating history, job history, and the “meeting somebody” types of conversation. We watched a movie together – we watched “Wonder Woman”. We really just hung out. It was incredible because I never thought that it would end up like this. I mean, she felt horrible after the first time we met as if I would never come back from it. Somehow, I mustered up the courage to forgive this person and she ended up kind of becoming somebody who I look forward to talking to more.

Scott

So, in spite of that bad first encounter, Kylie and Amber’s connection grew stronger pretty quickly. That brings us to Kylie’s story of what happened.

Kylie

We only knew each other for such a short amount of time, but we really sort of became each other’s little world. We were texting each other every day. We texted when I was at work. It sort of took on a flirtatious direction, and we sort of began going into that avenue again with each other, but in a healthier and consensual way, which is even more surprising that we would even go down that route. I was going over there every day, just hanging out at her house.

Scott

You guys are now pretty special to each other.

Kylie

Yeah, we were very insulated with each other. We weren’t really doing, seeing, or anything, really, that wasn’t involving the other person in those few weeks,

Scott

Then, there was the night of January 13th. What happened that night?

Kylie

That night, I had to work and picked up rice to eat. I didn’t plan on going over there because she hadn’t invited me at that point. I have a habit of feeling like I need to give people their distance because I don’t want to be around somebody too much and make them feel sick of me. So I was just giving her power to invite me if she wanted me there, or not to have me there if she didn’t want me there. So I wasn’t going to try to force myself into going over there because I didn’t want to be overbearing. So I planned on just being home that night eating my rice and sleeping in my bed at home.

She texted me. I knew that she had been at a bar that night because I saw her Instagram story. She was at some sports bar in Smyrna. She was a big football fan – a big football, specifically, of the Falcons, which is the Atlanta football team here. There was a football game that night that she was watching at that sports bar in Smyrna – it was Falcons versus Philadelphia. Philadelphia fans are very passionate. They, sort of, have a reputation here starting fights and just, sort of, being a lot.

Scott

So Amber had gotten into something with one of those people?

Kylie

Yeah, she had gotten into– I don’t really know what the extent of the fight was – whether it got physical or whether they were just yelling at each other – but she had described a situation in the bathroom that it had gotten intense and she thought about the fact that she carried a gun with her and she thought about pulling the gun out during this fight. Of course, she didn’t pull out the gun, but the thought came through her head. She was drunk as well. I’m sure that she was also thinking about, “Well, I hurt someone when I was drunk before.” So I think that thought really freaked her out. She managed to get herself home. She Ubered home. So she got home and she was quite upset. She texted me, “Come get back in my bed, so I don’t kill anyone. I told her, “I’m having rice right now. Do you mean you want me to come back over tonight or tomorrow?” She just said, “Now.” I said, “Let me finish up my din-din and then get changed and head out.” She said, “KK. I’ll try to not hurt anyone till then.” Then, I told her I was leaving.

Scott

The thing that comes to my mind right now is “Why in the world does she have a gun?”

Kylie

Yeah, I had thought about that a few times before that. Like I said, when we were first getting to know each other, she told me about her job history. She used to work, I believe, in the shipping department of the Glock factory.

Scott

and Glock of course is a major manufacturer of handguns.

Kylie

It was a few years prior when she worked there, so I assumed– because I don’t know much about guns, I didn’t really know the brand of gun that she had. I’d seen her gun before but I didn’t know that it wasn’t a Glock. I assumed it was a Glock because she worked at the Glock and I assumed that she had it for a few years at that point. My rationale there was like, “Oh, well, she seems knowledgeable enough about it. If she had it all these years and hasn’t hurt herself up to this point, maybe she won’t hurt herself or anyone.” But, definitely, the thought crossed my mind that this is not somebody stable, certainly.

Scott

In most places – I don’t know about Georgia but– here in Florida, even if people have concealed weapons permit to carry concealed, you still can’t carry concealed in a bar. That’s where this altercation happened where she thought about pulling it, right?

Kylie

Oh, yeah. Like I said, I am not very knowledgeable about guns at all, so I actually didn’t know that that was something that she wasn’t allowed to do. I do know that she did break a lot of laws. In general, she was actually a drug dealer, as well. The reason she had the gun is because she lived in Austell – not Smyrna – in a neighborhood that is a little bit more dangerous for a woman to be living in, I guess. So, she had it for protection. Also, she was involved in drug dealing and things like that, so she felt like she needed something to protect herself in situations like that. She did carry the gun into the bar. I didn’t even think about the legality of that. I didn’t realize how serious she was about how upset she was, I thought she was just like, “Oh, tee-heh, my team lost.”

I had no idea what I was gonna be walking into when I got to her apartment. When I walked in, she was taking more shots of Jack Daniels and watching another football game on her phone – Patriots versus I-don’t-know-who. She was pacing and was a little belligerent. She would change subjects a lot and have really bad mood swings. She kept telling me that she needed me to stop her from hitting anything or head-butting anything. She was just really worked up about this. Of course, the whole time, she has the gun.

We’re sitting and talking. Now, I just kept trying to get her off of what is troubling her, “Tell me about something, about this thing, or tell me about that thing.” So I kept trying to change the subject – anything that I can to make her not feel upset anymore. It would work sometimes. She’d get off of the subject but then something would bring her back to something upsetting – whether it was a football game, whether it was her situation with being currently unemployed, her legal troubles, medical troubles, or her family troubles. She was pouring out to me all these things that were really just not going well for her and the life that she was stressed out about. I would try to get her away from those things and she would always find her way back.

At some point, she brought up the gun and asked me how I felt about her having a gun and did it make me uncomfortable. I told her, “It kind of did make me uncomfortable, but I trust her.” She started going into this whole thing about gun safety. She showed me how to tell if there are bullets in the chamber. She took the whole thing apart, basically, and showed me everything in it. The whole time she’s doing this, I was thinking to myself, “She’s knowledgeable. It seems like she’s experienced. It seems like she knows all these things.” So it sort of put the thought out of my head – not that it completely left my head that she would ever do something bad with the gun. It just took my mind off of it a little bit. She even handed me the gun and had me, like, practice turning the safety on, taking the safety off, cocking it, loading it, and all this stuff. She had me touching the gun and she would say, “The most important thing about guns is that you never touch the trigger unless you are 100% ready to face the repercussions of what pulling the trigger means.” So it sort of put my mind at ease somewhat when she was telling me all of this. Of course, she knows this, so she’s not gonna go do something because she knows she’s gonna face repercussions for it, as she was saying,

Landon, her roommate, came back home. He worked a job where he had to take the train to Atlanta. It was a restaurant with a bar and stuff, so it was open quite late. So he got back pretty late. We were talking and, at that point, the mood had sort of lightened a bit. We were laughing.

Scott

So you were able to calm her down a little bit…

Kylie

Yeah. Okay. It seemed like we were good. It seemed like we were in the clear. We went to bed. I didn’t really know how much time exactly had passed before we were woken up by Landon, her roommate, but I do know that we were sleeping and he woke us up – or he woke her up specifically and he wanted to borrow her gun. He had a guy coming over that he was going to sell some weed to.

Scott

So Landon was a dealer too?

Kylie

Well, he was helping her. He wasn’t really a dealer in his own right but, I guess, he had a friend or somebody that he knew that wanted to buy some. He was going to sell it on her behalf, basically. So he came into the room to borrow the gun or try to borrow the gun. Because it was pretty late at night and he just sort of felt paranoid – like something fell off to him – he thought he might need the gun for protection. She said, “Hell no.” She referred to him as “Baby boy” a lot, which I think is pretty funny.

Scott

Meaning he wasn’t quite as street-smart as she was -is that what that meant?

Kylie

Something to that effect. It was like she just viewed him as somebody that was precious and needed to be protected or something. She called him “Baby boy” a lot and it was, like, a term of endearment. But she was like, “No, baby boy. You can’t. You’re not ready for that, for what that means if you have to use it. I mean, like, I don’t want to put you in that situation. I’ll compromise with you. I’ll go with you with the gun on me. If something happens, I can be the one to take care of it or whatever.” I don’t know what they thought was gonna happen exactly. I don’t know exactly what the problem was, why he felt it was sketchy, and why he felt like he needed the gun. I don’t know why he woke her up. There are a lot of like hindsight issues there. If we had just slept, everything would have been fine, maybe.

So she went out with him with the gun. But before she left, she told me, “Tell everybody to wear a tie dye to my funeral.” I kind of chuckled at her because I thought it was a joke. I fell back asleep while they were taking care of that and was awoken by the door swinging open and the two of them arguing. I could really hear her screaming at him. She was really upset, really distraught. I could hear her say something to the effect of, like, “Why would you do that? Why would you put me in a car on a night like this with a guy like that with a gun in my hand?” So something had happened with this guy that really pissed her off and she was really mad at Landon for putting her in a stressful situation when she already had so much stress that night. I didn’t really hear him say anything back to that.

She sort of rushed back to the room where I was still laying in bed. She was, sort of, wrestling stuff around and slamming stuff. She was, like, in a really agitated state. She laid down, started crying, and said, “I think I said something I can’t take back.” I tried to comfort her and tell her, like, “You’re really drunk. I’m sure that situation was really bad, but nobody’s gonna be mad at you in the morning. It’ll be fine. I wouldn’t worry about it. I don’t think he’s gonna hold it against you. We’re good.” So she got up and wrestled more things around. I wasn’t looking at what she was doing – I had my back sort of turned – but I just heard, like, a lot of agitation happening – stuff slamming, stuff falling over.

I glanced back and she was standing to my left at the corner of the bed facing the wall. I saw her hand or her arm go up, and that’s kind of all I saw. I heard a pop sound, but it wasn’t, like, the sound of what you would think a gun would sound like in a closed room. It was pretty quiet. It wasn’t, like, a gun sound. Like I said, I’m pretty dumb when it comes to guns. I don’t know a lot about what they’re supposed to sound like. It wasn’t like the movies. She flew to the ground. So now, her body was lying parallel to the foot of the bed. Her head is on my side of the bed – I’m lying on the right side of the bed and the opposite corner from where she was standing before.

The room smelled like gunpowder, so I knew that the gun had gone off, but there wasn’t blood that I could see right away and I didn’t really understand what was going on because I didn’t think that she would hurt herself. I know that sounds stupid, but it wasn’t immediately apparent to me what had happened. She was laying there and I was calling her name, “Amber! Amber!” thinking that she was just, like, screwing with me because she would jump scare me a lot. She would just be sitting there on the couch and would go “Whoop!” – like, shake me and scare the shit out of me. So I thought she was gonna do that because, when you’re in these situations, you’re not thinking, like, bad things. “It’s never a bad thing – that can’t happen.”

So I crawled on the bed to the foot of the bed to where she was on the floor, and I still didn’t see anything. I thought, “Well, I know the gun went off, but I didn’t think that she’d, like, hurt herself. Maybe, she got her leg or something.” So I was looking at her legs. Then, I got to the upper part of her body where I started to shake her to try to, like, wake her up or make her do her prank or whatever because I thought that was what was gonna happen. When I shook her body a little bit, that was when I saw blood in her head coming from her right temple. I was just shocked. Shocked doesn’t even begin to describe what that felt like. I knew she was depressed. I knew she had all these things going on. I knew she had a gun. I knew she wasn’t stable. I knew she was an alcoholic. I knew that all these things are sort of, like, a recipe for disaster waiting to happen, but I just didn’t think it was possible. Why the hell would she do that? Why would she do that? I just couldn’t fathom it.

She wasn’t breathing at that point. I didn’t hear her breathe anything. So, I ran out to go to Landon and get him aware of the situation. I didn’t even say anything to him. I just looked at him and pointed at the room. Then, he went into the room and he understood immediately what happened – she committed suicide. She shot herself in the head. We’re looking at each other, getting through the shock of what just happened, grabbing the phone, and making the call. Landon was the one that got his phone out and made the call.

911 Operator

South County. How are you doing? What’s the location of your emergency?

Landon

(Sobbing) My friend just committed suicide. She’s not breathing.

911 Operator

Okay. What’s the address there, sir?

Landon

(Hidden information)

911 Operator

What type of method?

Landon

It was a gun. The gun is still under her, though.

911 Operator

I need you to get out of those rooms, sir. Or do you think we need to start CPR?

Landon

She’s still breathing.

911 Operator

Okay, just stay on the line. What’s your name?

Landon

Landon

911 Operator

All right. I have a call in now so I need you to stay on the line. I need to ask you some additional questions, okay?

Landon

(Sobbing) Yeah.

911 Operator

Are you with your friend now?

Landon

Yes.

911 Operator

How old is she? How old is your friend, sir?

Landon

How old is she?

Kylie

(In the background) 22.

Landon

911 Operator

Okay, sir. Are you right by her now?

Landon

No. You said to leave the room.

911 Operator

And you said that you feel like she’s still breathing.

Landon

Yes, she was still breathing when I left.

911 Operator

Okay, do you want to start CPR? Can we get you back in there and start CPR?

Landon

(Sobbing) She’s still breathing…

911 Operator

Okay, if it’s safe for you to do so, sir, Let’s try to get CPR started, okay?

Landon

(Sobbing)

911 Operator

Sir, is it safe to do so? Because we don’t want you to discharge the gun while you’re doing CPR.

Landon

(Sobbing)

911 Operator

Hello, sir? Hello, sir?

Scott

Landon was too upset to speak, so he handed the phone to Kylie.

Kylie

Yeah, hello?

911 Operator

Yes, do you feel like it’s safe for you to do CPR?

Kylie

I’ve never done CPR in my life.

911 Operator

Okay, can someone go and unlock the door now?

Kylie

Unlock the door?

911 Operator

Can someone unlock the door so we can get paramedics in as soon as they get there? And I want to know is it safe for you all to do CPR?

Kylie

I’m not sure if it’s safe for us to do CPR because we’ve never done this before. Nobody’s ever shot themselves in front of us before.

911 Operator

Okay, well Ma’am, if you don’t feel like you can do it, I need you to step out of the room, okay?

Kylie

Okay, I don’t think either of us can do CPR, so you need to help with this.

911 Operator

We have them coming as fast as they can, ma’am. Okay?

Kylie

Okay, that’s fine. Are they close?

911 Operator

Yes, ma’am. They’re coming as fast as they can. If you feel like you can do CPR if I give you directions, we can get started, ma’am.

Kylie

Okay. It’s a gated community.

911 Operator

Okay, ma’am, don’t worry about them getting in. The paramedics will get in. Where is the gun? I don’t want it to discharge while we administer CPR.

Kylie

Trust me. She is not conscious enough to do that shit. I don’t know where it is. I think it’s underneath my girlfriend’s, but I’m not prepared to move my girlfriend’s bloody body to get the fucking gun. Okay?

911 Operator

Okay. Well ma’am, step out of the room.

Kylie

I’m really sorry

911 Operator

Ma’am, what’s the name of the apartment complex?

Kylie

(Hidden information) She is still breathing.

(Silence)

Are you still on the phone?

911 Operator

Yes, ma’am. I’m asking you if it is safe for you to remove the gun to the side so we can start CPR on your friend? Are you able to drag the body away from the gun?

Kylie

Remove the gun? Okay, she’s not conscious. She’s not going to shoot me.

911 Operator

Ma’am, I’m not worried about her shooting you. I’m worried about you punching on her chest and the gun discharging. I’m trying to keep you all from being shot as well.

Kylie

We haven’t touched her. We have not touched her.

911 Operator

What I’m saying is, “Are you able to move the gun so we can administer CPR now?”

Kylie

I want to say yes, but there’s a person bleeding to death in that room, and we love her so much. It’s really difficult to get the image that I have in my head out of my head.

911 Operator

Okay, ma’am, I’m going to ask you two to step out of the room until we can get the paramedics in there.

Kylie

We’re currently in the kitchen. She’s still in the bedroom. We’re currently in the kitchen. We’re not in the room with her.

911 Operator

Okay, just stay exactly where you are, ma’am. Help is coming as fast as they can.

Kylie

Thank you.

911 Operator

What’s your name, ma’am?

Kylie

My name is Kylie.

911 Operator

Okay, and were you all there? Or did you all just come and find her that way?

Kylie

I was in the same room with her when she did it. I didn’t realize that she was going to do that.

911 Operator

Okay, so you were in the same room with her.

Kylie

I was laying in bed. She came in. She was upset and I didn’t realize–

911 Operator

Okay, ma’am. So what was said or what was being done in the time when she got the gun and shot herself?

Kylie

She came into the room. She was upset, slamming the door, and trying to see where I was laying down.

911 Operator

Had you all been in an argument?

Kylie

No, no. Not me.

911 Operator

This is your friend or your girlfriend?

Kylie

We’ve been, like, talking. We’re not, like, girlfriends. We talk.

911 Operator

So who was she arguing with when she was upset, ma’am?

Kylie

Her roommate. But honestly, she’s been drinking tonight. She’s 22. She’s been drinking tonight because of the Falcons’ game. I know it sounds like shit, but she’s drunk.

911 Operator

Does she have a history of threats of suicide?

Kylie

Yeah.

911 Operator

Okay. Has she ever tried attempted to commit suicide?

Kylie

I haven’t known her for that long. She told me that she’s been suicidal. I can still hear her breathing. She’s not dead.

911 Operator

Okay, you can still hear the breathing.

Kylie

I can still hear her breathing. She’s not conscious. It sounds like she’s snoring.

911 Operator

Okay, it sounds like she’s snoring…

Kylie

She’s in her room. She’s in her room.

911 Operator

Alright, ma’am. I’ll go ahead and disconnect with you. Speak with the police.

Kylie

There’s a gun underneath her somewhere. Can I get up and open the door?

911 Operator

Yes, ma’am. Bye bye.

Kylie

All right, thank you.

Kylie

A few seconds into the call, we heard her breathe. We can hear her gasping for breath. Then, the situation becomes, “Oh, shit, she has a chance!” So we’re thinking, “Get here now and save her!” Before, we thought that she was dead at that point. So, partway through the call, you can hear us realizing that she’s still breathing, that she’s still alive, and that they need to send, like, an ambulance and stuff – not just cops.

Scott

So neither of you knew how to do CPR.

Kylie

No, I am pissed at myself to this day for not knowing. I have since gotten certified though. I did pull the instructor aside and, sort of, ask like, “What difference it would have made. I don’t think much of any.” The 911 operator was being very confusing with us because she was telling us to leave the room. Then, she would say, “Start CPR.” And we’re like, “Okay, but we left the room because he told us to leave the room.” “We don’t know CPR. So what do we do? Can you, like, teach us? Can you tell us?” I was just so powerless.

Scott

So the ambulance got there and brought her to the hospital. Did you go to the hospital with her?

Kylie

They wouldn’t let us go to the hospital with her. When you make a 911 call for somebody who has a bullet in them, they treat it like a homicide first. After they rule out homicide, that’s when they will say suicide. So we were under investigation right away. I mean, they were very gentle with us. They weren’t being, like, accusatory towards us, but they just had to make sure that they were doing their due diligence and ruling everything out. So, we were brought out of the room, sat down on the couches, and we had a bunch of officers standing in the house. Her apartment was carpeted. She had a rule about no shoes. I just kept seeing these cops with their big boots. I believe it was raining that night and they were just tracking their nasty boots all over the floor, and I was, like, shaking my head because I just knew that she would be pissed. We weren’t even allowed to go outside on, like, the porch and smoke cigarettes. Landon ended up smoking a cigarette inside the living room. It was just chaotic as hell while we were waiting for this detective to get there and interview us. They have to collect stuff from her room and take pictures. It’s a whole thing before they’ll let anybody out.

Scott

Did they determine right then that it was not a homicide – that it was a suicide?

Kylie

Yeah. They were able to make that determination enough that night/morning to where we could go home the next morning when we were ready. So that would have been Sunday, 14th. When we were allowed to leave, we had to wait, of course, for the detectives and stuff to get there. I had texted Jordan what had happened. She called, so I had a phone call with her just trying to explain because she didn’t know I was there at all, that I was going over there, and that we were talking beyond anything. So not only do I have this insane, terrible, fucked up news, but also – “What the hell were you doing there?” – just trying to try to explain that.

Landon had called this guy, Nate. I found out that Nate was the one who gave her the gun. The gun was under his name. He bought it for her as a birthday gift. As her birthday was January 5 that year, she only had this gun for a few days – not a few years like I thought. He didn’t know the extent of what she had going on in her personal life because she did not open up to him the way that she opened up with some people. So he didn’t know the risk that he was really taking when he bought her that for her birthday. We’re now able to leave. I wrote her a note on a napkin,

“Amber, I haven’t known you for long at all, but I feel so grateful for every second even though what we’ve been through should have been the last time. We even contacted. I am so extremely glad it was not. You have shown me so much love, appreciation, and dedication even though our paths would have never allowed you to. I think I’m cursed, to be honest. But I hope – with every last drop of luck that I may have – that you live. I don’t want this to be the end.

Kylie.”

So, of course, I wrote that, thinking that there may have been a possibility that she would live to read it.

Scott

So you left that there at her place.

Kylie

Yeah, I left it at her place. She had this coffee table with a glass top where people had written her, like, poems, notes, and stuff like that. When I saw the notes written under the glass table, it gave me the idea to write her note that, maybe, would end up there with the rest of the notes at some point – I don’t know what I was thinking. I just needed some way to get out what I was thinking. I felt like what had happened was somehow a result of me feeling cursed, like I’m not worthy of friends, I’m not worthy of relationships, I’m not worthy of her, and this is just the universe taking her away from me – that’s kind of what I felt like. I was hoping that she would pull through.

Scott

At this point, she’s at the hospital?

Kylie

Yeah, she’s at the trauma unit at Grady. We were able to leave the apartment and I was going to head to Jordan’s apartment at that time. I made that drive to her house, pretty much, every day at that point. I knew the way. My phone was dead and I, obviously, had just been through something really fucked up and my brain did not work at all. I got lost on the way home to her house – a drive that I had made several times, very recently, at that point. I should have been able to make the drive again without the GPS. I kept pulling over, asking for directions, looking like a crazy person crying, and they would tell me, like, “This way, this way, and this way.” I would forget immediately after. Then, I’d be pulling away and was like, “Oh, well, I don’t want to turn around and ask them again, so I’ll find somebody else.” A 20-minute drive tops took me an hour overnight, but I somehow made it. Right away, I walked in and just, sort of, explained what happened. I hugged Sky and apologized because I felt like I had squandered something like this responsibility – like, “I’m sorry that I let this happen to your friend because you’ve known her for so long. Of course, we were hoping that it would be fine.” It’s not fine because, obviously, it’s a head injury – we’re hoping that she wouldn’t die.

Scott

Even if she came through, still, this was a suicide attempt. This is something that’s a big thing that you’d have to deal with.

Kylie

For sure. I had to make a few calls at the request of friends of hers that wanted to know what happened or whatever, and I told them what happened. It’s pretty tough having to tell that story the first couple of times. I would just break down. It’s been a few years now, so I’m able to sort of tell it without just being a mess, but it’s tough.

Scott

When did you go to the hospital?

Kylie

We were able to go to the hospital the next day, Monday. A big group of people – friends – all drove over there and got to the hospital. We pretty quickly found out that 2 of us were not welcome there – the 2 of us were, of course, myself and Landon, her roommate. Amber’s mom came to the waiting area to, sort of, bring us in. We had to go in groups of two and we were not allowed to touch her or stand next to her. We’re only allowed 5 minutes which, honestly, I don’t think I was even given the full 5 minutes – I think she cut it short.

Scott

So it was Amber’s mom that was making these rules about your access to her?

Kylie

Yeah, it was not the hospital. It wasn’t her condition that was preventing us from visiting how we ought to be visiting. It was her mom. Her mom was very disconnected from the fact that this was a suicide. I believe it had already been cleared at that point obviously enough to where we could leave and we weren’t criminals. She didn’t seem to know that her daughter had depression. She didn’t seem to know that anything would cause this at all. She had no idea. I guess – I don’t know – maybe, Amber just didn’t talk to her mom about these things. Or maybe she knew, but she was just really in denial at that point. She was convinced that somebody had killed her daughter, or somebody had shot her daughter. She was yelling accusations mostly at Landon because he’s a man and, I guess, her mom figured it more likely that the man in the situation would have hurt her. But I mean, she just wasn’t believing anything we were saying. Her dad paced the hallways of the hospital and said, “You get in there and take a good look at what you could have prevented.”

Scott

They don’t know you or Landon very well but, as a parent in that kind of situation, it’s almost understandable that they would just lash out.

Kylie

Yeah. I mean, I do get it to some extent. I mean, that hospital visit was traumatizing in and of itself – being treated like that. I just wish that they could have stepped back and understood, like, “These are 2 people that had to deal with this, like, on the front line, so to say. How could they have just thought that we were in any sort of emotional position to take what they were throwing at us?”

Landon and I didn’t get to go on together. They separated us. They put Landon and our other friend, Alex, together in a group and then myself and this girl, Sarah, together. When we got into the hospital room, I didn’t really know what I was expecting. She was hooked up to breathing tubes and wasn’t responsive although she was making, like, squeaking noises as if she kind of understood that somebody was in the room. Maybe, she might have been trying to say something. Her face was very swollen. I could see how swollen everything was with respect to her nose because her nose stayed the same size while everything else just, sort of, ballooned out beyond her nose and discolored. She was really in rough shape. To my understanding, the swelling was internal as well – she was having brain swelling. Her mom kept saying that the detectives think that something is fishy going on and they’re gonna investigate this to the full extent. They’re gonna get to the bottom of this.

Scott

But none of that was true.

Kylie

No, it wasn’t. The detectives did not think anything at all was going on. I mean, looking back, I got the police report after the fact because I had some questions in my mind as to whether it was a press contact or, maybe, a ricochet or something. As I said, her arm went forward, so I thought, maybe, she shot something on the floor out of anger and it bounced – I don’t know. There are records of all the detectives’ inner thoughts about this and, every step of the way, they’re like, “This is a suicide.” Like, it’s obvious. They found text messages of hers where she was talking about having depression, thinking about suicide, and being out of medication. They found empty pill bottles of depression medications – some with her name, some without her name – like, with a different person’s name. So she was taking other people’s medication to substitute the medication that she no longer had access to, which is another factor that led to what happened because of being off of antidepressants, taking an abnormal dose, skipping days, and mixing it with alcohol. All these things are extremely dangerous and can very much lead you to suicide. But her mom was not having any of it and it was really tough to endure that. I mean, in my ideal world, I would have sat by her, held her hand, cried next to her, and told her to pull through, but I just wasn’t allowed to do any of that. I was treated like a criminal – like it was all my fault. After our group had left, her parents decided they had enough. They didn’t want anybody else to go in. So, in our carpool of people, it was only 4 of us that were allowed to go in. So, Jordan and Sky weren’t allowed to go in at all because the parents were distraught and had enough of visitors.

Scott

And they’re in control.

Kylie

Yeah. And they’re in control. We had to leave.

Scott

How long did Amber last?

Kylie

She passed away at 8.11 PM on January 16 – the next day, Tuesday. Basically, the swelling was just too much. They weren’t gonna be able to do anything. There wasn’t anything that they could do. I was so deep in denial when she passed. When she actually passed, I was still talking about her in present tense. I was really horrified and worried that, maybe, I wouldn’t be allowed to go to her funeral. So that was making me really upset. Thinking about her parents acting like that in the hospital, there’s no way that they’re going to let me and Landon go. At that point, Landon was staying with my mom and I was in my dad’s old room. I had mentioned how that Christmas would be our last Christmas together. My dad had already left the state at that point. He left to live in South Carolina, where he’s still at. So we had an empty room. My parents had separate bedrooms, pretty much, my whole life growing up. I had a very odd relationship – if you can call it that. So we had a spare bedroom. Landon was staying with us because his name was not on the lease at that apartment. Not only was it just too much for him to bear being there anymore, but he would not be allowed to be there anymore. Her parents had made it very clear that nobody was supposed to be living there regardless of any arrangements they had made.

Scott

It seems so unusual. I mean, Landon isn’t someone that you had known for a long time, either.

Kylie

We were trauma-bonded. We went through this awful thing together. We were the only people that understood what we were going through. Yeah, I mean, we’re complete strangers. The only way that I know this person is that he was her roommate and we had been through this awful thing together. Now, he was staying with us in my dad’s old bedroom. I mean, we really helped each other through a lot of that.

Scott

So were you allowed to attend the funeral?

Kylie

Thankfully, we were. I don’t know how they came to the conclusion that they were going to let us come, but they did. There were actually two separate things. There was a “viewing” which was not a viewing because she was cremated. It was a visitation-type thing. It was at a funeral home. But it wasn’t a funeral. It was sort of casual. We were just milling around, sharing stories, and stuff like that. I wore tie dye into that, as she instructed. I did tell people that was what she said. I said, “Hey, as hard as it is to believe and as ridiculous as it sounds right now, she did actually tell me this. So if you want to do that, you can.” Some people did wear tie dye.

Scott

You don’t often see that at a funeral.

Kylie

Yeah, you don’t. She was a big fan of tie dye. She liked colors and happy things despite being not very internally happy. She always had the biggest smile. Most of her pictures of her have this big grin on her face.

Scott

How did you deal with this? I mean, typically, counseling is what would help get through something like this, right? Did you do that?

Kylie

I called my Papi – he’s my grandpa on my dad’s side. I called my Papi and I asked him for help. I said, “Hey, do you know any counselors or anything?” Because I know that he’s a kind of a community staple – he knows a lot of people. I just figured, maybe, he knows a friend or somebody who’s a counselor who would be able to help me out. I told him what happened minus the drugs and the gay parts. Of course, if somebody does hear this podcast and finds out about this, I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you.

Scott

Now you’re out.

Kylie

Yeah, it’d be like that. It’s somehow easier to tell a podcast with thousands of listeners than it is to tell your own family. So yeah, my Papi was a big help with this whole thing. He is, surprisingly, very understanding of mental health as an elderly person because he has his own mental health struggles with being a war veteran with PTSD. So he was very helpful with helping me get a counselor. He paid for 6 sessions for me to go talk to the counselor and try to work out some initial things, which definitely helped. I’m not cured, obviously. It didn’t, like, take everything away, but I do think that it made those first couple of months possible because what I found after this is that the pain somebody feels when they commit suicide does not go away, it spreads to other people. So I was pretty depressed before this happened. Then, of course, the assault added to that. Then, of course, the trauma from her doing this in front of me and from losing her – the grief and the guilt…

Scott

That’s a whole lot of things piled on top of each other.

Kylie

Yeah, losing my entire friend group, my entire support system– everybody that I knew hated me. So I kind of refered to it as, like, a poison. It’s like a poisonous, suicidal feeling. It goes away sometimes, and then it comes back. The pain doesn’t leave, it spreads.

Scott

This was a few years ago.

Kylie

Yeah, this happened five years from now.

Scott

How are you doing now?

Kylie

Two years after this happened, I got diagnosed with PTSD because I was working a job where I was doing, like, woodworking. So I was working with loud tools in a very loud environment. I started noticing that when I would use certain tools, I would get really upset and, like, cry and stuff. I would just sit there and be working on putting together wooden frames and things like that with a nail gun, and I just wouldn’t be able to stop seeing the image of her and her blood. The feelings and imagery of everything associated with that would come back to me with the sounds of these nail guns because the nail gun – like I said, the gunshot didn’t sound too much like a gunshot – sounds like a loud pop – almost like a nail gun. So I noticed that I was getting really distraught at work and crying every day at work. Obviously, I had after-effects besides that. I had gone through some issues with self-harm, some issues with alcoholism, some issues with self-medicating with Valium, Xanax, and things like that. So I’ve gone through some after-effects, for sure, before the two years.

When I realized, like, “This was two years ago”, I didn’t think it was going to go away. I also didn’t think that I would be crying at work every single day because of the nail gun. So I knew that I needed help again and that 6 six counseling sessions after this happened weren’t going to fix me. So I started looking online for – I don’t know – like, group therapy because I heard that you don’t have to pay money for group therapy, usually. So I just wanted to find something that I could do for free because I couldn’t really afford therapy or counseling at that time. I had moved out on my own. I was paying my own bills. I didn’t live with Landon anymore. So, I had a lot of bills and a lot of responsibilities. I couldn’t afford counseling. I looked up this group and I found what’s called “Survivors of suicide.” It’s a group that meets up usually once a month. Just everybody in the group has lost somebody to suicide in some form or fashion. I found that going to those is really helpful.

Scott

These are your people.

Kylie

Yeah. I thought that, maybe, I would be the only person there who had witnessed one. But actually, the group leader had witnessed her loved one suicide as well – the same method. Then, I discovered that this feeling that I had when I’m alone and, like, I’m the only person going through this is not true. There are other people who have had the misfortune of witnessing or finding– and I listened to that episode that you did with the woman who found her husband. There are other people going through this. So I would encourage, like, if there are any listeners out there who are going through any sort of suicide loss, there’s a website – maybe you can link it in the description. So find a support group – a free support group – to talk to other people who have lost people to suicide.

Scott

Yeah, we can do that. It’s remarkable that someone that you only knew for, like, a couple of weeks could have such a profound and long effect on your life.

Kylie

I’ve thought about that a lot – what it means to know somebody, what it means to love somebody, what it means to be hurt by somebody’s loss and to miss someone. I don’t think time has anything to do with it. I mean, it certainly can. We had a very intense time together. I miss her. Certainly, for a while, after she passed away, I would get these feelings of, like, wanting to text her and wanting to send her some funny memes. When I meet somebody, I would think, like, “Oh, this would be somebody that Amber would have liked.” It sucks. She was only 22 years old. I’ve only just turned 22. I mean, I’m 23 now. I had to turn 22 as well and think about it like, “I haven’t lived enough life at 22.” I think it’s important to tell the story and to let people hear it because I had certainly never thought about the people who find someone or witness someone committing suicide. Obviously, it’s a tragedy, we miss the person, and we feel sad for the person’s loss, but the other thing people often don’t consider is that they’re leaving people hurting because of it, that we’re left to pick up the pieces and deal with it, and then the guilt and the shame that comes with it, feeling responsible, feeling like you could have done something or said something. I mean, in my situation, I didn’t have time, I didn’t even know that she had the gun in her hand, that she was planning. There wasn’t, like, an opportunity for me to talk her down. I think people just expect that “Oh, well, if somebody is there, then they could have done something about it. They could have been the ones to save the day.” Unfortunately, I’m not the one who saved the day. Nobody could save the day. So, I just want to encourage people to have empathy for the people who are there or are there shortly afterward because it’s a really hard position to be in with the guilt and, certainly, the survivor’s guilt.

Scott

You heard Kylie mention that she lost a lot of her friends over this incident. For a while, even her best friend Jordan was part of that. But since then, Kylie and Jordan have rekindled their friendship – and in fact they are now roommates.

If you or someone you know is having thoughts about suicide or self harm, please be aware that you can call and talk to someone anytime of the day or night by dialing 988. This used to be called the National Suicide Hotline, but now it’s the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. Someone is always available, and it’s always free and confidential.

Also, you can see the website that Kylie used to find support for those who have survived loss. That information, as well as pictures of Kylie and Amber, are in the show notes for this episode, at WhatWasThatLike.com/125.

I also wanted to mention that Kylie is in our Facebook group, so if there’s a question that I didn’t ask that you’re wondering about, you can ask her in the discussion about this episode. We’ve had about 200 new people join the group just in the last couple of weeks – and many of them are long-time listeners of the podcast, who finally joined the Facebook group just because they wanted to comment on the LAST episode about Josh being struck by lightning. And boy, were there some comments about that one! If you’re wondering what all the fuss is about, come on over! WhatWasThatLike.com/facebook.

And before we get to this week’s Listener Story, I want to tell you about a podcast that I’m pretty sure you’re going to love. Obviously, because I’m not going to promote a show that I don’t think you’ll like. Anyway, this is a fairly new show, called Beastie Bonds. I’m subscribed to it because I’m a big animal lover, and I know you are too. On this podcast, you’ll hear first-hand stories of people talking about their remarkable experiences and situations where the bond between animals and humans made all the difference. It’s hosted by my friend AJ, and even though she’s new to podcasting, you wouldn’t know it by listening to this show – she has a great voice and the podcast is very well produced. And the stories are great! For a first episode, I recommend the one titled “194 days”. You can subscribe anywhere, or listen at the website at BeastieBonds.com.

And now, this week’s Listener Story. This is how we end every episode – a story sent in by a listener. If you have a story that you can tell in about 5 minutes, record it on your phone and email it to me – Scott@WhatWasThatLike.com. You just might hear yourself on a future episode!

In this story, we get a snippet of what it can be like to be a baseball team mascot.

Stay safe, and I’ll see you in two weeks, because I’m already working on the first episode for 2023.

(Listener story)

Mark

View Details

Almost since the day I had the idea to start this podcast, I’ve wanted to talk to someone who has been struck by lightning.

I mean, the thought that you could just be going about your day, maybe walking through a parking lot to go get some groceries, or even at home, maybe in your kitchen – and suddenly you could be hit by 300 million volts. And you never saw it coming. You might wake up a few minutes later – or maybe several hours later – and still not know what exactly happened, until someone tells you.

But the reality is, a human being getting struck by lightning overall is pretty rare. I live in Florida, which is considered the lightning capital of the country. We average around 40 lightning injuries each year, which is still not many. And then there’s the fact that some lightning strike victims don’t survive, so they aren’t around to tell that story. So I’ve been looking around for a while, for someone with this experience to come on the podcast.

And then, I connected with Josh. He lives not far from me, here in the Tampa Bay area. In the summer of 2022, just a few months ago, he was struck by lightning. A few people were with him at the time, and they saw it happen.

But getting help was kind of difficult, because when Josh was struck by a bolt of lightning, he was on a boat – 100 miles offshore, in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico.

after the rescueJosh, Meghan and kidsJosh’s video:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/UEltkDTBmrs

Coast Guard rescue video:
https://youtu.be/BDwMojzvJoE

Josh’s website:
https://www.thenautiviking.com/

Full show notes and pictures for this episode are here:
https://WhatWasThatLike.com/124

This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp – professional online therapy. Get 10% off your first month at BetterHelp.com/WHATWAS.

This episode is also sponsored by StoryWorth – the easiest way for someone to write their life story! Save $10 on your first purchase at StoryWorth.com/WHAT.

Check out the Compelled podcast – inspiring stories of people who have overcome – at CompelledPodcast.com.

Want to discuss this episode and other things with thousands of other WWTL listeners? Join our podcast Facebook group at WhatWasThatLike.com/facebook (many of the podcast guests are there as well).

Episode transcript (download transcript PDF):

Almost since the day I had the idea to start this podcast, I’ve wanted to talk to someone who has been struck by lightning.

But getting help was kind of difficult, because when Josh was struck by a bolt of lightning, he was on a boat – 100 miles offshore, in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico.

Scott

You were out in the Gulf of Mexico in an area called the Middle Grounds. Where is that? Why is it called Middle Grounds?

Josh

It’s basically the middle between Florida and Mexico – that’s why the nickname. There’s a huge rock ledge that, if you look on a map, you can see where the deviation of the floor of the Gulf of Mexico – it really starts to get deep at that point. It goes from 100 feet, 150 feet, 220 feet, to around 500 feet pretty quickly after that. I believe I might be wrong about the 500-foot part, but that’s where it really starts to drop off and get much deeper.

Scott

And that’s about 100 miles offshore. What was going on that took you 100 miles away from land?

Josh

My girlfriend, Meghan, fished in this specific old salt tournament. She’s fished this 2 other times. I believe this is her third time with a buddy of ours, Glenn. We were on his boat. So she was fishing in this tournament. She’s 25 weeks pregnant. It just happened to be that I wasn’t busy on the weekend of this tournament and I was able to fish the tournament and co-captain in the tournament with my buddy, Glenn. I wasn’t going to let her go out on the water and be 100 miles offshore while being 25 weeks pregnant. So that’s what allowed me to be out there – not being busy and the reason I was out there is because, like I said, my girlfriend was pregnant. I didn’t want to didn’t want her to be out there without me.

Scott

How many people were on the boat?

Josh

We had 7 people total on the boat. We had 5 girls fishing and then myself and Glenn as the captain and co-captain of the boat.

Scott

So it must have been a pretty good-sized boat then. How big was the boat?

Josh

It’s a 39-foot Stamas. It comes out to about 42 feet after the platform and motors are measured out.

Scott

You knew Glenn and, obviously, your girlfriend Meghan. Did you know the other people as well?

Josh

No, unfortunately. I didn’t know any of them. I had heard of Sherri, who is Glenn’s sister, but I had not met these ladies at all. Unfortunately, the first time that they met me was at around 11.30 that night. I’m tired. I’m grumpy. I’d already been on the water earlier in the day catching bait with my son for the tournament. Their first impression of me – I couldn’t imagine – was not pleasurable because, like I said, I was just tired and grumpy. When I look back now, I’m like, “Man, I should have been a little bit nicer and a little bit less ornery. I can only imagine what their impression of me was, when they first met me.

Scott

Well, they got to know you a little bit better later on, so you kind of made up for it.

Josh

Yeah, absolutely.

Scott

So you guys had finished fishing and were headed back in.

Josh

Yeah, it’s about 3 hours at 30 knots close to what we call the Middle Grounds. So we got out. We hit some rain out in the middle of the Gulf. There’s no “Oh, this is the way the weather’s going to work.” The weather is mother nature. It works the way it wants to work. You just have to be abreast of that and understand that the fluctuation in the weather can go from beautiful sun to an absolute nightmare in no time.

Scott

Even though this is a pretty high-tech boat, there’s no kind of warning system for weather or storms that are coming in.

Josh

Yeah, you have the radar. This boat, especially, has a full radar system where we can see where the weather is, where it’s going, and what it’s doing. The issue that we have in this specific instance is we have two storm cells that are converging and coming together. We were headed due east, going back into John’s Pass to weigh the fish in. If we were to deviate from our course, we would have to go 50 miles north and 50 miles south, and have another 100 miles to still get back into the weighing station. The issue with that is fuel consumption. If we’re adding 50 miles, and then we’re deviating the course around that, it could add another 75 to 100 miles onto the trip. Then, at that point, we’re going to run out of fuel. What we saw in front of us were rain clouds – just rain clouds and not a super crazy-looking thunderstorm. It wasn’t anything that we’ve not gone through before. It wasn’t something that we were, “Oh my gosh, we’re gonna freak out. We got 15-foot swells or 8-foot swells.” It was a general thunderstorm here in Florida and a little bit of rain. There’s always lightning – nothing that we’ve not encountered before on the water.

Scott

When this happened – when the lightning actually struck – you happened to be recording video on your phone. Were you recording something in particular or just documenting, “Hey, here we are. We’re having fun. We’re coming back in”?

Josh

Yeah, I know that we had been taking pictures and photos of the trip before we left and while we’re fishing. I do videography for my own personal charters. At this moment, we fished all day long. We know we have 2, possibly 3 winning fish on the boat. There are no ifs, ands, or buts. We were in this storm in the rain clouds and all the girls were in the back of the boat. They’re there along the transom after the boat. I just wanted to record the waves that were going through the rain that we’re going through. You can look at the waves that we’re going through – it’s minimal at best. I was scanning across Glenn and his sister, Sherri. The rest of the girls were at the back of the boat hunkered down on the beanbags covered up with towels to help them stop from getting rained on. I was scanning to go over to them in what looked like a moment of defeat. We’re in a rainstorm coming back in. In my mind, the video that I’m gonna put together for this victory would be, “Here we are coming in getting rained on through a rainstorm. We’re going to be going to the way ends,” and then make that transition to the way ends where we are celebrating victory with, at least, two or possibly three winning fish for the tournament.

Scott

We’re going to have that video up on the website so people can watch that. It’s pretty incredible. That video went viral, of course, too. You have that video to watch yourself right now. Can you just take us through what exactly happened while you were videoing?

Josh

The video is around 17 seconds long. What it doesn’t show is where I was at and what I was experiencing while I’m unconscious. I’m hit in the face with lightning. So, I have no idea what’s happening at the beginning of the video. I was panning over at Glenn. The camera was focused on Glennn and moved over to Sherri. When it gets to Sherry, that’s when the lightning hits the outrigger. After we got back in the boat and looked at the boat, it hit the outrigger and it went out of the aft courtesy light that lights up the back deck. From that point, it exits the light and then hits me in the face. That’s when I went unconscious. You can watch the video. When you’re watching the video, though, it’s filming my knee. It shows Sherri’s foot and then it also shows my knee.

At that point, I am in a realm in a place that I can only describe for the religious – it’s what I would consider purgatory or a place of silence, but it was the loudest, most deafening place I’ve ever experienced. I’m gathering my thoughts and my understanding of what happened because I could see the lightning hit my face and I felt it in my ankle. I was watching the lightning and watching my ankle from the perspective of “I was watching myself.” In this short period of time, it feels like eternity. There’s no explanation for the amount of time that I was gone. Like I said, I was sitting or crouching down in this blackness, in this dark place. The understanding of, “I don’t know where I’m at, but I’m not where I’m supposed to be. Where am I going? Where the fuck am I going right now? Where am I at?” I have no fucking idea what is happening. Then, it clicked and I was like, “Holy shit! I’m fucking dead! I’m dead!! I’m dead!!!” I was screaming at the top of my lungs and just fighting. You’ll see in the video where the video starts to shake and the camera kind of went up away from my ankle up onto the boat. That’s when Glenn’s sister, Sherri, grabbed my phone. In that moment, I can feel myself screaming at the top of my lungs, “No, this can’t be happening!”

(Silence. Deep breath)

I’m with my girlfriend who’s 25 weeks pregnant, who will be giving birth to my son. As I’m going through this process, I’m thinking about my oldest son that is six years old at the time, and my only objective and only thought process is, “I have to get back to him and make sure that my girlfriend and my soon-to-be child are safe. But if I am gone and I am in this place that is again the most deafening place you could ever experience, the loneliest place you could ever be, but full of just– I can’t get the words of where you are, what you’re encompassed by, and the enveloping feeling of not being alone but being alone in the same sense. I was screaming, “Fuck, there’s no fucking way! No, no. This isn’t gonna happen. I am not doing this. I refuse to allow this to happen. I can’t be here. I have to get home. I have to see my son – because my son was supposed to be at the weighing station and be a part of the celebration. My mom was going to bring him.” All these things were going through my mind in this place. “I’m not going to allow it to happen.” This feeling of something being there… the comfort that started to form… and then I felt something hit my shoulder, but the words that were said when they were spoken reverberated throughout my entire body, and it was, “You have more to do.” Something hit my shoulder and I woke up.

When I woke up to this just insanity, I’m deaf and I’m blind, but I could smell something. I can’t move. I’m now, like, “Holy shit. You’ve got to get moving. What’s going on and burning? There’s burning on a boat 100-miles offshore. If fiberglass starts to ignite, we are so fucked and dead. At least one of the people on this boat is going to die. There are no ifs, ands, or buts. I couldn’t move. I was trying and doing my damnedest to move and get up, and I heard in a very muddled voice, “Struck by lightning. Struck by lightning. Struck by lightning.”

As I was starting to stand up, I could smell it. I was trying to get my wits and my vision started to come back. The ringing that was in my ears was starting to go away. I could see and hear again. I heard, “No, Josh. You were struck by lightning. Are you okay?” That was Sherri looking at me going, “Calm down. You’re okay.” She’s trying to stay calm in the situation where all hell is about to break loose.

Sherri

I was right there with Josh when it happened.

Scott

This is Sherri.

Sherri

A lightning struck. I took a second to figure out what just happened. I looked down and Josh was on the floor. He did not look well. His eyes were open. I asked, “Did you get hit?” At that point, I noticed his nose had what appeared to be dirt. After a few moments, I realized it was a singe mark from probably the lightning. He responded and slowly got up, and my attention turned to everyone else and the fire that was on the outrigger.

Josh

There was black soot all over my face. What I was smelling was the inside of my nasal passage that had been fried from the lightning strike that hit me in the face. At that point, I was trying to compute where I was at and how long I was out for. I didn’t know where I was at. I don’t know. I was still just in a shock and awe state of mind, like, “What is going on?” Glenn was trying his damnedest to get the boat to start but the boat wouldn’t start. Again, I was lucid at that point of “What are we going to do? What am I going to do?” I was like, “Yeah, ship. It’s not a big deal. This boat’s gonna start. It probably has a fuse. It is what it is. We’re alright. We’re good to go.”

Scott

Was anyone else injured?

Josh

No one, to my knowledge. You read my mind. I missed one part of the video because I don’t have the volume on. When the outrigger was hit – it’s made out of graphite – the lightning melted the outrigger and you can hear a tap-tap-tap in the video. That outrigger hit my girlfriend in the head. So that’s the closest to anyone being injured. Tanya said that she felt the lightning and she felt static electricity. She felt like she was actually hit by it – I don’t know if she was hit indirectly – but no one else on the boat was injured or touched by the lightning other than myself.

Scott

Was there a sense of panic? What were the other people doing when you regained consciousness?

Josh

I would say, for probably 10 minutes, I was looking around and trying to assess what was really happening, the danger of where we are, and how much trouble we were really going to be in because this storm that we were going through was nothing I’ve not encountered. I’ve been in storms 10 times worse than this. The only difference is I wasn’t 100 miles offshore. I saw the panic really starting to set in once we couldn’t get the boat started – we were really stuck and there was a good possibility that we were not going to get this boat started.

We started to get life vests out just in preparation because, in this type of scenario, more often than not, what the lightning strike will do is ground itself to the brass fittings of the boat and the hole and blow them out. When they blow out, you’re having 3-6 inch holes in the boat that are just there. In the end, you have water that you cannot stop from coming back into the boat. So, at that point, I’ve gotten into the bilge area of the boat below deck. I was down there looking around. The girls really didn’t know what to look for and Glenn’s a really big guy – I’m the guy too, but Glennn wasn’t able to get down there. So I was down in this boat. I was not really familiar with Glenn’s boat, but I’m familiar enough with the electronics of a boat – this is considered a yacht. I was down there looking around. Nothing’s fried. There’s no evidence that anything’s fried. I found the switch panel or the breaker panel underneath the boat and did everything I could to try to get this thing to start back up.

When I was down there, I was maybe 10 minutes after being hit in the face and being gone. I was down in the bilge area trying to keep my composure, and I was, “Hi, motherfucker. It’s time. You were somewhere. You’ll be able to talk about that and think about where you were at later on, but we’ve got to get home. Now you have six other people on this boat that you have to get home.” At that moment, I knew that I had to take responsibility and control the vessel. From a mental standpoint, I had to because – as you asked, “Was panic setting in?” – yes, panic was setting in amongst everyone in the boat.

Scott

This is what kind of struck me about this story. This is not your boat…

Josh

No.

Scott

But you are certified as a Coast Guard master captain…

Josh

Yes.

Scott

You’ve also got years of martial arts training…

Josh

Yes.

Scott

I know, typically, when there’s a group emergency, one person usually emerges as the leader. Why do you think that was you?

Josh

I’ve had hundreds and hundreds of employees over my lifetime. I’ve experienced life in a different thought process. I’ve gone through life and I’ve experienced life. I know that the one thing in life that is most important is you have to make it happen. There are no ifs, ands, or buts. And I’m completely malleable. There’s a quote from Bruce Lee, “Be water.” You become the cup. You become the rock. You become the sand. Water is malleable. That’s my thought process in life. I’m going to hit something, but I’m going to absorb everything that happened and learn from that. At that moment, it’s not my boat. They were people that I’ve known for, honest to god, 8-9 hours at that time – maybe a little bit longer. Let’s say it’s 12 hours for argument’s sake. I’ve only known these people – with the exception of Glenn and my girlfriend – for 12 hours and here I am. It’s time to buck up. It’s time to make shit happen. There’s no “Why did this happen?” It’s not that I was waiting for anybody else to take charge and take control of the situation. It’s just who I am. It’s my thought process. In my Nordic heritage, it’s what we call the observers. It’s absolute insanity that no matter what happens, you’re taking control.

If Glenn would have said to me, “Hey, man, we got it. We’re good.” We worked in tandem throughout this entire scenario at times. But when it came to the girls – taking control of the girls and trying to control their emotions – it was something that’s just innate. It’s an innate ability that I have to absorb their emotion, absorb their anger, and talk to them in a way that they’re going to understand. Again, I don’t pussyfoot. I don’t hold back. I don’t give a shit about your feelings. I really don’t. If you want to argue with me about your feelings, that’s fine. I understand you have feelings and emotions – so do I – but the facts of this scenario – and all scenarios in life although this one’s a little bit more severe – is, “If you deviate, we’re gonna die. It’s over and done. We are so fucked. You have no clue. You have zero understanding that – not even two hours ago – an hour ago, we were taking pictures of huge grouper and red snapper and having a hell of a time. Everybody was catching fish. We ended the day by catching Vinita and Blackfin tuna and we were ‘Holy shit.’ That’s a great time. It was 30 minutes ago now. Now we’re gonna die. So shut the fuck up.”

So I got out of the bilge area. That’s where I come up and saw Glenn fuckin distraught. He really, really panicked. I could process the information. I’ve known Glenn for a while now. The irony behind this scenario is the first time he took Meghan fishing, my first question was, “Do you have an EPIRB or satellite phone if you’re going to be going off 100 miles offshore?” His first response was, “Absolutely, I have an EPIRB. It’s always sharp. It’s ready to go.”

Scott

Can you describe what an EPIRB is for people who don’t know?

Josh

EPIRB is an emergency response indicator beacon or positioning device. Once you buy it, you’re supposed to register it – put some phone numbers, email address, and blah, blah, blah. You hit the button and that sends out the emergency response to the Coast Guard. We’re literally 100 miles offshore and the Coast Guard gets that response. They call the phone numbers to make sure that it’s not a false alarm. They called both phone numbers and neither one of the phone numbers responded – they didn’t pick up the phone. Then, they had to send a text message that this is the United States Coast Guard. This is a possible emergency. We need to be in contact with you. Please give us a call ASAP. The Coast Guard had already left the Coast Guard station in St. Pete. They were on their way to us. That emergency response beacon gives the Coast Guard a pretty accurate idea of where we’re at from the time the response beacon goes off to the time that they get to us. It made life a little bit easier and also made life easier in controlling the situation and emotions.

Scott

Right. Because now people have hope. “We’re putting out a signal. Coast Guards are on their way.” Did that kind of calm everybody down at that point?

Josh

No, not really.

Scott

Because you’re still 100 miles away out there?

Josh

Yeah, we got out of the bilge area and encountered more rain. We had gotten down into the galley of the boat – like I said, that’s where we’re getting all of the life jackets out and getting life jackets on. Everybody got their life jackets. I was looking at the girls that are in the boat. Again, I want them to understand the seriousness of the situation. The severity was not, like, “Oh my gosh, it’s okay.” You have to understand that we’re about to die. So I got all of the life vests out and I said, “Alright, girls. Now we have all the life vests ready to go. Anything that floats – tie them together. Tethered other life vests together. I need a pile of all floatation devices. Get them together.”

At that moment, the severity sunk in for them – the terror that was on their face was, “Oh my gosh. He’s preparing for the boat to sink.” One of the girls said, “So it’s that serious?” I said, “No. It’s more serious than that. I want you to understand what I’m about to say to you. I’m not screaming this. I’m not yelling. I’m as calm as I possibly can be.” I looked at them all and I said, “If you deviate from anything that we’re about to do, if you question anything that I say, or if you hesitate for a moment to do what I tell you to do, I want you to understand that you’re going to die. If I get any thought that you’re going to stop me or anybody else on this boat from getting home, I will put you out. If you’re going to hinder our ability to survive, you will not make it home. That is the severity of what we’re about to go through. If the boat capsizes, do not swim away from the boat. If you leave the boat for any reason whatsoever, understand that you’re going to die. I’m not coming to get you. Glenn’s not coming to get you. If any of you leave to go get that person, you’re going to die as well. It’s over. It’s done. Don’t leave the boat. You stay here. The boat’s not going to sink. If it capsizes, we stay on the boat. We have the EPIRB deployed. We have the EPIRB deployed. If you stay here with the EPIRB, you stay here with the boat, we’re going to get rescued. It’s only a matter of time. But if you do anything to panic, it’s done. It’s over. I’m letting you know now.” And they’re just like, “Holy shit.”

Scott

Yeah, after hearing that kind of message, I assume everyone was compliant.

Josh

Yeah, very compliant. We did have Glen up the top of the boat. Sherri was up top with him screaming at the top of her lungs trying to get him back down to the galley. We had dropped all 500 foot of anchor line and we knew that the boat was still dragging from the way that the boat was rocking. The boat was rocking back and forth. It was going back and forth in the waves. We knew that the anchor hasn’t caught yet. I don’t know what was really happening with Glenn above deck – I don’t understand – but I know that I can’t stop him from doing what he’s doing. To me, it looked like a full panic attack from the severity because he knew what the severity of the situation was. He has not said it. That’s where he’s up top.

Sherri finally got him to come down into the deck. Then, we have 7 people in a small confined area that, I would say, is probably 20 foot by 10 foot, at best. It got really tight quarters. The girls started getting seasick and people were throwing up below deck. It’s just like, “This isn’t happening. I am claustrophobic.” The way that the boat is lined up below deck– it’s a little area where you have the head and then a bedding area that is maybe 4 feet from the bed to the ceiling, if you will. I took that area – that’s where all the flotation devices were. I needed to make sure that I had the flotation devices because I didn’t know how well the girls on the boat had computed the fact that we needed these flotation devices. I can say it all day long, but they’re not prepared to jump off the boat. They’re not prepared to grab everything that floats and get out of the boat with that. So I positioned myself in the galley to make sure that I could go and I would be the last one out of the galley with all the floatation devices to give us a raft.

The boat actually did sink to the bottom of the Gulf. They’re looking at my girlfriend now who is also getting seasick. After the seas had settled a little bit and the anchor had caught, and we weren’t going and rocking back and forth, the girls were like, “How are you so calm?” My girlfriend was 25 weeks pregnant. Meghan was like, “I just look. He’s here.” And she pointed to me as I was laying on the floatation devices. I was drinking very warm tequila out of the bottles, and it’s not that I’m drinking to get hammered. I’m not doing a shot at a time. I was literally taking the bottle, taking the cap off, and just putting the tequila to my lips to give the persona of how relaxed I was and how calm I was. I didn’t care. I’m okay. I was giving them the understanding that we’re not freaking out. I was not freaking out. I just told you that we’re about to die, but I was not freaking out and made it end with, “If he’s not freaking out, we shouldn’t be freaking out.” That was to help quell the emotion and draw everybody back in and give them the understanding that we’re okay. But the severity is much worse and if you deviate from the plan, if you deviate for whatever reason, you’re taking your life into your own hands.

Scott

Did you detect that the boat was taking on water at all?

Josh

No. Luckily, the design of the Stamas boat was impeccable. It was great. The circuit that’s called the bilge pump that removes the water– that actually stayed on. When I was underneath the boat and looking at the bilge, I knew that we were not taking on water. We don’t have excess water. The boat was not, like, rocking. When your boat takes on water, it actually sways. It’s not a crashing rock up and down – it’s a swaying fluid motion when the boat takes on water. We never had that feeling. I knew we weren’t taking on water. Most importantly, the bilge pump would read the rainwater that would get into the hole of the boat – the bilge pump was removing that. When I was underneath the bilge area, I believe I counted 15 12V batteries, so I knew that we were on a separate circuit. The bilge pump was working. I have 15-plus batteries, so we can be out here for days and it’s okay. We have plenty of ice. We have plenty of food. We have close to 300 pounds of fish. Like, we’re good. And we have EPIRB. So again, I knew we were fine because I direct wire this bilge pump if I have to, and get rid of any water that’s coming into the boat because the hole is completely impacted. We’re there anchored up. We’re going to be alright. We don’t have anything to worry about.

Scott

That says a lot about that boat manufacturer.

Josh

Yeah, well, the reason I believe that I was struck was I was on the ground plate that’s below the decking. From what I’ve been told, there’s a ground plate that runs from the aft to the bow of the boat. That takes the lightning strike and directs the lightning strike to the back of the boat and out of the side of the boat. That’s what it did. It operated perfectly. I believe I was actually standing on that, and that’s what helped – I was grounded to that. That’s what helped the lightning pass through me.

Scott

Yeah, that’s why you felt it leave your ankle…

Josh

Yeah, exactly. I believe, if I were to have been hit and I wasn’t standing there, I wouldn’t have made it. I think that’s what helped me. But I’m not a physicist, so I really don’t have a great explanation for that. But that boat was designed to take a lightning strike and stay afloat, and also continue to pump out water when the water comes in from either the waves or the rainstorm.

Scott

And the manufacturer of the boat is– did you say Stamas?

Josh

Yes, Stamas Boatworks, I believe. I know the boat’s Stamas out Tarpon Springs, Florida.

Scott

How long did you have to wait before the Coast Guard showed up? They were coming out by helicopter…

Josh

Yeah, they came out via helicopter. I have an exceptional vision. At 39 years old, I have now probably somewhere around 2018 vision. But when I had my vision taken years ago with a piece of metal in my eye, I had 2012 vision at that point in time. We were sitting on the boat. The rains have dissipated. We were above deck. We’re freaking out. The body language of everyone on the boat, except for myself and Meghan is very tense. You could cut it with a knife. It was so tense – how tense everyone was. It was like a fog that was over a boat. I was looking down south. I knew where we were at approximately. We finally got our heading. The anchor holds and we have our north, so I know what direction we were now and I know where the hell the helicopter is going to come from. I know that. So I was looking south of the boat and I saw, in the foreground, a rectangle flash of light. That wouldn’t be a boat. If it was a boat, it would be a cruise ship. But if it was a cruise ship, we would see it. So I saw this flashlight. I looked at everybody and I went, “Guys, there’s something over there. I just saw a flash of light.” Then, I realized immediately that I fucked up because – that’s a false hope – they’re doing a grid search. I could see the Coast Guard doing a grid search and not coming directly to us. That’s what I assumed that they were doing from the way that the flashlight was. Nobody could see it. Nobody really paid attention to it. So I was like, “Alright, I’m not even gonna mess around. I’m not going to say anything. I’m not gonna bring it up again.”

It was around, I believe, an hour and a half from the time we hit the beacon to the time that they were on to us in the helicopter. You asked earlier about panic. That’s when I knew how panicked everyone on the boat really was. That’s how I knew how panicked Glennn was – the relief of seeing this helicopter and everyone being like, “Oh my gosh, this is amazing! This is awesome! We’re safe!” My mindset was in a totally different area. My brain was still there scrambled from everything that had just transpired – that relief of pressure and “We’re here safe and ready to go.” It was an eye-opening situation for me – how condensed everyone’s emotions were because it was an explosion. Everybody started crying. Everybody was happy. Like, “I’m over here and I’m legitimately pissed off. Like, I’m mad now that the helicopter’s here. I’m mad. I’m upset. I’m pissed off when I should be happy.” Like I said, we had three winning fish on the boat and I knew that we weren’t going to be bringing those fish home.

Scott

So the helicopter was there. The Coast Guard has arrived. They obviously are professionals at this. They know exactly what to do. What was the process for getting everyone from the boat to the helicopter? And could it accommodate that many people?

Josh

I was very surprised that we were able to get everyone on one trip. It was tight. It was really, really tight, but we were good. They radio to us. Our VHF was actually working – again, that’s on a separate circuit. I can only assume that it’s on the same circuit that the bilge pumps were operating on and was not struck by lightning somehow. They were radioing us back and forth and they wanted to know the severity, if there were any damages, and if anybody was hurt on the boat. They kind of glossed over the fact that I was hit by lightning. I felt fine. So there’s nobody that’s injured on the boat. They dropped the diver and the diver came up. My girlfriend was going home. Meghan was going home. I wasn’t leaving the boat unless everyone was leaving the boat. There was no possible way I was going to leave anybody on that boat.

There was a discussion that Glenn was possibly staying with the boat until Sea Tow or Boat Tow US or whatever tow service we could get there to the boat to tow the boat back in. There was a discussion that he was staying on the boat and I wasn’t going to allow him to be on the boat by himself – zero chance. We had that discussion. Sherri, his sister, was pleading with Glenn to get into the helicopter and, “Let’s go home. Let’s get everybody home. We can get the boat another time.” I made the promise to her that I would be the last person off the boat. I was going to make sure that Glenn was going to get into the water because I knew if I got in the water and into the helicopter, I couldn’t make him get off the boat.

We were sitting there talking back and forth and I went, “Man, I made your sister a promise that you’re gonna get into the helicopter before me.”

He went, “The captain goes down with the ship. The captain is the last one off the boat.”

“But Glennn, let’s be honest. I’m the only one that’s a captain on this boat.”

He looked at me and he smiled. He was, “Josh, I promise. Get in the water. I’ll be in the helicopter.”

So I quickly ran up to the front cooler – or the back, I don’t remember which cooler – got the cookies, ate a couple of cookies, jumped in the water, and then we were all in the helicopter. Then, Glennn came in right after that. We took a ride back to St. Pete’s Coast Guard station.

Scott

I can imagine how conflicted he would be by not just the fact that you always hear that “The captain goes down with the ship”, but he’s also leaving a million-dollar boat behind.

Josh

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Again, back to watching him panic, he was all over the boat and looking for things. I don’t know what he was looking for. The severity of what he was going through was on a different level because he got 6 other people on the boat that he’s now responsible for their lives. From the complexity of that thought process that he’s going through, I can only imagine that immense pressure because it’s going to affect everyone. Multiple people are going to be affected by this if we don’t get back home. So he’s back to the million-dollar boat. I really think it clicked with him. It’s a boat. It’s insured. Let’s go home. I have a fishing rod and reel that I brought out and I left that on the boat, and that was one of my oldest rods and reels I’ve had. My grandfather gave it to me 30 years ago. I’ve had it and I fished with it all the time, but I had to leave this rod reel on the boat and I was like, “Oh, well, see you later.”

Scott

It’s just a thing…

Josh

It’s just a thing. It’s a sentimental thing, but at least we’re going to be home. We’re all going to be able to get back home to your family, and it’ll be good. Glenn and I have become very good friends before this. When he told me that he was coming in and getting off the boat, I knew that he was coming. He wasn’t gonna stay out there alone if I was getting off the boat as well. So the relief of seeing him get off the boat and into the helicopter was something for me. I was, “Thank you, Jesus for getting him, in his stubbornness, and getting him off the boat and into the helicopter.”

Scott

When you’re loading everybody into the helicopter, at that point, you knew everything was going to be okay. You had those winning fishes on the boat. Did you consider bringing them with you?

Josh

100%. I absolutely did. Again, I was upset. I was upset, more so for the fact that my son wasn’t going to be at this station. My son wasn’t going to be able to see what this experience was like to win a fishing tournament or place in a fishing tournament, and just take in this awesome aura of just being outside, being an old Salty Dog and a Florida cracker, living and fishing on the water, and being outdoors in general. My son wasn’t going to experience that. That’s when I was thinking, “Man, we have the fish bags. We literally can get the three biggest fish that we have. We have plenty of ice. What’s another 100 pounds of fish and some ice? We’re fine. We have plenty of space on the helicopter. They said they can take all of us. I was strongly considering just putting the fish in the bag, bringing it to the back of the boat, and asking the diver if we can take the fish back home.”

I asked the diver, “How long is it going to take to get back?” “Probably an hour and a half – two hours at the absolute most.” I was calculating what time it is – it’s 12.30 or 1.30. “We’re gonna get back by 3 or 4. Shit, man. We can make this happen. I’m gonna be able to make this happen. Let’s do it.” And then I was like, “Oh shit, there’s the negative connotation of the fact that I have been the arrogant asshole to take the winning fish and put it in a fish bag, and my concentration was just the winning fish because none of these idiots – I don’t mean to offend anybody but, again, I don’t care – respond to the fact that I or we as the boat were concentrated on having the winning fish delivered to the weigh-ins. I didn’t want the negative thought process and the people to focus on the negativity – not the perseverance, not the fact that we had caught winning fish on the boat, we’ve been rescued, we had overcome being out on the water because we have the EPIRB device, and we were saved quick enough to get back to the weigh station. They would probably not allow us to weigh the fish anyways just because of the rule set – the fish has to be delivered via boat. They can’t leave the boat and blah, blah, blah. But just to have that story of perseverance, like, “Oh my gosh, these guys actually went the extra distance and the extra mile to make this happen to show people that we can pursue and persevere over almost anything in life. It’s a mindset.” I went through all that and was like, “I don’t want the negative because the negative is going to outweigh the positive of the situation.”

Scott

Of course, that’s the way Facebook comments work. People don’t see the good there. They look at you and like, “Wow, you guys all could have died and all you were thinking about was those fish?”

Josh

Yeah, absolutely. I was not thinking of that. That was the least of my concerns. I thought, “Now that we’re safe, we’re good, and we’re ready to go, what’s another extra 5 minutes of me throwing fish on the helicopter and taking them into the weigh station?” Because the people in the tournament knew that we were in trouble because Glenn has fished in this tournament for years. They knew that we were in trouble because we hadn’t gotten back to the boat, he hadn’t moved back to the dock, and he hadn’t radioed in or communicated with the directors of the tournament that we were not going to make it back. We’re just going home. I think, the last time that they ran the tournament, all the fish that they were catching were good-sized fish but got cut in half by sharks. So they just went back to the dock or went back home. Anyways, that’s where I was like, “Let’s not do it so I don’t have to deal with the nonsense of people being just inexperienced and just not having the understanding of what we had gone through.” I decided to ice as much fish down as possible before we left – I had thrown ice on all the fish because we were preparing for the 3-hour ride back into the dock.

Scott

I think it was a good decision.

Josh

Yeah. I mean, again, it’s been almost four months since this transpired. I look back and I’m still very upset with myself for giving a fuck about what other people thought. It was the best move at the moment, but I’m upset that I allowed other people to dictate what I was going to do at that moment because everyone on that boat, everyone in the helicopter would have absolutely been thrilled that the 7 of us would be like, “Holy shit, look what we’ve gone through.”

Scott

Because they were there. They know exactly what happened.

Josh

Absolutely.

Scott

Was the boat recovered?

Josh

Yeah.

Scott

What’s the process for bringing it in?

Josh

I’ve mentioned a couple of the tow companies – I’m not going to mention the names of the companies moving forward. Glenn was contracted with a tow company. Because we were over 99 miles outside of their tow restrictions, they refused to bring the tow, so he had to contract another company to come out. They did that tow process because they adhere to the DOT – you can only work eight hours. It took 2 boats to get out to the recovery. One boat went all the way out there and the guys that recovered the boat were telling us that the boat was in 8-foot swells. So when they got out there, they could hardly recover the boat in a safe manner. They got the boat hooked up and they finally got it moving. So they got out there. Then, they came back, and then they were met halfway with the second tow boat. It’s a long process. They’re only going 7-8 miles an hour at best. Most of the time, they’re going about 5 miles an hour in 8-foot waves – the 8-foot swells. So the guys that we’re talking about were like, “Thank god you guys left. You would have probably fallen off the boat. You would have been seasick.” At that point, I was like, “Thank God we didn’t stay because, if we did, it would have been myself and Glenn crying, crying into each other’s arms because of the just lightning storm that was going on.” I think it took about 24 hours for them to get out there, and then get the boat back to the dock. When we got the boat back to the dock, we looked at the VHF radio antenna, I noticed it was missing. It had gotten struck by lightning again while it was out in the water waiting for the tow to come back in. Like I said, if you stayed out there – the VHF has a 20-mile radius line of sight – you really have no communication with anybody at 100 miles offshore. All you have is your beacon going off and nothing else.

Scott

That’s literally what saved all of your lives.

Josh

100%. grant, we have what’s called a Float Plan. We let people within the family and friends know the precise location – the general GPS coordinates – of where we’re at, but that doesn’t account for if we’re moving or drifting. So the reality is, if we didn’t have the EPIRB, we’re adrift and sitting somewhere for 24 hours, 36 hours, 48 hours – who knows how long it would have taken them to eventually find us. We’re a speck of sand on the beach. It’s an immense understatement for people that really don’t go out there and don’t know how far you’re going out and how secluded you really are. You’re out in the ocean. People are under the misconception that you see all these boats out there. You don’t see anybody. You don’t see anyone. When you’re 100 miles offshore, you’re not going to see an abundance of people fishing. So having that EPIRB and being home within 3 hours or so after the lightning strike is something that I cannot reiterate enough how important it is. If you’re more than 20 miles offshore, it’s important to have some type of EPIRB device on your vessel or on your person. It’s extremely important just for the sound of mind because you can research horror stories of people going 10 miles offshore and never being found again because of not having an EPIRB advice.

Scott

It sounds like that’s probably the most important takeaway that you want people to hear from this experience.

Josh

Yeah, 100%. It’s being prepared for what can happen. Back to the question you asked me, “Why did I become the leader of the group and take control at that moment?” It’s the mental preparation as well. Being prepared and knowing that you have everything put together when something goes wrong – because it’s going to go wrong, it’s going to happen, it’s only a matter of time. You’re dealing with Mother Nature. You’re dealing with things that are outside of your control. Having the mental understanding that you’ve done everything necessary to be prepared for when the boat breaks down or gets struck by lightning, just having that security keeps you in the ability to stay in a mental focus and move forward. So having the EPIRB device on your boat is the most important piece of safety equipment outside of having a fully functional bilge pump on your boat. That’s the most important safety device you can have on your boat to get you located so that they can find you. You’re not just floating out there hoping and praying to Little Baby Jesus that you’re going to see the big bird in the sky coming to save you.

Scott

How long after this before you were back out on the water? And what was that mentally for you?

Josh

I got a couple of good ones there. My son’s sensei – his name is Master Leo – just left for Nepal. He’s gonna be running an endurance race in Nepal at Mount Everest. He’s a maniac. I was on the water with Leo. This is getting close to scallop season here in the Pasco County area, and I wanted to get Leo out on the water. Under different circumstances, I wasn’t prepared mentally for this, but it was a fitting situation for Leo. He’s Hungarian and he has 2 modes of operation, which is “Go” and “Go harder.” If I tell him I can’t go on the water because of what I went through, he would have just told me in his Hungarian voice, “Who cares? You’re alive. Make it happen.”

So we got out on the water – I believe that was a Monday or Tuesday after this happened on Saturday. It’s Monday or Tuesday the following week. So, within 72 hours, I was back on the water on my personal flat in my skiff that I do charters out of. The clouds were out there. You look at the lightning and it’s a little– I’ve never mocked Mother Nature. I’ve never mocked Mother Nature. I’ve never made fun of mother nature. The power of Mother Nature is immense and it’s beyond our understanding. The respect that I had at this moment was like, “Wow, there are clouds over there. They’re gonna form. Are we gonna get struck by lightning? Am I going to get struck by lightning again?” Because the likelihood of myself being struck by lightning goes up threefold.

I’m on the water and all these things are going through. I hate swimming. I hate being in the water. It’s not something I like to do. I can freedive 3040 feet, but I don’t like to be in the water because I’m afraid of sharks, if you will. I have respect for sharks. I have so much more respect for lightning and the fear of lightning is a reality. So we’re out on the water and we had a good day. We saw almost like an omen. We got out on the water. We’re gonna go to the beach. Leo and I are going to practice jiu-jitsu together. We’re gonna go to the Anclote Island. He wanted to– it’s called rolling in jiu-jitsu. He wanted to roll on the beach, but we made a stop at one of the sandbars and it was almost like a message. There’s a 10-foot plus Hammerhead in four foot of water chasing down other bait fish and stuff. We were following this fish around. This big shark came up next to the boat and swam away. We were on the boat or we were tracking the shark back down, and everybody on the boat was like, “Oh my gosh, look at this! This is so awesome!”

The whole time I was thinking about lightning. Then, there’s the shark. Right before this happened – I run 40 charters out of Tampa – I spent 20 hours in thunderstorms with bachelor parties in storms 10 times worse than what we were in when I was struck by lightning. Everything started to compile – like, how much I put myself at risk of being struck by lightning on a regular basis. All I was thinking about the whole time that I’ve been around was the lightning and – my biggest fear in the water – this shark that is in the water. To say it was easy to get back on the water, I was going through the motions. Being on the water is not a problem – not an issue going through the motions – but that feeling that I had was just nausea all day long the first time I was back on the water.

That was June. At the beginning of August, just about a month later, I was running a kid’s fishing trip and lightning started to come in. I was looking at my radar. It’s coming in. There are no ifs, ands, or buts. We ran back to the dock and the lightning started hitting very close to where we were at, and my buddy that was at the dock was, “Man, go inside. Get out of here. You really need to get away because the PTSD was something that was setting in.” Like, holy cow, I could feel it. I was getting lightheaded. So, it’s there. I’m still in crabbing right now as well, so I’m still on the water for 5 days a week. You can’t stop your lights for what happened yesterday. You have to continue moving. You just have the knowledge and a different perspective now.

Scott

Since this happened, you’ve had some good stuff happen too. Meghan was pregnant at the time. The baby has arrived, right?

Josh

Yeah, absolutely. It was triumphant perseverance going through that experience and her giving birth. We had a plan and it didn’t go to plan – it went the exact opposite of the way we wanted it to happen. It’s her body and her choice to do whatever she wants, and it went the exact opposite. But again, the perseverance and the fact that we have a healthy baby boy that’s three weeks old now.

Scott

You run a charter fishing service here in the Tampa Bay area. Can you tell us what exactly what do you do, your website, and how people can contact you?

Josh

You can contact me on Facebook and Instagram. My website is thenautiviking.com. I predominantly run a flats charter fishing for snow trout, redfish, tarpon, and grouper when the season is right and the water temperature drops down to get the fishing a little bit closer. I run a 26-foot Carolina skiff – plenty of room. It’s charter fishing. It’s not rocket science. The only thing that I can say that differentiates me from other captains in the area is I’m a relatively new captain as far as charter fishing. I’ve been a fisherman my entire life. I’ve lived in the Clearwater area most of my life. I know how to deal with people and talk to people. My goal in life and being a charter captain is to be known as a kid-friendly cap. So if you can put up with 5, 6, or 7-year-old and teenagers on the boat and keep people engaged in learning what the fishing aspect is and not losing your temper–

I’ve had so many stories of clients coming on my boat telling me stories of what they’ve gone through with other charter captains and it’s disheartening because you’ve got these people that are paying you very good money to go out on a boat. To be chastised, talked down to, and reprimanded on a charter captain boat is just inexcusable. From my perception, you’re supposed to be giving an experience – even if you’re not catching fish all day long – from the time that they hit the water to the time that they leave the dock. You’re selling an experience and you want to make this memory for your clients. So that’s my perspective of charter fishing – just giving people an experience that they’re going to have for a long time. In doing so, they’re going to come back and they’re going to hang out with me some more. They know that I’m a decent human being, I’m not going to yell and scream at them, just give the experience of a family event for you and your family, and be safe and know that you’re going to get out on the water and come back home safe – having that experience.

Scott

Even though you may be one of the less experienced, you probably are the only one with a personal lightning strike story.

Josh

I don’t know of anybody else that’s alive today.

Scott

That’s the problem – they don’t survive, usually, to tell that story.

Josh

Absolutely. I don’t know anybody else that’s alive today that has been struck by lightning, who recorded their own lightning strike, and is here to tell the story and to give that experience of life and the importance of how finite our time is here, too. I wake up every morning and I get to do things now. I get to hug my son one more time. I get to hug my newborn son, which I might not have been able to do. That’s the real perspective on life that she has changed for me. I am one of a kind. I’ve been asked out in public. People noticed and recognized me from the local news station to get the story. But again, the emphasis is on the fact that you can overcome something. You’re not stuck to the life that you have right now. It may be a little bit rough and maybe a little bit of a hard time that you’re going through, but it could be so much worse. You could have gone to the place that I went where most people don’t come back from. You could be somewhere else. So smile. Have a good day. Keep the EPIRBs active – keep them charged – and keep fishing.

Scott

You can see Josh’s video – the one he was recording when he was struck by lightning – as well as the Coast Guard rescue video recorded from their helicopter, in the show notes for this episode at WhatWasThatLike.com/124.

Female

Hi, Scott. I first wanted to start out by saying that I really enjoy the podcast and I really love listening to everyone’s stories, the situations they find themselves in, and how they come out on the other side. It’s very fascinating. I just finished listening to Episode 122: Ella was trampled by an elephant and I found the story very moving and felt very compelled to call in as a wildlife conservationist and an animal lover myself. I just wanted to encourage people to do research when they’re traveling internationally and visiting these magnificent animals in so-called sanctuaries. Any sanctuary that offers rides or keeps the animals in chains is not a sanctuary at all, and it’s actually rather exploitative to the animals. There are many sanctuaries in places like Thailand and India where the animals are free and they are truly rescued. They are free to roam and free to live out their lives in peace, safety, and comfort without the exploitation of riding and without the exploitation of being kept in chains to get close to them. Those are the sanctuaries that I believe should be supported and should be visited when tourists come to those countries to see all of those incredible animals. I just would encourage anyone who wants to travel to those places to really vet out the sanctuary first and ensure that those animals are truly free to live and free to be themselves and experience life the way that they should be experiencing life. Thank you for listening and I can’t wait for the next episode.

Scott

I mentioned previously that I’m now on Tiktok, and I’m definitely having some fun posting these little short-form videos. I’ve actually only talked about podcast episodes in a few of them, even though that was the original plan. I’ll still talk about podcast episodes there, but I’m kind of enjoying putting up random things like me telling stupid jokes, or my little dogs chasing a ball down the hallway. If you want to follow me there, my user name is WhatWasThatLike, with no spaces.

And of course, you can always join the thousands of other podcast listeners who are already in the What Was That Like Facebook discussion group. We do talk about podcast episodes there, along with a bunch of other things – but never any politics. That’s at WhatWasThatLike.com/facebook.

And now I want to mention a correction. In the previous episode, titled “Alice’s brother went missing”, Alice was talking about her brother having problems with addiction, including meth. She mentioned that he was taking methadone, and in my expert medical opinion, I said I thought that methadone was a drug used to help people get off of methamphetamine. And of course, that was completely wrong. It’s actually used to help people get off of opiates. I want to thank everyone who emailed and messaged me to let me know about that mistake. I’d love to say it won’t happen again, but I’m pretty sure I’ll say something that’s incorrect at some point in a future episode. If you hear it, please feel free to let me know and I’ll tell everyone that I screwed up. Love you guys.

And now we’re at this week’s Listener Story. If you have an interesting story you can tell in about 5 minutes, or if you just have any comment you want to make, you can record it on your phone and email it to me at Scott@WhatWasThatLike.com. Or you can call the Podcast Voice Mail line anytime 24/7, at 727-386-9468. We end every episode with a Listener Story, so I’m always looking for new ones.

This week’s Listener Story has a Christmas/911 theme.

Stay safe, and I’ll see you back here in 2 weeks, with the last episode for 2022.

(Listener’s Story)

View Details

Content warning – this episode includes discussion of self-harm, addiction, and suicide.

Have you ever had to deal with the problem of someone you know, like a family member or a friend, who’s gone missing?

There’s this weird mixture of emotions, like frustration, because you just don’t know where this person is. And it’s also scary, because you don’t know what happened.

My mom got a little taste of what that’s like years ago. And the person that was missing was me. I was 5 years old, and it was my very first day of school. You can hear my mom tell what happened, in the opening moments of this episode.

But not all missing person stories are resolved quickly or easily.

The story you’re about to hear is from Alice, and it’s about the time when her brother, Jake, disappeared. Their whole family was worried, and they reported Jake to the police as a missing person.

Jake with his nieceJake missing person posterthe searchBut eventually even the police gave up looking for Jake, and Alice knew it was up to her and the rest of the family to find him.

Full show notes for this episode:
https://WhatWasThatLike.com/123

Western States Aerial Search:
https://wsasearch.org/
https://www.facebook.com/WesternStatesAerialSearch

This episode is sponsored by Uncommon Goods – your secret source for unique gifts! Get 15% off your first gift at UncommonGoods.com/WHAT.

This episode is also sponsored by the Jordan Harbinger Show podcast – conversations with amazing people! Search for the Jordan Harbinger Show on any app including Spotify

And check out the podcast titled Some of My Best Friends Are – critical conversations about race in America. Just search for Some of My Best Friends Are, wherever you get podcasts.

Get the full transcript for this episode and ALL previous episodes in a single digital download:
WhatWasThatLike.com/transcripts

Want to discuss this episode and other things with thousands of other WWTL listeners? Join our podcast Facebook group at WhatWasThatLike.com/facebook (many of the podcast guests are there as well)

Episode transcript (download transcript PDF):

Content warning – this episode includes discussion of self-harm, addiction, and suicide.

Have you ever had to deal with the problem of someone you know, like a family member or a friend, who’s gone missing?

There’s this weird mixture of emotions, like frustration, because you just don’t know where this person is. And it’s also scary, because you don’t know what happened.

My mom got a little taste of what that’s like years ago. And the person that was missing was me. I was 5 years old, and it was my very first day of school. Personally, I don’t remember that this happened. But my mom does.

Scott’s mom

So it was your first day of school, going to kindergarten. You were about five. We knew what time the bus was going to bring you back. We knew the bus driver would let you off in front of our house. So we were waiting with a camera in hand to get your picture coming off the bus. We were so excited. The bus came down the road. Of course, we were at the end of the driveway waiting. The bus driver said, “Your little boy is not on my bus.”

Scott

So when the bus driver says, “Sorry, I don’t know where your kid is, but I don’t have him” how does a parent even react to that?

Scott’s mom

We were shocked because you should have been on that bus. You had never ridden the school bus before because you were five. It was your first day of school. So we went into the house and called the principal, and the principal said that he would look into it. He would ask questions to different people. He would look into it and find out where you were. So he found that you made a friend on the first day of school, and that little boy invited you to his house after school to play with his toys at his house.

Scott

Yeah, that kind of sounds like me. Sorry mom, I’m just too busy to come home after school this afternoon! But I did catch a ride home later.

Scott’s mom

The principal went over there and picked you up and brought you home.

Scott

And the next day, I made sure to get on the right bus home.

Scott’s mom

On the second day, we were out at the end of the driveway watching for the bus. The bus stopped, you got off and came around in front of the bus, and we took a lot of pictures. I have those pictures to remind me of that horrible day when my 5-year-old was missing.

Scott

My mom was only 26 years old at the time, so I can imagine the stress and worry she felt during that time when she didn’t know where I was. And the relief when she saw me again, just a short time later.

But not all missing person stories are resolved that quickly or that easily.

But eventually even the police gave up looking for Jake, and Alice knew it was up to her and the rest of the family to find him.

Scott

Before this happened, had you had any experience at all with searching for a missing person?

Alice

None. No experience besides what you see on the news or on TV.

Scott

Just hearing about other missing people, sometimes – right?

Alice

Yes

Scott

Okay. You grew up with Jake as your younger brother. Who else was in the family? What other siblings did you have?

Alice

I have a twin sister. We’re the oldest. We have a brother, and then Jake, and then a younger sister. So, there are five of us. When our parents divorced, my twin sister and I moved in with our grandparents. The others, kind of, bounced around, initially, moving with our mom, but they kind of had a chaotic– we all had a chaotic childhood.

Scott

Where did you grow up? Where was this?

Alice

It was a very small town in Utah – very rural with no stoplights. It was a very small, religious community.

Scott

Can you talk about the time, several years ago, when Jake came to live with you and your husband?

Alice

I had been married, maybe, two years at that point, and I just had my first baby. Actually, I was talking to Jake on the phone. He was an alcoholic. He had his first drink when he was about 9 years old. He said he became hooked immediately and he chased that sense of – I don’t know – I guess, trying to evade his feelings for his whole life. Anyway, he started using drugs and drinking. He was talking to me about just wanting to get clean. So, on a whim, we invited him to come and live with us. I mean, it was a big risk – we had a new little baby – but we listened and he set some goals. He wanted to get clean. We wanted to help him start his education, get a job, and find some direction in his life, and he agreed. We kind of set up, maybe, like, a rehab environment where we had strict rules. He wanted to quit smoking and quit drinking, so we require 100% abstinence from those things. God was important to him, so he wanted to establish a relationship with God. He would attend and participate in church. Anyway, we had a lot of strict rules that he had to follow. If he broke any of those rules, then it was an opportunity lost. Anyway, he excelled. He was successful. He started working for my husband – he was really happy he was. It was a really good experience for him. My baby was probably one of the most profound experiences for him during that time because– I don’t know. Holding a baby– They just look at you with so much innocence and love that, I think, maybe, for the first time in his life, he just really experienced a sense of truly being loved.

Scott

Yeah, when a baby looks at you, there’s no judgment at all.

Alice

No. There’s no judgment. It’s just pure joy looking into a little baby’s eyes.

Scott

It sounds like the phrase, “Cold turkey.” Would that apply here to him?

Alice

Yes. Before he came, we had established a therapist, a psychiatrist, and a doctor. In fact, I even met with those people before he moved in with me, and asked them questions and for advice. So we had some help in deciding those things. It was cold turkey, and he did it. It was impressive. I mean, I was very amazed.

Scott

He had to be kind of excited about his life turning around at that point.

Alice

He was excited about it turning around. I think he was proud of himself. I think he surprised himself. He was amazing. Drugs and alcohol just tormented him.

Scott

Was he able to maintain that?

Alice

He stayed clean for the time that he lived with me and for, I think, about 3 years afterward. He stayed clean. He ended up even doing some missionary service for the church that he was attending. So he did stay clean for about 3 years. Once he started using again, then it’s just a spiral of repetitive behavior. I mean, by then, I had 2 kids, so we just, sort of– I wouldn’t say cut ties because I was in constant contact with him, but I definitely didn’t want any drugs around my baby. I just felt protecting them from his choices was more important than inviting him into my home, in my life, which is a hard choice to make when you love somebody.

Scott

Right. Yeah. Your brother or your children…?

Alice

Yeah, it’s just heartbreaking.

Scott

Considering the success that he had before when he came to live with you, did you think at all about saying, “Hey, come back. Let’s do it again.”?

Alice

No. I mean, initially, after about 3 years, he was going back to school. He completed his missionary service. When he moved back, we did offer him to come home and stay with us and go to school. We encouraged him to not go back to the previous environment where he was comfortable using drugs and hanging out with his old friends. For those who also drink or use drugs, I think it’s not a good idea to go back into that environment, but he chose to do that for a couple of weeks and he just immediately reverted back to those behaviors. So it just was a quick switch.

Scott

You got a text message from Jake on a Friday…

Alice

Yes. On a Friday, I got a bizarre text from Jake where he said something along the lines of praying for him, he lost his leg. He can’t live without his leg. To me, it was nonsense. I just thought, “Oh, here we go. Again, another spiral. I am not getting involved.” I quickly deleted the text. It was this history of – I don’t know – bizarre behavior in and out of jail. At some point, over the years, I just decided to stop getting involved and ignored it all. It was too much drama for me and my life. On that Friday, I deleted the text, although I do remember thinking, “I wonder what he feels the next day or whatever when he sobers up, checks his phone, and nobody responds to him.” Everybody has just written him off. I wonder if he’s embarrassed. I wonder if it makes him feel sad or if he thinks, “Good. Everyone just ignored me.” I wonder if I just told him, “I love him,” what would that do? It wouldn’t cause any harm, I’m sure. But ultimately, I just decided, “No, I’m not getting involved.” So I just deleted the text and moved on with my life.

Mother’s Day was coming up. I was a mother, so it was a day about me and I did not want his drama. So on Mother’s Day, my mom – I can’t remember if she called me or if she just texted me – I talked to her and she said, “Your brother is missing. Nobody has heard from him since Friday.” They were a little concerned. Jake was, like I said, in and out of rehabs and jail. He often would even call the police on himself, so they would come, pick him up, and put him in jail to give him time to sober up, but he always got in touch with somebody the next day. He was really good about checking in, especially with my mom. They had a very codependent relationship. He did good at not disappearing, so a couple of days was a little bizarre to not be heard from him. He was also actually posting on Facebook. He was constantly sharing things on his social media. There was no activity either on Facebook, which was a little disconcerting to everybody because he’s an addict who can’t resist putting their phone down for even 10 or 20 minutes and constantly posting. Going off 2 days would take a whole lot of self-control that maybe he didn’t have.

Scott

When was the last time anyone communicated with him?

Alice

On that Friday when I got a text that I deleted, he had an explosive phone conversation with my dad. Jake had been working. He got a job as a farmhand. So, he’d been working on this farm fairly regularly. I think he had an agreement with our dad that my dad would supply, every day, a dose of methadone – I think it’s called – so that he could– he was trying to get off of opiates, from my understanding.

Scott

Methadone is, kind of, what you take when you’re trying to get off of actual methamphetamine…

Alice

Yeah, meth was definitely his drug of choice, although he used anything and everything he could. But yes, he was taking methadone to try to keep his job and live a stable life. So, my dad, I believe, was supplying him with his dose of methadone every day because Jake couldn’t handle it on his own. They had an explosive argument that same day and Jake said to my dad– I can’t remember exactly what the argument was about. I don’t think I really ever knew all of the details. At some point, Jake said, “You know what this means, don’t you?” My dad said, “Yes, I know what this means, and that scares me for you.” And the call abruptly ended. He hung up angry. Jake had made threats like that before, so my dad really just left it alone. It was just another kind of threat of self-harm, but that was something Jake used often to manipulate us – well, at least what we judged him to be – to get what he needed and wanted. That was the last time anyone had spoken to him as far as I knew. My dad didn’t call anybody or report it. The farmer that Jake was working for called the police because Jake didn’t show up to work – I believe it was on Friday evening. By Saturday morning, a red 4-wheeler was missing. Jake was also not at work. So the farmer was furious. He thought Jake took off with his 4-wheeler and ditched him to meet his druggie friends…

Scott

Which was not an unreasonable assumption, right?

Alice

No. So he reported that as stolen. That’s how the police got involved and found out about the conversation with my dad. Otherwise, nobody had seen when he last turned.

Scott

When he said to your dad, “You know what this means?” Your dad knew what it meant?

Alice

Yes.

Scott

The implication there was suicide?

Alice

Yes, I believe the implication there was suicide. Jake had struggled with self-harm. He cut himself often. So, yes, he threatened suicide. Often, in fact, I always remember believing that, someday, Jake was going to end up hurting himself. My siblings and I had conversations where we would just hope Jake ended up in jail or prison or he was going to end up dead.

Scott

You mentioned that you, kind of, saw this as part of what you called “The cycle.”

Alice

Yes.

Scott

Has this happened before? What are you referring to as “The cycle”?

Alice

The cycle, I think, is manipulation. Jake was angry. He. I think he was hurting inside. He had a difficult life. So he just tried to avoid his feelings. He would start using again. Then, when he was using, I guess he would manipulate or threaten to hurt himself – anything he could – to get away with whatever he needed to feed his addiction. I think he needed more methadone. I think he wanted money. Sometimes, I think he even wanted attention. So, I guess the cycle was just destructive behavior and manipulative communication. It just always made me feel tricked like we were gonna get involved in feeding his addiction – nobody wanted to be responsible for that. He would get stuck in his choices. He would be so hooked on drugs that he needed a way out. So I guess that part of the cycle is either he would end up just wanting to hurt or kill himself or get locked up.

Scott

I’ve heard that people who are sometimes suicidal don’t really want to die – they just want the pain to go away.

Alice

Yes, I’ve heard that too. I think that must have been true for Jake because he did threaten suicide often. He also hurt himself. Often, he cut himself. I think he wanted the pain to go away. He had threatened so many times, but he didn’t die. So I think that was absolutely true for him.

Scott

At what point did you realize Something’s definitely wrong?

Alice

Sunday – that was Mother’s Day. In the back of my mind, I knew. I don’t know, I just had a feeling that something was different this time. I was annoyed because it was interfering with my day, which makes me feel very selfish. That day, I guess I was just being selfish. I just thought, “Something’s wrong. The fact that he wasn’t posting on Facebook is really what made me think, ‘He didn’t have enough self-control to just step away like that.’” By Monday, my sister and I – we were split – started talking about it immediately. She must have felt too that something was not right. So, by Monday, we hadn’t heard anything. The police posted a missing person, kind of, announcement on their Facebook, asking if anyone has seen him to call. At that point, I thought, “Okay, this may be serious.” So, by Monday, I knew something was very wrong.

Scott

What did you do at that point? I mean, you think he’s missing, but what was your plan of action?

Alice

Well, yeah. I mean, when somebody goes missing, like I said, you see it on the news and on TV, but where do you even start? I mean, the world is a big place. I mean, we just really started. We were frantic. I guess we started sharing the post that the police put up for a missing person, and we printed it into posters. We just really started guessing and doing everything we can, which really started with the missing person posters. My husband and I decided, “Well, let’s drive to that little town where he went missing. Maybe we can talk to the police. Maybe we can drive to the farm and talk to the farmer.” We had so many questions. At that point, I didn’t know about the conversation he had with my dad or anything. All I knew was I had a bizarre text, my mom said he was missing and then the police were apparently involved. My husband was not really on board – he thought it was just drama and that I was just getting myself into a mess again – but I did convince him to drive. It took us about 4 hours to drive to that town.

Scott

Oh, so it wasn’t, like, the next town over. It was a drive.

Alice

Oh, yeah. We didn’t live there where he was living. So we had to drive to the farm. The farmers showed us the little cabin that Jake was staying in the night before, at least, Jake had been angry. He tipped the fridge over. He had thrown food and things all over the wall. The whole little cabin was just destroyed. It was a mess.

Scott

It’s no wonder he was mad then.

Alice

Yeah, he was very angry.

Scott

All of that, on top of the stolen 4-wheeler.

Alice

Yes, yeah. The farmer was very upset.

Scott

So logistically, this seems kind of difficult. I mean, he was 4 hours away from you. You can’t just move there and continue to look for him.

Alice

No. I mean, Jake was kind of transient. He didn’t live anywhere. This farm that he was working on– he would stay in a cabin that was an Airbnb. If nobody had it reserved, then he would stay there. Otherwise, I think he would just sleep in the mountains. He would just take a sleeping bag and find somewhere to sleep for the night. The 4-wheeler was missing, but nobody even knew what direction he went in. I think my brother thought he went to Oregon for some reason or that he was going to make his way to his house to visit him. He wasn’t worried. So, logistically, yeah, it was hard to know where to start. We thought, “Do we just go look for him? Where do we go look? We went to the farm. Where do we go from there? There are mountains in the West. There are mountains on the east side. So, as far as logistics, I mean, it was just like throwing a dart in the dark – we had no idea where to begin.

Scott

And were the police actively searching for him as well?

Alice

The police said that, initially, in the first few days, they found places where Jake was known to frequent in the mountain. So, they just kind of drove on the main road heading into a canyon and looked around. They did tell us that they spent about 200 man-hours looking around for him, but there was no trace, no evidence that led to anything. After a couple of days, there was nothing else they really felt they could do, so they quit searching for him. That’s when we decided we’ll search for him on our own. The police weren’t really supportive – they did not think it was a good idea for us to be doing it on our own for several reasons.

Scott

Why would they think that it’s not good for you to search on your own?

Alice

I think liability. There was private property. I mean, these mountains were very rugged and we were inexperienced. We had never even spent time in those mountains. So they didn’t want any other injuries or anybody else going missing, or they would have to go in and rescue them. So I think it was just them not feeling comfortable with our abilities. Of course, if something else had happened, if there was a crime, I mean, you don’t want people stumbling onto a crime scene and corrupting any kind of evidence.

Scott

But from your standpoint, I would feel like there’s an increased sense of urgency.

Alice

Yes, we started to feel a sense of urgency. In the beginning, after just a few days, by the next weekend, we had driven to the town where he went missing. I mean, the urgency just built. My husband finally realized that this is a bigger deal than he was thinking, so he was on board. When we were driving to the town– it’s a small town. My mom had tried talking to the police, but they weren’t very receptive to her. I felt like they wouldn’t be very receptive to me. I think, maybe, because I’m female in that small town – it’s a boys club – I wanted my husband to call and talk to them, but he was uncomfortable, so I just took my phone, dialed the number, gave it to my husband, and said, “Just say hello.” I just made him make this phone call. After he talked to them, he realized that it is up to us. My sister lives in Colorado, so she wasn’t there at that time, but she was also feeling, like, “Yes, we need to go look for him. I mean, is he injured?” We had no idea what happened. We didn’t know. I mean, like I said, he had threatened to hurt himself before, but he had never really followed through with it. So, we just had no idea what happened. The police weren’t gonna find Him. If we didn’t do something, then nothing was gonna happen – we weren’t gonna find him. He would just disappear. So yes, the urgency was building. We weren’t sleeping. Ideas were coming to us. Do we just walk into the mountains? I mean, we don’t even know how. I mean, we don’t have hiking shoes to go on a hike in the mountains. We really had no idea what to do.

Scott

When you say “We”, who is the group that’s actively involved in this? Is it you, your husband, and your mom and dad?

Alice

When I say “We”, honestly, I think that’s my twin sister. I just kind of speak as if we are one person. So when I say “We”, it’s mostly her and I that are talking and deciding what course of action we are going to take. Yes, my husband, too, was involved. He became part of the “We”. I didn’t really have a super strong relationship with my parents. Like I said, my sister, and I ended up living with our grandparents – they raised us. I mean, we would communicate occasionally with them, but they lived their own lives. So really, the only thing we had in common at that point was “Jake was missing”. My mom decided on the side of the police that it wasn’t worth the liability to go out and search for him – that was asking too much. My dad had surgery, so he wasn’t feeling very well. In fact, I think he was pretty sick. He was on crutches and he couldn’t get around. Again, he had dealt with this with Jake before so, I think, to him, maybe it wasn’t seeming quite as urgent at that point, or he just knew there was nothing he could do. It was in Jake’s hands.

Scott

I can imagine from his perspective – having been through this kind of drama before – that “We’re gonna go through all this trouble,” and then find out that he’s fine somewhere. “Now we all look like fools because we were so worried about him again.”

Alice

Yes. And we got caught up in it all over again. Yeah. I definitely can’t judge him for that either because I think he was trying with Jake. But again, he did maybe everything he felt he could do. So our next step is, my husband got on board. He’s very logical. Logistically he got out a pen and a paper and he wrote down– I mean, he mapped out. I guess the next step is we decided to search. We were going to start where the police started and left off, and we would branch out from there.

Memorial Day was coming up. By Memorial Day, he would have been missing for almost three weeks. So we thought, “Well, this weekend is perfect. We will have hung posters up. There will be people in the mountains because it’s warming up enough for them to get further into the mountain, so people will know to look for him.” So my husband decided. He talked to the police and he found out the areas where they started and left off, and then he just created a plan to branch off from there. Really, my sister and I would talk on the phone and we would decide, “We need to probably have, like, a registration table if we’re going to have other people joining us for this search. Or is it just going to be us? If other people come, we’re going to have to make sure we have their names, phone numbers, what they’re driving, or some information in case they go missing or get injured so that we can keep track of people. It really just unfolded by the hour. I mean, I didn’t know anyone who had ever searched for somebody like this before.

Scott

But it sounds like your husband had the sense of organization to put structure to the search.

Alice

Yeah, he was a little more emotionally removed. He stepped in and he was very structured. He’s an engineer and he just came together with this plan as far as what to do next and where to start. He found the coordinates for the canyons we were going to start in. He created a post asking for volunteers. But the police did not want us to have very many people going into those mountains again because of private property and the terrain was very rugged. So yes, Casey was very logical. He laid out the plan. He went to the farm and set up an area where people could come and park their cars. He was clear that the police were not going to be helping us – they weren’t supporting our search or participating or providing any resources. He had just all of their rules ready and laid out for us.

The morning of the search, my husband, like I said, went early. He took a camping trailer to that farm and parked it there. Then, the morning of the search, I think there were maybe 30 people who showed up. There weren’t too many. We were hoping initially to just have as many as possible – hundreds if we could – because it was such a big area. I don’t know how much time you’ve spent in the mountains in Utah, but it’s overwhelmingly big. You look out into this area of just trees, and think, “We have to look behind every one of those trees.” And it’s impossible. It’s huge. It’s overwhelming. We had about 30 people show up – I mean, random people who knew Jake or maybe my mom, or some of our friends.

A few of Jake’s friends showed up. One of them was a sheep herder. Oh, no, he was a hunter. He came with a spotting scope. He and his wife went to the very top of a mountain and they were going to just use that spotting scope and search through that just as much area as they could cover. So they had coordinates that they were marking off. What we were looking for, really, was a red 4-wheeler – we thought maybe that would be a place to start to find that. So there were also people showing up with horses. They took their horses into the canyons. My husband had 3 designated canyons that we were going to start in, and they would go to the top of that canyon and just work their way down. We had hiking teams. We had horse teams. We had a drone team – they volunteered their technology. They came. There were a lot of just really random people which was very surprising to show up and show how important Jake was to them because, at that point, we just felt like, “Jake was just kind of a forgotten soul. He’s in and out of jail. He was a drug addict. He wasn’t important enough to even the police to be out there using their resources, although they did do everything that they could.”

Scott

That had to be encouraging to have that group of people all wanting to come together.

Alice

It was incredible, yes. We had ATVs and side-by-side 4-wheelers. Everybody just took whatever resource they had and coming together as a combination was just beautiful. I mean, we didn’t have any hiking experience or anything, really. We even had to borrow a 4-wheeler to take with us so that we could participate and get into the mountains. Anyway, everyone just took whatever they had. Maybe, as a whole – we couldn’t have done it on our own – every person with whatever little resource they had as a combination just turned out to be a beautiful sight. I mean, we all opened up on the first day of the hike, all circled together to get instructions from my husband, and it was just amazing. It was urgent, it was scary, and it was emotional, but it was exciting, too.

Scott

Did you have a sense that, “Wow, this is the day we’re gonna find him”?

Alice

Yes. I woke up that morning on the first day of the search. The instant I woke up, I just felt overwhelmed with the idea that, “Today is the day we’re going to find Jake.” I even felt like I needed to do whatever I could to get up into those mountains because I would find him – if I was willing to do that. I just knew today was going to be the day, even though we had about 4 days of searching planned. I just knew it was going to be that day. So I felt the urgency. We had one canyon that was missing a hiking team, so my sisters and I decided, “Well, we’ll be that hiking team.” Then, we just decided to go and get dropped off at the top of the canyon. There were no trails. I mean, we got dropped off at the top of a ravine and we just climbed steep walls. It was muddy and there were giant boulders, and we just had to work our way down the mountain without any real hiking gear. I told my husband, “My sisters and I are going to be on a hiking team.” He said, “No, you’re not. You can’t do that. It’s too dangerous.” I said, “Well, we are going. You can join us or you can stay here. Either way, we are going to do this.” So he told me to get a backpack and get ready to go, and he would join us. I mean, I’m not outdoorsy at all. So I grabbed a backpack, but I didn’t put anything in – I just grabbed the backpack. So we showed up at the top.

Scott

Well, you did what he said to do, right?

Alice

Yes. Because he was just thinking, “Well, no.”

Scott

It’s no wonder he didn’t want you to go out there. So you were in a group of 4?

Alice

Yes, my two sisters, myself, and my husband were in a group of four. We took the last, the third Canyon – can’t even remember what it’s called. We drove our 4-wheeler that we had borrowed to the very top of the canyon, and left it there, and we just started climbing. We got our first step on the ground and our feet just sunk into the mud, and we thought, “Oh, no. This is gonna be a wild day.”

Scott

So you started at the top, and you were climbing downhill the whole time. Is that right?

Alice

We were climbing downhill, but we also had to climb up just steep rock walls to get up and around the boulders. It was a deep ravine. We wanted to climb down into it to see if we could see anything. I mean, there were cliffs. Jake could have rolled the 4-wheeler and fallen into the ravine. I mean, yeah, he could have been anywhere. So yes, we started at the top, and we worked our way up and down. The terrain was incredible. It was beautiful, but it was by far one of the hardest things I’ve ever done – I mean, not only hiking but searching for Jake, too.

Scott

It’s not like there was a path for tourists that wanted to hike through here.

Alice

No, there was no trail. The police had kind of already taken the typical trails that they could just drive a truck on to.

Scott

Right. The easy ones.

Alice

Yeah. There was no path. We were really just going dependent on hope and determination to find our brother. We were just willing to do anything and everything. I believe in God, so I really just depended on Him for direction. Even in the 3 weeks leading up to this search, I just really prayed hard for the right ideas to know the right place to look and the places to begin. So we’ve really just hoped God was really out there and He would direct us where to go.

Scott

Did you set a particular time to call it off for that day and meet up? How long did you plan to be out?

Alice

We didn’t want to be out past dark, so we asked everyone to be back before the sunset. So for that day, that was all we had planned. I mean, whether it took 6 hours, 8 hours, 12 hours, however much daylight we had, that’s what we were going to do that day. If we didn’t find anything, we would get up and do it again the next morning.

Scott

So you had to kind of build into that the fact that you had to get back to the 4-wheeler and then get back to the original meeting point before dark?

Alice

Yes, I think, in my mind, personally, “I was not coming home without my brother. I was going into those mountains and I was going to find him. I was going to come back with him.” That’s really all I even considered. I think the plan was to go and be back before dark, but I was just not going to go back without my brother.

Scott

Did you still feel that confident at the end of the day?

Alice

I did, for some reason. We made it all the way to the bottom of this canyon and we had found nothing. We had cell phone service through the mountains, which was a little unexpected. We heard other teams had finished their areas, and were coming out. Everyone was checking in at our little registration areas and checking out for the day. Nobody saw anything or found anything. We had called somebody to come to us and pick us up so that they could drive us back to the top to get our 4-wheeler. My husband said to my sisters and I to get in with another person, and they would take us back to the cabin where we started. I said, “No, I can’t go back. We didn’t find him.” I know today’s the day we’re going to find him. So my sisters got it and they went back to the cabin so that they could eat. I stayed with my husband. I even told him, “I need you to stay with me because I need you to be there when we find him.” So he let me get in and we started driving back up to the top of the mountain.

When he got a phone call from that old deer hunter – the deer hunter called my husband’s phone – he said he saw something through his spotting scope that was red. Of course, we were hopeful it was the red 4-wheeler, but it was so far away that he couldn’t tell what it was. It just was something red. The 4-wheeler that my husband and I left at the top of that canyon was also red, so this deer hunter said, “It’s probably just yours, but I’ll stay on the phone with you just to make sure.” So we just raced to get to our 4-wheeler and we said, “Okay, we’re here.” He said, “You’re not there.” So it wasn’t our red 4-wheeler that he was looking at. So I knew at that point. I thought, “Okay, this is it. We’re going to find Jake.”

So my husband jumped on the 4-wheeler. I took the phone and this deer hunter would just say, “Go a little more east, or a little more south, a little more West that way.” He just used his spotting scope. He kept one on my yellow shirt and one on this red spot that he had seen, and he just directed us. We were just racing. It was starting to rain. We were driving so fast. We felt the urgency to just get there. It was so rugged that we ended up getting a flat tire on our 4-wheeler, so we jumped off that 4-wheeler and just started running. We were racing. At one point, the deer hunter who was still on top of the mountain said “I lost you”, so I had to climb up on top of this big boulder until he could find my yellow shirt. Then, he led us.

We walked right up to a red 4-wheeler and it was obviously wrecked. It also had a flat tire. It had some broken pieces off of it. It was in bad shape, but it was a red 4-wheeler. I looked at my husband and my husband’s face was just relieved. He said, “He’s not here. That means that’s great news. We’ll call the police and say, ‘We found the red 4-wheeler’. He’s not here, which means there’s still hope he’s alive.” I just remember seeing the relief on his face and this urgent sense of calm came over me and I thought, “Just keep going. Keep walking.” So I started walking ahead while my husband was making a phone call.

I walked – I don’t know for how long. I walked and walked, maybe, 200 yards, and I walked directly to my brother. Jake was there. His body was laying just underneath, tucked into like a little– it was a big giant boulder. He was laying on his back and he was obviously not alive. He didn’t even look– I mean, it took me a minute to think this has to be my brother, but it didn’t even look human. I recognized his shirt – he was wearing an orange shirt. I thought I knew that shirt. In one of his last Facebook posts, Jake had a picture of a whole bunch of T-shirts that somebody had given him as a hand-me-down, and he was so grateful and excited to have fancy clothes. One of them was an orange shirt that was in this picture. I thought he was wearing that shirt that I had just seen not long ago, so I knew it was my brother. I mean, the condition he was in was awful, but we found him.

Scott

And the condition that he was in– was it just from decomposition – being out in the elements for three weeks?

Alice

Yeah. He died, likely, the night he went missing, so it had been almost 3 weeks at that point. The deep state of decomposition was horrifying. I mean nothing on TV or in movies even compared to what he looked like. It was awful. It’s something that will haunt me for the rest of my life. I have nightmares about it. At first, I noticed his hands. I noticed he was very bloated. So I noticed his clothes were just tight on his body and he was wearing a baseball cap. I couldn’t really tell how he died, but his face was partially gone. So I walked up to this side where it was missing. I mean, I assumed he shot himself in the head. His head was so swollen and big, and he had this baseball cap on and it just looked tiny. I mean, it just looked like he was wearing a tiny little Mr. Potatohead hat, kind of, on his head. I can still picture his feet – his legs were spread out. I knew it was him, but it did not look like him. It was awful.

It was just awful, but also incredible. I just thought I knew he was here. I knew we were going to find him. I hoped so much that we would find him alive, but I also am very grateful that we found him. There are so many families whose loved ones went missing, especially in the mountains, and they never found them, so we felt very blessed to find him. I was just so thankful that my sisters had left and they weren’t there to see it. I mean, I was thankful that nobody else had to see it. In fact, I called out to my husband once I established what I was looking at and that I found him. I just said, “Casey, he’s here. I found him. He’s here.” So he came running, and I said, “Stop. You don’t want to see this.”

So then, again, he called the police and said, “We found him. He’s here.” My husband said I was shaking, getting so emotional and shocked. My husband said, “You need to sit down.” So I climbed onto the 4-wheeler and sat down. Then, I realized, “This is not my 4-wheeler.” The police told us, “If you find anything, don’t touch anything. Just call us.” And I’m sitting on his 4-wheeler. I’m like, “My fingerprints are on the 4-wheeler now.” So, things just started going fast.

I thought I needed to call my sisters, my mom, my dad, and my brother – they need to know. I need to tell them first. So I just immediately called my twin sister and I said, “He’s here. I found him. You need to come here.” She said, “Okay, where are you?” I mean, I had no idea where I was. The sheep or the deer hunter had told me, “Just go west, go north, go a little more south,” so I had no idea where I was. I said, “Just come” and I hung up on her. She called me 2 or 3 more times, saying, “Alice, you need to tell me where you are.” I just told her, “I need you to come here.” Eventually, she found me. But yes, I called my mom and I called my brother who did not come for the search. He still wasn’t really sure that it was even a good idea to be out there searching for him. He thought Jake was going to show up in a rehab or something somewhere. So those were difficult phone calls to make.

Scott

He had likely been there. Do you think that’s where he sent you that text message from?

Alice

I’m assuming he sent the text possibly from there. I don’t really know. We tried to find his phone and we couldn’t ever find it. It wasn’t with his belongings. Later we did. The police, I believe, tried to trace his phone coordinates and where his last text messages and things were sent, but we never found the phone. So we think he just threw it in his anger. He obviously had rolled the 4-wheeler, so he could have lost it. When I saw his body laying there, I thought, “Was he injured? When he wrecked his 4-wheeler, did he get hurt? Did he die out here all alone because he was hurt?” I mean, nothing made sense. Even though I knew the answers, my brain was just kind of lagging trying to fill in all of these holes that just my mind could not comprehend.

Scott

Way too much to process.

Alice

There was a lot to process, yes. Anyway, We know he died either late that Friday night or early Saturday morning. It was a really beautiful view where he was at. Standing where he was laying down underneath that boulder was a really beautiful view. So he knew where he was going.

Scott

Was an autopsy done to rule out foul play or anything like that?

Alice

Yes. The police came and we waited until they got his body out. It was such difficult terrain. They had a 4-wheeler and a trailer. So they just put his body in a body bag, tied it to a trailer, drove him out, and they took all of his belongings that they could out of there to a medical examiner for the autopsy. I think we all assumed he was – I hoped that he was – high or so intoxicated that he just didn’t know what he was doing. I didn’t want to imagine him being sober and sad all alone in the dark mountains to die just all alone where we just all ignored him – me especially. I just ignored the text and deleted it. It just hurt my heart too much. I had hoped he was high. The autopsy results came back that he had alcohol in his system, but he didn’t have any drugs, so he was not high. I think he had a little bit of cold syrup. Otherwise, there were no drugs in his system. It did turn out that he shot himself, I believe, through his mouth. The sight that I came up on was where the bullet came out of. So it was messy and it was sad. My dad had actually given him this gun. When I found Jake, my husband told me, “You need to go sit down.” I thought, “No, I have to go back to see” because the police asked us, “Is there a weapon? We need to make sure we know where it is. It’s secured.” So I went back and looked for it. It was tucked under one of his – he was left-handed – body a little bit. So I had to go back and look at it again.

Scott

Do you think, maybe, he shot himself and then fell on it? Or how would it get under his body after he pulled the trigger?

Alice

I think his arms – I mean, with the way his body had swelled up while decomposing – just eventually kind of fell under him. His arms were, like, straight out and lifted a little bit, and I’m sure the recoil kind of bounced it around.

Scott

Since that time, you’ve experienced feelings of guilt.

Alice

Yeah, I had to question all of my choices in regard to how involved he was in my life, especially with my children. I mean, we had this beautiful experience when he lived with me. I got to see him be really happy and healthy. My daughter, my baby, was a large part of that joy for him, but I had chosen to not allow him to be a part of their lives anymore. I felt really guilty for taking that from him because of his choices. I mean, I thought what I was doing at the time was the right thing. I didn’t know what he was capable of doing. When it comes to getting drugs, really, I was scared. I didn’t know what he was capable of doing. If you can become violent from being high using drugs like meth, I didn’t know what to expect from him. So I felt very guilty about that.

And then the text that I ignored. I went back to that moment where I thought, “Just tell him you love him. That’s not going to hurt anything – what damage can it do when he sobers up?” I thought about him being sad and feeling all alone, and I knew at that moment, I should have listened to that. I felt like maybe that was God giving me an opportunity to know what was coming for me later. I felt like it was maybe an opportunity that I ignored and that definitely has brought a lot of guilt, but also taught me how to manage my relationships. Now, I do take those opportunities to tell people that I do love them. When my kids go to school, I have a 14-year-old. She’s a girl, so she’s angry a lot. I always make sure she knows I love her even if she is going to school mad at me for one reason or another. I want her to know the last thing she ever hears from me is that she is so loved, and I wanted Jake to know that too.

When I stood there with his body and waited for the police and even my husband to get there in those moments, it was awful and it was so sad, but it was almost like a tender moment with him where I just told him that I loved him. I just felt overwhelmed with love for him. As I was seeing this dead body laying there, I was seeing this person as that annoying little energetic brother, as a little kid, as that happy man who came to live with me, get cleaned, and worked so hard. I’m just seeing this whole life right in front of me that’s ended. It was just such a tragedy, a loss, that didn’t have to happen. I don’t know if it would have changed anything if I told him I loved him when I replied to that text. I don’t know if my dad would have reported him missing after that phone call or reached out for someone to go and intervene when he threatened to hurt himself. Maybe not. But I think it would have done something for me. I mean, it would have been peace of mind for me to know I did all I could for him.

Scott

Just his lifestyle– he spent so much time on his own alone with his own thoughts. I think he had to know that he was loved.

Alice

Yeah, I hope he knows he is loved. I hope he knew he was loved. He was okay alone, but I think he craved belonging somewhere to belong his whole life. He was bullied as a kid. I mean, he was different. As a kid, we would fight over the princess dresses to wear when we were dressing up and playing as little kids. So when he went to school, he got called derogatory names for his sexual orientation. Later in his life, he came out as a gay man. At that time, it was hard for him to find any amount of acceptance in a small community like we were in now, though I think he knew he was accepted by our family, which I’m thankful for. God was always very important to him. I think he had this internal struggle for pleasing God and disappointing him. So that was difficult for him. Anyway, yes, he was accustomed to being alone. He spent the majority of his adult life alone. I hope he felt loved. But he was sad enough to end his life. So he could have felt more loved…

Scott

Well, your intuition about what would happen that day turned out to be correct.

Alice

Yeah, I was. I mean, that was a really interesting experience for me. I’ve always believed in God and in a higher power. I do believe that He is a loving God. I believe He’s interested in our lives, and we can find him in the details of our lives. I don’t think he takes away the hard things from us, but he’ll help us through them. That morning, I was very dependent on Him getting us through that day, and I just knew we were going to find him. I knew I had to do everything I could do. I mean, I had to be willing to do whatever He asked me to do, so we could find him.

Scott

Sometimes, I feel like the word “Closure” is kind of overrated. I mean, it’s nice that you found him, you were able to bring him home, and give him a proper funeral, but it’s still a tragic loss of someone you love.

Alice

It was such a tragic loss. I don’t even know what closure would mean. I don’t think there is closure though. I do think finding your missing person is a huge part of maybe closure – at least it’s an answer. We did have a funeral for him, but our dad who was sick had an infection that had been growing and a medical crisis, so we didn’t even have the funeral. We didn’t get to do any kind of ceremony. We had Jake cremated, so we didn’t even get to do anything with his ashes. It ended abruptly to get to the hospital and then spent the next several weeks and months with my dad on full life support. So that was scary. We almost lost him. He ended up living, but that was also very scary and difficult. I mean, I’m not as close to my dad as maybe I would like to be, but my heart feels for him because that last conversation he had with my brother is something that’s probably very difficult to live with.

Scott

What’s the best memory you have with Jake?

Alice

That’s a good question. I have so many memories with him. When he lived with me, toward the end, he was getting ready to do some missionary service. One day, when we were shopping, he saw a ring that had, like, a chain in the middle that you could spin – kind of, like, a fidget ring that people like to have for anxiety. Anyway, he liked it, so I bought it for him and gave it to him. I mean, it’s not even fancy or anything. I gave it to him and he was so grateful. Jake was so humble. He never had anything. When he died, everything he owned, he carried in a backpack. He wasn’t very worldly. So after they took Jake’s body out the next week, we had the funeral. My brother had flown in for the funeral. Just before it, I took him up to the location where we found Jake so he could see it. I was giving him a minute there and I was wandering around the area. I don’t know how far away I walked. I couldn’t even turn around and see where my other brother was.

I was just walking and I saw this silver ring, just sitting in the dirt, not anywhere near the 4-wheeler – it was just kind of in the middle of nowhere. It has a “CTR” on it, which means “Choose the right.” It was the same ring that I had bought for Jake 15 years ago, and it brought back such a special memory of a time when Jake was so happy. Then, I got to have time with him. It was just such a random find in the great outdoors in the mountains to look down and, first of all, see that he still had it all these years later. So I stared at it and I have that ring again. It’s something that reminds me of a happy time in his life, which is something I needed in coming to terms with all the things that I saw. Seeing his body like that is traumatic and gives me nightmares. I’ve had to do a lot of therapy and try to live with those images. Anyway, that ring is something that is a good reminder of happy memories and a happier time.

Scott

Who would have thought just a random impulse purchase now holds so much for you?

Alice

Yes. I mean, back then, it was fairly meaningless because it wasn’t expensive or anything, but it was important to him, and it just told me that– I don’t know. I think the fact that he still had it was because of sentimental value only, which means that I felt loved by him and I hoped it reminded him that I also loved him. So that was special.

Scott

If you or someone you know here in the US is struggling with suicidal thoughts, you can call the US National Suicide Prevention Hotline at 800-273-8255 any time day or night. The Crisis Text Line also provides free, 24/7 confidential support by text message, when you send a message to 741741.

If you want to see pictures related to this episode, or really any past episode, you can see them by looking at the show notes. You’ve probably heard me mention the show notes in a lot of the previous episodes, but I wanted to let you know that when you click on the episode on your phone, what you’re seeing is a text description of that episode. The full show notes – with pictures – is at the podcast website. You can always find it by going to the name of the show, then a slash, and the episode number. So for example, this week’s episode show notes with pictures can be seen at WhatWasThatLike.com/123 because this is episode number 123.

I only recently realized that I should clarify that, because I was visiting with some family and I was talking to my nephew, Scott, who listens to the podcast. He was clicking and viewing what he THOUGHT were the show notes, but he always wondered, where are the pictures? So thanks, Scott, for letting me know that I need to clear up that confusion.

All right, a couple more things before we get to another great story –

First, I just released the newest Raw Audio. The Raw Audio episodes are bonus episodes, where you hear actual 911 emergency phone calls and the stories that go with them. Usually there are 3 of them in each episode. In this newest one, you’ll hear a man calling about a carjacking, on the interstate –

Male 1

She’s in the bed of my truck right now. She’s got a machete and an automatic pistol. The car has been abandoned in the middle of Interstate 40.

Scott

A man calls because he has just accidentally driven his SUV into a pond –

Male 2

Hurry up.

911 Operator

There on the way. Are you in the car?

Male 2

Yeah, I’m in the car.

Scott

And several people call to report an active shooter at the local mall –

911 Operator

What’s going on?

Female 1

There were shots. A kid came running up to our car and he said, “Open!” He was covered in blood and there are shots being fired!

Scott

This Raw Audio episode is #28, so when you sign up as a supporter for $5/month, you can binge all 28 episodes. You also get all the new What Was That Like episodes ad-free, and you get a sticker and a handwritten note from me, AND a personal audio message from me. You can get all of that by becoming a supporter at WhatWasThatLike.com/support. Not to mention, you’ll be helping to support the show, which I greatly appreciate.

And about those handwritten notes – sometimes people ask me, do you really write those yourself? And the answer is yes, I do. In fact, you can see me writing one of them on my TikTok channel at WhatWasThatLike (no spaces).

And I have to tell you, we’re having some great conversations in the What Was That Like listener Facebook group. We talk about the newest podcast episodes when they come out, but lots of other stuff too. In fact, I recently posted a question for the roughly 3500 people in that group – I asked, “How did you find out you were being cheated on?” And as you can imagine, that generated some truly interesting stories! If you want to join me and the other listeners there, we’d love to have you! And for a limited time, you can join that group for free! Just kidding, it’s always free. WhatWasThatLike.com/facebook

All right, now we have come to this week’s Listener Story. This one is from Bill, and you’ll probably be able to tell by his voice, he’s a podcaster. His show is called When Dating Hurts, and he talks to guests who tell their stories of dating and domestic violence. Bill shared his own story on What Was That Like about a year ago, when he told the story of his daughter Kristin being murdered by her boyfriend. You can find out more about his story and his work at WhenDatingHurts.com.

In this Listener Story, Bill tells about the time he met one of his idols.

Stay safe, and I’ll see you in two weeks.

(Listener Story)

Bill

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It’s time for a bonus episode! You’ve heard me talking about the Raw Audio episodes, and today you’ll hear a full, extra Raw Audio episode…

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I’m really happy to bring you this episode today, but it comes with a content warning, because it includes discussion of suicide. For a long…

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The subway system in New York City is pretty impressive.

It opened in 1904 so it’s one of the oldest subway systems in the world. And it is definitely the largest, with 472 stations. And throughout its history, the subway has offered service 24 hours a day, 7 days a week almost continuously. The exceptions are usually emergencies and disasters, such as 9/11.

You want to take a guess as to how many people ride the subway, on an average weekday? Go ahead, think of a number. Okay, it’s 5.6 million people. Per day!

The subway system can be a little scary sometimes, but most of the time it’s safe. It’s just a large crowd of individual people, each one needing to get from one location to another location. Many of them will have ear buds in, or be engrossed in a book or newspaper, mostly unaware of what’s going on around them.

What you’re gonna hear today is my conversation with Danny. Back when this happened, he lived in New York City with his partner, Pete. In fact, they still live there.

Danny was one of those people on the subway. Head down, in a hurry because he was running late, just wanted to get off the train and up to the street.

But on this day, he happened to notice something on the floor near the stairs.

It was a baby.

Danny – first time holding Kevin Pete – first time holding Kevin Family Day at school After the wedding ceremony Family vacation to Yellowstone Our Subway Baby – the true story of how one baby found his home by Peter Mercurio

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Episode transcript (download transcript PDF)

The subway system in New York City is pretty impressive.

You want to take a guess as to how many people ride the subway, on an average weekday? Go ahead, think of a number. Okay, it’s 5.6 million people. Per day!

The subway system can be a little scary sometimes, but most of the time it’s safe. It’s just a large crowd of individual people, each one needing to get from one location to another location. Many of them will have earbuds in, or be engrossed in a book or newspaper, mostly unaware of what’s going on around them.

What you’re gonna hear today is my conversation with Danny. Back when this happened, he lived in New York City with his partner, Pete. In fact, they still live there.

Danny was one of those people on the subway. Head down, in a hurry because he was running late, just wanted to get off the train and up to the street.

But on this day, he happened to notice something on the floor near the stairs.

It was a baby.

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Scott

You and your partner Pete were living in New York City at the time. Which borough did you live in?

Danny

We lived in Manhattan. We have lived in the same neighborhood since that time. It is the neighborhood of Chelsea and borders the West Village. We had met in July of 1997. By this time in 2000 we had been together just a little over 3 years. We had a pretty good rhythm in our relationship. We had separate apartments, but we ended up spending most of our time at Pete’s apartment. He had a roommate, so we had an agreement that since I was spending most of my time there, that we would split the rent 3-ways and then I would sublet my apartment. We had that arrangement for about a year starting in 1999. I’m a social worker. I have been doing social work since I moved to New York in 1994. Pete is a presentation designer, he worked for close to 30 years with a pharmaceutical advertising agency. Now he’s freelanced but he still works for pharmaceutical advertising agencies doing presentation design for new drugs that are coming out.

Scott

Here in Florida if I want to go somewhere I go and get in my car and go. In New York City it’s very common to use public transportation all the time: subway, taxi, that kind of thing. Do you guys even have cars?

Danny

We used to; we had a car for 17 years. We loved that car; it was just to be able to get us around and it lasted for a very long time, so it was really sad when we finally gave it up. We parked it on the street so moving it and finding parking spots in Manhattan was never easy. It would always be a frustrating process of driving around and around the neighborhood to find one free spot, and hope that no one beats you to it.

Scott

Well, let’s talk about that day. You were actually on the subway that day. Where were you headed and what happened?

Danny

This was August 28, 2000. Pete and I had made arrangements to have a dinner date that night. I was working late, actually I should’ve already left– I was running late. It was a night that I was going up to my apartment in Harlem. Even though I had a tenant that was subleasing from me – all my things were still there – so we had an arrangement where I would go up once a week to get my mail, maybe a few clothes to change out. This was a particular night where I had arranged to go pick up my mail. It’s about a 30 minute train ride from where I was working up to my apartment. Like I said I was running late to begin with so my hope was that I could get in and out of my apartment. I was thinking that maybe I could catch an express train so I could save a few minutes and not be so late. That didn’t happen. I stayed on the local train, so I continued to be late. It was close to 8’oclock that night and I think we probably had dinner arrangements by [7:30] so I was well late by this time.

Scott

So you were kind of in a rush?

Danny

I was in a rush yeah. I knew that I was running late and Pete tends to get impatient when we’re not sticking to the schedule, so I was trying to be mindful of that so he wouldn’t get too angry (laughter). I was exiting at the 14th street station or the ACE line, as I was going through the gate, I noticed on the ground to my left against the wall was a bundle. All I saw was 2 little legs sticking out, it looked like a doll. I’m thinking, “Some little girl left her doll on the ground, I wonder if she’s around.” I continue to walk and I’m starting to go up the stairs to exit, and I glance back one more time. When I did, his legs moved. Then I knew it wasn’t a doll and I rushed down the stairs. I loosened this dark sweatshirt that he was wrapped up in and made sure he was breathing ok. He had no clothes on and I could tell that it was a newborn infant, I didn’t know exactly how old he was at the time. But he still had– the reason I knew he was a newborn was because he still had the umbilical cord partially intact. It had been cut but I could tell that it was a relatively new baby.

I’m thinking, “How could this be? How could there be a baby on the ground? Is the mother around or somebody around that knows what’s going on?” I tried to alert other passengers that may have been going through the station. By this time, it was 8 o’clock, past rush hour, there weren’t a lot of people going through the exit I was going through. I managed to get the attention of one woman that was walking by and I was alerting her, “There’s a baby right here.” She did not speak any English, so she didn’t understand what I was saying; but I was pointing and motioning to the baby. I think she got nervous because she backed away and just left really quickly. I tried to yell to notify– this was before the MetroCard system that’s in New York City now, so the subway operated on subway tokens. I wanted someone to notify the token booth attendant so that they could notify the authorities or call the police, but that wasn’t happening. Then I thought, “Oh there’s a payphone right upstairs on the street” – this was before I had a cellphone – I just thought, “I’m going to call the police.” So, I ran up the stairs to that payphone and then I called 911 and I said, “I found a baby!” I told them where I was located and then I ran back down the steps. I didn’t pick the baby up because I wasn’t sure if he’d been injured in any way, so I didn’t want to cause any further injury by picking him up, so I left him there; but I went back down to be with him. Waiting for the police I was thinking it was taking forever and I’m sure for me time was standing still. It may have only been minutes, but it felt like hours. Then I had a thought, “Oh they probably think it’s a prank call so that’s the reason why they’re not coming.” I felt in my pocket, and I had a quarter, so I thought, “I need to call somebody else.” So, I thought of Pete. I thought, “If I call Pete, he can call the police and they’ll believe him and they’ll send the police.” So, I ran back up to that payphone and I called Pete and blurted out, “I found a baby. I don’t think they believed me. I think they thought it was a prank call so if you call, they’ll believe you and they’ll come.” While I was on the phone with him that’s when the police showed up, so I hung up the phone really quickly and went over to the police car as they were getting out of the car.

Scott

He must have been– I mean you had to hang up so quickly he had to be completely confused like, “What in the world is going on?” Right?

Danny

He was. He was asking me, “Where are you? Where are you?” I told him, “I’m at 15th street and 8th avenue. Send the police.” Then as they were showing up, I just said, “They’re here” and I just hung up. I don’t know if he even believed me. (laughter)

Scott

Yeah, Danny’s running late, he’s come up with this crazy story. This is like a Seinfeld episode or something right? (laughter)

Danny

Yeah, it was completely bizarre.

Scott

I wanted to hear from Pete what it was like to get that phone call. Here’s Pete.

Pete

When I picked up the phone, I was expecting him to tell me that he was– you know we had a dinner date that night and I was expecting him to tell me that he was gonna be later than he already was. I was at home waiting for him, and I was hungry. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of the term “hangry” so I was hungry and angry. When I picked up the phone, I was expecting him to say, “I’m gonna be later” and I was expecting to get angry at him and then he just blurted out, “I found a baby!” His tone was so panicked that I knew that– and he doesn’t joke around. He’s usually very calm, so I knew he was dead serious. I just said, “Where are you?” He kept repeating himself he said, “I called 911 but I don’t think they believed me.” I said, “Where are you? Where are you? Where are you?” He said, “I’m at the subway station at 15th street and 8th avenue can you call 911?” I said, “Well I’m just gonna come down there it would be easier for me to find some help on the street.” There was always a cop car or police on the sidewalks in that neighborhood all the time so I figured it would just be easier to do that. I ran down there and by the time I got there the authorities had arrived. Danny was standing at the top of the steps, and I said, “Where’s the baby?!” He just gestured with his head to the steps and at that moment 2 police officers were walking up and one of them was holding the baby in his arms. He was still in shock when I got there, he was like not saying much. He was just sort of gesturing in small gestures, but he didn’t really say much, he was just still processing it all, I think.

Danny

When the police showed up, they wanted me to tell them what happened. First, I had to show them where the baby was, so we went down those stairs again to where he was. Then I went back up, but they wanted me to wait. They said, “Don’t leave, just wait right here.” So, I waited. As they were bringing the baby up, holding him in their arms, that’s when Pete was running down the street and he came up just as they were coming out from the station. It quickly became a scene, not only were there those 2 police officers that arrived but probably like a half a dozen other police cars showed up. They quickly put police tape around the whole area. Then detectives showed up and they told me, “You cannot leave.” So I had to stay there for 2 hours as they one-by-one interviewed me to tell exactly what had happened. Why was I there, the circumstances that led me to find the baby, and anything else that I may have noticed. So that process took about a couple of hours.

Scott

Pete was there during that time?

Danny

Pete was there although they would always pull me away, so he wasn’t able to listen to me telling the story. As a new detective would show up, he would say, “Ok come over here I have some questions for you.” They would pull me away from him and then I would tell the story. At some point Pete said to me, “I think you’re going to be connected to this baby for the rest of your life.” I had no idea what he was talking about. I said, “What do you mean?” He was like, “Well, maybe not tonight, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not even next year but eventually this baby is going to know what happened tonight. He’s gonna want to know– he may want to meet the person that found him.” I said, “Oh ok.” He said, “Well maybe what we can do is we can send a birthday card everyday on this day if we find out where he happens to be placed or where he gets adopted by.” I said, “That sounds like a really great idea.” I was still probably in a state of shock and of course we’re still hungry.

Eventually the police detectives say, “Ok you’re free to go.” By this time, it’s about 10 o’clock at night so we both go to a restaurant that’s about a block away from there that, at the time, was one of our favorite Mexican restaurants. We sat down and the first thing we did was order a margarita.

Scott

Of course, no matter what time of the day or night there’s going to be a place to go find something to eat in New York.

Danny

Yes. I was still in a state of shock, but Pete still hadn’t heard the complete story, so he was asking, “So what happened?” I didn’t realize that he wasn’t part of all those conversations with me telling the story. So, I had to tell him what exactly happened.

Scott

Now the next day this was all over the news?

Danny

Oh yeah. That night the local news stations showed up and they did a story and I saw the local paper was there that night. So, it was in the paper, and it was also broadcast that night on the news. Then more reporters showed up to get an interview. It was a part of the news cycle for at least 24-48 hours. In addition, because of the situation with the baby, the police were doing regular updates. They were doing press conferences appealing to the public if anyone knew anything about the whereabouts of the mother of the baby. Or if anyone knew anything that could lead them to anything new in their case. For 24 hours they were doing regular press conferences, so it was in the news for a while.

The next morning, I’m going to work and the hospital that the police took him to– here’s another part of the story. They had called for an ambulance to show up to take the baby to the hospital. The ambulance never showed up, so those original 2 police officers took him to the local hospital, which was just 2 blocks away. So, I knew where they had taken him, which was just 2 blocks north of where we lived at the time. That morning as I’m going to work, I had a change of mind. I thought, “I’m gonna go to the hospital. I’m gonna see if I can find out any information about the baby and see what’s happened to him.” As I go in, I go to the information desk and the attendant says, “How can I help you?” I said, “I’m here to see a baby that was brought in last night.” She said, “Are you family?” I said, “No.” She said, “I’m sorry only family are allowed.” I said, “Well he doesn’t have any family. I found him. He was found last night.” But she said, “I’m sorry only family are allowed in.” To me that was the end of the story. Yet I still wanted to find out more.

I had quite a few friends and colleagues that had experience in foster care or adoptive care. They were telling me what usually happens in situations like this. They also recommended that I contact the pediatric social worker at the hospital to see if I could find out more information about where he might be and what condition he might be in. I took that advice, and it took me about a day to locate the pediatric social worker. She was very annoyed with me when I finally got her. She asked, “How did you get this number? How did you find me?” I said, “Well I was just persistent until I could find you, and you actually answered the phone.” I told her who I was, and I said, “I’m just calling to see if I can find out how the baby is doing.” She said, “I can’t share any information with you.” I said, “You don’t have to share any information about where he might be but just, how is he doing?” She said, “I can tell you that he’s healthy and he’s doing ok.”

Scott

Good. Well, that’s what you wanted to know anyway.

Danny

That was all it was. I go on my way thinking it’s the end of the story. About 6 weeks later I got a call from the attorney with The Administration of Children’s Services, the child welfare agency in New York City. She said, “I’ve been looking for you and I would like for you to testify in court.” I said, “For what?” She said, “The baby you found, there’s no biological relatives that have come forward. But we’re proceeding with terminating the biological parental rights so the baby can be free for adoption. Your testimony will aid our case so we can move forward with terminating the parental rights.” I said, “Sure.” She actually sent me a subpoena to come to court just a few days later. So, I go into court and I meet the attorney– actually there’s 3 attorneys. There’s the attorney for The Administration of Children’s Services, there’s a legal aid attorney, and there’s an attorney for the Foster Care agency. They tell me, “I’m so sorry the judge postponed the hearing for 6 more weeks because we didn’t have all the paperwork in. Would you be able to come back in 6 weeks’ time?” They gave me the date and I said, “Sure.”

By this time, it’s the beginning of December. I go back to that family court in early December. I had just started a new job, so I was going on my lunch break. I’m going in thinking I’m just telling my story and then I’ll be on my way. I tell the story, the circumstances leading up to finding the baby. Then the judge asked me, “Would you mind staying for the remainder of the hearing?” I said, “Well I’ve got to go back to work; if it’s not gonna take too long.” She smiles and says, “No it won’t.” Sure, enough it didn’t. The 2 police officers that showed up that night wrote up their testimony of what had happened when they showed up on the scene and found the baby. They told their story and two minutes later it’s over. The judge is addressing me again and she says, “Mr. Stewart I just want to let you know what’s happening here. In situations where we have an abandoned baby, we want to place that baby in pre-adoptive foster care as quickly as possible.” In my head I’m thinking, “That makes a lot of sense.” Then the next thing out of her mouth was, “Would you be interested in adopting this baby?” Of course, all eyes were on me in the court, I think mouths were dropping open. I paused for a second and I said, “Yes, but I don’t think it’s that easy.” She said with a smile and a little chuckle, “Well it can be. If you’re interested in adopting this baby, you need to show up at the next hearing and state your intention.” The next thing I know she is issuing all kinds of court orders left and right, and I’m not sure what’s happening. She’s “setting up a home visit for Mr. Stewart to visit the baby” and “beginning an expedited home study” and “beginning the fingerprinting process” and I don’t know what’s happened.

Scott

This just seems so unusual. I mean obviously yes you want a baby to have a home, but did she base her offer to you just on her trust that she’s a good judge of character, and that you would be a good place for the baby to go?

Danny

That’s a very good question and we didn’t get that question answered for a couple of years.

Scott

Alright. We’ll get to that part then.

Danny

We’ll get to that part. Then we got more clarity 10 years later.

Scott

Ok.

Danny

We did not know what prompted her to ask that question. She didn’t know me. I mean I’m sure the background check had been done by the police and everyone else that night. I’m sure that’s why they were taking their time in interviewing me. I’m sure they were doing a background check on that night. But I don’t know. I mean I didn’t know at the time what prompted her to ask that question. It caught everyone by surprise, I mean not just me but everyone that was involved including the attorneys. I guess everyone but the judge.

Scott

So, you left there and called Pete?

Danny

Yeah, I left court, and once again I’m going back to work. I went into the train station, there’s a payphone on the platform, so I have a quarter in my pocket again and I called Pete. I said, “You’ll never guess what the judge just asked me. She asked if I would be interested in adopting this baby.” He said, “What?” He was in disbelief and at the same time my train was coming in so I said, “I can’t talk” and I just hung up the phone.

Scott

It seems you have a history of doing that. (laughter)

Danny

(laughter) Yeah, I guess I do.

Scott

Leaving Pete on the other end to wonder, “Ok, now what’s happening?” So you guys had some conversations about this?

Danny

Yes, we did. We had some in depth heated conversations that lasted a week or so. You know in my mind I’m thinking, “This judge is offering this baby. This baby’s a gift. How can we say no to this gift?” That’s what I just kept thinking was like, “I think it’s meant to be. I think this is something that we should do.” Pete wasn’t so sure about that.

Scott

During that period, Danny and Pete obviously had very different opinions about what they should do. I wanted to get Pete’s perspective on those heated discussions.

Pete

When Danny went to court to testify, they were starting the process of– the lawyer needed Danny to testify to free the baby up for adoption. He called me after the judge asked him if he wanted to adopt the baby from a payphone at another subway station. I was at work and he said, “You’re never going to believe this. The judge asked if I want to adopt the baby.” I instantly said, “No. No, no, no, no, no. Go back there right now and tell her you misspoke.” My initial reaction was just completely fear based. His train was whirring into the station at the time, and he said, “I’ve got to get back to work.” He got on his train, and we didn’t get a chance to discuss it again until that night. After he told me everything that happened in court in detail. I said, “How could you just say yes without consulting me? We’re not ready to have a baby.” We had a roommate. We lived in a small one bedroom with a roommate behind a partition in the living room. We had no money; we were in debt. We didn’t have the space or the resources for a baby and I was just sort of flabbergasted, for lack of a better word, that he would even think that this was a possibility. He just said, “What was I supposed to say? You know, they were all looking at me in the courtroom.” I said, “Well how about, ‘Let me talk it over with my partner I’ll get back to you.’” He said, “Well I’m talking it over with you now.” I’m like, “Yeah but you already said yes.” He was seeing this as a gift, and I was seeing this as something that was going to upend our lives completely. So, my reaction was all from being scared to death about what this was going to do to our lives and how we would ever be able to do this. So our discussions went on for a few nights and then at one point Danny just said, “This is a gift. We can’t pass up this opportunity, we could make this work. I know we can make this work. We will make this work.” The more he said that, the more angry I got. I felt like he wasn’t listening to me and my concerns. He just said one night, “I think I’m going to go ahead and do this whether you’re on board or not.” So, I said, “You’re choosing a baby over our relationship?” He said, “No. I would really love for you to do this with me, but I understand if you’re not ready and you’re not there yet. That’s where you’re at.” I said something really sort of mean and snarky. I said, “Good luck being a single parent in New York City.”

For the second or third night in a row I went out into the cold December air in New York and I just went for long walks. There was always a part of me that knew he was right. There was always a part of me that really wanted to do this so bad. But I was giving over to the fear of really– it was consuming me, it was overwhelming me all the negative things that could happen. Who are we to think we can be this baby’s parents? It was sort of like; we can’t provide for him. Who are we to think that?

Scott

Back to Danny

Danny

Yeah, the conversations were heated. He was angry that I had said yes, and he was thinking that I wasn’t being rational in making a decision unilaterally without consulting him.

Scott

Well, there is a little bit of basis to that.

Danny

Yeah, he wasn’t wrong. He wasn’t wrong.

Scott

You finally got Pete to come with you on a visit. Was that a little bit calculated on your part? To kind of help persuade him.

Danny

I was hoping that he would come around. You know, I’m pretty patient and I just kept reiterating that this is a gift, and we can’t say no. I thought that he just needed time and space to be able to process it and that he would eventually come around. They had set up the visit for me to go see the baby in the foster family he had been placed with. What was unbeknownst to us at the time was that he was placed there the next day after he was found. So, he had been with this foster family for, by this time, almost 3 and a half months. We go and we meet the foster care worker to do this home visit.

On the way there Pete and I had a conversation. Pete agreed to go with me and that was all he was going to do was just go with me on this visit. One of the things I kept telling him, that everyone else also kept telling us, was that even if we were pursuing adoption it wasn’t going to happen overnight. There’s a process, it takes 6 to 9 months for you to get the background check, to get a home study done, to have clearance to move forward. Then you have to go through 10 weeks of parenting classes. The foster care workers and my friends who had experience in foster care were telling us this whole process and I told Pete, “Let’s just take it one step at a time. This is the first step, we can go visit the baby. We’re not making a permanent decision right now.” Once he agreed with me the conversation on the way there, which to me was very important, was that no matter what condition the baby is in, no matter what the condition of the home he’s in right now; we do not want to move forward with this just to save this child. That’s not a good enough reason. We had to want to do this because we want to be his parents. Of course, Pete was just saying, “Yes. Yes. Yes.” He’s placating me because he wasn’t fully on board yet. When we got to the home, we quickly realized the baby wasn’t in the best condition.

We actually had to wait because the baby had been sick and the foster care mother had taken him to the clinic, so we waited a few minutes before they got there. When they arrived the foster care mother put the baby in something similar to a car seat on the floor. Then she and the foster care worker went to another room to have a conversation. We’re just in there with the baby. The foster care worker asked, “Would you like to hold him?” and I said, “Sure!” so she puts him in my arms. He had the biggest eyes, that’s what I remember from that first night that he had just very big wide eyes. His eyes seemed to be so curious but also, he seemed scared at the same time. We had brought a camera, so Pete took a photo of me holding the baby and then I just said, “Here, your turn.” Then I snapped a photo of him holding the baby.

Scott

I really wanted to know how Pete felt, holding that baby for the first time.

Pete

When we went Danny held the baby first and that was really beautiful. Just witnessing this person who found this little baby, in his arms. Danny looked at him and said, “Hey! Remember me?” It was just beautiful, my heart just melted. Then Danny held out the baby to me and said, “Your turn.” I reflexively took him even though I didn’t want to hold him because I kind of felt that if I held him the bond would form. I think Danny knew that too. I held the baby and he instantly put his entire hand around my finger. I looked down at him and he was just looking up at me. The baby did not take his eyes off of us and we did not take our eyes off of him on that visit. It was almost like he was saying, “I’m your son. Just realize it already.” I turned to Danny after he was in my arms a few moments and I said, “This is our boy.” I made the decision, “We will be able to figure it out. We will be able to make it work. We’ll do what most parents have to do and figure out how to bring a child into our lives.”

Scott

So, Danny and Pete were finally in agreement to move ahead with the adoption. Here’s Danny with what happened next.

Danny

The next court hearing was scheduled for about a week after the visit on December 20th. Both Pete and I show up. This is Pete’s first time in court there. When the judge sees us, she addresses us, “Gentlemen I hope you’re here for the reason I think that you’re here.” We nodded. She said, “Are you ready to state your intentions?” We said, “Yes.” She asked, “Are your stating your intentions that you would like to adopt this baby?” We said, “Yes.” She looks down at her calendar and says, “Holidays are coming up. Would you like to have the baby for a visit during the holidays?” We just nodded and said, “Yes.” Then she said, “Ok.” Then she addressed the foster care agency and said, “Have the baby ready for Mr. Stewart and Mr. Mercurio to pick up in 2 days.” The morning of December 22nd we made arrangements to go pick up the baby. All of our notions, all of our thinking that it was going to be 6 to 9 months before we were placed with this baby all were condensed to 48 hours.

Scott

Anybody else gets at least 9 months to prepare for a baby to arrive! You got 2 days.

Danny

Yes, it was unbelievable. Once again, this judge is doing something unbelievable and unexpected. She had arranged for us to be given the baby. Thankfully Pete’s family lived in northern New Jersey, not far from Manhattan. We get on the phone with them and let them know what’s happened and they just jump into action and buy everything that you could ever possibly need for a new baby. We actually got a hand-me-down crib, but everything else they went out to purchase. On the morning of December 22nd when we went to pick up the baby, they all came over to our small little apartment and transformed it into a nursery. It was unrecognizable when we got back from picking him up. They provided every possible thing we needed which was really wonderful. I don’t know if we would have been able to do it. I’m sure we would have found a way but they were just amazingly generous.

We went that Friday morning to pick up the baby. We’re there just long enough for the nurse to check the baby. When she opened the diaper, it’s at that point that we knew exactly what condition he was in. When I mentioned earlier that he was not in a good place– he had a diaper rash from his belly button all the way down and around to the small of his back. It seemed like they never changed his diaper. It also seemed like he was never picked up, or only picked up very infrequently. He was very scared and guarded and stiff when we held him. The nurse was there so she saw the diaper rash and gave us some ointment and told us how to care for it, then made sure that we can change a diaper. Then we gave him his first feeding and she said, “Ok you’re on your way. You’re on your own now.” We go home and are there in the apartment that night, the 3 of us alone for the first time. The whole thing was unbelievable, here we were the 3 of us with this baby. He had fallen asleep on one of us on the couch. We just looked at one another in disbelief at what had transpired in such a short period of time.

Scott

Did the baby have a name yet?

Danny

Yeah, this is interesting. The name that was given to him was a combination of borrowed names. His name was Daniel Ace Doe. I think the police officers named him Daniel. Then the hospital, knowing that he was found on the ACE line of the subway, named him Ace. Then because he didn’t have a last name, he had Doe. His official name was Daniel Ace Doe until his adoption was finalized 2 years later. We named him Kevin, that was the name that we had picked out.

That was another pretty miraculous story in and of itself. On the way home after the visit with Kevin– well with the baby when he was with that foster family Pete asked me, “Have you thought about a name for the baby?” I said, “I’ve always liked the name Devin.” He said, “Wow! Just one letter off. I like the name Kevin.” He said, “Let me tell you why.” Then he told me the story. Prior to Pete being born his parents had given birth to a stillborn. That stillborn had been named Kevin. Pete had always thought that this baby Kevin his parents had was almost like a guardian angel in his life. The name Kevin had significance for him because, at various points in his life, a person by the name of Kevin would come into his life for a brief amount of time and change it. Then they had quickly disappeared. He always felt like this character Kevin was a guardian angel. Once he told me the story of the significance of this name. I said, “Absolutely his name should be Kevin.” A year after we found Kevin, 9/11 happened and that put a delay on everything because family court was close to ground zero. So, everything was on delay for many months and that was a big reason the adoption took 2 years. It was almost 2 years to the date that we went back into family court to finalize his adoption. It was at that moment Pete asked the judge, “Your Honor, what ever prompted you to ask Danny that question? If he was interested in adopting this baby?” She said, “I had a hunch. Was I wrong?” We said, “No of course not.” We didn’t know the full story either, there was actually more to that that we learned when we had our wedding.

Scott

Let’s talk about that. At this point Kevin was 10 when that happened.

Danny

Kevin was 10 years old when same-sex marriage was legal in New York state. The night the state assembly was passing the vote in New York state we were up watching it on the political channel. We had a friend who was state assembly for Staten Island at the time, so we were very curious about how that was going. The 3 of us, Kevin, Pete and I were watching it that night, so when it passed, we cheered. I think it was the next day or maybe a couple days later, Pete was walking Kevin to school. He asked Kevin, “Do you think your dad and I should get married?” Kevin said, “Sure, I guess. Yeah.” I think Kevin in his mind had started to see same-sex marriages being performed by judges. He asked, “Don’t judges perform weddings?” Pete said, “Yeah. Would you be interested in meeting the judge who finalized your adoption?” Kevin said, “Yeah!” Then he ran off into school.

Then Pete went in and called Manhattan family court– actually no he sent an email to the family court to the generic email and got a response like a couple hours later. He was asking if the judge who had performed the adoption would be available and interested in performing our wedding ceremony. He got a response 2 hours later that the judge remembered us and would definitely be interested and would like to set up a time for us to meet. Then we set a date. We wanted it to coincide with the anniversary we already celebrated which is July 13th so we decided that July 13, 2012, would be the date that we would get married.

We met with the judge probably a month or so before. She wanted to talk with us about what we were wanting and what we were thinking about, and just to catch up also. It had been 8 years since we were in court together. She was interested in knowing about Kevin and what his interests were, and she was also interested in knowing how we were doing. It was at that point we asked her – we just wanted to get more information – about her ability to expedite the adoption process. We also wanted to know what was behind that question, in asking me if we wanted to adopt. It was still burning in the back of our mind, “What was behind that hunch?” By this time, she had been a family court judge for over 30 years, and she was about to retire. She told us, “You caught me just at the right time because I’m retiring in just a few months. All babies need to have some connection with somebody, and you were the only connection that this baby had so, I went on that.” She also told us that at the time she was leading a pilot project in New York state to expedite placement for babies that had been abandoned so they would not languish and linger in foster care for years and years before they were adopted. She had the power and authority to expedite the whole process of adoption. That is the reason she was able to do what she did. She could cut through bureaucratic red tape by deciding that she was going to place the baby with us in the timely manner that she did. That’s why it didn’t take 6 to 9 months. We still had to go through the whole process, but she was able to place him with us.

Scott

She has to look at that as one of the crowning achievements of her career as a judge. I mean I’m sure she did a lot of other things as well but what a story.

Danny

She’s become a part of our extended family. We’ve kept in touch with her through the years, she has remained in contact with us, and she emails us from time to time. She came to Kevin’s graduation ceremony we held. We send her an annual newsletter and holiday card every year and she sends us one back. So, we keep in touch and we’ve always expressed our gratitude for her changing our lives. But she says, “I was just doing my job.”

Scott

How old is Kevin now and what’s he like?

Danny

Kevin is 21. He is a senior in school. He is going to a small liberal arts school. He’s a dual major in both mathematics and computer science. He really loves math but over the last year he has shifted more to computer science but those are his passions. The other passion is ultimate frisbee. He is one of the co-captains on his team in school. Not only does he play it through his school team, this past summer he was also on 2 teams in Philadelphia where he played on club teams, so he was playing a lot of Ultimate. He really loves that.

Scott

I understand he’s run some marathons as well.

Danny

Yes. This is another thing; he loves to challenge himself. One challenge he had, this started right after he graduated high school. He told us, “I’m going to run in a half marathon. It’s called the Rockapulco. It’s in the rockaways where they have a half marathon.” He ran it the day before he started his freshman year in college. Then he did another one in Yonkers. His sophomore year he did the Chicago marathon, he registered and got into that. Then a month later he did the Philadelphia marathon. He’s done a few other ones, but I wouldn’t call it a marathon; it’s like a super marathon. He did this 4 by 4 by 4. So, you run 4 miles every 4 hours for 48 hours. He likes to set a challenge and a goal, and he likes to see how far he can push himself.

Scott

Yeah. That’s awesome. Ok, one thing I’m wondering. Have you guys ever considered doing like a DNA kit? Like 23andMe to see if you can find any of his biological relatives? Does he have any interest in that at all?

Danny

We have done that. In 2013 the 3 of us did 23andMe. We had always guessed about what his ancestry or lineage was, but it was never known at all. I had made a guess but when we did the 23andMe– now it’s more refined they’ve been able to be more specific, back then they were able to provide things like: Oceanic, Southeast Asian and possibly Tonkin or Samoan. Since then, it’s been refined, and they know pretty much exactly that he is American Samoan. More broadly geographically, in the Pacific Islands, so he’s definitely an island boy. That was always my guess, looking at his features and coloring he always seemed to be Samoan. He was always big for his age, tall and his skin coloring made me think, “He’s got to be from the islands somewhere.” Sure enough, that’s where he’s from.

As far as locating any biological relatives– now we had, even very recently over the last few months, have had conversations with him about this. We support him in wanting to go down that journey in locating any biological relatives. We told him, “It would not diminish what we have as a family or the love that we have. It would not infringe on the family that we have together. If there are others in your life that you can find and find connection with, we support that.” He said, “Maybe someday, but I’m not ready right now. I’m not wanting to do that.” He knows that that option is available. Through 23andMe his profile is private, so no biological relatives would be able to find him. We suspect that there are some out there but he’s just not ready to start that journey.

Scott

You’ve got to be ready for that for sure.

Danny

We wanted to give him permission thinking that it’s not going to take away– it wouldn’t be anything against us, our feelings wouldn’t be hurt at all if he wanted to do that. If he finds others in his life that can help him answer questions that he may have or that he can expand love for him. We support that process for him.

Scott

It’s amazing how the tiniest little turn of events– that brief moment of noticing the baby while you were rushing out of the subway can just change your life so profoundly. Do you ever go back to that spot?

Danny

All the time, yeah. For years when Kevin was an infant and older, that was the closest station to where we lived so we were going through it all the time. It became known as Kevin’s Corner or Kevin’s Spot. We embraced as like; this is the place where we found each other. This is the place where we became a family.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Scott

You know, one thing that struck me about this story – before they agreed to take Kevin, and Pete was saying they shouldn’t do it, one of his objections was “who are we to think we can do this? We have no skills at being parents”. But what they did have was compassion. The day to day stuff you can learn – how to change a diaper, checking that the bath water isn’t too hot or cold, those things are teachable. But when you have two people who have so much love to give, that makes just about anything possible. And now it’s obvious that they did a really great job of parenting with Kevin.

And Pete wrote a book about this. It’s a children’s book, a large hardcover with great illustrations on each page, and it tells the story in a way that makes it easy for kids to understand and enjoy. If you know a family who has adopted children, this is a great gift. I’ll have a link to that in the show notes for this episode. And also in the show notes you’ll see pictures of Danny and Pete on that first visit when they held baby Kevin for the first time, as well as more recent family photos where Kevin is the tallest one in the picture. All of that is at WhatWasThatLike.com/96.

But before that book was beautifully illustrated and published, the first version was just put together by Pete at home, so that Kevin could hear about his story from a very young age – and coming up at the end of this episode in today’s Listener Story, you’ll hear about what happened with that.

Voicemail

Justin

Hi Scott. My name’s Justin. I just wanted to say that I enjoy your show immensely. I’ll admit that when I first checked out your episode list, my first reaction was that they were maybe going to be sensationalist and morbidly interesting; but I was very wrong. After diving into your show, I’ve been amazed and inspired by some of these stories. I love that you have found people that have experienced crazy, traumatic events. They then, despite these events, have used them to go on to lead incredible, courageous, and admirable lives, usually also guiding others towards the better lives they seek. What you bring to listeners is what I wish our mainstream media and news outlets would bring more of to the public. It’s easy to feel a level of despair, or at the very least, a pessimistic view of humans when you just skim the headlines or even read the articles of the world’s events that the media chooses to present to us. Through your curiosity and effort, your show presents events with human depth. You focus just as much if not more on the positives of the people and the experiences in their lives after these events. I was just telling my wife about the Grizzly Attack and Plane Crash episodes the other day and she’s become a listener as well. Please keep up your great work. Thanks. Bye.

Scott

And if you have any comments about the podcast, this is your invitation – that’s right, this is me, personally inviting YOU – to call in and leave a message. The podcast voicemail line is 727-386-9468, and you can call anytime night or day and leave me a message. I’d love to hear from you!

And just a quick mention – if you follow me on Instagram, that may be no more. I got a notice from Instagram that my account has been disabled because it has violated their terms. I looked at their terms and can’t see anything listed there that I’ve violated, but that’s unfortunately the way it is sometimes. They don’t give you specifics so you can’t really argue with them. As I record this, I’m trying to get it resolved, but I may not be on Instagram any more. And this is exactly why I also have plans to get the podcast community off of Facebook. It’s too easy to build a nice big community and then just have it canceled. I have over 10k followers on Instagram so I hope it gets fixed but if you don’t see me on there any more, you know why.

But enough of that silliness, let’s get on to today’s Listener Story. This is going to be Danny again, talking about when Kevin gradually learned about how he was found – and how his story affected someone else.

Stay safe, have a great holiday season, and I’ll see you in two weeks – for the last episode of 2021, coming out on New Year’s Eve.

Danny

View Details

On the morning of April 19, 1995, a former US Army soldier parked a rented Ryder truck in front of the Alfred P Murrah Federal Building, located in downtown Oklahoma City.

Inside the truck was everything he needed to carry out his plan of terrorism and mass murder. He had a large bomb, which he created using agricultural fertilizer and some chemicals, including diesel fuel. After parking the car, he got out and walked toward his getaway car, a yellow Mercury Marquis.

He ignited a timed fuse, and a second fuse as backup.

Inside the building, in one of the office conference rooms, the Oklahoma Water Resources Board had just begun a 9 am meeting when the bomb exploded.

The blast effect was equivalent to over 5000 pounds of TNT, and could be heard and felt 55 miles away. The blast either destroyed or damaged 324 buildings within a 4-block radius. 86 cars were either burned or destroyed, and a large section of the Federal building had been reduced to rubble. News crews were shocked when they first viewed the damage from their helicopter.

Inside the building, 163 people were killed. Additional casualties were one person in the nearby Athenian building, one woman in a parking lot across the street, two people in the Oklahoma Water Resources building, and a rescue worker who was struck on the head by falling debris. In total, 168 people died that day. 19 of those were children. Almost 700 other people were injured.

My guest today, Amy, was in the Federal Building that morning. She worked on the third floor, at the Federal Employees Credit Union.

search and rescue after the bombing In this episode, you’ll hear her talk about what happened to her that day. But just as amazing is what has happened to her SINCE that day.

early Amy, mid Amy, and today Amy Amy Downs, YOU ARE AN IRONMAN Amy’s website: AmyDowns.org

Amy’s book: Hope is a Verb: My Journey of Impossible Transformation

Amy’s TEDx talk: How Hope Can Change Your Life

This episode is sponsored by the Sleep Meditation for Women podcast – listen to help fall asleep and stay asleep.

Also mentioned in this episode is the School of Podcasting – that’s where you go to launch, grow, and even monetize your podcast. Go to SchoolofPodcasting.com/what and use the coupon code WHAT to get 20% off either a monthly or yearly membership.

Episode transcript (download transcript PDF)

On the morning of April 19, 1995, a former US Army soldier parked a rented Ryder truck in front of the Alfred P Murrah Federal Building, located in downtown Oklahoma City.

Inside the truck was everything he needed to carry out his plan of terrorism and mass murder. He had a large bomb, which he created using agricultural fertilizer and some chemicals, including diesel fuel. After parking the truck, he got out and walked toward his getaway car, a yellow Mercury Marquis.

He ignited a timed fuse, and a second fuse as backup.

Inside the building, in one of the office conference rooms, the Oklahoma Water Resources Board had just begun a 9 am meeting.

____________________________________________________________________________

(Meeting Audio)

Woman

Before the Oklahoma Water Resources Board meets, they actually sit in this room and discuss the application and vote whether to approve or deny the application. So they’re the decision makers. You’ll receive a copy of my proposed recommendation and can attend that board meeting and present your arguments directly to the 9 member board. They generally meet the second Tuesday of every month. So you’ll be advised of that. With regard to this proceeding, basically there are 4 elements that I have to receive information regarding–

Interrupted by very loud explosion

(Indistinct chatter and yelling can be heard)

Woman

Everybody, let’s get out of here now! (confusion and chatter) …press the alarm!

____________________________________________________________________________

(Chopper audio)

Male reporter

It looks like part of the building has been blown away. We’ll have to bank around to the other side so I can get a better view of it. The explosion went off around 9 a.m. and we could feel the explosion in the newsroom at least 5 miles from downtown.

Female reporter

As a chopper goes around the side of the federal building– look at that shot it is absolutely incredible

Male reporter

Wow! Holy cow!

Female reporter

The side of the federal building has been blown off–

Male reporter

About a third– about a third of the building has been blown away. This is just devastating.

____________________________________________________________________________

My guest today, Amy, was in the Federal Building that morning. She worked on the third floor, at the Federal Employees Credit Union.

You’re about to hear her talk about what happened to her that day. But just as amazing is what has happened to her SINCE that day.

____________________________________________________________________________

Scott

What was your job on that day, and where was your office?

Amy

I worked downtown in the federal building on the 3rd floor. My actual desk was just a few feet away from the glass windows of the federal building. So, basically front and center on the 3rd floor. At that time I worked- I had a desk job -and I worked in the credit card department. I had started out as a teller and had worked for several years as a teller when I finally got my opportunity for a desk job and was really excited about that.

Scott

This may seem like an unrelated question, but it kind of fits in with the rest of the story. Did you like your job?

Amy

Ya know…I was a bit on the lazy side. I liked the people that I worked with. The woman that I worked for, Vicky, I really admired and liked her. So, I was starting to reach a place where I did actually like what I did because I really liked the approval I would get from Vicky. So it really was about my supervisor not my actual work. Of course we all know now that when people quit their jobs they’re usually quitting a supervisor. The supervisor has so much to do with the quality of work life. So I think I was finally at a place where I was starting to like work, but I always liked the people that I worked with.

Scott

Yeah. That makes a big difference when you go in. You mentioned the name of the credit union was Federal Employees Credit Union, and this building had lots of government offices and government workers. Did it ever occur to you ahead of time, that the building might be a terrorist target?

Amy

Absolutely not! I went to work for the credit union in 1988. We never heard stories of anything happening to federal buildings or anything like that. In fact, I remember thinking that I was at the safest place because usually the issue of working for a financial institution is you’re concerned about robbery. That’s always in the back of your mind. Well I never worried about robbery. We had secret service, ATF, and all the law enforcement agents all around us. They watched out for us. We never worried about somebody robbing us. So that never entered my mind.

Scott

Yeah a bank robber is going to look for an easier target than something like that for sure.

Amy

Oh yeah. So in never dawned on me that we would be a terrorist target. Ever.

Scott

On that day you were in your office. Some co-workers came in, tell us what happened then?

Amy

The morning of the bombing, it was really just a typical spring morning in Oklahoma City. I had spent the first hour of my workday running around chatting with all my friends. Basically goofing off; just talking with everybody. I was getting ready to close on my first house so I was really excited about it. I was talking to everybody about the house. When it got close to 9 o’clock I had this feeling of, “Oh my gosh I have literally goofed off like almost the first hour of my day. I better get to work.” So I headed to my office to sit down at my desk and start to work. One of my coworkers, who was 7 months pregnant, came in and sat down right beside me. I was finishing up signing on the computer. I sort of had this feeling of, “Ugh what does she want?” because you know here I had goofed off the first part of my day I really needed to get to work. I didn’t have time for whatever it was she needed. So I kind of took my sweet time addressing her; signing on the computer, doing some other stuff. When I finally turned to say, “Hey what do you need?” I don’t know if the words ever made it out of my mouth or not because that’s when the bomb went off.

The only way I know how to describe it is if you’ve ever been to a hard rock or heavy metal concert, and you happen to be right in front of the speaker. It’s almost like that feedback static– like it’s so loud you can’t actually comprehend what you’re hearing. Like a roar. That was my attempt at trying to describe it, cause I just can’t describe it.

Scott

I know what you’re talking about. It’s more like you feel it than hear it.

Amy

Definitely. Then on top of that I was hearing screaming. I could hear screaming all around. I remember hearing a woman scream right in my ear, then realizing that was my own voice. I didn’t even recognize the sound of my own voice. I was just so terrified. The whole time this was happening I felt this rushing sensation like I was falling. I’m thinking, “I’m falling to the floor.” I didn’t know this but I was actually falling 3 floors. I found out later that I was still in my chair, had fallen 3 floors, was upside down in my chair, with about 10 feet of rubble packed on top of me.

Scott

That part just seems so incredible. Somebody listening to this right now, picture if you laid on the floor wherever you’re at right now, and look up. The ceiling is probably 8 feet, maybe. So you had another 2 feet on top of that, and this is all concrete and all the building construction and everything; yet you’re still alive at the bottom of that.

Amy

The way they described it, the concrete slabs of the 3rd and the 4th floors had cracked and formed some shield of some sort, which is why I wasn’t crushed to death. There was some amount of concrete protecting where I was to some degree. There were little bits of rubble encased all around me, but the heavy parts were a little protected because of the slabs of concrete above me that had fallen.

In that split second, I hear this noise, I feel this rushing sensation, I can hear people screaming. My first thought was that somebody had come in and shot me in the back of the head, because that thought of robbery is always back there. Even though I didn’t really worry about it, being in the federal building, my first thought was, “Oh my gosh, somebody’s come in and I’ve been shot.” That was how powerful it was. It was the only thing I could think as my mind was trying to connect the dots of what had happened. Then very quickly, everything was quiet. I tried to move. I couldn’t move. I tried to close my eyes to see, but it didn’t matter whether I opened my eyes or closed my eyes, it was just pitch black. I remember my mouth– I thought that maybe my teeth had broken off in my mouth because my mouth was full of what felt like teeth. It was concrete bits. I remember just screaming, “Help me! Help me!” and nothing. I wondered about Robin, my friend who was sitting next to me and I called out to her several times. There was nothing. Occasionally I would hear someone moaning off in the distance, but nobody ever replied. It was hot and I remember there was this smell that– if I ever smelled it again I would know what it was. It was just this awful burning smell that I’m assuming was fertilizer burning, I don’t know. I remember wondering when it first happened, “Am I dead? Did I die?” I couldn’t move, I couldn’t see, it was just so…unbelievable. I couldn’t figure out what had happened. Then I could hear a siren going off in the distance. I decided, “Ok. There’s a siren going off in the distance. I’m alive. I’m hearing this.” Then I thought, because nobody would answer, I thought, “I don’t know what just happened but what if everybody else is dead and I’m the only person left alive and I’m just here until I die.” I really could not understand what happened.

That whole thing was about 45 minutes. Then I heard men’s voices. I heard them say, “Let’s split up. Let’s look for the daycare babies.” I heard this and so I thought, “Oh ok.” I was a little confused because I worked on the 3rd floor; the daycare was on the 2nd floor. I did not understand that I was at the bottom of what was once this 9 story building. I started screaming. I heard this man say, “I hear you! I hear you child! How old are you?” I remember wanting to say, “2! I’m 2!” Because I was thinking, “If I say I’m 28 he’s not going to come get me.” I paused and said, “I’m sorry. I’m 28.” He said, “That’s ok.” Then he started yelling, “We have a live one! We have a live one! We need backup! We need help!” He said, “We can’t see you, we have to follow the sound of your voice so keep talking to us.” I said, “What happened?” He said that it had been a bomb. In 1995, for listeners who weren’t around then, this is not a thing that happened, terrorist attacks. I did not even know what a car bomb was. In the United States we just didn’t deal with that kind of thing. I thought when he said it was a bomb, I’m picturing like, we’re at war and some airplane just dropped a bomb on our city. It took me a while to understand that this bomb had only happened to my building.

They started working their way closer to me and my right hand was sticking out of the side of that rubble pile. So they were able to come across my hand. When they got to my hand– I’m not understanding that I’m buried in all this rubble, I’m still thinking I’ve just fallen down and I don’t really know. When I feel them grab my hand I’m thinking, “This is gonna be 1, 2, 3 and they’re gonna pull me out.” I’m thinking, “This is it! It’s over, I’m saved.” About the time they find my hand I heard all of this screaming in the background and these men yelling, “There’s another bomb! There’s another bomb! We need to go. Let’s go. Let’s go.” I realized at that point that they couldn’t pull me out. They started saying to me, “Amy we’re going to be right back, we just need some more hydraulic equipment. We’re going to be right back.” But I could hear what was going on so I just started saying my name over and over again and saying, “Tell my family I love them.” I knew this was it, I now understood what had happened and now there’s another one so I’m not getting out. I was getting ready to die.

Scott

So they were saying they just needed more equipment but that was just to placate you so you wouldn’t worry as much, but you knew that any minute another bomb could go off and then you’d really–

Amy

Yeah I mean, they were yelling, “There is another bomb!” I remember hearing another one of them say, “There’s another bomb it’s gonna be worse than the first. We’ve gotta go!” They did need equipment; but I could hear what was happening. If you have ever watched footage that they play sometimes at the anniversary; you will see the footage of people running from the scene. That footage is during that second bomb scare, it’s not during the first one. When the first bomb when off there was nobody in the streets, they were all in the building. When the second bomb supposedly was going to happen, that’s when you saw people running everywhere, blood streaming down their faces, just panicked and running. That was when they thought there was another bomb.

Scott

But in reality there was no second bomb.

Amy

There was no second bomb. There was about 45 minutes where my reality was, “There is another bomb. I’m getting ready to die.” When they left that’s when I experienced what a lot of people refer to as your life flashing before your eyes. Just those moments where you realize, “This is it. This is really, really it.” You’re thinking about your life and all of the sudden realizing what really is important. That you lived a life that you didn’t really live. The deep crushing regret that I felt was just terrible. It’s something I would not want anyone to ever go through. Which is why I speak so much about my experience, because I want people to really think about their lives and not take it for granted and to live with intention; because you don’t realize until it’s over.

There’s a book I read called, “Regrets of the Dying” by a woman named Bonnie Ware who was a hospice nurse. She interviewed all these patients she had that were dying and asked them what their regrets were. The number one regret was not living a life true to themselves. We get so caught up in our day-to-day stuff, taking care of kids, groceries, errands, work; we don’t stop to really think about how we are actually living our lives. Are we really living a life true to ourselves? We don’t think about these things until we are about to die. Then all of the sudden it’s like, “Whoa. I didn’t live my life the way I should have.”

Scott

Right. What was I thinking?

Amy

That’s what I experienced during that 45 minutes, just all of that realization. I’m getting ready to die and I never even lived. I just kept begging God for a second chance, a do-over. I was thinking, “I’ll live differently. I’ll do anything. I just want a second chance.”

Scott

Now how does that fit in– there was a point when you were still trapped where you assumed you were going to die and you decided, “I’ll just kill myself.”

Amy

I did, I really did. My first thought was it was really hard to get air. I sort of had to lift my head up in this crevice to really breathe in some air. I remember thinking, “I’m going to quit breathing. I’m going to quit trying to breathe and die.” Yes that sounds ridiculous and it is; but it was just an attempt to try and control my own destiny I guess. That didn’t work. Your body will fight to live and breathe. So then I thought, “Ok I’m going to try to fall asleep. I’m gonna make myself fall asleep because if you die in your sleep that’s not going to hurt.” (laughs) You know? So I tried to fall asleep, and that didn’t work. You can’t make yourself fall asleep either. So I had all these thoughts racing through my head, trying to figure out what to do.

Scott

People hearing this might think, “Well that’s so silly, why would she think those things?”

Amy

It’s so stupid, right!

Scott

But nobody has been through what you’ve been through.

Amy

Right. In those moments you’re just freaked out, panicked and trying to do anything. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t do anything. So all I have is my mind to think and that’s it.

Scott

I’m just picturing the claustrophobia of that. Of course that had to be the least of your concerns though, right?

Amy

I mean, I’m terribly claustrophobic. (laughs) I really am. I always have been, but that just didn’t even enter my mind.

Scott

That’s amazing.

Amy

It was such terror and such panic you couldn’t even dissect– and it all happened so fast you couldn’t really process or dissect every moment because it was all just so much so fast. Just that desperate, “I want to live.” It’s amazing the strength you have when you must have it, suddenly it’s there. So I laid there and did this bargaining and pleading for a second chance saying, “Please God just get me out of here.” I remember another thing I did was I thought– so I grew up in a Christian faith-based home. I went to a children’s church as a kid and you’d always have to memorize scripture and they gave you candy. That probably wasn’t the right thing to do. So here I am– I have to say too, I was 355 pounds so I–

Scott

That’s a critical part of the story.

Amy

Yeah. So I was 355 pounds and I’m trapped under the rubble. Some of the regret that I had was that I had let relationships back home drift away. This was before cell phones, social media and email. I didn’t want to go back home to have people see me because I had gained so much weight. I had gained 200 pounds. I didn’t want anybody to know. Therefore, I let relationships slide. Those were some of the regrets I had while I was trapped, not maintaining those relationships.

I remember thinking, “Ok, I’m going to remember one of these scriptures. I’m going to quote a scripture.” I guess I was thinking it would be like a meditation. So the scripture that popped into my head was this one that I’m sure a lot of people have heard, whether they’re of Christian faith or not. It’s, “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death.” That was the only part I remembered. I was laying there thinking, “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…well, crap. I’m in the freakin’ shadow of death. I don’t even know what comes next in the scripture or what happens next. How appropriate.” It was just the irony of it, you know? I sort of went through this whole– I flunked out of college, not that I think college is the right answer for anything. I was just thinking of all of the opportunities that I had in my life that I squandered and wasted. Then, of all the really weird things to do- as if all these other things aren’t weird – this song popped into my head that we used to sing in church when I was growing up. I began to sing. As I sang, I felt this incredible peace come over me, and I knew I was going to be ok. I did not know that meant I was going to make it out alive. I really thought I was going to die, but I was at peace with what was getting ready to happen.

Of course, there was not a second bomb, and they came back and started working to get me out. It wasn’t as easy as 1,2,3 to pull me out. It took over 6 hours for these men to finally be able to pull me out.

Scott

They were in danger themselves.

Amy

They were in danger. The wind had begun to pick up, and what was left of the building was extremely unstable. There was a very large industrial size refrigerator that was dangling, just by conduit, over some of the broken concrete that was swinging above the pit where I was located. So the danger for these men was that at any point something could fall and crush them. Because of that, there was an emergency physician on standby to amputate my leg if needed. My leg was what was preventing them- it was so pinned -it was preventing them from pulling my whole body out of this hole. Every so often I would hear them talking about, “her leg” and I figured out what was going on. So I said to them, “If you need to chop something off to get me out, chop it off.” I know that sounds really crude, but that’s where I was. That was the situation.

There was a girl I met later on, and she’s just the most wonderful woman, Dana Bradley. She was the last person rescued, and they did have to amputate her on site to get her out. My rescuers just kept saying, “Give us 20 more minutes. Give us 20 more minutes.” They did this for a long time and because of that I still have my legs. They risked their lives to get me out in one piece. It would have been easier for them to just go ahead and amputate so they could get me out quickly and get everybody to safety.

Scott

Did you feel pain in that leg at that time?

Amy

I felt no pain until they pulled me out and then everything came alive. They said, “We’re gonna count to 3 and pull. This is probably going to hurt.” Of course I’ve been saying, “Chop it off.” Acting all brave (laughs) so I’m like, “I don’t care, pull me out!” Then they pulled me out and wow, everything did come alive. As I looked around it was like a movie scene, the only way I can describe it, like it wasn’t real. My brain was telling me, “What you’re seeing is not real.” That’s how crazy it was seeing the remains of the building. I remember seeing the staircase that would have gone up to the 2nd floor was still intact. There was a piece of Native American artwork hanging there that was still hanging there perfectly as if nothing had ever happened. Then everywhere around it looked like a bomb had destroyed it.

They put me on this gurney and took me out of the back of what was once the federal building. The sky was dark and gray. It had been a beautiful spring morning but now it looked like the middle of winter. It was cold, gray and starting to rain. Looking up at that sky and taking that first breath of fresh air, I remember promising, “I will never live my life the same.” They took me to the ambulance. It’s kind of funny (laughing) in the ambulance the nurse asked me, “When’s the last time you had a tetanus shot?” That was when I lost my shit, right then (laughing). That’s when I lost it. Here I am in the building saying, “Chop it off if you need to chop it off” I get in the ambulance and they start talking to me about a shot and I freak out. I hate needles. I’m bawling, crying, “I don’t want a shot!” That nurse -I’ll never forget it was a male nurse- he’s looking at me with his eyes like, so big. He said, “You mean to tell me, you have been trapped in that building and you’re scared of a shot?” and I’m like, (imitating crying) “Yes!!” He said, “Well I’m not giving it to you. I’m getting my supervisor. (laughter) I did get the shot. Then they took me to the hospital and I ended up in the ICU. That’s when I started piecing together -the nurses had the news on in ICU and we were watching it- so that’s when I started piecing together bits and pieces of how bad it was and what had really happened.

Media descended upon Oklahoma City immediately. The hospital PR guy had come into my room and said, “Hey Bryant Gumbel is out in the hallway. He wants to interview you.” To set the stage, back in the day the Today Show had 2 anchors Bryant Gumbel and Katie Couric, and there was always this rumor in the tabloids that they didn’t get along or something. I don’t know, I think it was the drugs they gave me, I have no idea but I can not believe I did this. This is what I said, “Well I don’t like Bryant Gumbel. I like Katie Couric.” (laughter) So the guy comes back in and says, “Ok. Katie Couric does want to interview you via satellite” because they didn’t send Katie there, they sent Bryant. So I go via satellite and do this interview with Katie Couric. She asked me about the wound on my leg. Well, they had told me that all I had was a cut on my leg; I’m picturing a Band-Aid situation. So I said, “I just have a cut on my leg.” I hadn’t seen anything because I was so beat up and sore I literally couldn’t move. I was like a mummy, I couldn’t move and I was bandaged all up so I couldn’t see anything. So we end that interview, and they take me immediately to this whirlpool and they start taking the bandaging off my leg.

Scott

While you were on TV?

Amy

No no, as soon as we finished the interview. So, here I am telling people on national TV, “I have a little cut on my leg, I’m good.” Then they take me to this whirlpool, they drop me down in there, they start taking the bandages off. That ‘little cut,’ no, my leg was blown open. I saw the bone in my leg, and I thought I was going to pass out. It was gray–I remember so vividly I saw my flesh, my bone, my everything. It freaked me out. I thought, “You can’t stand up. Stuff is going to fall out of your leg” (laughs). I didn’t know a person could live with a hole that big in their leg.

Scott

Yeah nobody wants to see their own bones. That’s for sure.

Amy

No! No, but I have thought since then– nowadays we all have our cell phones and our cameras and the gross part of me is like, “Man! I wish I had a picture of that.” (laughs) But, ugh yeah it was terrible.

Scott

When did you find out about the outcome as far as your coworkers?

Amy

Well, right away in the hospital I was just convinced that, if I made it out alive there are other people. I was wanting to encourage everybody like, “Don’t give up hope. They’re in there, they just have to get to them.” I really held on to this thought that, “They’re in there, and they are going to get them out.” Then, as the days ticked on there were no other survivors coming out. There was me and Dana Bradley and nobody else. It became evident that they weren’t going to come out. The phone would ring constantly in my hospital room with my coworkers’ family members calling asking if I remember what they wore that day. You know like, “Do you remember what Christy had on?” It was terrible because I talked to Christy, I spent that first hour of my day running around talking to everybody. I kept thinking, “how can I not remember what they were wearing?” I could only remember what my best friend Sonya had on that day and that was it. I couldn’t remember what anybody else had.

Scott

The family wanted to know that because of the search?

Amy

They were trying to identify bodies. They were having to identify bodies based on clothing and things like that. It was awful. This was before cell phones, so news traveled slower. We had to wait for the newspaper to come out, or some of the news was running 24/7, but the newspaper would print everyday whose bodies they found. Who was deceased and who was in hospitals, so we could keep track of who’d made it and who hadn’t through the newspaper.

Scott

So that’s how you– you read your friends names in the newspaper?

Amy

Yeah. I remember Billy Graham and president Bill Clinton came to town to do a prayer service. I don’t know what day it was. I was in the hospital for 8 days, so somewhere during that 8 days they had this big prayer service. This big multi-faith thing, and it was on television because they were filming it live. I remember sitting in the bed like, “Oh my gosh there’s Bobby!” That was one of the first moments I could see people that I knew walking in, so I knew they were alive. 168 people being killed, you can’t keep track of that many names. I found out that 18 of my 33 coworkers were killed. 100 out of those 168 I knew because they had accounts at my credit union and they came in to get money everyday. We didn’t even have ATM’s back then, so they came to us to get their $5 for lunch or whatever. So even now sometimes, somebody will say a name and they’ll be like, “Oh they were killed in the bombing” and it’s like, “Oh yeah.” It’s just hard to remember that many people that died. We lost 18 of 33 coworkers; I mean think about that. If you worked in an office with 33 people, over half are killed. It was terrible.

Scott

One of your customers came to visit you in the hospital. Can you talk about that?

Amy

Oh gosh yeah. The day before the bombing, I think it was, I had had a call from a man who was going through a divorce and wanted to take his wife off the account. Well it doesn’t actually work that way, you can’t just call up and remove your spouse. The spouse has to actually agree to be taken off. I tried to explain by saying, “Ok well I’m going to need both of you to sign a card to remove her from the account.” He did not like that and was talking down to me the whole time saing, “Honey, get your boss on the line. He’ll understand. Let me talk to him.” Well my boss was a woman, the CEO was a woman, in fact it was mostly women where I worked. So I remember finally just being equally ugly back to him, saying, “Well SHE is at lunch I will have HER call you back.” I remember he called me an ugly word. So that’s how that went. Then one day I was laying in the hospital and it was one of those moments where nobody was around, which was unusual because the room had been flooded with people and family. This big ol’ man walks in, I mean he looks like he needs to be a bouncer at a bar somewhere, he was tattooed up and down and looked like he was getting ready to beat somebody up. I was a little nervous like, “Who is this guy walking in?” He walks in carrying a rose. He gets closer to my bed and I look at his face and I can see that he is emotional. He’s got tears running down his face, he’s choked up, he can’t talk; then he says his name. Then he says, “Do you remember me?” It was that guy, it was the jerk. I just nod, and he just says, “I’m so sorry.” Then he just lays that rose down and he can’t talk, he just starts crying and leaves. I was crying too. It was just one of those things where you realize– maybe in his shoes but, also in mine too since I was ugly back to him. You think, “You know, we don’t have to be ugly to each other. We’re both humans.” I guess that probably drove home to him that the person on the other line was not a robot but a person.

It changed a lot of Oklahoma. You saw the good come out in so many people. We just put our differences aside and came together to help each other get through this time.

Scott

The person who bombed the building was executed by lethal injection 6 years after the bombing. Did you ever try to contact him or communicate with him at all?

Amy

No, not at all. I had the opportunity, I could’ve gone and seen the execution and I did not. Instead, Katie Couric actually came back to town to do coverage during that time frame. So, I opted to go do an interview with Katie Couric.

Scott

You’re a real Katie Couric fan aren’t you? (laughter)

Amy

I’m a Katie Couric fan (laughter) so I went to hang out with her. I didn’t want any part of it. I will say this, there were 2 people that were involved. The accomplice is actually still alive and serving time in prison right now. I’ve never made any move to contact him at all. I don’t usually talk about this because-I don’t know it just doesn’t come up- but I did go through a time where I was thinking a lot about forgiveness and what forgiveness means and I usually will pray in the morning. So, I did go through a season, I don’t know maybe a week or two not very long, where I actually prayed for that person. I thought, “Maybe this is a place of healing where you can actually pray for that person’s soul, or pray that they come to some sort of reckoning of themselves.” I didn’t want to contact him or anything like that though. I’m not saying I’m all perfect about it, because later a news story came out that he was complaining about the food he was being served in prison. He didn’t like the food. I was like, “Are you freaking kidding me? I’ll give him some food. Let’s put poison in it.” (laughter) So it’s not like this perfect Christian who forgave.

Scott

(laughter) Oh, so you’re human too?

Amy

Oh yeah I went straight back to, “I’ll give you some food with some rat poison in it.”

Scott

Right, right. So at this point, your credit union, your employer, that was the only location you had that was completely destroyed.

Amy

That was it.

Scott

Half your staff is gone too. What do you do?

Amy

What do you do? In an instant our entire business model was destroyed. We existed to serve the people in that building and that was our only location. That’s gone, the business model is gone, more than half the employees are gone; what do you do? Well, the credit union industry as a whole is very collaborative. All credit unions’ missions are: “People helping people.” What happened was credit unions coming together from all over to help us. There was a large credit union in Oklahoma City, they were so large they actually had a mock teller line to train new tellers in this fake line. They let us open 48 hours later using that fake teller line. We opened up inside a competitor’s office, so we were able to open 48 hours later. There was just a handful of us left, but we were clear that we wanted to survive. It was very important to us, we did not want to merge, we wanted to make it. So we began getting very intentional about what needed to happen next. You know, “What do we need to do?” The next step, the next step, the next step; to survive. We did and we’re 6 times larger today then we were then. I look back now and I think, “We shouldn’t have survived, we shouldn’t have made it. I don’t know how that happened.” That’s just an amazing story right there to me, that our credit union made it.

Scott

Well, it says something about the nature of credit unions too. Can you imagine Bank of America saying to Wells Fargo, “Hey come and use one of our buildings?”

Amy

It’s funny, I have said that so many times. Not to slam any other bank or anything, but you typically don’t hear that with other banks; but you will see that with credit unions. They will come together to help each other.

Scott

So your credit union, it’s a different name now, but it’s much larger. You yourself are much smaller.

Amy

(laughter) Yeah.

Scott

How did you do that?

Amy

Well, I’d like to tell you, that when I left the hospital, you know, queue the “Rocky” music and I go running down the steps to change my life. It didn’t exactly work that way. I first had to work through a lot of grief. A lot of grief. A lot of emotional trauma. As well as rebuilding the credit union, I was totally focused on that. Through the process of rebuilding this credit union, we got really good at setting goals and accomplishing those goals. I realized, “Why is it that I can do amazing things at work -I’m a rockstar at work- but my personal life sucks? Why can I not get it together?” I had never lost that moment of, “I want to live my life differently.” I meant that, I really did. There were things I did change right away; but there were bigger things I wanted to change. I wanted to go back to school. I wanted to lose weight, I didn’t want to weigh 355 pounds. I wanted all those things different but felt paralyzed to get there.

I remember we had a new CEO come in -our old CEO retired- and I remember she said to me one day, “Amy I want to ask you a question, what do you think we need to change here? What needs to be different?” I’m like, “This is the CEO; is this a trick question? I’m not sure how to answer this.” I kind of had a ‘deer in the headlights’ look. She said to me, “No imagine you have a magic wand. What would you do differently?” That sounds so silly, but that little twist of, “you have a magic wand, what do you do” made it safe for me to dream and give my suggestions. I thought about it and said that we needed a great culture, I described it as, “We’re gonna sing Kumbaya in staff meetings.” (laughter) Then she said, “Ok. Given your current situation and limitations; what are the smallest steps you can take today to help get us there? Write that down, that’s your action plan.” I left her office thinking, “What just happened? I’m not even in management yet and suddenly I’m responsible for our culture?” But it was exciting. I later looked back and realized it was exciting because what she gave me was hope. The definition of hope, by the authors of Hope Rising: The Science of Hope, they say, “Hope is the idea that your future can be better and brighter than your past and that you actually play a role in making that happen.” So hope is action. Hope is something you do. Hope is a verb. So I thought, “Ok I can do that.” I pulled out an index card and thought, “What are the things I want to change in my life, if I had a magic wand?” I took it further; I looked at financial, relational, I looked at every aspect and wrote it down. I even wrote it down as if it had already happened. Later I found this Word document, I did it in Word doc. It gave me chills because everything had come true. One thing that had come true was slightly different, because I had written about what my marriage would look like and I wrote this beautiful love story of this marriage. It happened; but it didn’t happen with the person I had been married to. I actually went through a divorce and remarried. I look back now and all those things I wrote down actually did come true.

What happened was, writing it down gave me clarity on what I really wanted, then I chose one thing. I chose what I thought would be the easiest thing, cause I thought all of them including weight were pretty tough, but I thought, “Maybe I can go back to school.” So I started with that one and the first step with that was to just get my transcripts. I had flunked out of college, I had a 0.50 grade point average, so I had to find a college that was even going to take me. That was step one, I went back to college and got my degree. Then I had so much confidence I went ahead and got my masters. Then I thought, “I have all these research skills now from going back to school and all this confidence. Let’s tackle the weight.” I started researching different ways people lose weight, treating it like a research project taking my emotion out of it with the mindset of, “Let’s just tackle this thing.” I ended up having a bariatric surgery called a gastric sleeve and lost 200 pounds. I didn’t just want to lose weight, I wanted to be fit. I wanted to be able to ride a bicycle and walk up a flight of stairs. That led to finding a bicycle. I was still heavy and in the process of losing the weight; but I found a bicycle that would hold me and started riding around in my neighborhood.

I kept going through this thought of “magic wand,” thinking, “Given my current situation, what are the next steps?” I do it to this day. I do it almost every morning. I’ll do it about a problem and think, “If I had a magic wand, how would I fix it and what would I do?” Then I go back to, “Given my circumstances, what can I do?” What that does is it takes you out of being the victim. When you’re a victim you’re helpless you can’t do anything. I could think, “I got blown up. I got divorced. It’s out of my control. I can’t help it.” Instead you have to own what happened to you even if you didn’t do it, cause it, or it’s unfair. You actually have to take responsibility for what has happened to you; and that sucks, but you do. Otherwise you will not move forward and overcome. I finally had to say, “Ok given my current situation, I just went through the bombing, I just had all this stuff happen. What can I do to move forward?” That takes you out of being the victim. So I just kept doing that over and over again. I look back now and I went from a teller who couldn’t balance a cash drawer, who flunked college because I couldn’t pass a math class–

Scott

You even failed remedial math.

Amy

Remedial! Not even the legitimate one, the fake one you take before you can take the new one. Now, I am CEO of a financial institution, I have a masters degree, I went from 355 pounds to completing an Ironman. An Ironman is a 2.4 mile swim followed by a 112 mile bike ride finished by a 26.2 marathon; all within 17 hours. I look back and I’m amazed. If you would’ve told me I would’ve done all of that 25 years ago; I would’ve looked at you and said, “Uh huh. Why don’t you also put on that list, get a rocket and fly to Mars.” It would have felt that ridiculous. That’s the power of constantly evaluating your life and taking steps to move forward.

Scott

I just heard somebody recently talking about how it’s always a mistake to measure yourself where you are today, to your ideal self; because that’s always going to be a disappointment and you’re never there. If you measure where you are today with where you were in the past you can see what progress you’ve made. You and I could talk for hours about human endurance sports and ultra marathons and ironmans and all that; but I’ve got to ask you this. When you cross that line in the ironman, the announcer always announces your name and says, “You are an Ironman,” what’s going through your head at that point?

Amy

Ugh you’re going to make me cry just saying it (laughter). I could talk about that Ironman journey. It was tough. I thought I wasn’t going to make it. I will tell you I came in last. It was hit or miss whether I was actually going to make it in time. So when I rounded that corner and I saw the lights and that big chute on that finish line and I looked up and saw myself on that jumbotron; it was like slow motion. I remember every moment. The hands giving me high fives over the railing. It’s midnight and there were still people there cheering me on. I saw my husband at the finish line; my coach was standing there and they had the medal. Then the voice of Ironman, Mike Reilly says, “You are an Ironman.” I was so overcome with emotion. Then they put the medal around my neck. I mentioned I grew up in a faith based home, and after the whole bombing and everything I really embraced my faith again. One of the things I thought of was that in the Bible they talk about life being like a race, an endurance race. I thought about whatever heaven is like, if it’s anything like finishing– you know this is what we dream up on earth. To cross this finish line and be given a medal and how that feels. Then what will it feel like when we cross over to eternity, after running this race of life. So I had spiritual thoughts like that also. Honestly I felt badass, and I was so proud of myself. That is probably one of the things I am most proud of in my entire life, because it didn’t have anything to do with the bombing. There’s been a lot of promotions I’ve received and now I’m CEO, but there’s a little voice in the back of my mind that says, “Well..you survived. If your coworkers might have lived they would have gotten that promotion.” But this was something I did. I got up at 4 a.m. to run. I ran in the rain. I swam in the crazy wind. I did this. My body, even though I’ve done this, I’m still an unlikely athlete. I’m still on the heavy side. I’m still not quite what you think of when you think of an Ironman; but I did it. It proved to me that I can do hard things and I can do what I put my mind to.

Scott

People listening to this might think that when you cross a finish line, in some huge event like that, your thoughts might be, “Wow I’m sure glad it’s over, I don’t have to run anymore.” That’s not what it is. I’ve seen it happen to me and I’ve seen it happen to so many people when they cross a finish line. It’s just an overwhelming emotion, that you did it.

Amy

Yeah. I mean just you even describing– when you said, “You are an Ironman.” You saw my eyes fill up with tears because it’s still emotional to this day thinking back on it. I think when you do these events it represents the hardships you have in life. It’s very symbolic when you cross that finish line that you can overcome. It’s really not about overcoming that particular race, it’s you overcoming the hard things in life that you deal with.

Scott

Exactly. You think, “I just did this. What else am I capable of?”

Amy

Yeah, right.

Scott

Ok I’m gonna ask you this and I’m sure –I think probably people are wondering this. You failed remedial math yet you went to college and got your masters in business. You weighed 355 pounds, you lost that weight. You were a couch potato, you completed an Ironman. You were a teller who, by your own admission, was a lazy worker, and now you’re the CEO of that credit union.

Amy

Right.

Scott

You know we hear stories of people changing their lives after some kind of traumatic event; but is it possible for people who are just in a rut? They haven’t had any big tragedy happen to them, how does that person get in that mindset to change things?

Amy

I absolutely believe that it can happen. I know people who have changed their lives without any traumatic event. You have to be intentional. I really do believe it is as simple as sitting down with yourself and asking yourself, “If I had a magic wand. Who would I become? What would my life look like? Who would I be?” Ask yourself those questions. Start there. Asking yourself, “Who is it I’m wanting to become? What am I wanting to do? What is my life– what am I really doing here and where do I want to go?” When you start asking yourself those questions and answering those things– I believe our brains are so smart; they’re like an app running in the background trying to figure out how to get there. You will start figuring it out. Then when you take that and you say, “Ok what are the smallest steps I can take?” Start every single day taking the tiniest step. Then you look back and those small consistent steps over time will transform your life; but you have to just take those small, tiny, tiny steps. It doesn’t happen overnight, it’s a process. It starts with allowing yourself to dream. I think particularly as we reach middle age. A lot of people have been knocked down so many times they just don’t want to get back up anymore; we’ve had life beat out of us. You have to really allow yourself to dream again. Life isn’t over. Middle age is just the beginning, are you kidding me? I’m living into my 90s. My dad lived into his 90s. I’m not ready to sit on a couch and wait to die. Heck no!

Scott

Would you say today– would you call yourself a different person? Or maybe I should rephrase that. People who knew you before the bombing and who still know you now, what would they say about your transformation?

Amy

I had a friend tell me -now she knew me after the bombing not before- but she knew me before the transformation. Like I said this transformation wasn’t me running out of the hospital and suddenly I was transformed. It was quite a while after that I could get traction. She says I’m the same person. She says she sees me as the same person just outwardly changed and with these accomplishments and achievements; but she says I’m the same. I don’t know. I don’t feel like I’m the same person from before the bombing, I definitely don’t. Now, here’s a question though, would those changes have happened overtime? That’s a good question because I know a lot of people, as we reach middle age, we look back and we realize we’ve grown. Hopefully we all have, right? We’re not the same immature, silly, whatever we were when we were younger; we’ve grown. So maybe that growth would’ve occurred whether the bombing happened or not, I don’t know.

Scott

You have to think most people aren’t going to sit down and have the intentionality to say, “I’m going to physically write this down, what do I want to change? What do I want to be?” Yet you did that.

Amy

We’ll do it every now and then, like at New Year’s, but just do it all the time. Like I do it with coffee, have my coffee, sit down– and it may not be every single day, it might be 5 days a week; but I do it often. When you do it often it doesn’t take very long, maybe 10 minutes I’m sitting there thinking about it, revisiting what I wrote the last time, asking, “Am I on track?” you know that kind of thing.

Scott

Even if it’s just something you want to do that day. Like saying, “If I got these 3 things done today, that’s going to be a good day” so then you focus on those things. So you’ve written a book?

Amy

Yes!

Scott

You’ve actually already mentioned the name of the book, but your book is called, “Hope is a Verb.” Can you just elaborate on that a little bit and what that book is about? I’ve read it, I already know, but go ahead.

Amy

(laughter) My intention for the book was to encourage others by sharing my journey in a way that the reader would maybe see themselves in my journey and be encouraged on their own journey. It does talk about my experience through the bombing, but it’s not just about that, it’s about the transformation and aftermath. Also the idea that hope is a verb, which is the idea that your future can be better and brighter than your past, but you play a role in making that happen, you have to take responsibility for your life. I’m sharing it from the first person experience of how I’ve done it but my wish is that it would impact the reader and inspire them a little bit for their own life.

Scott

We’ll have a link to your book in the show notes of this episode so if anybody wants to get that they can. I should say, it goes into a lot more detail about what happened than what we talked about here and it’s really good. If people want to contact you how can they do that?

Amy

Go to my website, amydowns.org and I’ve got links to my social media pages on there.

Scott

Great. You do public speaking as well right?

Amy

I do.

Scott

I know we’re kind of coming out of Covid, are you back to speaking in person now

Amy

Yes! I am! Just this month I’ve had 2 keynotes that I’ve been able to deliver in person to a live physical audience and it’s been wonderful. A lot of conferences have been getting scheduled and back in place so it’s nice.

Scott

So anyone hearing this that has a company or a group they should contact you and that would be an amazing thing to experience.

Amy

Yes! I have to give a plug to Oklahoma City. We have a brand new convention center. It is amazing, it is a great place to bring a conference. So, I have to give that little shameless plug.

Scott

Well Amy thanks for sharing your story. It’s pretty amazing.

Amy

Thank you! Thank you for having me.

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Amy’s story is definitely one of my favorites. She is just so incredible. She’s also done a TEDx talk, and there’s a video of that. I’ll put a link to that along with everything else in the episode notes at WhatWasThatLike.com/95.

Sometimes people ask me how I come up with ideas for this podcast. Well, in some cases, they come as suggestions from listeners. That’s what happened with this one.

My nephew Scott listens to this podcast. Earlier this year, he moved to Oklahoma with his wife and their little girl. They were visiting the Oklahoma City National Memorial, and he sent me a text message asking if I’ve ever thought about interviewing someone who survived the bombing. And that’s what started the ball rolling for this episode. So thanks, Scott!

And if you have an idea for an episode, that’s how easy it is. Honestly I don’t think I’ll ever run out of stories for this show, but I’m always looking for new ones. You can send me your idea by contacting me through the website.

And I’d love to hear what you think of Amy’s story! If you want to chime in with an opinion or a question, you can do that at the private Facebook group we have just for listeners of this show. You can join at WhatWasThatLike.com/facebook. We’re coming up on 2000 people in that group now. And sometime in the near future, we’ll be moving that group OFF of Facebook to a different platform. But I’ll give you all the details about that when it happens.

And before we get to this week’s listener story, I wanted to let you know that you can support the podcast and get all the new episodes ad-free, as well as extra bonus episodes that have actual 911 calls and the stories that go with them. And most importantly, your support tells me you like what I’m doing and that’s always a huge encouragement! You can sign up to support the show at WhatWasThatLike.com/support.

And now, this week’s Listener Stories. That’s right, I said “stories” – plural. I knew this episode with Amy was coming up, and I just LOVE to hear stories of people overcoming adversity.

So, I asked the people in the Facebook group to tell me about something they’ve done, that just seemed SO big and difficult, they didn’t know if they’d be able to do it. And they came through! And some of them called in to tell what happened. So that means we don’t have just ONE Listener Story – we have FIVE Listener Stories. These people are amazing and I’m glad you and I get to hear what they’ve been able to accomplish.

Stay safe, and I’ll see you in two weeks.

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Female Caller #1

My father was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 1990. By 2004 the situation was becoming too much for my mom to handle alone. I’m one of 4 children, the 3rd in line, but because we lived in the same town I guess I felt more responsible for them. To make a long story short we sold our home and built-on to theirs and I became a caregiver for the next 13 years. My parents were not the overly lovey-dovey type. Yet here I was, possibly the least favorite kid, which is a whole other story, set up to take care of them for the rest of their lives. When I knew my dad was actively dying, the thought of even asking for Hospice help and then calling my siblings to tell them that; it paralyzed me. I was so afraid of the deaths, the emotions, all of it. My family all came and we surrounded his deathbed and had the most beautiful send off. 12 years later my mom had a stroke and was in bed for 2 years. Again I didn’t know how I was going to do this, I just knew it had to be done. Caregiving is a really really hard job. Changing your parents’ diapers is just something you don’t expect to do in life. Fortunately my family was great. My kids would keep my mom’s spirits up and mine. I remember one night listening on the baby monitor to my daughter singing her heart out and my mom jokingly telling her she was really good. My siblings would also come whenever I needed them and I was graced by their gratitude. Inside I was still so scared of my mom dying. Her death was just as scary to me as my dad’s. Giving her the morphine that was prescribed by Hospice felt like I was aiding in her death somehow. Again calling all the family when I knew it was the end was the worst feelings I ever had. I held it together until a car ride to the hospital behind an ambulance carrying my mom where I think I just scream-cried for about 20 minutes. We took her home from the hospital so she could die in her house in peace surrounded by her family. I miss my parents terribly. I miss the life we had when we were all living together and making the best of their health struggles; but I’m at peace with the death we were able to give them.

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Female Caller #2

Hi Scott! Love the show. In response to your prompt on Facebook, something I did that was incredibly difficult that I never thought I would do was a CrossFit competition. Growing up I wasn’t super athletically inclined, but in my 30s I was diagnosed with high blood pressure and the weight was creeping up so I knew that I needed to start some kind of physical activity consistently. I knew as I got older the harder it would be to start. On a whim I joined a gym. Unbeknownst to me they did CrossFit style workouts as well as HIIT type workouts, and I absolutely loved it. It was the first time I had ever consistently gone to the gym. After about a year of going there a group of the members decided to do a CrossFit competition and actually asked me if I would join them. I said, “Yeah, ok let’s do it!” My goal was to not place last; and I actually placed 8 out of 11. So I considered that a success.

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Female Caller #3

Hi Scott! Thanks for letting me be on your show. It’s about my daughter. We had a wonderful relationship. Then in 2016 I found out she was an IV drug user; heroin was her drug of choice. Our relationship went downhill from that. I’m a tough love kind of mom and I could not be an enabler and watch my daughter kill herself. So she was homeless for quite a while. Then in 2017 she found out she was pregnant and she got arrested. While she was in jail she had to go to the hospital and there she found out she had necrotizing fasciitis in her arm. So she went for several surgeries and skin grafts; all of this while she was pregnant. It was just crazy. So when she was released from the hospital I brought her to my house, and she went on a maintenance program that would keep her from having withdrawal symptoms, so that she would not lose the baby. She did wonderful and the baby did wonderful. We knew that he was going to have to withdrawal at birth, and he did great. It was easy and we were at a wonderful hospital that took great care of him. Now he is just a healthy, wonderful, energetic 3 year old boy. But when he was 3 months old, my daughter relapsed and I had to take him in, which was very scary. I’m 50ish and when you’re handed a 4 month old baby, it scares you it’s hard. There’s a lot you have to do, you have to find daycare etc. I wouldn’t change it for a million dollars. So, this year, about 75 days ago my daughter decided she wanted to get clean. She is doing absolutely wonderful, she’s in a great program in our town. She’s going to meetings, she’s working that program, she’s helping others, she’s been working out of a sober living house. She’s back living with us and we are gradually working her back into his life and he absolutely loves having his mama home. So there is a light at the end of that tunnel, and you can do it if you want to do it. I’m so proud of my daughter. She will never know how proud I am of her and what a good mother she’s becoming. I just want other people to know, if you’re struggling, if you have to take in a grandchild; do what you need to do. You will not regret it for one minute. Be there for your child when they say they’re ready to get help. I would walk on water to help my baby and I’m so proud of her.

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Male Caller

Hello my name is Devon. I’ve always had a dream of owning rentals, flipping houses and being involved in real estate. In the beginning my wife and I started dating at 15. We ended up getting married and had a kid at 17 and moved out and finished our senior year on our own. As you can imagine, the place that we found was not ideal. Not a lot of people want to rent to 17 year olds. We didn’t have a stove or microwave, all we had was a hot plate and a pot to cook our single meals in. The car we had was a 5-speed, it didn’t have a starter in it, so we had to push it down the road and pop the clutch to get to work everyday and the same thing on the way home. We learned pretty quickly that this was not going to be the lifestyle for us. So we worked really hard to build our credit and at 19 we were able to buy our first home. We spent a lot of time fixing it up and working on it. We found out after we bought it that the people actually had pet raccoons, so the house was a mess. We lived there for about 5 years. During that time we had another child and decided it was time to move on to another house. So we converted that into a rental and upgraded our life a little bit. Then we repeated this process to the point where, just before the pandemic, I was able to have 3 rentals, and the property we live in now has 25 acres and two ponds in a very beautiful area. Shortly after that after the pandemic got started, unfortunately I found out that I was diagnosed with cancer. Although I had been working on the real estate stuff, our focus went to family stuff. So during this time all of our focus, all of my energy, all of our money pretty much went all in on the real estate thing, to follow my dreams. My family was fantastic in supporting me during this time. Which by the way, totally cured, definitely going to live many more years. Anyway, during that time I put in everything I had and was able to flip a home. As of now we’ve got 9 rentals and we’ll probably be able to retire by the time I’m 40. I was able to purchase the car of my dreams, which was a Tesla Model 3. We’re very happy.

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Female Caller #4

My name is Megan. This November 1st marked 5 years off of opiates for me. I used different pills and dabbled in heroin but my drug of choice was fentanyl. There’s been a drug epidemic around the world and a large increase in deaths from fentanyl. I started drinking around the age of 11 and progressed to cocaine when I was 14 when I was hanging out with my older sister. Unfortunately she is still suffering from her addiction. The next year was when I first started using opiates. First, OxyContin, doctors used to over prescribe so they were everywhere. When that started happening less, I progressed to heroin and hydromorphone; and eventually I tried fentanyl. Actually the first time I tried it, I was with my boyfriend and I overdosed. I had to be rushed to the hospital and revived with narcan. You know what I didn’t do after overdosing? Try to get sober. It wasn’t until over a year later that I would decide to finally try to get off of drugs; but that boyfriend wasn’t ready, so we had to go our separate ways. This January he was shot and killed by police. I’ve been living with a lot of guilt. I know you can’t help someone who doesn’t want help; but it’s hard. So, onto the good though. At the end of 2016 I made the decision to try to better myself. But physically it was just unbearable. I won’t go into too much information or details, but after being so dehydrated from withdrawals, I started medication assisted treatment of Suboxone. The doctors and nurses at the clinic were absolutely amazing. Seriously, they saved my life. I was able to taper off of the Suboxone, just in time for me to get pregnant unexpectedly. My ex left me as soon as I told him, and it was a really hard time physically and mentally because I was really sick with hyperemesis gravidarum. But I pulled through and I have a sweet 3 year old son. Now I’m in school full time for child and youth care. I have a great boyfriend and we’re planning our future together. In my Facebook memories I see pictures of me and you can see it in my eyes how high I was. It’s a good reminder that I’ve come a long way and I have a lot of things to look forward to in the future.

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View Details

As I walk or bike through my neighborhood, one of the saddest things I often see is a flyer stuck to a telephone pole or electric pole, telling about a lost dog.

We have a couple of little dogs, Lilly and Fenway. They’re both Yorkies. And believe me, they are family. I can’t imagine the stress and anxiety and sadness if we suddenly discovered one of them were missing.

So that’s what I think about when I see one of those flyers. Some family, in a neighborhood near to where I live, is living with the fact that they don’t know where their dog is. Or where their cat is. And they don’t know if their family pet will ever come home again.

So I think we can all agree, losing a dog is traumatic.

But what if your dog didn’t just escape and get lost…

What if your dog was actually stolen?

That’s what Barbie suspected when her dog, Scooby, went missing.

Barbie with Scooby as a puppy Brandy and Scooby Scooby today Scooby comes home:

If your dog gets away:

Drive slowly around the neighborhood. Your dog might hear and recognize the sound of your car or your voice, and might be close by.
Put a sign in your yard. Include a photo of your pet, along with your phone number. The sign will be seen by pizza deliveries, the mail carrier, and the kids in the neighborhood.
Leave unwashed clothing outside, near your house.
Hang flyers around the neighborhood and go door to door to let everyone know. Also, post online in local groups such as Next Door.
Visit local shelters regularly. Don’t just call – go there in person.

This episode is sponsored by the Sleep Meditation for Women podcast – listen to help you fall asleep and stay asleep.

This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp online counseling. Get 10% off your first month by visiting BetterHelp.com/WHATWAS.

Episode transcript (download transcript PDF)

As I walk or bike through my neighborhood, one of the saddest things I often see is a flier stuck to a telephone pole or electric pole, telling about a lost dog.

So I think we can all agree, losing a dog is traumatic.

But what if your dog didn’t just escape and get lost…

What if your dog was actually stolen?

That’s what Barbie suspected when her dog, Scooby, went missing.

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Scott

Have you always been a dog lover?

Barbie

I have always loved dogs; and all kinds of critters, but mostly dogs.

Scott

There’s people that are cat people and people that are dog people and some that are both, but I’m kind of like you. I’m a dog person. All animals are great though. So how did you end up getting Scooby?

Barbie

Well back in November 2005, my husband and 2 small children and I, the mommy, moved to Orlando. When you have Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse as your neighbors, what could go wrong right? We moved into a beautiful home in Orlando, and all our neighbors had dogs. They were so cute, and were all different sizes. My kids and I would see them and always melt and say, “Oh we want to take them home.” My husband would always say no. I understand why he said no; when he was younger, about a teenager, he was on his way to school and a big dog got out of a neighbors yard and chased him down and bit him. So I understand why he didn’t want any pets.

Scott

That’s understandable, yeah.

Barbie

Yeah, he was afraid of all kinds of pets. We used to go to visit his father in South Carolina 4 or 5 times a year, and they would come visit us. My father-in-law used to breed toy poodles and they are so adorable. Everytime we went up the first 2 years– of course it was in between the breeding so we never saw the puppies. One time it was our turn to visit again in 2007 and we went in there and “Surprise!” Tiny itty-bitty furballs. One stuck out like a sore thumb, dark chocolate little furball. It even caught my husband’s attention. When he would hold him he’d say, “Aw he’s so cute.” About 5 minutes after him holding this little furball he looked at me and said, “Would you and the girls still like a dog?” At the same time we all yelled, “Yes!”

Scott

That’s a dumb question. Right?

Barbie

Yeah, we were not going to even let him finish that question. We said, “Yes, let’s take him now!” But he was too small, the puppies were born August 24, 2007, so he wasn’t even a month old so we couldn’t take him at that time. My father-in-law always told me I could have the pick of the litter, and it didn’t matter which one. The one we liked was the runt. My father-in-law told me after all the puppies he’s seen born he was the only deep dark chocolate toy poodle with the longest tail. He could have been a show dog. We never did that to him though. My husband said to us, “Do you want to take him?” We said, “Yes!” He said, “Under one condition,” I thought oh no, here we go, he’s going to make sure we agree to take care of it and keep it away from him. He said, “I get to name him.” I thought, “Ok.” He’s Spanish so I thought– he likes to play jokes on me, so I thought he was going to name it something I can’t even pronounce. I said, “Ok, name him.” He goes, “Scooby.” We all thought he was joking but we weren’t going to say anything because we thought, “He can name him Scooby if we get to take him home.” So we said, “Yes, deal.” So we were going to take him home and we made arrangements with my father-in-law to come back a month later in October when Scooby would be old enough to take home. About a week before we were going to go pick him up, my father-in-law came knocking on the door, but he looked sad and upset. I said, “What’s the matter?” He said, “I sold your dog by mistake. But I still have one dog left in the basket in the car.” We were very disappointed, we had our minds set on Scooby, you know? I said, “Ok, we’ll take him.” So he went to get the basket out of the car, put it in my hands, opened up the lid and guess who popped out? Scooby! What a joker he was!

Scott

What a joker.

Barbie

I forgot, I have a family where both sides are full of comedians and jokers.

Scott

That’s a funny joke though. You’ve got to admit.

Barbie

Yeah, after we got Scooby it was ok, he was forgiven.

Scott

I saw some of the pictures that you had of Scooby and he seems to change colors. Do you know why that happened?

Barbie

Well, it seemed kind of weird. Everytime we gave him his haircut, and he was so proud after each haircut, he would prance around proud like a peacock. Everytime we gave him a haircut he got lighter and lighter and lighter. We still loved him, the dark chocolate sold us on him but it was him and his personality that kept us loving him.

Scott

Tell us about what happened on that day. You had mentioned when we were speaking before, that he was always so quiet you didn’t even always know that he was around. That was part of the reason he was missing for a while before you noticed. What happened there?

Barbie

About a week before that day happened I was scheduled to go into major surgery. So my mind was elsewhere anyway, but he usually never favored any of us so he would just take turns with whoever he slept with. Different beds with different children or us, he just never had any favorites. He wasn’t in my bed so I assumed he was with the kids, and I went to work that morning. I was at work and my husband called me saying, “Where’s Scooby?” I said, “What do you mean he’s home and I’m at work. Don’t say this jokingly, I’m at work.” He said, “I’m not kidding. Scooby’s not here.” So I said, “I’ll be home as soon as I can.” I went in to see my boss and said, “I have to go home, my dog is missing.” They let me go so I went home. My husband was in his office and he called me to come in. We had a security camera, and I never thought about looking at it because Scooby had escaped 4 or 5 times in the 4 years we had him.

Scott

So he was 4 years old now?

Barbie

He was 4 years old, yes. I never thought to look at the cameras to see how he escaped. Well, my husband saw the cameras that day and he saw what happened; how Scooby escaped. He would end up on the front porch and we would wonder, “How did he escape the privacy fence?” It was 6 feet tall so we knew he didn’t climb it, and there were no holes so we didn’t know how he got out. Well, when the wind blew a certain amount it would blow up one of the boards. Scooby is so smart and he knew that, so he would dash right underneath it while it was lifted and that’s how he would escape. He usually went to the front door and whined and he’d look at us so sad and we’d say, “Well come in the house!”

This fateful day he never came home. So my husband looked at the video completely that day; and that late afternoon we saw a car stop in front of the house. A guy gets out, opens the back door, and it looks like he’s calling somebody to his car. We saw Scooby enter the camera’s range, in the front yard, and he’s going to the man. I realized, “He’s trying to get my dog.” Scooby ran down and out, away from him, and down the street out of camera range. Then the car took off in the same direction Scooby went.

Scott

So you’re watching that on the camera?

Barbie

Yes.

Scott

You didn’t realize that that’s the last time you would see him?

Barbie

No, I thought, “We can get him.” My husband Marcos did tell me that while he was waiting for me to come home and he saw this, he went in his car with my daughter– who was only 18 months at the time. She was born 2 years after we got Scooby, I gave birth to a beautiful no-verbal autistic daughter, and they were so close. At first Scooby was jealous and would growl at her like,”You’re taking my spot!” but then they got really close. So when my husband saw the video, he looked at the car and the picture was clear so he could see the make of the car, but we couldn’t see the license plate. So he got in his car and drove around the neighborhood to see if he could spot the car. He saw the car in a driveway right around the corner from us behind our backyard, 3 houses away. He took pictures of the car and came back home. At this time I came in the door from work and said, “What are we gonna do? We need to call the police. If they have my dog I want my dog back.” Right now in my mind I’m not even thinking about my surgery, I’m thinking about getting my dog back. My husband said, “No, what if this man retaliates against our family when we call?” I said, “Yeah you’re right, what are we going to do?”

Scott

You really don’t have any proof anyway, right?

Barbie

No I don’t. Just because there was an open car, it looked like he could’ve taken Scooby, but then he could say, “No, the dog went away, it was just a stray dog. Then I went home.” There was no proof at this time.

Scott

Or he could say there are other cars that look like that too?

Barbie

That’s true. My husband says, “I can make up a bunch of flyers and we can go around the neighborhood and hand them out.” I said, “Yeah that’s a good idea! We’ll knock on neighbors doors, hand out flyers and then we’ll go to his door and knock on the door like we don’t know who he is. Then hand him a flyer too.”

Scott

That sounds like a good plan.

Barbie

Yeah I thought it was a great plan. Then I thought if I heard Scooby I could say, “That’s my dog, give him back right now.” My husband made a generic flier with Scooby’s picture and name and it had our address and phone number and said, “If you see this dog, call this number.” So we put my daughter in the stroller and started going. Every pole I saw, the stop sign, the light poles, the telephone poles; we hung up fliers of Scooby. It’s a single family neighborhood so every house we came to we knocked on the door, handed them a flier and the people would thank us and said they would call us. If nobody was home we would stick a flier on their door so they would see it. We got 2 doors from where my husband saw the car and I knocked on the door and 3 or 4 kids came running out. They looked like elementary school age so I don’t know why they weren’t in school, but I didn’t question it and I handed them a flier and said, “Did you see my dog?” They all got excited and said, “Yeah the man that lives in that house 2 doors down, he was chasing your dog and he caught him.” I said, “Are you sure?” They said, “Yes!” I looked at my husband and I said, “I think we can go get my dog.” So we skipped the house in between and went right where we thought my dog was.

Scott

Was that the house where that car was parked before?

Barbie

That’s where the car was when my husband took the picture. The car was gone when we got there.

Scott

Oh. So you’ve got two different pieces of evidence that point to the people in that house.

Barbie

So then we go there, I knock on the door and my husband stays back with my daughter in the stroller. A lady answered, I guessed his wife, and before she could say anything I handed her a flier and said, “Have you seen my dog? He’s been missing since yesterday and we’re looking for him. The neighbor kids said they saw him in the neighborhood running around. Have you seen him?” Then she looked and said, “No I haven’t.” So I said, “Well the kids said your husband caught him.” She goes, “No. That’s right, the dog was there but he couldn’t catch him, the dog was too fast.” In the meantime, the door was open so I was listening for my dog, and I couldn’t hear him. Usually when he hears us or hears my voice, he cries. He’s like a big baby, he cries, he’s so happy. Always as a puppy, if I was gone he would cry. Even if it was just 5 minutes he’d jump in my lap and cry. I didn’t hear him cry, so I gave her the flier and I said, “Please call me if you see him.” Then I don’t know why I told her, I said, “I’m going into major surgery in a couple days and I just want my dog home, he’s part of the family.” She said, “I’ll call you if we hear anything.”

Scott

So you kind of knew that she was not being completely truthful with you?

Barbie

Absolutely. You could tell she was feeling bad, but she wasn’t going to tell me anything.

Scott

It seems like she was kind of in an awkward position, she either had to be nice to you, someone she doesn’t know, or she had to betray her husband, if he really still had your dog. That’s a tough spot.

Barbie

Yes, very tough. I wasn’t mad at her, that’s why I kept my calm and I cried and I told her the story. I thought I could appeal from one mother to another, because she had a couple little kids running around. Little kids, probably 2 years old and maybe still in diapers. She said, “I will call you if I see your dog.” I said, “Thank you.” From there we went and knocked on doors on the way back home and handed out more fliers. The kids were still in school at this time. I have to tell you my husband was very good to me, he said, “What do you want to do next?” I said, “I want to go to different stores and hang up these fliers. I still want to look around. I want to go to his vet. Maybe someone handed him in, we just don’t know.”

Scott

Yeah, you want to feel like you’re taking action and doing something right? You can’t just stay home and hope he comes back, that would feel kind of useless.

Barbie

I wouldn’t do that to my daughters, why would I do that to my dog who’s part of the family? So we went home, my husband made a bunch more fliers, and then we went to the shopping store around the corner and hung up fliers with their permission. Scooby’s vet wasn’t that far from our home, not even a mile away, so on the way we stopped a lot to hang up fliers on the poles. We talked to the vet and told her what happened, she was upset for us too. She let us put the flier up in her waiting room. My husband stayed in the car with the baby while I did all this running around to make it easier. Then we went to the animal shelter and they were so very nice. I explained what happened and they let me hang up the flier on their wall of missing critters. They let me go back into any place they had animals, they even let me go see if Scooby was in their hospital. They showed me the book of all the dead animals they find and have to record. Scooby wasn’t there.

Scott

That was very nice of them to accommodate you that way though.

Barbie

Yes, they were very good people. You could tell they cared for the animals there, it wasn’t just a job for the money. I went back and told my husband and we headed home. On the way home I noticed one of our neighbors out. She’s not a very nice neighbor; she was always what you’d call the troublemaker of the block. But I told my husband, “Please pull over, I need to speak with her!” because she knew everybody and everything. I took a flier and handed it to her and she listened and said, “I’ll call you if I know anything.” I said, “Thank you so much, I appreciate this.” By then the kids were home from school and we had to go home and break the news to Becky and Brandy. They were devastated. We said, “We’re not going to give up. Scooby’s going to come home, we know he’s going to come home and we’re just going to keep looking for him.” That calmed them down a little bit. That night when it started to get dark, around [5:30] or 6, my husband got a call on his cell phone, which was the number we put on the fliers for Scooby. A man with a really bad accent– my husband like I said is Spanish so he didn’t understand this accent. So he handed me the phone and he was getting upset and I said, “No it’s about Scooby let me handle this.” The man told me, “I found your dog on my way to work. His name was Scooby right?” I said, “Yes.” He said, “I can wait for a little bit, but you need to come here. I’m at a church yard where you can come pick up Scooby.” I said, “Yes! Ok directions, give me directions.” He gave me directions 10 miles away from my house. Orlando is not a very safe place, they have bad neighborhoods. So I wrote the directions down and told my husband what happened and he said, “I’m going to stay here with the kids, it’s not safe you shouldn’t go.” I said, “I’m going to call one of your cousins.” She’s a wonderful cousin. I called her and she dropped everything, came to get me and drove me to where the directions took us. It was at a church. We go into the church and it’s deserted. There’s nobody there. The lights were on because it was getting really dark now, and we’re yelling for Scooby. We didn’t even hear dogs, it was on a main busy street. It was kind of scary but I wasn’t thinking about being scared, I was only thinking about Scooby. There was a neighborhood behind the church so we rode around the neighborhood and tried to listen for any dogs barking and I was yelling, “Scooby, Scooby!” We did that for about an hour and there was nothing. So she took me home, and I told my husband and kids. I said, “Don’t give up! Scooby’s going to come home.”

Scott

That’s almost even worse to think that somebody called you and said, “I have Scooby” and get your hopes up. Then nothing.

Barbie

Well here’s worse. Something worse happened. The next morning, that troublemaker lady called me and said, “Well did you get your dog back?” I said, “No, he wasn’t there.” She said, “What do you mean? He gave you directions?” Now how would she know this? I stayed calm and I said, “No, he gave me directions for a church 10 miles away.” She sounded very annoyed and she said, “No it was the church around the corner from us.” So I said, “Oh.” Then I hung up. I took my baby– we were home alone at this time, everybody was at work or school, it was just me and Marianna. So I took the car and the stroller and we went to this church. They were remodeling at the time, so there were about 3 or 4 guys fixing up the church. I had fliers in my car, so I handed them one and said, “Have you seen this dog? I was told he was in here.” They said, “No we didn’t.” You could tell they felt bad. They said, “If we see him we’ll call, but you can look around in the meantime.” They let me in the church, they let me all through the– they were really nice people. No Scooby. There was a neighborhood behind it too, which was like 3 neighborhoods away from mine. I put Marianna back in the car and rolled all the windows down and drove 1 to 2 miles per hour through this neighborhood yelling for Scooby and listening. Nothing. We finally went home about an hour or 2 later.

Scott

At this point it seems like you have exhausted everything you can do. What do you do next?

Barbie

We called family and friends to let them know and keep an ear out and so they could let their friends and family know. We weren’t giving up. The animal shelter said I could come back anytime and just go in the back room and look for Scooby. I did that. Every week the kids would go to school and I would go twice a week. Then I would do it once a week. Then I would do it once a month. I never gave up, I prayed. I’m a Christian, I prayed and I had a voice come over me and say, “Don’t worry, he’s coming home.” This was about a week after my surgery, I had to go through my surgery I couldn’t cancel. A few days after all this happened I had to go through my surgery, which of course, was successful because you’re talking to me.

Scott

That just seems like so much more stress. When you’re going into surgery, you don’t want to have all this other stuff on your mind.

Barbie

And when you have a handicapped child that needs to be taken care of and one almost teenager and one teenage daughter. All those mothers and fathers out there know what I’m saying; and then your dog is missing. It’s the worst.

Scott

Barbie has a daughter named Brandy; and of course she was always looking for Scooby even when she was at school.

Brandy

I was in middle school around that time, maybe 6th or 7th grade. Every afternoon I would have a PE class and we would go around the track. As I was running around the track I would call Scooby and my friend, he happens to share the same class that I have. He and I were running the track together, he goes, “Hey why are you calling for your dog?” I said, “Well my dog is missing. He was stolen, we’re trying to get him back.” He looked at me and said, “Oh. I think I’ve seen a dog running around here.” I said, “You’re kidding! Well what did he look like? Is he a big dog or a small dog?” He said, “It was a small dog.” I said, “What color is it?” He said, “I think it was a brown color. It was like a dark brown.” I said, “That’s my dog!” He said, “Well I’ve seen him running around here.” I said, “Can you please see if you can find him again?” Three or four days later he came up to me looking so sad. He handed me a piece of paper with a cute drawing of a dog and walked away. I opened up that piece of paper and it said, “I’m so sorry. I tried looking for your dog and I couldn’t find it. I’m just too ashamed to tell you in person.” I said, “Well you really did try and that meant a lot.”

Scott

At this point, Scooby has been gone for 2 years and Barbie is still clinging to the hope that she’ll find him.

Barbie

So 2 years have gone by; Scooby is 6 years old at that time. I still had not given up. I heard that voice tell me he was going to come home. Every morning I would on purpose walk my kids to school, at least to the middle school because we could hear all the dogs. We’d say, “Wouldn’t it be funny if Scooby was behind us?” I never changed the color of the house, I kept everything the same. I never even got a new car because I wanted Scooby to know that was his home and be able to find it easily. No Scooby. We just couldn’t find him. We just kept saying that, every time we would go to school 5 days a week, the kids were very healthy so they almost never had to stay home from school. I was friendly with the mail lady. She would drop off the mail and I would wave. I’m friendly with everybody, and my mother doesn’t know how I talk to strangers. She says, “How do you do that like you know them?” So the mail lady would wave back. She knew about Scooby, sometimes I would have him in my arms to go pick up the mail. One day, after Scooby had been gone for 2 years already, she said, “How are you doing?” Somehow we got to talking about how Scooby was stolen. I just thought I’d tell my story to her and that would be it; she would go off and she could care less. She said, “Do you still have a flier?” I looked at her and said, “Yeah! Hold on, I’ll go run inside and get it.” I gave her the flier and she goes, “I do my routes in this area. Everywhere I go on my route I will keep an eye out for your dog. I promise you.” I said, “Thank you so much.” I didn’t really think much of it.

Scott

That was very nice of her. She must be an animal lover herself.

Barbie

She is. She had, not little dogs but big dogs. Every once and a while she would ask, “Did Scooby come back home yet?” I would say, “No. But I know he is, I know he’s coming home.” She said, “Well I’ll keep looking. I don’t want you to think I haven’t been looking, I have.” That would go on for 2 years.

Scott

So she kept the flier in her mail truck.

Barbie

Yes, in fact I could see where she kept it, she taped it in her mail truck. So every time I would see the mail lady– I wish I could remember her name, she was the sweetest woman. I would go run out and say hi and thank her for the mail; she still had the flier, and this was 2 years later that I still noticed the flier. I said, “Thank you for keeping Scooby near you.” She said, “I would never hide Scooby. I told you I’m going to find him, and keep looking for him and I will never stop.” I thanked her.

On January 14, 2016 I had to go to the store for some milk. I asked my husband if he could watch the baby while I went out to get milk. He said,”Yeah but hurry up home” because he didn’t like to change diapers (laughter) and she was getting a little old for him to be changing her diaper. So I said, “Ok, I’ll make sure she’s clean before I go.” I hopped in the car and headed out. All I needed was milk, that’s all I went out for. No sooner had I gotten to the parking lot, and hadn’t even turned off my car, and I got a call from my husband. He said, “What are you doing?” I said, “I’m going to get milk, I told you.” He said, “Well when are you going to come home?” I said, “After I get milk, that’s all I need. The store’s a little busy but I don’t think the lines are bad because they move fast here.” He says, “Ok, hurry up.” I thought that was weird. I go into the store and get my milk and it takes a little bit of time because there are some people there with full baskets of stuff. I got in my car and started going home. I turned into our development and I was maybe 3 minutes from home and I got a call from my husband Marcos again. He said, “Where are you?” and I said, “I’m almost home, I’m just about to the door.” He said, “Hurry up, just get home!” I said, “What’s wrong with Marianna?!” He assured me, “No, she’s fine, everyone is fine, just come home.” I pull into the driveway, park and grab my milk. When I get to the front door, I see this really dirty little dog with lots of fuzzy hair running at me. I knew right away it was my Scooby, he came home! I said, “You remember me!” He made his famous whine and cry. He was just so happy to see me.

Scott

Yeah I saw in the video where you were holding the gallon of milk and you set it on the floor– and for anybody listening we will have the video of this on the website for this episode. So obviously the best reuniting ever. What happened? How did Scooby come home?

Barbie

Well I asked my husband that, and he said, “I got a call from the mail lady, and she said, ‘Come get your dog. I have your dog, it was not even a mile down the street.’ I went to get the dog and that was it.” He said, “She was outside the mail truck holding Scooby for me so that I could take him home.” I said, “Oh that’s so sweet.” Well come to find out a couple days later when I hugged the mail lady and told her thank you, she told me the true story. She did call my husband and said, “Come get your dog, I can’t stay here long and I can’t bring him to you because I could get fired if I put him in my mail truck.” He said, “Ok let me get dressed and do this and that.” She said, “No, come get here now, I’m not wanting to get fired, I have your dog.” So my husband got there, not even a mile down the street, and she said my husband looked at him and said, “That’s not my dog.” and started walking away. She said, “Oh this is Scooby, you better get here and get your dog and take him home.” Thank god she was frisky and feisty. She told me, “I was getting annoyed by this time. I knew that was Scooby. A bunch of kids were chasing after him.” A toy poodle, I don’t know if you understand, they need haircuts every 6 months or they grow a lot and you don’t know what kind of critter it is. It looks like Cousin It, or worse. You could tell, his neck was indented like there was a rope tied around his neck to keep him from escaping. He escaped somehow and the kids were trying to catch him. The mail lady saw that and yelled, “Scooby!’ and he looked up and ran, right to the mail lady. That’s when she called my husband and said, “That’s Scooby. Take him home.” So he took him home and that’s when he called me.

Scott

When did he finally figure out that, yes this is Scooby?

Barbie

They used to have a secret language going. He would make this funny language sound and Scooby would whine in excitement, all happy, it drove him crazy in a happy way. They would do that, that was their thing. So he thought, “I’m gonna do a test.” So he did that and Scooby went crazy.

Scott

I asked Barbie’s daughter Brandy about when she found out that Scooby was home.

Brandy

It was 2016, and I was in 7th grade at the time. I remember I was coming home and– I had an iPod but I didn’t have any data, I didn’t have a phone or any of that. So I would go by text. Well nobody texted me, everything seemed like a normal day. When I got to the front door, I heard my one dog Chica barking and thought, “Oh ok, she’s in back she’s ok.” So I open up the front door and I hear my mom calling from her bathroom, which is located in her bedroom, and I can’t see her at all but she’s calling for me. She’s going, “Brandy get in here! Brandy!” I’m thinking, “Oh my gosh, did she just slip and fall? What happened?” I closed the door and said, “Mom hold on, I’ll be there.” I was dropping my stuff off. I ran over to the bathroom and stopped at the door frame. I peeked in and all I could see was this ragged old dog. Just a pathetic looking dog; like a sad rat (laughter). It was so hard to explain how he looked. It was years of clay and dirt and all sorts of stuff on him. I fell to my knees and cried, I knew right away that it was Scooby. My mom all she did was just look at me. She just looked at me falling to my knees and I said, “Is that Scooby?” He started wagging his tail, he remembered me. When she was done giving him a shower she handed him to me; and this dog was excited and happy to see me.

Scott

In the video there’s another dog. Who was that?

Barbie

After Scooby left, I’d say about 2 years later. I felt really bad and my older daughter knew how I was feeling. She had a toy poodle called Sarah and she saw how devastated I was so she said, “Mommy have my dog” because she had 2 dogs. So she gave me Sarah and I never knew that she was sick. She was the best dog, she was such a good dog. She was black with a white star. I had her for about a year, maybe not even, and she died on us. I was so devastated, I cried and cried. My husband, I guess he didn’t want to hear me cry anymore, he looked in the paper and saw another doggy in a basket, a white toy poodle. He said, “Let’s go get her.” That’s where Chica comes along. Chica is Scooby’s wife to this day. They have a little daughter that lives with them. So it’s Chica, Scooby and Princess Leia.

Scott

And where is Scooby today? He’s living with Brandy.

Brandy

A couple years later I worked at a job, a few months later I was hit by a car. Orlando was starting to get really dangerous, and that was a breaking point for my mother. My mother said, “We’ve got to move.” So I lived with my sister when she moved into a new house. Around that time when she was moving to a new house, she was still in Orlando packing up and I said, “I want to take Scooby.” We had 2 other dogs, his son and the wife, or the girlfriend (laughter). So I said, “I want Scooby. I want to take him with me so that I can take him everywhere and bring him places.” While she was packing up I visited my sister’s house. I was already living there, so I visited my mom and asked, “Can we take Scooby?” So we took him and brought him back to where I lived, which is about an hour and forty-five minutes away.

Scott

Now back to Barbie to wrap this story up.

Barbie

So here’s the timeline of how it happened. In 2007 Scooby was born, 2011 Scooby was stolen, 2016 Scooby came home. I never gave up the faith. I kept knowing, knowing he was coming. Why would I hear a voice telling me, “He’s coming home” I didn’t know it was going to take 4 years. I kept telling people and they kept looking at me like, “No it’s been too long. He’ll never come home.” I showed them, Scooby showed them.

____________________________________________________________________________

You know, when you’ve got a story about a lost dog, there’s no better way for that story to end than to report that the dog is back home where they belong.

One thing I wanted to also mention is this. You might be wondering why Barbie would be okay with having Scooby go and live with Brandy. I did ask her about that. You might have heard her mention that one of her children has some disabilities and challenges, and Barbie really devotes most of her time and energy to handling that situation and everything that comes with it. She knew that Scooby would get more love and attention at Brandy’s place, so it was the best thing for everyone. And they visit regularly so it’s all good.

If you want to see the video of when Barbie first came home and was reunited with Scooby, and trust me – you do want to – you can see that on the website for this episode. I’ll also have some tips about what you should do if YOUR dog or cat ever goes missing. And there’s some photos of Scooby as well. All of that is at WhatWasThatLike.com/94.

And one more announcement – there’s a new Raw Audio episode available right now. Raw Audio number 19 was just released, and it’s available to anyone who supports the show at $5 a month. In this episode –

A woman is with her family on their boat, and she calls 911 because it’s sinking –

911 Dispatcher

Ok, what’s the description of your boat?

Woman

We’re taking on water, we’re sinking, we’re taking on water.

911 Dispatcher

Attention Maritime units. Hold on ma’am I’m going to try and get some officers out to you.

A man calls because he has just discovered his stepson’s girlfriend –

Man

My stepson, I think he might have murdered his girlfriend.

911 Dispatcher

He might have murdered his girlfriend?

Man

Yes. She’s upstairs. I looked for a pulse and I just found her.

And some bridge inspectors discover a huge crack in a major bridge –

Bridge Inspector

I am doing a bridge inspection here on the I-40 Mississippi River Bridge and we just just found a super critical finding that needs traffic shut down in both directions on I-40 Mississippi River Bridge.

So you can hear all of those calls, along with the stories that go with them, and you can also binge all 18 of the previous Raw Audio episodes. Not to mention all the new What Was That Like episodes come straight to you ad-free. You get all of that by signing up as a patron at What Was That Like.com/support.

And now, this week’s listener story from Brandon in Nashville.

Stay safe, and I’ll see you in two weeks.

____________________________________________________________________________

Brandon

Hi ya’ll, my name is Brandon. This is a story about how I had to defend someone else with a gun. My main job is a 911 dispatcher. You can imagine what kind of stress happens day to day with that. I also have a second job doing rideshare with companies like Uber and Lyft. I enjoy doing this most nights because it’s a huge contrast with my regular job. At 911, everyone is calling because something bad is happening to them. With rideshare, especially here where I am, most of the people are tourists. They’re just here to have a great time, and I can help them out along the way by taking them back to their hotel or AirBnB when they’ve had a little too much to drink; or just giving them tips about local sites and attractions, good food, etc. On the weekends, I like driving very late and I like going until after the bars close up here, which is around 3 a.m. During the night this happened, it was during the summer of 2019. I was pulling up to one of our many streets that have several bars on it, and was waiting for my passengers who were on the side of the road by a hot dog stand. There were about 15 or so people hanging out around the stand, outside one of the bars that had just closed. While sitting there, one person came over to my car and got in; we were waiting for his friend to get in as well. Luckily for me, and for you listening, I, like many other rideshare drivers, installed a dashcam on my car. The one I have, it records in front of the car for potential collisions and reckless drivers. It also has an interior camera that records everything going on inside the car along with sound. I’ll play the actual audio of what happened so you can get an idea of what happened. But keep in mind, because of the time of night and where this was and what was going on, there’s quite a bit of cussing at the end of this, and you’ll hear why.

____________________________

Brandon

Is that your address on the Lane?

Passenger

Yeah that’s me. Yeah Lane drive yeah. Ok. Jake! Jake!

(Gunshot is heard, woman yells)

Passenger

What the fuck?

Brandon

Hang on. Stay here.

Passenger

Jake! Get the fuck in here! Jake! Get in here now! Jake!

Brandon (in the distance)

Put the gun down now! Put the gun down!

Passenger

Jake! Get in here now! Get in the fucking car! Get in the fucking car! Get in the fucking car!

Brandon

Put the gun down!

Passenger

Jake what the fuck!?

Jake

I didn’t do shit bro.

_____________________________

Brandon

So you heard the person there that was in my car. What was happening outside the car with the second passenger, his name was Jake, he was waiting for his order to be filled at the hot dog stand. Jake was smoking a cigarette while waiting, and some random guy went up to him and asked Jake to have a drag from his cigarette. Like anyone with half a brain, Jake declines since he has no idea who this person is. At this point the random guy grabs Jake’s cigarette, pulls it out of his mouth, throws it on the ground, pulls out a gun, and shoots it right next to Jake’s head. I wasn’t sure if he was just trying to scare Jake, or if he was actually trying to shoot him in the head, or what else had happened. I was afraid someone else might get shot. So after that I told the passenger who was in the car to stay put. I drew my gun, walked outside and ordered the guy with the gun to put his gun down. It was a little bit hard to hear, over all the yelling of the person inside the car; but if you listen in the background you can hear me. The suspect in this thought he was the only one with a gun, he was waving it around and cussing really loudly. When he saw that a gun was pointed at him, he quickly turned and ran off. I could’ve easily just sat there and not intervened at all, but I’m not that type of person. If there was a chance to help someone that needed help I was going to go ahead and jump in. Police were called to the scene and a report was made, but from what I know the suspect in this was never found. I’m just glad that I happened to be there to run him off before he could hurt one of those other people standing around, wanting to wash down their booze with some hot dogs. If you want to hear more about that incident, or want to hear much more about my other job as a 911 dispatcher, feel free to check out my podcast as well. It’s called Music City 911. Where I play real 911 calls, and go over the details about the crimes. It’s available to listen to on your favorite podcast app.

View Details

Few things are scarier than being attacked by a shark.

Australian Mick Fanning was in a professional surfing competition, which was being broadcast live around the world. Viewers watched as a shark approached him and he was quickly rescued by nearby safety crews – the only damage was the leash that connected him to his surfboard had been chewed through.

In 1963, Rodney Fox was competing in a spearfishing tournament. A great white shark attacked and bit him around his midsection, puncturing his diaphragm, crushing his rib cage, and leaving many of his organs exposed. He survived with surgery and around 400 stitches.

One summer on the Jersey Shore, five shark attacks happened in 10 days, resulting in four deaths. That period is often thought to be the inspiration for the classic movie, Jaws.

As scary as it sounds, the reality is that shark attacks are quite rare. In fact, your odds of being attacked by a shark are around 1 in 11 million. Of course, that’s not much comfort if you’re one of the unlucky people to actually experience a violent attack by a shark.

Just ask Brook.

Brook’s sense of humor Brook has an amazing positive outlook learning to walk again If you would like to help Brook with her ongoing recovery, here is her GoFundMe account.

This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp online counseling. Get 10% off your first month by visiting BetterHelp.com/WHATWAS.

This episode is sponsored by StoryWorth. Preserve your loved one’s memories in a keepsake book, and get 10% off your first order at StoryWorth.com/WHAT.

Episode transcript (download transcript PDF)

Few things are scarier than being attacked by a shark.

One summer on the Jersey Shore, five shark attacks happened in 10 days, resulting in four deaths. That period is often thought to be the inspiration for the classic movie, Jaws.

Just ask Brook.

____________________________________________________________________________

Scott

Do you have a favorite shark?

Brook

I would say my favorite shark would be a whale shark. I’ve seen a lot of videos of people diving with them and they look really incredible and majestic. I’d put them up there.

Scott

I’ve never heard of a whale shark, it sounds like it would be really big.

Brook

Yes. But they are actually filter feeders, so they’re catching little prey. They are a little safer to be around (laughter).

Scott

You seem to be fairly intelligent about this species, and probably other species, and that’s part of why you were in the Caribbean. So what were you doing down there, because you live in Texas?

Brook

Yes. I’m originally born and raised in Texas. I was in the Caribbean though on the island of Saint Kitts and Nevis for schooling actually. I attend a veterinary school down there to obtain a doctorate in veterinary medicine. I was going into my 7th semester of didactic learning down there. We were just on our Christmas break around the time of my accident.

Scott

So you were part of a swim group, these are all people who were also studying in veterinary school?

Brook

Yes, different members of the community but usually all connected through our schooling. It could be students of others, students themselves, part of the faculty, or just other members of the community who all have a love of swimming. We all try to gather at the same time each week depending on schedules, just to get out in the ocean and swim for health and for fun.

Scott

For people who aren’t familiar, Saint Kitts and Nevis are islands in the chain of islands in the Caribbean. On the west side of Saint Kitts is the Caribbean ocean and on the east side is the Atlantic ocean.

Brook

That’s correct. It’s really beautiful and at the ends of that island you can see where these two bodies of water meet, it’s really cool. Yeah on the west side you have all that Caribbean sea there where it is beautiful, clear water, a lot more palm. On the east side is that Atlantic ocean where it is more choppy, a little cooler, but good for surfing.

Scott

Alright well let’s talk about what happened that day. Your day, I understand, started around 8:45 a.m. when you got together with this group of people. How many people were in the group? Just take us through what happened.

Brook

We had a group of 7 meeting up to go on this fun end of break swim that we were building up to, as it was a longer distance than we usually swam. Unless we were in training mode for one of the longer length competition swims that they have on the island just for fun. We had to do a lot of planning because this wasn’t a typical route for the club to do. Others as individuals have done them for fun, but this goes out to a little island that is not inhabited by people, it’s small so it just has animals and great reefs around it. A really great place to just watch the local wildlife and just get out there and experience it without it being touched by humans.

Scott

Sounds like the perfect place for a field trip for a school of veterinary students.

Brook

Yes. We were all so excited to go out there. Some had been out before and we had friends who had been out before and described it to us. This was supposed to be a really fun trip, just something new and exciting to try and everyone would get to see something new. Also it was going to be a fun challenge because it was a more daunting distance. Because of that aspect we were stressing to others that if you weren’t ready we were building up to it with shorter distances and working up to it; and iif there was any doubt in their minds to play it safe. We had those that were actually in kayaks with us because they were still a little unsure and we wanted to make sure everyone would get there and come back fine, since we were swimming into open water and not necessarily following a shoreline this time. We were going to a new location and it was on the Atlantic ocean side, so it would be a different kind of swim we would be doing that day.

Scott

In talking about the distance we’re talking about from where you started to the goal island was about a mile and a half; which is a long way to swim. I understand you had 3 swimmers and 4 kayakers.

Brook

Yes, that’s correct. We had 3 persons, including myself, that were going to be in the water and we were swimming the whole distance. We had 4 persons that we had kayaks for and they were split up between two single kayaks and one double. This was a distance that all together it could’ve been more than 3 miles, because when you’re swimming in the ocean you don’t have a landline to follow so you can veer back and forth a little, we’ve seen some pretty funny tracking from watches. It promised to be at least 3 miles round trip total just depending on how off course we got.

Scott

You chose to swim out in the open water of the Atlantic, rather than in the more protected waters of the Caribbean. Why did you choose that route that day?

Brook

This island that we were reaching, it is more on the western side of Saint Kitts and Nevis, so to swim to it would be easier starting on the Atlantic side. There were some beaches that extended a little closer to it before the beach ran out and it was just cliff edges. On the eastern side the beaches were a little further back, so we would have to start swimming further back and then have to swim around to the Atlantic side. We would also have been fighting against that change in the waters where there is a lot of pick up in current and it’s going to be a lot more choppy. It would exhaust us faster so we were starting on the Atlantic side for that reason. We also knew that we didn’t want to do the swim at all if the Atlantic side was too rough, because it already had that reputation of being choppy and more churned up. So we were already watching out and keeping an eye on the weather. If the swells were going to be too big or it was going to be too windy we were going to just cancel it. Everyone was aware of this, that it was still kind of up in the air and that we would make the call that day when we got out there and saw it with our own eyes. We wanted to be able to say, “Ok it’s not too bad. It looks like we’ll be able to make it through and won’t get completely exhausted just trying to get out past this pier.”

Scott

Can you talk about what you were wearing for this swim?

Brook

For our usual swims, I go out in a sports bikini that ties on and I can tighten it, and I wear a rash guard with long sleeves. The sun down there is a whole other level. For this swim in particular we had swim buoys for all the swimmers in the water. These are just kind of big beans that you inflate so that they float above the water and follow you, they’re attached to you usually around the waist. That way you can keep an eye on others. Usually we would have brightly colored caps and we told everyone not to wear blue so it would be easier to pick them out. The buoys are bigger and brighter so they help as well. Usually I wear my cap and goggles and my jewelry that I have on.

Scott

It seems like when you’re swimming your head is mostly down facing the water. How do you keep track of going in the right direction?

Brook

That’s a really good question. This is really something you have to figure out with open water swimming. It’s not something you have to deal with when you’re in a pool. What I learned to do myself, so I wouldn’t hurt my neck over the duration, is when I wanted to look at my surroundings out of the water I would use that time to do a breaststroke instead of the freestyle where you are moving forward. With the breaststroke I’m able to really pick myself out of the water and I can scan 180 degrees so I can keep an eye on where I’m headed and where everyone else is. So I do those when I am wanting to look around out of the water.

Scott

Yeah it seems like if you weren’t paying attention it would be pretty easy to get separated from the rest of the group if you’re not keeping an eye on it.

Brook

Yeah it is very easy in the open water to just kind of veer off. We’ve certainly had a lot of stories like that. We have a couple swimmers that we joke about that it’s their go to just to add a lot more distance and get more exercise. It’s why my professor nicknamed me the sheepdog of the group because, I was typically at the back of the group for speed anyways, I would make sure to corral people in if they were drifting a little too far from the route.

Scott

That’s kind of how this thing started right? You pop your head up and see that some other swimmers and kayaks have sort of gathered in one place and you started going their direction.

Brook

Yes. So we were, by my estimations, about a mile from shore where we started. Everyone was trying to stick to the east side of the island that we were headed to. Which was a good idea because that’s the side we wanted to enter on, where the current was a little less weak. I was sticking a little more outside of that to make sure everyone did stay in that direction. There was one point where we were getting pretty close and you’re thinking, “Oh I’ll be there in the next 5 minutes. I’ll be there in the next 5 minutes.” Then you’re thinking, “The island keeps getting bigger but I don’t think that we’re getting closer.” I think people were wanting to kind of talk it out and just take a little break. I saw that the swimmers had gathered up with the kayakers when I was doing one of my scans. Since they were just a little to the right of me I was just going to change my direction a little bit to go directly towards them instead of on an intersecting path to meet up with them later. Since they were gathered then I just turned right to head towards them.

It was one, two strokes in when I felt the pressure on my leg just latch on. I knew I couldn’t even bother kicking whatever was holding onto me, it was very strong and I wouldn’t be able to kick there was just no way. You could just tell from the strength of the pressure. I did not think it was a shark at all. A shark was actually the furthest thing from my mind. Before I turned around I was literally thinking in my head, “Why would I feel pressure like this? Well the pressure feels as if something could be biting me, but there’s no dogs in the ocean, I’m not giving shots right now. Nothing would want to bite me.” Then my brain was thinking, “Can an octopus hold on this hard? Are they so strong that their grip could feel like this? Could it be the bite of something like a sea turtle? They are curious and they want to bite everything to see what it tastes like and if they can eat it.” I honestly was surprised to turn around and see a shark. It was the biggest surprise. I had been scanning around me on the surface, I had been looking below me in the water, but I hadn’t been looking behind me, which is where I assume it came from. I was told afterwards that is where they do like to attack is either from below or behind so they can have an easier hunt, like a sneak attack. Especially on what they think is a wounded animal, which is what my swimming looks like apparently (laughter). That’s fine. The time that the shark held me it was an out of body surreal experience. I remember that I had to tell myself to do something, because I was thinking, “Oh wow this is so weird I’m watching this happen to someone. That must be what’s happening because this is so improbable to be happening to me. I must be watching someone else’s story unfold.” I had to tell myself, “If you don’t do anything, if you act like this isn’t happening right now, the story’s going to end. There’s not going to be any more story.” Even though it still felt like it wasn’t really happening, that it was almost like a dream, I had to be like, “Do something.” (laughter)

For most animal attacks you are going to go for sensitive areas and in my mind that was first, go for the muzzle area, the nose. Those are typically sensitive areas. When I turned around I tried to hit it with my right hand with a fist, in the nose. It just felt like nothing I’m sure. I don’t even think it registered because nothing changed, it didn’t seem like the shark cared at all or even noticed it. I could tell moving through the water, it didn’t have a lot of speed behind it anyway, and just all that resistance. That meant I had to change tactics because I was expecting that to work. I was like, “Oh no, now what? Now I’ve got to think of something else.” I had this huge eye in front of me, and I just jammed my thumb into its eye. That’s when it finally let go. It actually seemed to turn. It shook its head and swam away. Then I was able to get above water.

It still felt surreal even at that point I think. Until I looked down at my leg just to survey what had happened. I saw, the best way to say it is just shredded, it just looked like shredded chicken thigh. It was not recognizable as a leg anymore. That set me back into the real world. I immediately thought, “Ok this is a problem.” So I’m yelling out, “Shark! Shark! Help me! Help me!” Then just trying to tread water, because as I’m yelling I just feel the energy draining out of me. I already felt like I was losing air, and it was a lot harder just to yell out, “Help me!” It ended up dying out to just a whisper. Thankfully, though, my friends were close and they reached me so fast it seemed like seconds. It was actually my friend that was in a kayak who, upon hearing me crying about a shark, jumped into the water to save me. That was Samantha.

Scott

Samantha the hero. One of the heroes in this story anyway.

Brook

Yes. Everybody there, I would not be here without them. I completely owe my life to them. Everyone wants to talk to me about the experience, because I got bit by the shark but it was only a couple of seconds of it. Only a couple of seconds out of this long- well seeming to me -long time period.

Scott

When this happened how far were you from the group?

Brook

Just going off of my estimation it looked like they were just 20 feet away. I could see them pretty well; they weren’t super far away, but it wouldn’t have been easy for me to just swim over and catch up to them really quickly. They said it looked like our professor was already swimming toward me before he even heard the rest of the story either, he was just already swimming. They weren’t sure he heard me yell shark, but he was on his way over to help. It seemed like they reached me about the same time. Samantha, since she was in a kayak, she had a life jacket on, so she had taken her life jacket off when she reached me to put it around me. Like I said, I was just losing energy and air so quickly, I was so exhausted. She put the life jacket around me just to help me stay afloat. Once they had gotten the kayak over to me that he was now in, my professor, he had grabbed my wrist, and she was holding me by my waist; then they pulled me onto the kayak. Just pulled me across the front of it so I was out of the water a little bit more; my head at least. It’s a kayak, it’s not very big, so we couldn’t get all of me out of the water. It at least helped me so there wasn’t the struggle of me staying a float and there wasn’t risk of me falling under the water. So I could keep my head up and still breathe, but it was very difficult at that time. No breath was satisfying enough. I was not able to get enough oxygen and my body was just constantly screaming at me for it.

During this time I could hear them talking about things, people yelling out different commands; what they were going to do and what other people should do. We had 2 cell phones with reception to call out. We were very lucky that we were still able to get reception out in the water, but we weren’t very far. It was still very lucky. We had one cell phone that the girls were calling the emergency response teams with. Police department to start with then trying to get connected with the Coast Guard, to have someone come out and get us. It was still a tricky area to get to the shore, it was a mile away and what was close to us was just the rocky cliffside, which wasn’t a safe place to get out. This island that we’re getting to that we were pretty close to, there was still a current that was pretty strong to fight against. Now we have 4 people on a kayak weighing it down, so we tried making our way there. He was really trying, but it was just a lot of weight on the kayak. We were just able to stay in the same spot so we were easy to find and so if we weren’t moving around they would be able to find us well enough.

While I’m laid across this kayak, I’m really just laying there trying to breathe, I couldn’t even really keep my eyes open. I had my professor that was on one side of the kayak holding onto my wrist, making sure I don’t slip back in the other way. Then I have Samantha, she was behind me trying to support me up and hold me onto the kayak so I’m not slipping back in, she actually had to get my swim buoy off from around my waist. They actually thought of using that as a tourniquet. With that waistband she was able to put that around my thigh and just crank it on as tight as possible to work as a tourniquet. I had already lost so much blood initially, and while it’s hard to see in the ocean after it’s just kind of trailing out because it diffuses so fast, we knew there was still blood loss. So she got that tourniquet on and she did it perfectly and that’s honestly why I’m still here, their quick thinking and actions.

Scott

Was there any concern about, you know when you use that much blood, sharks smell blood from a long ways away. Were there other sharks around or did that initial attacking shark leave the area, or was he still there?

Brook

I was so afraid of what else would come around because of the blood. When that shark had let go of me and I got up to the surface, it just billowed up around me. It looked like one of those movies, it really did seem like a movie and that was what made it so surreal too while that was still happening. As quickly as it was there it was gone. Samantha told me later– everyone told their sides of the story and pieced together the different things that we didn’t realize were happening at the time until we talked to the others. She said she saw it and by the next wave it was gone. That amount of blood, to be gone that quickly, I was very afraid of how far it was spreading and what it was attracting. Luckily we only had the one shark to contend with. I thought that I injured it enough that it wasn’t going to come back, the eye is very sensitive, and I saw it swim away. I was told later -I was too incapacitated to realize this- while we were in the water and I was already across the kayak, the tiger shark did come back. It was circling the group. We were all together at this time so it was circling around the group and they were aware of it. It was going right under the kayaks, the girls were able to see it right there. They’re so smart, these beautiful amazing people, they were turning the kayak to keep in inbetween me and the shark. Obviously I would be the easiest to pick off and I’m attracting it. They just knew, “We’re going to keep turning this kayak, whichever direction we need to so we have the full length of it between it and me.” They were doing that for, they said, 10 minutes before it gave up and swam away. I think we are incredibly lucky that was the only one that came around at that time. I know they are territorial so maybe that’s what gave us the luck that nobody else wanted to go up against this shark in its own territory. I don’t know exactly, but I’m surprised nothing else came around.

Scott

I’m picturing this, right now you’ve got 4 people on this kayak, the kayak is too weighted down to make any forward progress. That’s got to be pretty discouraging like, ‘How are we ever going to get out of this mess?”

Brook

I could hear the fear in their voices. Talking about what the options were, what was happening and what wasn’t happening. Key is so strong, she is so strong, and I know she was trying her hardest; but she was saying that it didn’t seem like we were making any forward progress. She wasn’t sure we were going to be able to get to the island to get out of the water there. Our goal was just to get out of the water and get blood out of the water. There were 4 adults on one kayak and this petite little girl, I mean she’s pure muscle, but it was so difficult. Then later in the day we got the wind picked up so the waves did pick up a little bit; especially getting around this island where all the currents are converging. It was a very very difficult task for anyone, without the weight of 3 extra adults on a kayak.

I at the time did not realize how much time had passed. I was just concentrating on getting air and staying conscious. I was setting goals for myself to hold on and be able to communicate to others if I was asked questions by emergency personnel. I wanted to be able to tell them my blood type, and answer any medical questions. While I was just laying there, I had my eyes closed maybe 90 percent of the time just trying to breathe, I think it’s only been like 10 minutes and everyone was set in their routine now of calling or trying to cheer the others on and encourage them to keep going. I hear Samantha say that she thinks that she is getting a little tired and starting to cramp up and she’s not sure how much longer she will be able to support me on this boat. So our professor was just being really encouraging, saying, “It won’t be much longer, she’ll be fine.” He’s got me. Then just a minute later he says, “Oh no. I think I’m starting to cramp up too.” We were already against the ropes to begin with, but it of course was not good to hear these words right now. Of course nobody wants to stop, nobody wants to give up. Thankfully those were just the magic words I think because just a minute later we heard the hum of the boats. It just took a few more minutes and they were there.

One of our usual swimmers with us is our professor’s wife, Catholine, she didn’t join us that day in the swim. She did wait on the beach for a little bit just to watch us as long as she could and she was going to hang around that area just in case there were any phone calls that were made. She was one of the other persons that was called right away so that she could also call people as she knows plenty of people to get the phone tree rolling.

Scott

Were you feeling pain from your leg during this time?

Brook

I’m very thankful to adrenaline that I did not feel pain. It’s weird to describe. It was just that I was aware that my leg was there, but I couldn’t feel everything or else I would have been feeling the pain. It really just felt like a floating entity, and I was just aware of it kind of swaying in the current. I knew it was there but I didn’t feel the pain. I’m very fortunate for that. The few times I was moved to the boat or into stretchers or gurneys, things like those jostling movements, I think because I had broken bones in my legs, those movements were enough to break through the adrenaline. I felt that pain. That was the worst pain I’ve felt in my life. It did have me cry out. Luckily I only felt that in those breakout moments when I was being moved. I’m honestly surprised it lasted as long as it did, but very lucky that I didn’t have to feel it the whole time. I didn’t even know until I woke up the next day that I’d injured my hand. I was talking to Key about it later and I said, “Yeah I had no idea my hand was also bleeding, so that was more blood in the water.” She said, “Oh yeah I could see it. But that was the least of your problems so it was fine.” I was like, “Fair point.” (laughter). I’d had no idea I hurt my hand at first, it was honestly the biggest mystery for us we were like, “How? How did that happen?” It was actually only through doing these interviews and talking with an actual shark expert, that he told me, “Well that’s why you’re not supposed to punch them in the nose is because you are likely to have your hand end up in their mouth and those teeth are gonna get you.”

Scott

Was the rescue boat big enough to hold everybody?

Brook

I’m not entirely sure about how big the boat was. I just kind of knew from what I’d seen of boats we had used before for our swims, that the Coast Guard has for just maintaining order in the water. I hadn’t really opened my eyes much at all so–

Scott

I understand in your condition you’re not doing a headcount making sure everybody is ok right? (laughter)

Brook

Yeah. So I just kind of assumed I knew which boat they used but actually when they first arrived I was the only one that was taken initially, to get me to the hospital quickly. It was another one of the Coast Guard boats that picked up everyone else, after they got me out of there. Their plan was literally to just grab me, go and get me to the hospital. How it worked out was, we were actually closer to Nevis even though in the water we were still right by the tail end of Saint Kitts. This is still down at the peninsula end where the buildings are personal housing, or maybe some bars and grills. The hospital they have on Saint Kitts would be all the way around the peninsula and down to the main body of the island, so it’s actually farther away to travel back there. So they took me to Nevis and took me to the hospital there.

The only part of the journey that I lost consciousness for was the transportation to the hospital. When I woke up at the hospital, I was in a gurney and they were trying to wheel me through and get me through the hallways into the inside. Everyone was trying to find veins to put IV’s in me. This is when I was asking for oxygen because now I had all this medical personnel around me in the hospital, so I was calling out for an oxygen tank. Once they got me to this room they were able to get an oxygen mask on me and it made such a huge difference. It was so painful to breathe before and that helped so much.

Scott

They took you into surgery pretty quickly right? I mean obviously this is a medical emergency. Were they talking about saving your leg at that point?

Brook

There was a lot of moving around and a lot of talking. I could catch certain phrases here and there. I was mostly hearing the nurses at first talking about IV’s and what medications to start. I was trying to call out where I could to answer questions. I do, at one point, hear a male voice and I hear him saying, “The bones are broken and we are going to need to go in for surgery” and he was giving instructions to others. So this oxygen mask that I had on me was switched out for a different mask, and that’s when I smelled the anesthetic. That’s when I knew, “Ok I’m going under for surgery now. Now is when they are really going to start digging into things.” They were cutting off my clothing. One of the last words I heard was the same male voice, and I heard the word, “amputate.” Well I knew he was talking about me, and I saw my own leg and it was a complete mess. I was still like, “Ugh. Dang. Do we have to?” Of course, whatever the doctor says goes.

Scott

How do you prepare yourself for that? Obviously you were about to be put under and not really know what was going on, but that was kind of your last thought before you got put to sleep right?

Brook

Yes, it was one of the last things I had heard before the anesthesia took me under. Yeah I don’t know why I thought that my leg would be ok, I saw how shredded it was. We were in the water for so long. There was so much blood loss, but I heard the word “amputate” and I thought, “Aw dang it. Do we have to?” I knew, though, “Yeah it is that bad. You already knew this. You saw it so that is the logical route to follow is yeah there is going to be an amputation.” I didn’t have too long to think about it, the anesthesia gas was already on me so it was only a couple of seconds before I was under. I wasn’t afraid. I was ok with it because I thought, “Yeah that’s a medical term. That’s a thing that is done, that’s a totally plausible route. It’s normal, it happens.” So I wasn’t too afraid because I knew that it tracked logically. I was still aware that it was still the most likely option when I was waking up from anesthesia, but I didn’t want to confirm it until I was completely conscious and aware and able to deal with it. They had the same thoughts as well, they didn’t want anybody to tell me if I didn’t already know and until I was fully awakened and out of that kind of state that you are in afterwards. So they were given instructions, “Hey don’t talk to her about it. We need to talk to her but we want to make sure that she’s in a more awake state.” So when my friends came in afterwards, they were just talking and gabbing, but I had it in the back of my head but I know I also didn’t want to confirm until I could really process it. You have these phantom sensations like, “Yeah I can still feel my toes. It still feels like things are there.” I didn’t want to look down and really lift up the bed sheet to check until it was a better time.

It was the next morning when I was waking up. I was a little worried to check because I could still feel my toes. So I thought, “Well maybe there is a chance that it’s still there. It would be pretty wild if it were still there and you were just feeling your toes and no pain or anything. Plus I had heard the word amputate so it would be pretty far-fetched if it was still there.” I was kind of taking it slow to reveal it to myself even. I didn’t want to just rip the bedsheets back and see something completely jarring. I honestly just looked at the bedsheets and said, “Oh ok, I can follow my right leg down there and that’s where the sheets are popped up a little bit because my toes are sticking up. If I just look to the left of that the sheets are completely flat until you get up near my knee around my thigh area.” I actually didn’t even really look at my leg, I don’t even think that whole first day, until a nurse came to look at it. I was also kind of scared to check too, so I just wanted to do it in a way that would confirm it but not be so–

Scott

Not so shocking.

Brook

Not so shocking, yes.

Scott

You didn’t stay in that hospital very long right? Weren’t you flown to Texas shortly after that?

Brook

Yeah, so there was a bit of travel involved. The hospital that I was taken to was on Nevis, that’s where I had my surgery and treatment. That evening they transferred me to the hospital on Saint Kitts, to stay there in their care overnight because they had an ICU department and nurses there around the clock. So I was taken on an ambulance and across the ferry in the ambulance to Saint Kitts. Stayed in that hospital for the night and the next morning and was able to have visitors, but just one at a time. This was still during Covid restrictions so they had their own mandates in place. It also may have been a restriction just for patients in the ICU as well just so there’s not too much happening with them when they are going through a lot. So I stayed there in Saint Kitts for just the next day and while we were waiting on plans to solidify to get me back to the states for further treatment and follow-up. It was that afternoon the next day, I was being boarded onto a medical flight, a private jet. It’s an actual company that has trained paramedics and EMTs accompany you on this plane to whatever hospital you’re going to. The whole crew was amazing, they were so sweet and so funny on this really tragic plane flight out of this paradise island. Typically, just because of where it is located, most flights would go to Miami for their hospitals there. Since I’m from the Houston area and that’s where my family is, it just made more sense just to add on the little extra time to take me to Houston so I could receive treatment there.

I stayed in in-patient rehabilitation for just a few weeks. Once I was released back to stay in family’s homes, then my real limitation was as an outpatient. I would travel to one of their sites to go for appointments where I actually got to first get into the pool there. While I was still staying at the inpatient facility, my incision line hadn’t healed up enough for me to get in the water, so we were still waiting on that to close up completely. It was actually a while until I was able to get back in the water. I really wanted to try, I just missed the water I always swam. I didn’t think there would be any problems with just getting into a pool. I was pretty sure there would be a problem going back to beaches so I knew I was going to work up to that, but I was not expecting a pool to be a problem. Especially one that was just a little square, it had stairs, lifts, platforms, all the safety devices in the world around it and in it; because it’s for those that are recuperating. It’s the safest amount of water, just a step above a puddle, that I could be in. My first time getting in I broke down, I did. My physical therapist had to turn into my mental health professional, but she’s been amazing. What made it harder was the fact that I was caught off guard and that it did affect me as much as it did, because I wasn’t expecting that to happen in a pool. I thought, “Yeah of course it makes sense if that were to happen in the ocean.” I was just thinking I was going to get in the pool here and see how I could swim now. For it to catch me off guard like that, it really scared me. I thought, “Well if I can’t even do this here, is there any hope of me getting back into the ocean again? Will I even be able to just sit on a beach again?” It was really hard but ultimately it was very helpful too. It turned out to be a cathartic experience. I had to actually confront those feelings that I was glossing over and thinking, “I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m healing up. I’m progressing in physical therapy. My body is healing, then that means that I’m ok. That’s the only thing that’s been affected is just my physical being. Nothing else is wrong. I just need to learn to walk again and that’s it.” Of course, that was definitely not the case so this excursion into the pool was the first instance of me confronting and dealing with what had happened.

Scott

I would have thought that the medical professionals, having dealt with a case like yours at some point in the past, or in their training they would have been instructed to kind of warn you ahead of time. To say, “You know, you’re getting back in the water. The water is where this bad thing happened so kind of be prepared for the unexpected.” They didn’t give you any heads up like that at all?

Brook

I think because I was so vocal about wanting to get in the water and I was so sure about it. I was misleading them. Ultimately it is the patient that makes the decisions, if I say I want to do this then they’re going to go along with it, if I say I don’t want to do it then they’re not going to do it. I think because I felt so confident in it then they were ok with it. I know they did have trepidations because when I did talk about it they had someone from the psychologist department talk to me about if I was to get back in the water what did I think it would be like? How soon and what kind of water. So they did kind of talk to me a little about it before, but I just kind of pushed for it so they were open to it. All my therapists have been so great and wonderful. I know that they were still looking out for me but these events are so rare. One of my therapists was actually so surprised to find out there was actually a code for it in their database system when putting in their notes and things. I don’t know that they had actually met another shark attack survivor.

Scott

It’s true. It is pretty rare.

Brook

I think it was kind of a learning experience for all of us.

Scott

I love seeing how you dealt with this. As part of your recovery you kind of have a sense of dark humor, because I’ve seen pictures- I saw you write one time, you had to be careful with Covid, because you were on your last leg haha. You’ve got T-shirts that say things like “Hello Chum” and “Bite me” stuff like that, is that kind of how you deal with trauma in general?

Brook

My therapist would say yes (laughter). Yes I’ve always kind of had comedy in my back pocket. I never really thought of it as a coping mechanism honestly until maybe the last few years. Definitely more so now. Seeing other amputees and shark attack survivors, they are aware they say, “Yeah we know that we’re making jokes about it but, heck that’s what helps me.” We kind of do get a lot of guff from family members usually because it’s hard for them to hear something that was so hard for them to process themselves, and they can only process from a distance. Then to see the person that it actually happened to make a joke about and make it sound so trivial and they’re like, “I almost lost you, how can you make a joke about that?” So I do understand, I know it’s really hard for my boyfriend. He is barely making jokes about it. Whenever I make jokes he’s just like, “I can’t believe you said that.” So many people in these communities agree that it’s really what gets you through so much of it, because if you can’t laugh at it what else are you supposed to do? It is a part of the human process. It might not be everyone’s process, and that’s fine, it’s just kind of where I was situated and it’s just helped me from there.

Scott

Your sister Paige has been a big help in your recovery, she’s kind of another hero in this story too.

Brook

Yes, but I want to tell a funny story about her first. When all these phone calls were first being made out, there was of course minimal information so my family was just getting a burst of phone calls saying, “Brook’s been attacked by a shark. She’s in the hospital, we’ll tell you more later.” That’s it. So I had family members calling around spreading the news of, “Be aware information is coming through. Have phones ready.” When Paige found out she heard, “Shark bit, taken to hospital” she thought, “Oh she just got grabbed, needs a couple stitches and she’ll be out later so she wanted to be presentable for when we FaceTimed later or talked on the phone or talked however we did. So she got out this T-shirt she had from elementary school with a shark on it and she wanted to wear that for the first time that she spoke to me afterward about this. Then later when more information came in, they said, “Hey she’s in the hospital because she has to get her leg amputated.” She was like, “Oh. My. Gosh. I can’t believe I even thought about wearing this! I’m going to burn this shirt.” Just like so freaked out about it. I think everyone else too cause you hear shark attack you think, “Oh yeah, what? That doesn’t happen. I’m sure she’s fine.” Then not realizing the severity of the situation until later so then they were like, “Oh no, I can’t believe I cracked a joke now.” I told everyone, “Hey I was making jokes right out of anesthesia. You can throw anything at me, I’ve probably already heard it or thought it up myself, but I will still enjoy it.” Paige knows me though, she was worried afterwards but then knew later that I was making jokes about it, so when I arrived in Houston I didn’t have anything but one bag Samantha had put together for me of things she collected from my apartment. So I didn’t have a lot of winter gear or anything so Paige had a bag for me of clothes and items for me to have while I was staying in the hospital and rehab, and she included that shark T-shirt. That’s the shirt I wore to my therapy sessions and my therapist were like, “You’re going to have people worried about you. You might get a visit later today. Not a lot of people know your story but we know and some might be worried about you” (laughter)

Scott

“This girl’s in complete denial. She needs help.” Are you walking again now?

Brook

Yes I am. I don’t know, the doctors said I was young and healthy, I don’t know where they got that from. I have had a pretty good recovery so far and in rehab we were just working on building back muscle that I had lost from just being out of commission. Just worked on being able to function in my limited capacity until that was able to be rectified. Not everyone can get a prosthesis right away and you don’t know how long it’s going to take. You also just have to learn how to use it anyway, so it first just started with just building up different muscles that wouldn’t really be used much before but would be now. I was in a wheelchair to start with and was able to use a walker and crutches, but I do have a prosthesis now and I’m able to walk with it. I’m at the point now where I do not need any assisting devices while I’m using it. I can use my hands now, and get around pretty well. I wasn’t very graceful to start with before the accident, so I do stumble here and there but that’s nobody’s fault but my own. I can’t dance just yet, but I couldn’t do that before so that’s not too much of a worry. It’s becoming more normal and natural. I do feel more confident now so I can get around, it’s just about building up my stamina and strength and practicing whatever obstacles I come across in different terrains. I do have plans to return to Saint Kitts and finish schooling there. I had just one semester of didactic learning to finish there before I would move stateside to do clinical rotations through another teaching hospital. I really want to return and finish up what I can at school in Saint Kitts. I know the island. I love it there. I know the faculty and administration there.

Scott

They’re going to be pretty excited to see you come back too.

Brook

I’d like to think so. Yeah they are. I’ve had some wonderful people reaching out to me and checking in on me. People that I would’ve considered friends before this. Yeah, just the support that I’ve gotten from the school has been amazing. I do want to return there to finish up my didactic learning there and we are trying to get me back so I can start classes in this upcoming spring semester. Which will start in January. So I would be back a year after the accident.

Scott

Right, so you’d be going back January 2022. This literally just happened- as we record this in the fall of 2021- this happened in January of this year. I think that’s a pretty good recovery.

Brook

Yeah, I might have been a little over confident before though, and I was thinking, “Oh I could be back next semester. Modern medicine is amazing, look how fast I am healing.” Then I hit my roadblock and I thought, “You know there’s other things to this healing process.” I was trying to go back earlier. I was trying to go back in the summer. Then I was thinking, “Ok well summer didn’t work out so maybe the fall.” Then the world is still burning with the pandemic, also there is always some requirement to be made. Now that I’ve progressed and given myself more time I am seeing like, “You know what? It’s ok to take more time to heal. Especially when you need it.” I do feel confident about going back in the spring and think I will be ready for that journey then.

Scott

Well I know this whole thing has been, obviously, very expensive. One of the things your sister Paige did early on is to set up a GoFundMe. I know a lot of people have contributed to that already, but I know the expenses are ongoing as well. We’ll have a link to your GoFundMe page in the show notes for this episode. So if anyone feels like they would like to contribute to that, everyone is welcome to do so. One final question, are you planning to go swim in the ocean again?

Brook

I am planning on it. I’m also planning to take a stuffed animal that I can hold on to and a couple friends to talk to, because now I know it’s not as easy as it once was. I’ve seen how strong everyone else is. They’ve gotten back in the water after seeing something so horrific and they push me to be better and do better. So I want to get back out in the water. I’m saying, I WILL get back out to the water, out into the ocean. I have a lot of support behind me to do that. I wanna actually try to go learn to scuba dive still. I know it might take a little bit longer though this time.

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You can see pictures of Brook, along with some of her dark humor t-shirts, at WhatWasThatLike.com/93.

I wanted to let you know, there are a couple of places you can find the podcast that you might not know about.

First, there is actually a What Was That Like YouTube channel that has every episode. No, you won’t see any videos of me interviewing the guests. I’m not Joe Rogan. But you can listen to them there if you want to. And if you go there and just click the Videos tab, it’s kind of cool to see the graphic image for each episode there, all on one page. That’s at WhatWasThatLike.com/youtube.

And the other place is Reddit. Lots and lots of people are on Reddit, and if you’ve never discovered it, it’s a pretty amazing place for user-submitted content. And if you’re not careful, you might suddenly realize it’s 3 in the morning and you’re still scrolling through and reading things. The What Was That Like subreddit is at reddit.com/r/whatwasthatlike.

And we close out this episode with a segment that’s become pretty popular – the Listener Story. If you have a story that you think people might find interesting, drop me an email and tell me about it – Scott@WhatWasThatLike.com.

Stay safe, and I’ll see you next time.

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Caller

Back in 2015 I was 16 years old and on a weekend my dad decided to take me, as a treat, to go see the new Terminator movie. Everything was fine until about halfway through after a pretty big car chase scene. At the beginning of this scene there was a jump scare, and we didn’t know it at the time, but this had actually caused an elderly woman in the audience to have a heart attack. When this happened, the lights in the theater came on and the movie paused. This caused everybody kind of to stop, we only had a second to realize what was happening before we heard her husband start yelling for help. He said that she wasn’t responding, she had just sat there and stopped moving. He said that she gripped his hand really hard and then just lost consciousness. My dad was the only one in the theater that actually had CPR experience, so he went down there and helped her husband take her and carry her to the bottom row of the chairs. Once they did this, my dad just started going to work. He started doing chest compressions, he started doing mouth to mouth, and while he was doing this we realized that he still wasn’t responding. My dad actually got me to go out and get the attendants to re-call the ambulance and get a proper ETA on how long it would be for them to get out to us. While this was happening my dad was still back in the theater doing mouth to mouth and chest compressions. Later he told me he was doing them so forcefully he could actually feel her ribs crack, which is actually a pretty normal thing to happen in CPR. She still wasn’t responding after a certain amount of time and we noticed she had actually urinated herself and she had very glassy eyes. My dad was pretty sure at that point that we had lost her. At this point the ambulance showed up and I was able to direct the people to the theater where my dad was still working on her. They were able to go to work, they had a whole machine that did chest compressions for us. We were only there for a little bit longer before they took her out on a gurney. The last thing my dad did was give his business card to the husband and told him to call us when she recovered, but we never got that call. So we are pretty sure she passed away that day, and it was a very unfortunate event.

The scariest thing though, to me, is that no one else in the theater did anything at all. That is something that I think could easily be fixed if people just took the time to educate themselves and took the time to take a simple CPR class. If it had been my dad that day that actually had the heart attack, he would probably be dead because there was no one else who knew anything besides him. I just say, educate yourselves and be sure to have a little bit of medical knowledge so in instances like that, if it is your loved one, you can do the things you need to do to help give them a fighting chance.

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I’ve lived in places where the winter is really cold. Personally, I can say I prefer to live here in Florida, where it’s usually relatively warm.

I don’t miss shoveling snow, or driving on roads that are icy, and it’s been a long time since my fingers and toes felt numb from the cold temperatures. I know some people prefer a colder climate, and I’m fine with that. The world is more interesting because we are all different.

But when you live in an area where there’s cold weather and lots of snow, one of the things that makes it more bearable, and even fun, is to ride on a snowmobile. These things are a blast. For an avid snowmobiler, there is nothing better than a sunny day and a wide open field of fresh snow.

And my guest today, Andrew, definitely falls into that category – he is a huge fan of snowmobiles. He goes out riding every time he gets a chance. And he’s one of those guys that sees a hill, and he knows that with enough speed, he can get his machine to go airborne. That’s his thrill, and he’s been doing it for years.

But there was this one day, he went flying up a hill and caught air, without realizing that there was someone on the other side of that hill. Someone on a snowmobile, coming TOWARD Andrew, who also was about to fly through the air, at the exact same time.

And in that split second, while they were both in the air, Andrew realized that the other driver was someone he knew very well.

the snowmobiles after the crash Andrew’s snowmobile speedometer This episode is sponsored by the Disturbed: True Horror Stories podcast. Get it on any podcast app, or at DisturbedPodcast.com.

This podcast is sponsored by Better Help online counseling – get 10% off your first month by visiting BetterHelp.com/WHATWAS.

Episode transcript (download transcript PDF)

I’ve lived in places where the winter is really cold. Personally, I can say I prefer to live here in Florida, where it’s usually relatively warm. I don’t miss shoveling snow, or driving on roads that are icy, and it’s been a long time since my fingers and toes felt numb from the cold temperatures. I know some people prefer a colder climate, and I’m fine with that. The world is more interesting because we are all different.

And in that split second, while they were both in the air, Andrew realized that the other driver was someone he knew very well.

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Scott

What is meant by backcountry snowmobiling? What exactly is that?

Andrew

That’s a great question. When I tell this story most people don’t really understand what that is. When most people think of snowmobiling they think of these kinds of lumbering machines loaded up with people driving down an icy road, sightseeing. That’s not at all what we were doing that day. Backcountry snowmobiling, first of all, the machine is very different. These machines are meant for deep snow, they are extremely powerful, and they weigh about 500 pounds. They are meant for a single rider. They have about 165 horsepower, so their power to weight ratio is just insane. They are as fast as any sports car out there off the line. They’re not even comfortable on roads, they’re really just meant for deep backcountry snow; 2 or 3 feet of snow is where they really excel.

Scott

I have a little bit of familiarity with snowmobiling. We lived in Maine for several years and my wife and I had a couple of Polaris snowmobiles. These were, like when you were describing touring down the road looking at nature, that’s more what these were. Big machines, two passengers, not designed for performance, more designed for comfort. It sounds like yours were kind of the opposite of this.

Andrew

Yeah like I said they’re meant for going up super steep hills really fast, shoeing through deep snow. Out in the backcountry, with that much snow involved, you’re always getting stuck, so these had really long tracks, it’s called a lug on the track but it’s the little paddle that’s attached to the track of the snowmobile. They’re about 3 inches long so they have a lot of dig and a lot of bite. I mean they’re fast they’ll go 80 miles an hour no problem up to 100 plus if you want to.

Scott

Well let’s talk about a little bit of setup. Where were you when this happened? How far away from civilization?

Andrew

I’ve kind of grown up, really in the mountains. My dad was just avid into nature and exploring; he loves motorsports. We’ve grown up in the Utah backcountry. The range is known as the Uinta range. It’s northeastern Utah. A lot of people are familiar with Park City, a famous ski area, so we are maybe 20 miles east of Park City in an area known as Wolf Creek Pass about 30 miles beyond the closest town. So basically, we load the machines up into a trailer, we drive up as far as we can get before the snow is too deep, and unload the machines. Then we just ride these little logging trails back into the mountains until we find a little play area, and we go off trail and just get lost and when we’re done we try to find the trail again, get back home.

Scott

Where you were that day, do you know who actually owns that piece of land?

Andrew

It’s forest land.

Scott

Oh so it’s all public?

Andrew

It’s all public land yeah. It’s actually a pretty popular camping area in the summer. There are some trails back in there. We actually go back there a lot to camp. It’s all dirt roads you know. This particular area is really nice because there’s not really steep mountains, it’s more hilly. A lot of big ridgelines and a lot of nice field areas. A lot of trees, lots of fields, it’s a perfect riding area in the winter time.

Scott

So who was with you that day?

Andrew

Like I said, I kind of grew up snowmobiling, it’s really a passion of mine. My father kind of raised my brother and I on snowmobiles. My dad was there that day but my brother couldn’t come for some reason. We had about 4 other good friends with us, all very experienced riders. It was just an awesome day as far as snowmobiling goes. We were pretty selective on who we wanted to bring, we didn’t want any beginners with us on that day.

Scott

When you got to this place where you unloaded the snow machines, can you describe what it looked like? I’m picturing a few football fields in size. Was it that big or what was the terrain like?

Andrew

Basically there’s a parking lot, and the forest service actually maintains a CAT track. So we park right in this parking lot where they’ve plowed. Then the road is snowed over. There’s a mountain pass that goes up and over and that’s what we use to ride back deep into the mountains. So we unload the snowmobiles, we get on this CAT track and we ride for maybe 20 minutes at 60 miles an hour down this road. Then you get into some of this deeper, more thick terrain, and that’s where the logging roads start. We were a solid 45 minutes- where this actually happened -we were probably an hour and a half away from our trailers. Probably 45 minutes riding from this CAT track graded road.

Scott

What was the temperature like that day? What was the weather like?

Andrew

As far as snowmobiling goes, a snowmobiler’s dream day is a big huge storm the night before and then you wake up to blue skies. Cold, you want cold temperatures so the snow stays really nice and powdery. That’s basically what this day was. We had a huge storm the night before, it dumped 2 or 3 feet, so we knew it was going to be awesome. Woke up early, loaded up the machines, and yeah we got to the trailhead and it was just a beautiful blue sky. It was probably- ideal temperature is like 10 degrees (F)- If it gets much warmer than that the sun really starts to heat up the snow and you lose some of the powdery feeling in the snow. We usually get to the trail head quite early so we can get the first tracks out into the virgin snow.

Scott

Take us through that day, what happened? You guys got to this area and what happened?

Andrew

As you can imagine, it was just epic conditions, we were all so excited, a mile high. We were just playing away up this ridgeline. We’d taken a logging road pretty deep in there to this play area that we knew was kind of hard to get to, we knew there wouldn’t be any people there. We probably wouldn’t see anyone all day. So we rode up this ridgeline and there’s a shelf under this ridge, then it drops off again into this big valley. We knew that on this shelf would probably be our best snow of the day, it’s really protected from the wind so we knew there would be a lot of deep snow. So we were up on this ridge and we had to drop down- with that much snow on the ridge there were a lot of avalanche concerns. We were really careful, we came really prepared. So when you drop down these hills you have to go one at a time just in case there were to be some kind of an avalanche, then everyone else can obviously come dig you up once you’re down. It’s a lot safer if you go one at a time. My dad dropped in first and I followed him. We got to the bottom and, I never actually asked what happened, but I think someone must have gotten stuck up above the rest of our group cause they just weren’t coming down the hill. My dad got greedy I think, he saw this virgin snow and he just took off right into this field. I just sat there for a couple of minutes waiting for the group, didn’t see them, so I thought, “Screw it. I’m gonna go play this field out and they can deal with it.” No friends on powder days, right? That’s the saying.

This field, it’s about 50 yards wide, and it runs for a couple hundred yards and it’s totally wide open. Just an absolute play area and there’s some little terrain features in there, but the main thing is just this little hill, maybe 10 feet tall and 50 feet around, right in the middle of the field. On snowmobiles in deep snow it’s really fun to hit these terrain features with some speed because, you’ll either get air, or it will push your skis up into the air and you can hold a wheelie for as long as you want, you feel like you’re flying. So that was my idea, I thought, “I’m going to go hit this hill and see if I can launch it.” I headed straight for it, no sign of my dad, no idea where he went. Crested this hill, and from that point I have really 3 memories. First, I just remember seeing my dad right in front of me at the top of this hill, and he was already kind of in a wheelie position. So I saw his skis right above my face. The next thing I remember I was just flipping through the air, just spinning and spinning. It seemed to last forever. The third memory I have is just laying in the snow on my back staring at the sky wondering, “What happened, where’s my dad, am I ok?” Pretty crazy situation.

Scott

So you and your dad had the same idea of hitting this hill and going airborne, but the hill was high enough that you couldn’t see each other and you were both coming toward each other.

Andrew

Yeah, crazy. We’ve been back to this hill many times and I still have no idea how we didn’t see each other. Just a perfect angle, one in a million shot, and we both had the exact same idea to crest the hill at the exact same place. We just happened to do it at the exact same time and in opposite directions.

Scott

Here’s Andrew’s dad Drew.

Drew

At the time of the impact, there was just this quick flash. Then all of the sudden there was this crunch, and then I just remember myself flying through the air and wondering, “What in the world just happened?” My first thought went to my son, and I thought, “I think I just killed my son.” Then I landed in the snow about 30 feet in front of the accident and quickly got up. The first thing I heard was just moaning. I was so relieved to know that my son was alive. I quickly ran back and I felt this adrenaline surge go into my body. I went over and I was so happy to see Andrew lying on his back in the snow, conscious and able to communicate with me. I was so relieved. As I looked around, there were just parts and pieces of snowmobiles everywhere. It was almost like a bomb had gone off. I looked over and the 2 snowmobiles were right on the crest of the hill, and they had locked horns and they were just this big crumbled mass that were totally locked together. I quickly realized that if it would have been a split second either direction, one of us could have gone right over the other or into the other at an impact speed of probably close to 70 miles an hour. It would have meant instant death to one, or even both of us. I just felt this immediate sense of gratitude that our lives had been spared and that my son was still conscious and able to communicate with me.

Scott

Back to Andrew

Andrew

There’s a couple miracles involved in this- I call them miracles -in this story. The crash itself honestly was a miracle the way it happened, one of us, no doubt, should be dead. If we were going maybe 1 or 2 mile an hour speed difference, faster or slower, either one of us; I think one of the machines would have– well his machine would have taken me right in the chest or right in the head. It would be a very different story. Basically his snowmobile kind of came down on top of mine and incredibly his front ski hooked on my handlebars and it stopped the machines on a dime. Completely stopped them dead. I was going at least 35 miles an hour and he was probably doing the same or faster. They try to keep these machines really lightweight, it’s just aluminum, so it’s just incredible that they locked horns the way they did and didn’t blast over each other. It kind of launched him off sideways, he really didn’t get hurt at all he just flew off the side. I think I remember kind of turning my body a little bit to the right, and that makes sense with the injuries I received. My left hip hit his front bumper, and the whole bumper was actually completely crushed in, so I think that was my leg or hip hitting him. I just flipped through the air several times and then landed there totally confused. I laid there for a second. It did enter my mind, “Is my dad dead? Is he ok? What happened to him?” I was completely winded, I sounded like a dying animal I’m sure. I was trying to get my air back. My dad came running over, it was great to see his face, he was super concerned obviously. Right about then the whole group showed up, I heard the machines and they pulled up. I looked around and there’s just pieces of snowmobile all over the ground. It looked like a bomb had gone up. Just stuff everywhere. They kind of just left me there, obviously they were taking care of and talking to me, but I just laid there for a few minutes and got my breath back. I was hurting but it seemed like I was ok. So they said, “Alright, well should we try to get you up and we’ll figure out what to do?” One of them tried to grab my arm and tried to help me stand up and then that’s when it hit me. I felt like my whole body was on fire, I thought my leg had fallen off. It was so painful right then when I tried to move. The shock of the accident was wearing off. That’s when we thought, “This is a lot more serious than we initially thought, we need to figure something out here quickly.”

Scott

I would assume that you were wearing a lot of layers and they couldn’t necessarily see– it wasn’t clearly obvious that you had any broken bones or anything.

Andrew

Exactly, kind of no idea what’s going on. These cold days when you’re riding you get windshield way below zero, so we’re fully suited up, lots of layers, helmets, protection, the whole 9 yards. So yeah, I got my coat off– I knew my upper body was relatively ok, I think I had a broken rib but I was moving my back and neck alright. My lower half was messed up, and I could feel my leg and it felt big. I knew there was immediate swelling that we were concerned about. They tried to pull my boot off and I was in just absolute agony. So they just left everything in, they were a little worried about my back so they didn’t want to move me too much. Yeah I had a lot of pain in my lower back- well more my pelvis region -but my very lower back, so they were concerned about that and wanted to be careful.

Scott

Now you were so far away from everything, did you even have cell service to make a phone call?

Andrew

No nothing like that. We were 30 miles plus from the closest town, and that town doesn’t have much cell service. That was definitely the first thing we thought about, how do we deal with this. I mentioned some miracles involved in this story and this is where the next one comes into play. We take this pretty seriously, we’ve been riding long enough to see accidents and be involved in avalanches and crazy weather, so there’s some gear we all bring. The most important piece being an avalanche beacon. It’s basically a small passive radio that sits in your chest pocket and when you start riding you turn those on, which is always transmitting a beacon signal, and the rest of the group has these transmitters. The idea is that if somebody gets trapped in an avalanche, the rest of the group can turn their transmitter on to search mode, which will allow them to pinpoint the body buried under the snow. They’re really accurate, you can find a body within a foot radius of where it tells you to go. Then you pull out what’s called a probe, which is just a long stick, it’s like a tent pole that folds up into a little pouch. So you unfold that and you can poke down into the snow and find the person. Then we all have shovels as well, for digging. We also make sure that somebody in the group carries a GPS with them and then we all have radios as well so we can communicate and talk to each other. That way when there is a problem we have a means of locating– what’s interesting about these avalanche beacons, it’s the most important thing to carry back there, but cell service actually interferes with the beacon. When you’re wearing those you have to turn your phones off or you may not be found if you get stuck in an avalanche. So we always turn our phones off when we get out of the trailer and load up our sleds. Miraculously, for some reason, my dad had not turned his phone off that day. He remembers cresting a few hills before the accident and he heard a text go through his phone, he heard it ding in his chest pocket. Honestly that may have saved my life because he knew exactly where he needed to go to get cell service. There was just barely enough to get a call out to 911. Luckily we had a group member with a GPS, he had our exact coordinates, so really within about 20 or 30 minutes of the crash we had a call out to 911 and they had search and rescue on their way.

Scott

How long did it take for emergency responders to get to you?

Andrew

It was about an hour and a half from the actual accident, which, considering how deep we were back there and how remote and the snow conditions that day, it was really a miracle. Utah had a pretty robust search and rescue system, a lot of the guys on search and rescue are avid snowmobilers and so at any given point on snow days there’s almost always search and rescue in the backcountry. Obviously it takes them some time to get on their radios and get the call. Search and rescue snowmobilers actually found us almost the exact same time as the helicopter found us. Luckily we had this big field where the helicopter could land. As soon as they showed up I had a crew of about 10 people on me trying to assess my condition and help me get comfortable.

Scott

You were laying in the snow for 90 minutes.

Andrew

Yeah.

Scott

Aside from your injuries, that’s got to be just miserable.

Andrew

Yeah exactly. About 30 minutes into the accident, that’s when I started getting uncomfortable. I knew I was hurting pretty bad. I knew my leg, hip, butt and possibly my back were hurt. Then yeah, just laying in the snow for that long you start to tense up and shiver and I could tell I was losing blood somehow, which was internal luckily. Yeah I was getting really cold. Search and rescue got to me and they couldn’t find a vein, I was all constricted, so I couldn’t get any kind of pain medicine.

Scott

Being in the snow, they had to get you on a backboard. Did you lose consciousness at all from the pain?

Andrew

No, I was conscious the whole time. The pain was mostly manageable, except when they tried to move me obviously, that was extremely painful. They did get me onto the backboard. What’s so interesting is the helicopter had landed about a hundred feet away from the crash sight. As you can imagine 3 feet of fresh snow is almost impossible to move in, so they actually draped the backboard over a snowmobile, and then very slowly drove the snowmobile through the snow with everyone keeping up behind postholing. I wish we had a video of that, it would have been comical to watch (laughter).

Scott

Your last ride for that day.

Andrew

Yeah exactly. I always joke, I’ve never been heli-skiing. I’ve always wanted to go heli-skiing, so this was my first heli-skiing experience.

Scott

What is that? I’m not familiar with that term?

Andrew

Heli-skiing is where they basically pick you up in a helicopter and then drop you off at the top of the mountain and let you ski down. It’s always been a dream of mine. I think this was my first helicopter ride; not quite the conditions I hoped it to be but I was sure grateful for the helicopter that day. Helicopter ride took about 30 minutes, they unloaded me at the hospital, got a bunch of painkillers into me and then I was right into surgery a couple hours after that. I ended up breaking my femur pretty severely, broke my hip, my pelvis, and the surgeon estimated I lost about 30 percent of my body’s blood internally into my leg. They didn’t find it on the x-ray but I’m pretty sure I broke a rib too because it hurt pretty bad.

Scott

I’ve heard that a femur break is the most painful break you can have. It’s the long bone in your thigh. Would you agree with that? How would you rate that pain?

Andrew

Yeah (laughter). It sucked. I’ve broken a lot of bones actually, I’ve broken about 10 bones in my life, so I’m no stranger to the bone pain and healing process. It was definitely the most painful. It’s the strongest and biggest bone in the body. It takes a lot of force to break that bone, so it was painful. What’s crazy about your leg, the muscles and tendons in your leg are so strong that when the femur breaks, a lot of the pain actually comes from the muscles and tendons pulling the bones into each other. Your tendons have so much tension on them in your thigh that it will literally crush the two bones into each other and that’s where a lot of the pain comes from.

Scott

In the meantime, your dad had called your wife to meet you at the hospital. Again, Andrew’s dad.

Drew

So I knew I needed to call Andrew’s wife Elizabeth, and again, this was something that I was not excited about, to tell her the news. They had not been married too long so I knew that this would be a really traumatic thing for her. The minute I made it to the parking lot where we had left from the accident, I got on the phone and explained what had happened and she was amazingly calm. Elizabeth, his wife, is just a rockstar. She took the news very well and headed straight to the hospital to be there. In fact she was the first member of the family to arrive at the hospital.

Scott

I also asked Elizabeth about getting that phone call.

Elizabeth

I felt like I was pretty calm through most of it but I do think I was in a little more shock than I realized at the time. When I got the phone call I was actually with my mom, we were at my brother’s soccer game. So I was like, “I gotta go to the hospital.” She was like, “No no, I can tell that you’re in shock. I will drive you.” So we drove down there and I remember feeling like it was kind of all a dream or like I was in a movie. When I walked into the hospital, we went in through the ER and I said, “My husband was just Life Flighted in,” and I explained the situation. They were like, “Ok,” then they went on the intercom and said, “Trauma 2’s wife is on her way. Trauma 2’s wife.” I was like, “Trauma 2!? This is real. This is really happening.” When I got there I was not completely at ease, but put at ease because the first thing he talked about was his snow pants and how concerned he was about his snow pants. I was like, “You’re gonna be fine, I’m just glad you’re alive. We’ll get you new snow pants. It will all be ok,” (laughter).

Andrew

My wife showed up to the hospital. I was in a trauma bay, they had just loaded me full of Dilaudid so I was a pretty happy kid at that point. She comes walking in stressed out of course and I think the first thing I said to her was, “They cut off my snow pants!” I was pretty distraught about my snow pants (laughter).

Scott

What’s the deal with those snow pants? Why was that so important?

Andrew

I had spent a month trying to find an awesome pair of snow pants, I’d been through- I actually ripped a couple -pairs of new snow pants while skiing. I had just found an awesome pair that fit me perfectly. Search and rescue actually wanted to cut my snow pants off when they found me in that field and I insisted that they would not cut my snow pants off. I didn’t let them. Then first thing when I get to the hospital they cut them off and for some reason that was a big hang up in my drugged brain (laughter).

Scott

Priorities become different when you’re high on painkillers.

Andrew

Exactly. My wife was very concerned but very grateful I was there and alive and hopefully stable.

Scott

So you went into surgery, and everything I’ve heard is that femur surgery is pretty violent. What exactly happens during that surgery?

Andrew

My profession, I’m in real estate and construction, so I’m used to drills and hammers. We build custom homes. During my recovery I had a lot of boredom just sitting around, so I thought I should pull up some of these surgeries and see what they actually did to me. Basically it just looked like another day on the job site. They literally pull out a big screw and ream out the inside of your femur. Then they stuff a rod- well a small nail -through your femur, that acts as a sleeve. Then with a hammer they sleeve this rod down the middle of your femur, and they actually hammer it into your femur. So I have a foot and a half long titanium rod in my leg right now. Yeah they use screws, drills, saws, hammers, it’s pretty involved surgery.

Scott

Not something you want to be awake for that’s for sure.

Andrew

No, no way.

Scott

Part of the motivation you had for recovery was an upcoming trip. What was that, what was the plan there?

Andrew

A little background during my phase of life during that time. This was March of 2015. I had just gotten married that year, so I’d been married less than a year. I was finishing up my senior year at the University of Utah. So it was right before I was supposed to graduate, I was trying to wrap up all my classes. Then as a graduation present to ourselves, my wife and I, we had booked a 2 month trip to southeast Asia. We wanted to backpack through a bunch of these countries in southeast Asia. I think that was my first question to my surgeon, I still really wanted to go on this trip. I said, “Can I go?” He said, “No way. Absolutely not,” but we went (laughter). We really wanted to go. We had this trip booked for 2 months after my accident, so I had a lot of recovering to do to be in a position where I could backpack through southeast Asia.

Scott

That just seems unbelievable. The accident happened in March and you’re supposed to go hiking in May. To have 2 months after breaking your leg and your pelvis and your hip, that just seems almost impossible to recover that quickly.

Andrew

Yeah you know it’s the marvels of modern medicine. The hospital had me up on crutches just 2 days after the surgery. They want you to move. They want you to recover your blood and recover your muscle mass, so they really encourage movement immediately after the surgery. Which was pretty painful trying to move, and with that much blood loss it was very hard to even want to get out of bed. I think this trip really helped motivate me to do that, I really tried to move as much as possible. It was a challenge, I was laid up in bed for the first few weeks. Really no movement, or very minimal movement, I was as helpless as it gets. It would take about 30 minutes to get me out of bed, into the bathroom, and back in bed. I needed 2 people to help me do that, at least for the first couple of weeks. So pretty challenging.

Scott

Was that in the hospital? How long were you in the hospital?

Andrew

They actually had me out of the hospital pretty quick. Obviously they checked me out and wanted to watch me and make sure I was recovering correctly and make sure there weren’t going to be complications with the surgery. I was out of there within a few days after the surgery. Obviously I couldn’t do stairs, I had trouble doing much of anything, so my parents were nice enough to put us up in their home. They have single-story living and they let me sleep in their bed actually. We kind of just moved into my parents home, and my wife was in school so she couldn’t be there all day. She and my mom just took turns taking care of me.

Scott

That’s nice to have that support system in place right out of the gate.

Andrew

Yeah I was really blessed in that way. It was nice to have a lot of help when I needed it.

Scott

What were some of the difficulties you found in just day to day stuff?

Andrew

Emotionally it was pretty hard. I’m not much of a movie person, I never watch TV, so just sitting there all day was really depressing for me. I read a lot of books but other than that it was pretty boring and that was hard. Using the bathroom was a challenge. Like I said it took about 3 people to help me do my business. I remember the first time I had to sit. I got in there and my mom was on one arm, my wife was on the other, and they got me sitting on the toilet and I did my business and then I had this horrible realization that there was no way I was going to be able to wipe my butt. I had to choose either my brand new wife of less than a year, or my mother. That was a hard choice (laughter).

Scott

Can you describe what was the physical part of it? Your arms weren’t broken or immobile, what was difficult about doing that? What made it impossible?

Andrew

Just the stiffness in my body and just the pain in trying to flex any muscle, or move anything down there. My pelvis was all messed up, my hip was all messed up, so trying to twist your back enough to be able to physically wipe the butt was just impossible. So I chose my wife, and we’re still married so things worked out I guess (laughter).

Scott

Now you know I had to ask Andrew’s wife Elizabeth what she thought of that decision making process.

Elizabeth

(Laughter) I was the one that said that, because I was like, “Here let me come help you.” He was like, “Absolutely not.” I was like, “Well it’s either me or your mother, so which is the better choice” (laughter).

Scott

I wondered how do you prepare yourself mentally to do a job like that?

Elizabeth

I would like to say I’m a mentally tough person. I feel like, I mean, we had just barely been married not even a year. So I understood why he obviously didn’t want me doing that. At the time I was like, “I’m supposed to be your caretaker though, like obviously I should be the one to help you with that.” Now looking back I think if it was the opposite situation and I needed that help, I would have absolutely refused as well. I mean I grew up babysitting a lot so I’d changed a lot of bums. I was a special ed teacher, so I’d even changed some older people, so I was ready for it. I was ready for the challenge (laughter).

Andrew

Oh bless her heart. I swore to myself no matter how painful it was, that was the first and last time that would ever happen.

Scott

Well good for her, man. Did you have any withdrawal issues once the pain meds were stopped?

Andrew

Yeah I was taking pain meds, heavy narcotic doses, every 3 hours. I’d wake up every 3 hours at night. I hated that man, that was hard. I’d wake up every night with the bed completely soaking wet, and I don’t know if that was part of the recovery or something to do with the pain medicine. I had sleep apnea, my wife said she’d wake up and I’d be not breathing or doing weird things. She said one night she woke up and I had my arms straight up in the air totally asleep. Just weird stuff with that much pain medicine. Then yeah, getting off of it was hard. I wanted off of it as fast as I could because I was actually like mega constipated from the heavy doses and nothing seemed to help so I wanted off of it pretty quick. I went through the full withdrawals and had about a week of just crazy withdrawal symptoms.

Scott

On top of all the other recovery issues, it feels like a recovery addict to some degree.

Andrew

(Laughter) Yeah.

Scott

A lot of people that’s there concern because so many people get addicted to that and you really don’t know until you’re on it if you’re one of those people or not.

Andrew

Yeah I love the feeling of pain medicine, it feels so good when you’re in pain, but the side effects are a major deterrent for me. I can’t handle the side effects of them.

Scott

So you went on the backpacking trip. Did you have any trouble during that time?

Andrew

You know I honestly think it was the best thing for me. My family was very nervous about it, she had no desire to see us go on this trip. She had been taking care of me and knew my condition. We went, at that point I was on a cane, I didn’t have much of a gait to my walk. I was struggling to walk, but I had a cane, I packed up a backpack and we took off. Basically we hiked every single day for 2 months through these little towns and cities. Within about a month I was able to ditch my cane. I had my normal gait back and even though it was highly unrecommended I think it was great for us. We had one scary incident there, we actually got into a motorcycle crash in the highlands of Vietnam.

Scott

Don’t tell me you were trying to jump a hill or anything right?

Andrew

(Laughter) We were playing chicken with another motor biker. (Laughter) No we were coming around a blind corner and met a semi head on and had to dump the bike and rode the road on my arms a little bit. Really bless my poor mom for putting up with it, she didn’t like those pictures very much. She said, “Come home.”

Scott

Speaking of your mom, I wanted to mention this, you had talked about a little prank that you pulled on her. What was that?

Andrew

Yeah, so I had just basically hours at home. My mom was so great the whole time, about as good of a caretaker as I could’ve asked for. She brought me food and helped me with anything I needed when my wife was at school or at work. But you get kind of bored and your mind wanders so I thought I should probably pull some kind of a prank on her. Her biggest fear was that I’d be walking around on my crutches and something would happen, like I’d slip and she wouldn’t be able to get me up or help me back into bed. So I thought I should play that to my advantage, my wife was in on this. I walked into the bathroom one day and, at this point I had enough mobility to shut the door and actually sit down on the floor with my back against the door. I sat there and threw my crutches across the bathroom and it hit the wall and it made this big noise and I started screaming. I think my mom had a heart attack, she started screaming and freaking out, and had her phone out ready to call. She kept trying to open the door but since I was leaning against it, she couldn’t get in there, it was just her absolute worst nightmare (laughter). We had a pretty good laugh about that one.

Scott

I would imagine that since she’s known you her whole life, that little prank was probably not a huge surprise.

Andrew

(Laughter) No it wasn’t out of the ordinary but definitely kind of a cruel prank to play on her.

Scott

Well it breaks the boredom anyway. You mentioned that your dad felt guilty or somehow responsible for the crash. Why do you think he felt that way? Maybe because you got injured and he wasn’t injured, or what do you think the thought process was there?

Andrew

The emotions of the crash are a pretty interesting aspect. When you’re in some kind of traumatic experience like that your brain wants to find fault somewhere, “Who’s at fault? Who’s the guilty party? Could this have been avoided?” This particular accident, it was kind of hard, you know my dad kind of escaped unscathed. I had a couple nights where I just felt like, “Oh it’s so unfair. Why was he where he was? Why did he think he should hit that hill when he did?” I struggled with that a little bit. At the end of the day we were both doing something totally ordinary. We weren’t really taking any risks beyond what we normally take. It was a very controlled situation and it just was a one in a million accident the way it happened. I went through the whole spectrum of emotions, anger and frustration. I’m sure he felt an immense amount of guilt because he basically was uninjured, then seeing his son laying there in the snow I’m sure was just heartbreaking for him. Since the accident I’ve had 2 kids and I can’t even imagine the emotions I would feel if I was in this situation as my father was. I was dealing with all this frustration and anger and depression a little bit, trying to get through this, but at the same time I had immense gratitude that the accident happened the way it did and that we were both alive. I didn’t kill my father or vice versa. It was a pretty emotional roller coaster.

Scott

I’m thinking about it as you have all these hours and days on end to think about what happened. If you had it to do over again, you probably would have chosen the same way, you wouldn’t want him to be the one that was injured. You’d probably rather be the one that got injured anyway.

Andrew

Oh 100 percent. My dad, I’d hate to see him in my position. I can’t imagine the feelings I would have had if I was in his shoes.

Scott

I asked Andrew’s dad his feelings about being, in any way, responsible for the accident.

Drew

From my end, the responsibility was confusing. I was on the other end of this large meadow, probably almost a football field away from Andrew when I last saw him. He was just sitting still on his snowmobile and others in our party were gathering up with him, and he was actually pointed in the other direction. So I thought, I better just go join up with this group. I had no idea that he could have gone from the place I saw him last to the blind crest of this hill so quickly. It was one of those things, when we collided, one of my biggest emotions was just shock and confusion as to how he could’ve gone from one place to another so quickly without me realizing it. We’re always so careful in everything that we do in the backcountry and try to be prepared and use good judgment. Like Andrew had indicated, this was just a one in a million chance that we could’ve crested the hill at the same time, same place exactly. There were no snowmobile tracks to follow, this was just wide open fresh snow. As far as the responsibility, when I review this I do not know what I could’ve done differently to avoid the accident. At the same time, any parent knows, any time anything happens to one of their children, they take it very very hard no matter what control they have over the situation or not.

Scott

Overall, Andrew is still happy with the way things turned out.

Andrew

If I were to do this over again, 100 percent I’d take the blow. I’m here today, I’m alive and it all worked out. I’m really grateful it worked out the way it did.

Scott

And you kept a souvenir of the crash?

Andrew

This is pretty crazy, somehow, in the crazy forces of the accident, it blew the whole computer off of my snowmobile. The computer that controls the speed and the RPMs. I actually have the dashboard intact and I have it hanging on my office wall, I look at it everyday. The needle is frozen at the speed that we were going when the accident happened, I’m looking at it right now. I was going 35 miles per hour and the RPMs were pinned at 6000. It’s a good reminder that life changes fast and you never really know what’s going to happen.

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And if you want to see a picture of Andrew’s speedometer that he talked about, we’ll have that on the website page for this episode, at WhatWasThatLike.com/92.

Last episode was a special one with all the childbirth stories. If you haven’t heard that one, go check it out, there are lots of great stories in there. Anyway, Ramona heard that episode and was reminded that she and her mom have something in common.

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Ramona

Hi Scott. Love your show. Just thought I would share something kind of fun after your stories about moms and giving birth. My mother had me on her birthday, same hour, same minute. We were off by an ounce or an inch, I don’t know that detail. She used to always tell the story, because it ended up in the paper and in the paper it said something about the baptism. She said the article said, “History repeats itself.” It didn’t say that but that was cute she thought that. I was named after her, first name and middle name. My first name is Ramona and my mom was named after the song “Ramona” in 1928. I just thought it was kind of a cool story and everybody that hears it thinks it’s pretty amazing.

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And now here’s something pretty cool about a previous episode. Episode 83 was called Shareen was rammed by her own car and it went live a few months ago – on July 16, 2021. The guest was Shareen, and she was pregnant and stuck in this relationship with her abusive boyfriend, and a co-worker helped her get away. Well, it ended up that the two of them were trying to get away and it turned into this car chase where he was chasing them and crashing into them. Really scary.

Anyway, I had tried to get the 911 audio from that day, and it didn’t get to me in time to include it in the episode, but I did just get it recently. So I’m going to play you a couple of calls. The first one is just someone who saw what was going on, and he wanted to get the police there to stop this attack. The second call is after Shareen and her friend had finally gotten away from him, and they went straight to the police substation and needed to have an officer come and take their statements. So here are those two calls:

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First Call

911 Operator

San Antonio 911 this is Denise. Do you need police, fire or–

Bystander

Ma’am, ma’am, ma’am, ma’am. 5 minutes ago two dudes were trying to run this girl off the road, into- I’m on Cinnamon Creek- into the Riverstone apartments. I’ve been trying to hit here and contact you for the last 5 minutes to let you know. The woman turned around, alright, she’s in a like goldish color little small car. One of the dudes, the bad guy, he’s in a black small car and the other one’s in a white truck, and they’re chasing these people. It’s a woman, I don’t know if it’s a little girl with her or if it’s another woman in the passenger seat. They turned around on Cinnamon Creek, the girls are trying to get away from these 2 dudes and they are trying to run this car off the street. I don’t know where they went. They were heading down Cinnamon Creek toward the Shell station. She spun around and came back up toward whatever that is across Cinnamon Creek.

911 Operator

Fredericksburg Road?

Bystander

No, Fredericksburg Road runs parallel to Cinnamon Creek. She spun around and went toward Hamilton Wharf and they chased her that way.

911 Operator

Bystander

It’s a white truck and a small black car, or like midnight blue, really dark. They’re chasing these 2 females in a small goldish colored car. Yeah I mean people had to stop to keep from getting in a head on collision with these 2 dudes. One in the white truck and one in a dark small car. Have you seen those old Nissan’s?

911 Operator

Yes sir.

Bystander

It might be something like that. Or maybe an old Corolla, some small car like that. Then the other guy is in a white truck and they tried to run these 2 females off the road right there in front of the Riverstone apartments.

911 Operator

Alright, I will get someone out there, ok?

Bystander

Alright, I don’t know where they went because I was towards the back when it happened. They spun around and shot out toward Hamilton Wharf because she was trying to get away from them. You might want to check it out, I don’t know. The 2 dudes almost caused a wreck on Cinnamon Creek because everybody had to stop.

911 Operator

Ok, I will get someone out there. I greatly appreciate it.

Bystander

Ok thank you.

911 Operator

Ok bye.

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Second Call

Shareen’s Friend

Hello?

911 Operator

San Antonio Police, ma’am are you ok?

Shareen’s Friend

We’re at the substation on Pru. We’re at the substation on Pru.

911 Operator

Ok, ok. At Pru substation ok.

Shareen’s Friend

If you could send somebody, I don’t know if there are officers here.

911 Operator

Yeah, they are on the way. They’re on the way.

Shareen’s Friend

Ok.

911 Operator

Thank you ma’am. Are you ok? You don’t need an ambulance or anything?

Shareen’s Friend

We don’t need an ambulance, but my car is pretty much totaled.

911 Operator

Ok well you are at the substation so you’re safe. Alright thank you so much ma’am you take care of yourself.

Shareen’s Friend

Ok.

911 Operator

Ok bye-bye.

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Again, that episode is Shareen was rammed by her own car, and it’s episode #83.

And just before this week’s listener story, I want to invite you to join a bunch of other listeners and be a supporter of the podcast. Your support is what keeps this thing going! And for just $5 a month, you get all the new episodes ad-free, and you get the bonus exclusive 911 episodes, and you know, I’ve never actually mentioned this, but you also get a personal audio message from me, thanking you for being a patron of the show. You can get all the details and sign up at WhatWasThatLike.com/support.

And now, this week’s Listener Story, about the sad cruelty that happens in high school. Stay safe, and I’ll see you in two weeks.

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Caller

I’m choosing to keep myself anonymous, but this is a story for kids or teenagers who struggle in high school; who struggle just as much as me. When I started in high school my father had just passed away on my first day of high school. I was really beat up, I was obviously sad and really mad. It was at [3:50] in the morning so I still had school that day. I decided I was gonna go to school and maybe get my mind off of it, talk to some friends and hopefully not think about it. I headed into my Biology class and I went to talk to my friends, so I asked them, “Hey let’s hang out.” The room goes completely quiet and everyone is looking at me and I didn’t think anything of it. Obviously, I was already struggling so I didn’t really like the attention on me, so I thought, “That’s weird.” Then I asked them one more time, “Hey do you guys wanna maybe hang out this weekend? Just do something fun?” One of them said, “I’m not gonna hang out with no little bitch who’s complaining about his dead dad.” My heart instantly sunk, to be honest, I was broken. I thought those were my friends. Everybody looked at me and the room went dead silent. I sat there in silence with my anxiety and stress and I was really broken. I left the classroom and I instantly started bawling. I started crying and bawling and then I heard the class get loud and everybody started talking and stuff. I decided I wasn’t going to show up for that period. I was going to head to the nurses office and pretend I was sick. I went to the nurses office, pretending I was sick. Then I headed off for the rest of my day hoping to forget about it. Obviously they weren’t friends. I sat at a table and I was all alone just sitting there with my hoodie on. I thought, “You know what, maybe I just don’t want to be bothered today.” I didn’t want to miss class so I sat there and then heard all the freshmen talking about me. Talking about my dead dad. Talking about how I was a pussy for being sad over my dead dad, and how their life was much harder. I was broken. I already had severe bipolar at the time and it didn’t make anything better. I struggled everyday, waking up, having to go to the same school, see the same people and hear the same things. It hurt me, it really did. I’m 18 now. I just graduated and I’ve never been any better or happier in my life, now that I’m done with high school.

View Details

This is a bonus episode of What Was That Like.

If this were a regular episode, you’d be hearing someone telling a story of how they survived a mass shooting, or when they got attacked by a grizzly bear, or that time they won $100,000 on Wheel of Fortune. We have guests on with all kinds of crazy stories, and they tell exactly what happened, first hand.

But this episode is different. A while back, I asked my listeners to send in their stories about a specific topic: childbirth. What happened, what went right, and in some cases, what went wrong. This is real life, and not every story has a happy ending.

I really enjoyed hearing these stories, and to those who sent one in, thank you.

And if you have a story about something unusual that’s happened to you, not necessarily related to childbirth, but anything unusual or interesting, hang around and at the end I’ll tell you how we might be able to use that here on the podcast in a future episode.

This episode is sponsored by A Life’s Story podcast – life stories of incredible people. Listen to it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Here is Sylvia’s story about her experience with Postpartum Psychosis:

My story starts after the birth of our first child.

I developed a rare condition called Postpartum Psychosis which distorted my mind. This illness affects one to two women out of every 1000 births.

After a very long day and night I gave birth to a healthy very big baby. Soon (maybe 5 days later), the only thing on my mind was finding the Wizard of Oz.

I convinced myself that I was Dorothy. My new-born son was Toto. Every day, my mission was to cast all the colourful characters that lived in Kansas and Oz. The cast changed daily, determined by my visitor’s personality and the colours they were wearing.

My overdriven mind was constantly re-arranging characters and scenes which led to many sleepless nights. I’d finally cast most of my main players like the Scarecrow, the Brave Lion, the Tin Man. I was going to rest now. But I still had to go to Oz. I also needed to find the red sparkly slippers to get Toto and me home.

Finally, I arrived home with my new-born son. While my husband and seven-day old baby slept, I tried to rest and switch my brain off but every sound from a microwave oven, cell phone, creaky floors, barking dogs were all cues that would lead me closer to the Wizard of Oz and my red slippers.

My husband realised something wasn’t quite right with me. The Community Nurse did a home visit to check on our new baby. The nurse confirmed that something wasn’t right with me. I was too elevated. It was suggested I should see my doctor to arrange a visit to a psychiatrist.

Soon after, I found myself sitting in this psychiatrist bleak, ugly stale office. To diagnose me, he quizzed on mathematics. The psychiatrist prescribed medication for 5 days to help my mind switch off and whatever I was experiencing would disappear.

These drugs REALLY knocked me out. I was now officially a mum zombie.

After 5 days, I truly thought I was cured!! To celebrate, my husband was going to drive me to see my friend, but in reality we were driving to the public hospital. I ran away when we arrived. My husband chased me down and dragged me into the emergency department which made the Triage Nurse get the security guards. I remember my husband screaming at the Triage Nurse:

“She’s not a drug addict, she’s just had a baby – someone help her!”

I tried to convince nurses and doctors, I was having a great time searching for the Wizard of Oz and I didn’t need to be locked up. In reality, I needed to be heavily medicated again and it was then admitted to the psych ward of this hospital, without Toto.

I don’t remember how many nights I stayed at this hospital, but I knew that I missed my son and husband. I just wanted to go home. I wanted to start our lives together. I convinced myself, I could make my way home, if I do things properly in the right order, like floss my teeth, exercise daily, make the bed, talk, and save people and eat well. This hospital didn’t offer healthy choices and it had a semi outdoor exercise, caged area, you could barely see the outside world – it was so prison like. I was trapped and felt like I never going to go home.

My brilliant, big sister found a baby and mother hospital which was located about 1.5 hours away from where we lived. It housed 8 mums and their babies. It was the only one in our state. I was admitted and this is where I was first diagnosed Post Natal Psychosis. I’d convinced myself that it would be okay because I was closer to Oz and I could take Toto with me.

I wanted to party when I first arrived at this new hospital. New mums were not as euphoric, and I couldn’t relate to them at all. I met mothers who were struggling after childbirth. One was on suicide watch, one played a jingle over and over in her head, one had to have ECT and one who couldn’t bring herself to hold her baby. I befriended them all because I could to fix them all. I spoke my mind, became irreverent and spent money without a care. I bought them all a pizza, each! To fix them!

Doctors experimented with various medications to dampen my elevated state. Some drugs did nothing, some drugs made me feel so sick and some were so strong that I couldn’t sit up or speak. Doctors settled on a medication that heavily sedated me. I slept a lot while the nurses looked after my baby.

I found a wonderful Psychiatrist. She wore my colours and enjoyed listening to my plan to visit the Wizard of Oz. I decided she could be cast as Good Witch Glenda. She seemed to appreciate this. She was quirky. I spent a lot of time talking about losing my dad, not grieving properly, not saying a proper good-bye. She really understood me. I was in good hands.

I was beginning to accept holistic therapy. I practised mindfulness, which I loathed then (I love now) as well as healthy eating, cognitive therapy, resting, art therapy, proper medication and being kind to each other and ourselves. This is was the way forward for me.

My new mission now was to run for Government to change women’s health. I wrote hundreds of letters to government and prepared many speeches for I when I going to be elected. I was going to win for sure!

My son and I stayed on at the hospital for over four months. I had put my amazing husband, our families, and our friends through a type of hell that I was totally oblivious to.

We were given a 50% chance of Postpartum Psychosis reoccurring with another pregnancy. We took the gamble and decided to try again for a baby.

My beautiful baby was born six weeks early, after a long, horrific pregnancy. My baby was very tiny and had to learn how to thrive, breathe and eat at the same time and was placed in ICU. I felt helpless and useless, so I was going to predict all the winning lottery tickets, while the nurses helped my baby thrive. I played lotto over and over; not because I wanted to be rich, but because I wanted all my friends and family to be debt free.

Five days later, I was getting sick again. My husband knew. I was in denial as I thought I just needed sunshine and a healthy baby to take home. We fought about it a lot. I lost the fight. When my baby was well and thriving, our bags were packed as the private hospital and my psychiatrist were ready. My hospital bed was pre booked. Credit cards were put away.

I was back at the mum and baby hospital with my beautiful daughter. My wonderful family looked after my son. My job was to rest. I was angry a lot. How could I have gotten sick again when everything was in place? I wanted to be home with my beautiful husband and my pigeon pair children.

It took a long time to accept my diagnosis.

I slowly recovered again. We survived again. Thanks to my wonderful supportive husband and amazing family including my friends that are just like family. My big sister was incredible, and my little sister who kept me going when I was “locked up”, by phoning every day, telling me how much she missed and loved me. My beautiful, healthy daughter and I were in hospital for over 3 months.

It took almost 2 years, from the birth of my daughter, to become medication free and I’ve made a full recovery.

I enjoy healthy eating, plenty of exercise and being kind to myself.

At times I get emotional when I think about what we went through. Sometimes we can laugh, about trying to save people with pizza, wanting to run for government, lotto winning tickets, outlandish and useless on-line shopping purchases, and how many red slippers I own.

I have enormous appreciation for proper post-natal care and The Wizard of Oz.

That’s our story.

Yours Truly,

Dorothy/Sylvia from Oz/Australia.

Episode transcript (download transcript PDF)

Hey, this is Scott, the host of the show, and this is a bonus episode.

If this were a regular episode, you’d be hearing someone telling a story of how they survived a mass shooting, or when they got attacked by a grizzly bear, or that time they won $100,000 on Wheel of Fortune. We have guests with all kinds of crazy stories, and they tell exactly what happened, first hand.

But this episode is different. A while back, I asked my listeners to send in their stories about a specific topic: childbirth. What happened, what went right, and in some cases, what went wrong. This is real life, and not every story has a happy ending.

I also wanted to let you know about a special story that I got from Sylvia in Australia, about her experience with Postpartum Psychosis. This is a very unusual story. Sylvia recorded it, but there was an issue with the audio so I couldn’t include it in the actual podcast. However – you can read it in the show notes for this episode, at WhatWasThatLike.com/91.

I really enjoyed hearing these stories, and to those who sent one in, thank you.

And now, let’s hear about those babies.

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Christy

Hi Scott, this is Christy from Mississippi. I have an interesting childbirth story that I wanted to share. On January 20, 1997 I was pregnant with my second child, a daughter. I woke up around 4:20 a.m. with contractions about 5 minutes apart. My husband and I left shortly after 4:30 a.m. and dropped off our 2 year old son at the babysitters. We headed south for the 45 minute drive to the hospital. At this time my contractions were 4 minutes apart, but soon after that they started getting closer and a little bit stronger, but I still wasn’t too alarmed. I told my husband to call our parents and let them know that we were on our way, but to tell them not to rush because it would be awhile. However my daughter had other plans.

We were about 15 minutes from the hospital when my water broke. I could tell that my daughter would be born very soon. My husband kept driving and was about to pass under an interstate when the time had come. I could feel the baby starting to come out. My husband pulled over and he called the highway patrol from the car phone and was immediately connected to the ambulance service dispatcher. By the time the ambulance arrived, my baby was here. Her father wrapped her in his leather jacket because it was a very cold night.

After a quick ride in the ambulance we arrived at the hospital. Thankfully everyone was healthy and we had quite a story to tell. Not only did we get an applause from the doctor and the staff as we were entering the hospital, but 2 local newspapers came and interviewed us about the experience. None of our family made it in time to see the birth and actually had no idea that she had been born in the car, until a baby with our last name was brought into the nursery. It was definitely a crazy experience that I would not recommend to anyone else. Thanks Scott for letting me share.

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Caller

I’m a mother of 2, I have one girl and one boy. There is a huge age difference- I had some fertility issues -but I had my baby. My daughter was 13 at the time my son was born. It’s been 3 years now since I had him. During my pregnancy, I was induced at 41 weeks because I was measuring at 35 weeks. We figured he’d be rather small. The doctor asked how big my daughter was for comparison and I said, “6 pounds, 13 ounces, 21 inches long.” She was a pretty easy labor. I had her within 4 hours with no drugs or medication; it was pretty easy. With my son I ended up being in labor for 13 hours and he shocked us all when he came out. He was 8 pounds, 15 ounces, and 22.5 inches long. The pain was rather unbearable, I ended up having to get 2 epidurals, and both times it only numbed my right side.

During my labor I started to have flu-like symptoms and by the end of my labor I had low grade fever. I ended up testing positive for the flu, but luckily because I had the flu shot my baby never contracted it. The doctor said that the baby took my immune system with him and that flu shot protected the both of us. I nursed my son for 3 weeks and had to wear a facemask while handling him. The hardest part of all of it was that I couldn’t kiss my baby. I cannot express how grateful and fortunate I was to have my husband step up and be so supportive and care for me and my son when I just couldn’t. Now he’s healthy, and life goes on, and here we are today.

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Caitlin

My name is Caitlin and I had a home birth for my second son in January of 2012. It didn’t quite go as planned. Originally we had an option of about 2 midwives in our entire side of the state that would do a home birth. The first one I chose ended up being a little too out there for me. Even though this was during the height of my “crunchy” phase as a mom and person. So we ended up going with the second one which was a midwife who was also an RN, a nurse midwife. I really trusted her so everything was going great. She often delivered Amish babies, so she was fine with cash but also admitted to receiving beef from cattle for payment. We did not have any cattle and lived in the city.

Meanwhile, I was 40 weeks and was at my due date. The night before our son was born, I was in tears because I felt like I was never going to have this baby, ever. The next morning- not even it was 2:30 a.m. -I woke up and was in full blown labor. From start to finish it was 4.5 hours. He came very fast and furious and things started right away. Yet my husband thought this was a good time to maybe go back to sleep while I bounced around on a yoga ball in our living room. After a couple hours of that, I essentially kicked him and told him it was time. By that point it was way too close to time. So he called his mother, who lived about a mile from us, and she is a seasoned labor and delivery nurse and has been for many years. She rushed over to take our oldest son over to a neighbor’s house, but also stuck around because she noticed things were progressing very quickly. So as she stayed with us while we waited for the midwife, I ended up just as a runaway train. It was out of control and I was feeling ready to have that baby quickly. I was on all fours, mooing like a cow in my tiny little bathroom, stuck between the toilet and the shower. My mother-in-law was humming away in the kitchen enjoying herself while she handwashes dishes and dries them, brews coffee, and yells out to me how I’m, “just doing fine honey!” I wasn’t pleased. I did not care for the scent of coffee so I hollered about that and started screaming, “Who the fuck is making coffee!” It was her.

As I moo away, my husband is calling the midwife and saying, “It’s happening now! Something’s happening.” She said, “Don’t worry honey, I’ve talked many fathers through delivering their own babies before. It’s gonna be fine.” He said, “Well then call one of them. I am not equipped for this.” Meanwhile I am moving my way towards my birthing tub, which was also a children’s kiddy pool sort of deal. It was something I ordered from Texas online with my birth kit. It was a small swimming school you would normally put in your driveway, this time it was in our living room. It was covered in really happy sea creatures, smiling sharks, some jellyfish; they were there only to serve as an anger focal point for me later. My husband was running around the house, which by the way we prepped for this for a long time and somehow he still thought the water heater wasn’t the correct temperature. He threw on a tool belt for some dumb reason, and was trying to hook up a garden hose to the kitchen sink, to fill the tub.

Once the tub was filled enough, and at the correct temperature, I got in and continued mooing. Later I realized I had to push and the midwives were not there. My mother-in-law was kind of concerned that the baby was going to be coming out very soon. So I screamed at her, “Will you please check me for dilation?!” She did, which stands to be one of the weirdest experiences in our entire relationship, where my mother-in-law put her whole hand up my birth canal, but also had to grab a nearby lamp to shine it up my- you know. So that went well. She said I was almost ready but to try to hold on until the midwives got there, but that was not happening. My body just started pushing that baby out. It’s like telling someone to stop throwing up, mid vomit; you can’t stop it, it’s just happening. So I’m pushing this big hunky baby out, and the midwives are trying to haul their oxygen tanks up the steps and into the house. My water had already broken and the baby was coming and he was there within 20 minutes or so. That went smoothly, he was healthy. We were all overjoyed. There was more shouting from me about donuts and wine; at 10 a.m.

After that we had all our families come over later. Well, my mother-in-law and father-in-law are long divorced, and do not speak at all. But over the past year my mother-in-law bonded with my husband’s stepmother. They had a little female Maltese dog and decided to breed it with my mother-in-laws male Maltese. The puppies were born approximately 5 days before our son was born. One of those puppies was promised to my parents. So all the family’s gather in the living room to welcome the new baby, but they only wanted to talk about how bad they felt for Lily, the female Maltese, while she gave birth to 5 puppies. Meanwhile, I’m sitting there in the living room, stitched up on the couch I had just given birth next to, only hours before. They all wanted to show off pictures of the puppy and everything. I don’t think they even noticed there was a human genetically related child next to them, or literally in their arms, that a human woman had just pushed out this 8 pound 10 ounce grandson. It went really well and thank you for listening to my home birth TED talk.

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Caller

I was 19 when I had my son. I was admitted into the hospital the night before, the next day I was induced at about 12 p.m. It was pretty strange, I remember walking around a lot because I felt really restless. I got up one time to use the restroom and peed on the floor. I thought, “Oh I should clean that up, might as well do something with myself.” The nurses were like, “Oh no, we can do that” and I felt bad. The time goes on, contractions start, everything happens, I got the epidural. The epidural only worked on half of me vertically, so my leg and arm was numb and that was it, so I felt just about everything almost. During the time of me giving birth they had to flip me upside down almost, on the bed. I remember I was upside down and I passed out, when I woke up I was right side up and my son was out of me. I don’t remember much because I was quite out of it, obviously, and I was bleeding profusely apparently. I remember my midwife was panicking saying, “We have to get you stitched up, this is really bad.” When they were doing that, they handed me my son and I was shaking so badly because I had no strength and I had to hand him over unfortunately because I didn’t want to drop him. I had to give him back to the nurse and the midwives stitches kept slipping, and I felt all of that, and I just remember telling the midwife, “Don’t make it hurt, please don’t make it hurt.” Everything went well after that, I had to be on iron supplements. I found out after the fact I almost died of blood loss but my son was born healthy.

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Kristen

This is Kristen, and this is the story of my first time giving birth. I was actually born at home and I think that that really influenced my ideas about what I wanted my giving birth experience to be like. When I was pregnant I was planning for a home birth. My parents drove out to Denver, where we lived, and they were going to be there for the birth of my baby and to meet their newest grandchild. The day that I was in labor, my mom and dad were there. My mom was making me food and rubbing my back and it was just really nice to have my mom there. We were in touch with the midwife a little bit throughout the day but she said, “Sounds like textbook early labor.”

Later in the day my water broke, and that was one of the indications to call the midwife and say, “Come now!” So we did. She said ok and was on her way. After they hung up my mom told my husband, “You need to call her back, I am seeing something when Kristen has a contraction.” We called her back and she told my husband to take her off speaker phone. I think the concern was that what my mom was seeing was the umbilical cord, but I could still hear her even though the phone was on normal level. I heard her say, “Kristen needs to push really hard for her next contraction.” So the next contraction came and a foot came out. So the midwife said to hang up and call 911. We hung up and called 911. While they were on their way we called the midwife back and she stayed on the phone with my husband the whole rest of her drive over. She got there and put the doppler on my belly, which is what hears the baby’s heart rate, and the baby’s heart rate was fine. That was a really good sign that the baby was not in distress. Then about a minute or 2 later the paramedics got there, and ultimately, I ended up having to climb off the bed, with a foot sticking out of my body, get a robe on, and get on the gurney. They wheeled me to the ambulance.

We took an ambulance ride to the hospital. My husband followed quickly behind. Once we got to the hospital I was wheeled to the operating room. The doctor said, “I think she’s going to deliver this baby breech, but I just need to check the positioning first.” Which was the most painful thing, up until that point, that I had experienced. That’s when they discovered that the baby was not only breech, but sunny side up, and the other leg was externally rotated and in kind of a yoga tree pose. He said to me, “We’re putting you under and we’re getting this baby out now.” Finally they put a mask over my face and I finally went out, I don’t remember that really. The next thing I knew I woke up and my husband was holding this squishy little thing and they said, “You have a baby girl!” We had kept a sex of the baby a surprise. I was pretty altered from the anesthesia and the drugs, because I had an emergency C-section.

Obviously I had drugs in my body so meeting my baby and the first couple of days were all kind of a haze, which I don’t particularly love, but I had a big healthy baby who’s now 4 and a half. Then 3 years later I had my home birth experience. I had a successful VBAC with my son, which stands for Vaginal Birth After Cesarean, and successfully delivered a baby at home. So that’s it! My first home birth turned into an emergency C-section. I have a breech baby who is just a little spitfire with an amazing spirit, and my son is a little mischievous guy. Thanks for listening!

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Denise

My name is Denise, and my birth story is about the day I was born. The story happened over 52 years ago. My mother arrived at the hospital to deliver me and found out that I was breech, meaning my bottom and feet were positioned first instead of my head. This meant significant complications could occur and the nurse was very concerned. The doctor had been called but was not getting to the hospital fast enough. The nurse kept telling my mother not to push, to wait for the doctor to get there, but that just wasn’t possible. I was delivered before the doctor arrived.

Once the doctor did arrive, it was apparent why he was late. He showed up stinking drunk to the hospital. Because of the breech delivery, my left foot was bent during the process. So the doctor took one look at me and told my parents that the entire left side of my body was paralyzed, then left the room. Fortunately before my parents could fully process this information, the nurse assured them that I was not paralyzed, I just had a club foot. So I was raised in a cast that covered almost my whole left leg for a while. I’m happy to say that there were no lasting effects from that unusual delivery. Love your show. Thank you!

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Jennifer

This is Jennifer and this is my birth story. Back in 2004 I was pregnant for the first time. I had gestational diabetes and I had a really hard time controlling it, so my baby grew quite large. At 35 weeks they said, “He needs to come out.” She said it kind of quietly and I didn’t quite hear her and since it was my first child and I was quite scared, I kind of ignored her hoping that I wouldn’t have to have him that day, but I did. So we went to the hospital with my husband, and we had to wait around for a while. They had to test if my baby’s lungs were mature enough. I did the test and waited about 8 hours, and about 8pm on November 4, 2004 my son was born. He was born at 35 weeks but he weighed 10 pounds 8 ounces, he was quite large. He seemed ok, they did put him in the NICU to make sure because he was born so early, but he did ok. He got to go home. I think he was there for about 4 days, and then we got to go home.

I was at the time trying to exclusively breastfeed. I was doing everything everyone told me to do. They showed me how to put him on, he latched perfectly and he would suck, but he wouldn’t do it for very long. He was very tired. He didn’t once open his eyes for the first week of his life, never opened them he slept all the time. I did what everyone told me to do, putting him on and waking him up cause he wouldn’t want to wake up to feed. He didn’t cry at all. He would latch on but only suck for a little bit before he fell asleep. Finally after a week I thought, “This baby doesn’t seem right.” He wasn’t waking up on his own at all, he slept all the time, so I finally took him to the ER. They told me he was severely dehydrated. If he had gone another day he could’ve died. They took him back to the NICU. They pulled me aside and they wanted to talk to me like, “What did you do to your child?” I told them, “I did what I thought was best. I put him on and everybody told me he would be fine. That he was a big baby and he would be fine.” Well he wasn’t. I had to learn the hard way that I wasn’t producing enough milk and he needed to be bottle fed. So that’s what happened. He’s ok now at 16 years old. He’s a happy healthy boy now.

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Caller

My twins’ birth was quite an adventure. I was 28 years old and was recently separated from my husband and I had a 1 and a half year old son. My son and I had moved in with my parents for a short time until I could figure out where to go and what we would do. One day my son started getting a cold that wouldn’t get better. After 2 trips to the ER he was admitted to the hospital with pneumonia. The doctors informed me that he had a collapsed lung and would need surgery to remove this tissue that had grown around his little lung. My son’s dad came to see him a couple of times and basically left me to deal with our son for over a month while he was in the hospital. I was so stressed and sad. He was finally able to come home and they put in a PICC line so I could administer antibiotics at home for him, so we wouldn’t have to stay at the hospital. It was exhausting.

One night I decided to go meet a friend for a drink after my son was finally better. While at the restaurant I met an old friend from high school and we exchanged numbers to catch up. That led to a dinner invite and also it said to bring my son with us. I was so surprised and felt like it would be good to do something and get out of the house. At the end of the night we put him to bed and we ended up having a little too much to drink and we had sex. I guess I did it a little bit out of spite because I was so angry at my husband and all the crap that we had been through, not thinking much about the consequences. Never have sex with someone out of spite. It backfired big time in my case. I realized that I wasn’t into him like that and didn’t really talk to him again for a while. I eventually missed my period and started freaking out. Sure enough I took a pregnancy test and it was positive. I struggled with what I would do. I was a single mom with a baby, how could I do this? My life was in no way able to manage having another baby right then. So I decided to tell him and he said, “Whatever you do is fine with me.” At the time I felt there was no other option but to have an abortion. That’s what I thought would be the right decision considering I was still married and I still had a young son.

A couple of weeks later, I was in the shower and I had almost passed out and felt really faint. So I went to the hospital and told them that I was about a month and a half pregnant. They did lot’s of tests and an ultrasound and eventually informed me that I was pregnant with twins. Along with a lot of smiles and congratulations from the hospital staff. I hated the way I felt. I was torn with guilt and so sad. After I left the hospital I called my mom and I told her, “Surprise! I’m having twins.” She was ecstatic. Me, not so much, but I knew that I had no choice but to keep these 2 precious lives and that God would help me find a way. So I told their dad and he was super excited at first. After a few months he sat me down and said, “I don’t trust that those kids are mine and I’m not signing any paperwork as their father until I have a paternity test.” So that was fine, and then the rest of the pregnancy it only got worse. I didn’t talk to him much but I ended up on bedrest after 6 months because the stress and potty training of a 2 year old was pretty tough.

I ended up going into early labor. My body started having contractions and luckily they gave me medication to stop it. Thank goodness for my mom, she was there to help me. The goal was to keep them baking in there for at least 36 weeks, so I did! Let me tell you, I was so bored being home, but I had so much time to bond with my son before they came. It was wonderful to have that time alone with him. I made it to 37 weeks when I finally asked my mom for some spicy enchiladas. I started having contractions at 1am. We left my son with my friend and my mom and I headed to the hospital. They admitted me and said, “Well you’re having these babies today.” So I waited around until about 8 o’clock in the morning, and I called the girls’ dad; as much as I didn’t want to. Shortly after that the crazy started. He showed up and was pacing all around the room. He was so stressed out. Apparently he called everyone he knew because soon there was a parade of his mom, grandma, sister, aunt, 2 best girlfriends, 2 best guy friends. They all showed up, in my room, while I’m in excruciating pain in my bed. Eventually so did the rest of his family, I was so irritated. After hours of this I begged the nurse to get them all out of there.

I eventually felt so bad and was in so much pain that I figured I better get the epidural. That took 2 more hours. When I finally got it I was more than 7 centimeters dilated and it just wouldn’t work. My labor progressed over a couple more hours and they told me that baby B was breech and that they needed to prep the OR incase there were complications. Luckily, baby A was in position and head down, so she came out with no problems and they assured me that they would probably be able to deliver baby B breech if they had to. Best case was that with the extra room after the first one was born, it would allow her to turn around. After some cussing and major pain they said I was ready to deliver her. I wanted my mom to come in with me but their dad argued with her that he should be there. I was so mad but I said fine. After a few pushes he asked if he should hold my hand or something. I told him, “Do not touch me. This is all your fault.” So he didn’t, and a couple minutes later out popped Miss McKenna. She was 6 pounds and 3 ounces. This baby had dark hair; and I’m blond so I was surprised. Then their dad said, “Well my hair isn’t that dark. I knew that those weren’t my babies.” I was so mad. How dare he say such a thing at that time.

As I’m catching my breath they told me that I had dilated back to 7 centimeters and would have to continue laboring until I got back to 10 centimeters. I was shocked. I said, “What do you mean? How long is that going to take?” They said, “Well it could be half an hour, it could be hours. We don’t know.” So they wheeled me and the baby back into the room to continue laboring. I was miserable. I begged for another epidural and they said they had to order another one and it could take a while. I said, “What?! It’s still in my back just get another dose.” Anyway, the only name that we agreed on at that time was McKenna. I wanted to name baby B Lillian after my grandma and great grandma from Sweden. He felt that this was a great time to argue with me about names and refused to agree to anything that I liked. This should’ve been a warning that I was going to be dealing with this from him for the rest of their lives. My mom finally asked him to stop, and he wouldn’t, so that same sweet nurse asked him to leave the room.

The nurse had left, and about 2 hours later I felt this big “bloop” and that baby dropped her head down low. Man the pressure was unbelievable. I told my mom in a panic to get the nurse because she was coming out. The nurse came in very nonchalantly and said, “Oh that baby isn’t coming.” I said, “Yes she is, I can feel her head!” She checked me and then sprung into action. She flung open the curtain and ran down the hall calling for the doctor. Now I’m glad that the epidural didn’t work because I wouldn’t have felt her coming. My mom looked and said that she could see her head and I was freaking out. Her dad came back in the room at that point but luckily was able to keep quiet. As soon as the doctor walked in the door, the baby came out all on her own. I didn’t push or anything, my body just pushed her out. He caught her just in time. My mom thought she was going to have to deliver him if the doctor didn’t make it. Out came my sweet baby without a name. She weighed 6 pounds and 13 ounces.

I was so relieved but only for a minute. While everyone was looking at the babies, their dad started in again saying, “What are we gonna name her? I want Kayla and I don’t like anything else that you like.” At that point he had beat me down. I couldn’t argue anymore. I said fine, let’s name her Kayla Lillian. I was delirious at that point. He still wasn’t happy and argued that we had to name her after his grandma Jewel. I said, “Fine, she will be Kayla Lillian Jewel.” That seemed to make him pretty happy.

My babies were strong, healthy and perfect. They were so cute and to my surprise looked nothing alike. One was brunette and the other was a blondie like her mama. The next day, a lady came in with the birth certificate paperwork, and since he didn’t want his name as the father until a paternity test was done, I put the last names as mine. Wouldn’t you know it, he just happened to walk through the door and asked what was going on. I told him and he started fuming. He called me a shady bitch and yelled in the hospital room that I was trying to keep him off the birth certificate. I explained that he can change it later and I thought he didn’t want to be on it. He ended up putting his name as the father and gave them his last name. I could probably write a book of what has happened since then with these babies and what we’ve gone through. It’s still going on to this day and they are 13. That’s a story for another day.

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Caller

When my mother was pregnant it wasn’t standard to go to the doctors every single month or have an ultrasound unless the doctor had concerns. My mom only went to the doctors when she found out she was pregnant and when it was time to deliver. When it was time to deliver, my mother delivered at the hospital, but it was a section off the hospital; it was a natural birthing center. So she goes in, delivers my brother, and they’re waiting for the second part of the delivery, and nothing is really happening. They were trying to get things moving along and they realized that there was something still in there. Everything went to chaos. They told her, “Listen, we don’t know if there’s another baby in there or if it’s a tumor.” They were trying to speed things up but unfortunately they didn’t have the necessary tools to do an emergency C-section right there, because it was in the natural section of the hospital. They waited a little bit longer and ended up finding out it was a baby. I was breech, so I was delivered breech, and my mother started hemorrhaging. She wasn’t on any pain pills or anything, so she is superwoman. They were able to control the bleeding. The umbilical cord was wrapped around my neck but thankfully I was ok. I was the surprise of a lifetime. Since then they did make a rule at that hospital that anybody having a baby in the birthing center had to have at least one ultrasound just to confirm there were no twins. My mom, she is superwoman.

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Kristi

My name is Kristi. On May 9 I presented as a breech baby and the doctor yelled, “I see toes!” and immediately sedated my mother. He proceeded to push me back up inside her and turn me around. My mother said we were both badly bruised and the doctor said he could’ve lost us both. I was born during the Lucille Ball show, an original not a rerun, that was 55 years ago. Thank you for the opportunity to share, have a great day.

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Caller

Hi Scott, I wanted to share my childbirth story with you and your listeners. When I became pregnant I didn’t feel that rush of connection with the child growing inside of me. From what I read and heard from so many other people, they reassured me that the moment I saw my baby I would feel the connection that I had longed for. That this bond would be immediate and I would be overwhelmed with love and attachment to this baby I’d grown inside of me for 9 months. During labor the nurses said, “Just wait until that moment, you’re gonna get there. It will all be worth it when you see your baby and you fall in love.” I gave birth and I felt nothing. I saw my daughter and just, it was like seeing a slimy little stranger. They put her on my chest, I nursed her, I held her, I did skin to skin, I did all the things I was told helped promote this amazing bond I was supposed to be experiencing. I did not experience that at all. I faked it with my friends, with my family, even my husband didn’t know how I felt for quite some time. I was ashamed, I was embarrassed and I felt like an absolute monster that I didn’t have this feeling I was supposed to have. I’m a very loving and caring person. For me to not feel that was absolutely heartbreaking. I truly felt there was something wrong with me and that I didn’t have the motherly instinct that we hear so much about. It took some time but I now absolutely adore, love and cherish my daughter; who is almost 2 years old. I think for me, maybe I’m just the type of person that needed to get to know my baby. Once I did, yes I have this unbelievable bond with her. I can’t imagine life without her and I would do anything for her. I do want to dispel this myth that it’s automatic, it’s natural, and it happens right when you have a baby. That is simply not the case. After I shared my experience, I did finally have people that admitted to me that they experienced the exact same thing. I wish this was something people would be a little more open about. It would be a lot more helpful to other mothers and parents who may not feel the initial bond that they are hoping for. Thank you!

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Caller

My story starts March 3, 2016. I had sneezed, and felt wet. Not super wet, but wet. I went to clean up and there was a lot of mucus. It was a big big clump. I ended up calling the nurse and she said to go to the ER. When we got to the ER they immediately did the test for water breakage, and my water had broken. I was only 21 weeks pregnant that Saturday, a couple days later on would be the 22 week mark. They checked me into the room and they had me hooked up to the monitor for the heartbeat and they had IV’s and they would check on me every now and then. But they never really told me, “Hey, you’re going to lose your kid.” They never told me, “This is what’s going on, you’re only 21 weeks pregnant. It’s not looking good, your water shouldn’t have broken. You know, let’s check out your cervix.” I wanted them to do something, but all they said was, “Oh lay here, you know if the baby reaches 23 weeks it would be great, we’ll be able to help a little more.” So I laid in that bed. I laid and laid and laid in that bed. Very naive and stupid. The very next day we had an ultrasound and there was still some fluid in the womb, he still looked fine, he had a strong heartbeat. They said, “Ok just lay in bed, things aren’t great. Your water is leaking but there is enough in there.” That made me think, “Ok, well let me just lay still so the water doesn’t leak out and nothing will happen.

Later on I got up to go to the bathroom and I wiped. When I wiped I felt a bulge, like his head was coming out, cause we found out it was a boy. I screamed. All I could think of was- I screamed like the horror films -my fiance burst into the room and called the nurse. Come to find out it was the sack of which our son was starting to protrude. I thought, “There is no way in hell I’m getting up out of this bed. I’m not getting out of this bed.” Time goes on and I’m laying there and I’m going in a urinal pan. I’m not moving, I’m uncomfortable, I can’t sleep, I can’t move, I don’t want to move. Third day, March 5, they were telling me, you have to go home. Your insurance doesn’t cover another day, you gotta go home. I said, “Nope. Give me all the bills. I’m not going home. Not happening. I will stay another week and if this has to happen in 23 weeks you guys can do something.” They said, “Yeah that’s true but you’ve got to go home.” So my fiance and mom were like, “Ok. So she’s going to get in the car and give birth very soon here.” They said, “Well yeah it’s a possibility.” We said, “Well why should we go home?!”

Not too long after that, however, I didn’t know they were labor pains, but they were labor pains. They hurt, they hurt, hurt, hurt. All of the sudden all I could say was, “He’s coming.” He literally slid out of me onto the bed. I just laid there and cried and cried and cried. You feel like a failure. You feel like you just killed your kid. You feel like you let down everybody. My fiance was bawling his eyes out. “Macho men don’t cry”, well he just lost it, he just lost his son. Ethan, we named him Ethan. He ended up living for 98 minutes in my arms. They would monitor his heart with a little stethoscope. We all took turns holding him. His dad and his grandma and I. Then he passed away. He was crying. He was very little, it was very soft, but he was moving. He was perfect, 10 fingers, 10 toes, black hair, dark eyebrows. He was 11 ounces, 12 inches long.

My life went out the window. A piece of my heart left and will never return. Just throwing it out there. They made us, before we had to leave, find a cremation service for him or a funeral home. Most places do not take babies of that size. We finally found one, we were going to have him cremated. Before we ended up leaving, we had him in the hospital in the room with us for 10 hours, because I couldn’t let him go. His dad had to pry him out of my arms after 10 hours because he didn’t want to remember his son, not in the way he was born. When a body is deceased it turns, and he didn’t want us to remember him that way. So he had to pry him out of my arms. We ended up bringing him down the hallway and there were a whole bunch of babies crying and I heard women screaming in labor and all I could think was, “I am a failure, I suck, my kid’s dead. I’m never gonna get to see him again.” It was the worst. We ended up getting to see him one last time before he was cremated. That was very very hard. We let him go. He’s cremated, he’s in a very small urn in the bedroom, and he’s in a heart around my neck. 5 years later, I’m alright. I’ll get triggers, certain songs or seeing kids that would be 5 years old now. I’m better than lots of people think I would be.

I wanted to take some time and talk about how October is pregnancy and infant loss awareness month. Just please everyone, if you could do one favor that would help a lot of mom’s and dad’s out who have lost a child, do a little research on what to say and what not to say. I’ve been through so many people saying certain things. They’re well meaning, but when you’ve lost your whole future, you’ve lost hope, you’ve lost memories that you’ll never be able to hold your son in your arms; there are just some things that shouldn’t be said. Everyone wanted that pregnancy, it’s not, “Oh you can try again.” Things like that are things you don’t say. I’m going to stop here. Thank you so much. Thank you.

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Lindsey

Hi Scott my name is Lindsey. I’m adopted and I’ve met my non-adoptive parents. I’ve also given up a daughter for adoption and met her as well, and have a relationship with her. I have had an ectopic pregnancy resulting in emergency surgery. I have had 2 healthy children, my daughter who’s 11 and my son who is 6. I wanted to focus on my son and his story for this message.

I found out I was pregnant pretty early on in my relationship with my son’s father; about a month into it. We had gone to several doctors appointments and he was growing faster than he should’ve. It turned out that the placenta had separated from the wall of my uterus. This causes polyhydramnios which is the access of amniotic fluid in the uterus. It was akin to him swimming in an Olympic sized swimming pool, whereas babies are usually in a little bathtub of amniotic fluid. As we were going through it kept getting larger and larger. I ended up being hooked up to heart monitors every other day for both him and myself. It eventually caused kidney failure around the 7 month mark. I was in the hospital for about a week for that. After we got out of the hospital we started having ultrasounds every single week, along with coming in every other day for the heart monitors. Then we found out that I had preeclampsia. A month before his due date I went in just like any other day. They took my blood pressure and it turned out my preeclampsia had turned into eclampsia and they told me to notify his father and anybody else I needed because I was going to be taken to have my son that day.

They induced labor and gave me the epidural and everything. As we were going on I kept pushing and pushing and he would not emerge. We found out later that we had a naturalist doctor so she was very intent on me giving birth naturally. As we found out later that would not be feasible. Matt had made it from work and my dad had come down from work, and they both stayed awake all night. This doctor kept making me attempt to give birth and he would just not come out. Everyone was staying up for 24 hours. Finally the other doctor came in and took one look at me. I was pale and had been asking the other doctor if I could have a C-section all ready and just get him out. She looked at my vitals and was like, you need to go have an emergency C-section now. Now I was headed to the OR and there were, what felt like, 50 million doctors around me and they had told my husband and myself, because of the condition I was in I might pass out when I was giving birth. As they were doing the C-section I stayed awake the whole time. When they actually had him out I didn’t hear anything and I said, “Why is there no crying? Why don’t I hear anything?” I remember the doctor standing over me saying, “Birth isn’t like it is on TV. You don’t always hear anything.” I knew immediately, even though he said that, that something was wrong with my son. That’s not normal. I’ve given birth 2 times before. I have quite a history here and I knew that wasn’t right.

Then we heard “Code Blue ” everywhere and found out that he had been born not breathing and with a very faint heartbeat and he was blue. They had to take several minutes of life saving measures for him. Finally they got him stabilized after about a minute or minute and a half and sent him down to the NICU. I got sent back to my room where they did testing and found out I was in liver and kidney failure. I had to have some emergency medications and procedures done to save my life as well. I was in the hospital for about a week and a half. My son did come home with me but we had to have daily doctors appointments after that. He still needed to be put under a bilirubin light and have some additional breathing measures done. His breathing was very shallow.

Thank you for listening to my stories.

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Megan

Hi my name is Megan. I am a single mom. I did my whole pregnancy alone. I went into labor with him slowly. It progressed slowly over a few days but I just wasn’t dilating enough, even on the medication that’s supposed to progress labor. After the second day of my water leaking I was only about 6.5 centimeters and the doctor was worried about infection for my son. So they rushed me along, they were so quick that my mom who was with me didn’t even have time to come with me. I’d been telling them that the epidural, or spinal, wasn’t working. After getting in the operating room they did a test to see if I could feel anything. I said, “Yes I do and it hurts.” They said, “No you don’t feel pain, you just feel pressure.” They proceeded to cut. It was unbelievable agony. Of course I cried out, and very quickly I was put under anesthesia. I didn’t even know that I had actually, I thought I dozed off, because I had been awake for 3 days. When I woke up he was already gone and they were putting me back together again. I missed that first look at him because they didn’t believe me.

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Nikki

Hi this is Nikki and this is my birth story. At the end of my pregnancy I woke up soaked. I went into the hospital as I thought my water broke. I was told no and was sent home. A few days later I went into an ultrasound and was told I needed to go right to the hospital because my fluids were low. I got to the hospital in the late afternoon and was allowed to eat right after they started my induction. I was fine all night and the next morning and thought, “Oh I’ve got this.” Then the contractions started full force. When you are induced, contractions aren’t like normal, so they were coming right on top of one another; primarily in my back. I really had wanted to have a natural birth so I agonized with the contractions for quite a while. I stood in the shower for ages because that gave me some relief. I finally came out and the nurses tried to help me find a position that would help with the pain, but nothing helped. I felt like my back was being broken over and over again. So I got an epidural and my blood pressure plummeted. A few hours later the epidural wore off again because I was still in labor with no end in sight. Got a second epidural and again, blood pressure plummeted, again it ran out. This time they gave me a smaller dose and I was fine. Still no baby. I was super uncomfortable, had sciatic pain despite the fact I should be numb, had horrible heartburn, and ended up throwing up everywhere. Then the second night came and my water finally broke, but still nowhere near dilated enough.

Finally at about 3pm on Sunday, Mother’s day, I was finally ready. I pushed for 3 hours. My daughter was not happy about being evicted and shoved her shoulder in, in protest. She decided to poop midway. They finally called the doctor in and got my little girl out, only for her to be whisked away for care as she was gray. I had a lot of tearing as well, so I did not get to do skin to skin and my husband did not get to cut the cord. Thankfully my daughter bounced right back and I got to hold her about an hour or so later. She looked right up at me and I swear she smiled. I decided the baby making machine was closed for business.

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Rebecca

Hi my name is Rebecca. My labor and delivery story is a little bit funny, but starts off a little sad. When I was in school to become a registered nurse, I had an acute illness that almost resulted in death. After that illness I thought that I didn’t want to return to school, because things change a lot when you’re on the other side of that bed seeing things as a patient. One of my professors talked me into coming back and I credit her for the fact that I graduated. When that professor is not teaching she is the head of the labor and delivery unit at our local hospital. A year after graduation when I was going to have my first child I immediately wanted her.

The second that the pain started I was in denial, thinking, “No this wasn’t labor. It was a little early. I’m just having Braxton-Hicks contractions.” Eventually my husband talked me into going to the hospital as he was in quite a panic. He was not happy that I made him wait in the house so I could wash my hair and shave my legs and repack my bag. When we finally got in the car to go, we had to take the dog downtown to drop her off at a friend’s house. Since it was the middle of the night all the traffic lights seemed to be stopped, so my husband ended up running traffic lights and he ran through some train tracks when he couldn’t see the train coming. He said that everytime he stopped I had another contraction and it freaked him out so bad he felt the need to drive through. We got to the hospital and I waddled inside and all I could get out between contractions was asking the unit clerk where my professor was. I just knew that she had to be there, luckily she was. I was still in denial that I was in labor. When I finally got to a room I ended up having the baby within 3 hours of arriving at the hospital, which is not actually very healthy. If you are in active labor for less than 4 hours it’s considered precipitous and it’s not the healthiest thing for mother or child. Everything ended up being ok. My doctor was busy with someone else in another room and all I wanted was for my professor to stay there and deliver my baby (laughter). She almost got to, but at the very last second the doctor ran in the room. My professor handled everything from the time I got there to when the baby was out. I was absolutely delighted that she was the one that got to do everything because I do credit her for the fact that I became a registered nurse. Now I’m in school to become a doctor of nursing so I credit her with that as well. I’m going to be a nurse practitioner just like her and that makes me really happy.

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Jen

Hi Scott, my name is Jen and I’m calling to tell you my story. After 9 months of carrying my firstborn and delivering him, on my very first night home from the hospital I laid down in my bed next to him and I immediately sat up as fast as lighting as I realized for the first time that I finally know another person who shares my DNA. I cried hysterically. I’m an adoptee whose records were sealed until 2019. This was 26 years ago and I now have 3 children. I did an ancestry test and finally had my biggest wish fulfilled, or so I thought. I found my biological family including a full sister, which was where the awful insanity began. Some secrets are meant to remain secrets. Also, when I had my second child, I ended up with a pelvic thrombosis blood clot, headed for my lungs; which could have given me a massive heart attack at 26 years old. If I had not been rushed into the hospital emergency room I may have had a massive heart attack. Keep in mind that I had no health history info at the time, so after my doctor asked me if there were heart attacks or clotting in my family, for all I knew maybe my bio mom died when she had me from the same condition. As that was back in 1997. I still had no medical history or information on who my biological family was. I thought that was kind of what you were looking for in an interesting birth story, thank you for letting me share.

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Hey, that was fun! Remember to check out Sylvia’s story on the website page for this episode.

And now, before we end this one, I’d like to ask for some feedback from you. Yeah, I’m talking to you – because you’re the listener, and you are the most important part of this whole thing.

As you probably know, each regular episode of What Was That Like ends with a segment called Listener Stories. This episode will even have one, even though the whole show was listener stories. I like to end each episode with one of these. This is just a short story, something that takes maybe 3 minutes, 4 minutes, 5 minutes to tell. And it’s about something unusual that happened to you – the listener.

Just stop and think right now – what’s the weirdest thing that has ever happened to you? Or, what’s the most surprised you’ve ever been? Or what was the time when something happened, and you just sat there in shock for a few minutes? Or how about this – what’s the story about something unusual that made you really, really happy? Hey, maybe you even have a childbirth story and we didn’t get to include it in this bonus episode and now you’re inspired to tell it – that’s perfect.

There are a couple of ways you can get your listener’s story to me. One way is to just call my Podcast Voicemail line. That number is 727-386-9468. It’s available anytime of the day or night, and it is ALWAYS voicemail. That line never gets answered. But when you call that number, you have a 3 minute voice mail recording that you can do.

Now what if you get part way through and you get confused or you mess up your words or something? No big deal! Just hang up, and call back and try it again. You can do that as many times as you want, until you get one that you’re happy with. So that’s one way.

But what if you’re outside the US and can’t call a US phone number? Or what if your story is one that takes longer than 3 minutes to tell? That’s great! If that’s the case, you can just record the audio on your phone. The app that I use for this sometimes is called Hi-Q. That’s just H I, then a dash, and the letter Q. It’s a free app that I use on my Android phone. I think iPhones already have an app like that. So you can just record the audio, and then email that audio file to me at Scott@WhatWasThatLike.com.

So I am really looking forward to hearing YOUR story, and hopefully you’ll hear it too, on an upcoming episode in the Listener Story segment at the end of the show.

And now, we’ll close with this week’s Listener Story. You’ll never guess what it’s about. Next regular episode is coming up in one week, so I’ll see you back here real soon.

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Caller

I had a very unique childbirth experience with my second. I was in my first semester of nursing school. I was going to be due a month after the end of the semester which is in the summer. So I was going to have a little bit of time with my baby before I went back to school. I had one teacher in particular, she was teaching “The Fundamentals of Nursing” , a very beginner core course. She specialized in geriatrics. She would joke with me all the time, “You’re not contracting are you? Because if you are, I’m calling an ambulance because I don’t do babies.” So there were a couple times throughout the semester that me and some of my friends pranked her and made her think I was going into labor just to make her nervous. It kind of became this joke.

Well, I was walking into my last final of the semester, which just happened to be her class. As we’re getting ready to go in, my water broke. I just kind of stopped and I turned to my sister-in-law, who was also taking the class with me and said, “My water just broke.” She looked at me and later she said that she knew I wasn’t joking because she could see every single freckle on my face. I was so pale because I was scared. This was about a month before my due date. Some of the girls ran into the teacher’s offices to get my instructor and they were saying, “Her water broke!” She took a little while to come to me because she said, “You guys. I’m not doing this” thinking that it was a prank again. They finally convinced her to come out. So she came out and she kind of looked at me. I was wearing a dress, so she slightly lifted it up to make sure there wasn’t a big bag of saline in there or something that I was using to trick her. Once she realized that yes I was in deep and was serious, she said to my sister-in-law, “Go ahead and take her to the hospital. I’ll figure out another time for you guys to take your finals.” So we went to the hospital and were kind of laughing and joking about it. I was told later that I did my fellow classmates a huge disservice because now they couldn’t think about the answers on their tests. They were so surprised and couldn’t stop thinking about what had just happened.

Anyway, I got to the hospital, and I had planned on not getting an epidural. Not because I disagree with them but simply I just wanted to see if I could do it. I labored for about 24 hours and was not progressing. I was up and walking around and I passed this really large blood clot. Even though I had not taken OB in nursing school yet, I thought, “I don’t think that’s supposed to happen.” We called my nurse in, she came in and checked and discovered that my baby’s cord was coming before the baby. It’s called a prolapsed umbilical cord. It is a medical emergency. It is very very dangerous because each time you have a contraction it cuts off the baby’s blood supply. The doctor came in and he was talking to the nurses about what was going on. I said, “What does this mean?” He said, “It means you have to have an emergency C-section right now.” They started getting me prepped to go into the OR, my husband was starting to get on a suit that you have to wear to go into the OR. The doctor said, after looking at the baby’s vital signs, “No, I’m sorry you can’t come back. This is dangerous, we have to take her right now.” So they wouldn’t let my husband come back with me. I remember them rushing me into the operating room. I had worked in an operating room for several years and when I saw all those people and how fast they were setting up I thought, “Oh. Something bad is happening. This is very serious.” They put me under general anesthesia since I didn’t have an epidural in place, so I wasn’t even awake for the C-section. I was terrified, I went to sleep with tears rolling down my cheeks because I was sure I was not going to survive.

When I woke up and asked my nurse if my baby was ok she said, “Yes she is but they have to take her to a different hospital.” The hospital I was at didn’t have a NICU. I was told that she had lost about 75 percent of her blood volume because along with the prolapsed cord, I also had what’s called an abruptio placenta,where the placenta begins to tear away from the wall. The doctor said the placenta did not look healthy and looked like it had been abrupted from days to weeks. My baby was taken to another hospital and I started to recover from my C-section. The next day they allowed my husband to drive me over to the hospital even though I was still a patient, and let me see my baby. She ended up being in the NICU for 11 days. She had to have a blood transfusion along with some antibiotics. She was on oxygen for 3 months after she came home and then again for a month when she was 8 months old, after contracting RSV and bacterial pneumonia. She is 9 years old now and she is as healthy as can be and we are so grateful to have her in our family. It’s definitely a memorable experience, I will never forget it.

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