--A little girl in an orange life vest, alone in the ocean for over twenty hours, a capsized boat near by; her mother and father, sister, aunt and uncle...all drowned. She is alone except for two... guardian angels.
“I’m Desiree”.
The young woman only had to say her name. Suddenly the two grown men seated across from her burst into tears, trying to hide their emotions behind the brims of their ball caps. What could make grown men; sea captains in fact, react so emotionally?
This is one of those stories that tug at your heartstrings in a good way. A Phil Hartman “On the Road” story for CBS (I will leave the link below so you can actually see this story--and trust me...it is worth seeing.
It actually begins 35 years earlier. Mark Pizzano and Paul Strasser (two charter boat captains), sailing their boat back from Catalina Island off the California coast came across a boat half submerged in the water and an orange life vest bobbing in the waves a few yards away.
Mark jumped in and pulled little nine year old Desiree’ Rodriguez out of the water. She had been in the water for over twenty hours and by rights should never have survived. Her mother, father, sister, aunt and uncle had all perished.
Unconscious for most of the journey back, the men would only learn that her name was Desiree'. They watched the little girl being loaded into the ambulance, and as it drove away, it would be the last time they would ever see her. Yet, for over 35 years, they had wondered about Desiree', imagining what she went through that terrible night, losing her entire family; they wondered if she even survived and if she did, what had happened to her.
Over the years, each time they passed the place where they had found her, something tugged at their hearts. They had only known her for few short hours and yet, as strange as it would seem, they had come to love the little girl they had pulled from the sea. Love, it seems, is rarely measured in minutes, or hours, or even years.
Now that might have been the end of the story except for a miracle of fate, or maybe even destiny, about to unfold. A local pod caster by the name of Phi Freedman invited the men on his show. They assumed to talk about their charter business. When they got to Phil's studio, they saw a young woman sitting quietly beside him and as far as they knew she was just part of Phil’s production crew.
When the broadcast went live, Phil introduced the two men and then said, “And we have a special guest with us today and I’m going to let her introduce herself”.
The young woman, voice quivering said, “I’m Desiree’.
The two men exploded in tears. “Oh my god...”. They rushed to hug little Desiree’ now a young woman in her forties. As the men held the little girl they had come to love, those many years, it was as if they had known her, her entire life, and in a sense, they had. From that moment on, Desiree’ would become part of their family.
A year later, they returned to where they first pulled Desiree’ from the water; the two captains, the aunt that had raised her, and the rest of her family, aboard the captain's charter boat. They returned to the place where they had pulled her from the sea and where her family had perished. She had come full circle. It would be a day of bitter sweet memories. As she gently laid flowers on the water, she said a final good bye to the family she had lost, and a prayer of thanks, for the new family she had found.
Sometimes guardian angels don’t have wings, or wear robes or have halos. Sometimes they walk among us and we don’t even know it. And sometimes, just sometimes...they look like fishing boat captains--and maybe that’s the way it should be.
If you would like to see Steve Hartman’s video it can be found at:
https://www.cbsnews.com/video/woman-reunited-with-fishermen-35-years-after-they-rescued-her/
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