HOST: StoryCorps conversations aren’t scripted, and even the participants can be surprised by what comes up when they get behind the mic.
That’s what happened to Karina Borgia-Lacroix brought her 10-year-old son, Levi, to the mobile booth in Fort Myers, Florida… where he asked her this.
Karina Borgia-Lacroix (KBL) and Levi Lacroix (LL)
LL: What is your favorite memory of me?
KBL: There’s one memory—
LL: Yeah?
KBL: That makes me sad, but it is the memory that always comes up when I think about you and your kindness.
LL: Ok.
KBL: You remember when we were in that car accident?
LL: Yeah.
KBL: It started raining so hard that I couldn’t see anything and there was a guy—I was heading west, and he was going east and … same thing happened to him. He couldn’t see and he loses control of his truck, and then he’s head-on to us when he finally sees us.
He, um, crushed my car and the car then went into the retention pond. He started swimming towards the car …
LL: I remember.
KBL: You remember?
LL: Our car had landed in the water. And then he goes to swim in and he gets me out.
KBL: Yeah. Do you remember when we finally made it to the hospital?
LL: Yeah.
LL: I had an orange monkey with me.
KBL: You did. They gave you an orange monkey.
LL: Mm hmm.
KBL: I don’t know if you remember this because you were just, what, two years old, almost three … You were sitting on my lap. I was in the hospital—
LL: I remember that, and you were crying, and you thought that I was bleeding.
KBL: Mm hmm.
LL: But I wasn’t. That was …
KBL: My blood.
LL: Yeah.
KBL: And you grabbed a tissue and you started cleaning off my face, and my neck, and my chest.
LL: Yeah.
KBL: That was one of those memories that will always be here for me.
You know what was really tough out of that accident was, um, realizing that I had very little control over some of those things. You know?
It didn’t matter how much I wanted to protect you, I couldn’t. Do you understand what I’m saying?
LL: Yeah. You really care about me and you really try and protect me and make sure that I’m safe at all times.
KBL: Yeah, it also let me know that there are good people out there. If it wasn’t for the guy that hit us, we wouldn’t be here today. Even the people that hurt us, they can still save us after they’ve hurt us.
That’s a big lesson out of that.
Karina Borgia-Lacroix and Levi Lacroix at JetBlue Park at Fenway South during spring training in Fort Myers, FL, in March of 2016. Courtesy of Karina Borgia-Lacroix.