So while writing yesterday's entry and reading the newspaper clipping I decided to see if I could locate the girl that I rescued. Stacey was a part of my life while I worked at the pool just as she had been before the incident. We were all friendly with the parents and kids on the swim team and we hung out with them and went to events with each other. Sadly, the child's mother died. She contracted AIDS through a blood transfusion and didn't know it until it was too late. We were all there for her and her husband as she fought the disease, but she didn't win. We all attended her funeral. Before she died she thanked me again and reminded me that saving a life makes you a guardian angel over the person you saved. I took that responsibility to heart. The children's father would not allow the stepfather to have custody of the kids so they went to live with their aunt who continued, along with grandpa, to bring Stacey to swim practice.
Eventually the drive to practice was too hard and the kids transferred to another pool closer to home. I followed her swimming career in the paper and I kept in touch with the stepfather who would give me updates on Stacey, but eventually he too lost contact as she and her brother grew up. She and her grandfather were always at the back of my mind any time I passed by the pool or thought of the relationship between grandchildren and grandparents or passed by the street where she had once lived. I always wondered what had become of her and since this trip down memory lane brought her to the forefront of my brain I set about to find her.
She was nine when the incident happened and so I figured she would be on Facebook, and I started there. I typed in her birth name and immediately someone else's page came up mentioning Stacey in a tribute BECAUSE SHE WAS DEAD. What the hell? What kind of ending to a story is that? I did some more research online and read her obituary and found she died in 2011. I don't know how. I found her aunt on Facebook and through her page found Stacey's husband's page. He had pictures, and I got to scroll through them looking at the adult I never got to meet. In many of them she is in water, at the beach, or on boats. I like to think I helped give her her love of the water. She looks very happy in the pictures and so I'm taking that with me instead of anything else. I'm sorry that her young life was cut short, but I'm also glad that I knew her.
As for the junior coach who was with me that day...he became a lifeguard and worked with me for several summers. We had a friendship born from that day and experience. He finished college and became a pediatrician, is married with children of his own.
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