Mario Gonzales owns a home improvement company and with Christmas approaching, business had dropped off slightly. People were not improving their homes unless they absolutely had to do it. Simone and Alfred Arcuri had no choice---their roof was leaking and the winter in Staten Island, New York, could be intense. Mario did the job for them, and then something moved him to give them an early Christmas gift. "They were a nice couple," he recalls, "warm and kind. There was just something about them..." So he charged them half of what the job actually cost. The Arcuris were astonished and grateful; in fact, the two men kept in touch and eventually became friends.
One day Mario's wife Carol and her mother decided to take Carol's two-year-old daughter Kayla, and run errands. Kayla was extremely active, but she usually behaved well in her car seat. Besides, Carol's mother would be sitting in the back right next to the toddler. Kayla was well behaved, and the women ticked off their to-do list. At one point, they left one mall and drove to another busy shopping center a few blocks away. Carol got into the left-hand turn lane, and waited for the three lanes of traffic to pass her so she could turn into the parking lot. As she began to turn, her mother suddenly screamed. "Carol! Stop the car! Stop the car!" Instinctively Carol looked out her rear view mirror, and her heart seemed to stop. The back rear passenger door was open, and Kayla was rolling across the street. She had somehow unlatched the belt of her car seat, and unlocked the back door of the car. Rolling several times, she came to a stop in the middle of the busy highway. Screaming, she got up in a daze. Carol was screaming too. Cars whizzed by her as she tried to run to her daughter. It was a matter of seconds, she felt, before drivers would hit one or both of them. Suddenly Carol saw the door of the car behind her open. A woman quickly got out. Kayla was closer to her---but surely she wasn't going to risk her own life... But the woman did just that. As Carol watched in horror, the stranger approached Kayla, stooped down, and held out her arms. Still crying, Kayla toddled towards her across a line of traffic. Quickly the woman snatched the toddler, dashed to Carol, and placed Kayla in her arms. Cars continued to honk and both women ran to their cars and merged into traffic. "She was like an angel," Carol recalls. "All of a sudden she was there, and then she was gone." Carol took her daughter to a nearby hospital, where Kayla was found to have skinned knees and a severe road burn on her cheek---injuries that would heal within a short time. Carol's gratitude was so intense that she wept every time she tried to explain what had happened. The empty back seat, the screams, the sight of her daughter rolling across the pavement kept her up for several nights. "I felt so guilty, of course. How could I have let such a thing happen? And I longed to meet the woman who had rescued Kayla," she says. "I wanted to try to tell her how much it meant to us all." But in the chaos, all she could remember was that the woman had blonde hair and drove a white four-door car. Carol decided to call the police, and later even alerted the local newspaper. For awhile, it looked as if nothing would happen. And then a few days later, she received a phone call. It was her rescuer! Carol wasted no time in inviting the woman over, and when she arrived, little Kayla met her with an armload of roses. As it turned out, the woman was a nurse who used to work in the hospital's neo-natal unit, and was now the school nurse at a Lutheran school. She had been on her lunch break when she'd seen what happened in the car in front of her. "Anyone would have done it," she protested when Carol tried to thank her. "It was just a motherly instinct." But the most significant part of the story had not yet played out. For eventually, when Carol remembered to ask the woman's name that afternoon, it sounded familiar. Shocked, both women realized that the rescuer was Simone Arcuri, the woman who Carol's husband had charged half price for his roofing job several months earlier. Although the men saw each other occasionally, their wives had never met. When Mario realized the coincidence, he nearly broke down too. Simone's husband wasn't at all surprised at his wife's heroism. "She's been an angel for our 27 years of marriage," he pointed out. "That's just who she is." Was the gift of Kayla's safety connected to the Christmas gift of a new roof? We'll probably never know. But what goes around does comes around. In this coming year, let's sow kindness, not only to reap kindness for ourselves, but to make the world a better place. Won't the angels be happy about that? <~><~><~><~><~><~><~><~><~><~><~><~><~><~><~> Copyright 2009 by Joan Wester Anderson. Published by Joan Wester Anderson, P.O. Box 127, Prospect Heights, IL 60070. For more stories of God's love, check the blog at http://www.joanwanderson.com. <*}}}>< <http://www.halfthekingdom.org/please%20donate.html>Donations are needed and very much appreciated <*}}}>< <*}}}>< <http://www.holypostage.com/>Holy Postage <*}}}>< <*}}}><<http://www.halfthekingdom.org/>Half the <http://www.halfthekingdom.org/>Kingdom!<*}}}>< Lord, may everything we do begin with Your inspiration and continue with Your help, so that all our prayers and works may begin in You and by You be happily ended. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Please note that I do not send or open attachments sent to this list. You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Catholics on Fire" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/Catholics-on-Fire May the blessing of Jesus and our Blessed Mother be with you -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
