CHRISTMAS SURPRISE

In 2008, I was living with HB and SIL in a house in Manassas, VA on a major roadway with a lot of traffic, although it was only a two-lane road. It was Christmas but it was unseasonably warm that year. HB and SIL were watching TV and, of course, I was sitting at my computer, which was directly in front of a window.

All of a sudden, I heard a loud crash and looked up to see that an SUV had crashed into a tree across the street. It hit the tree and bounced back; I saw the driver’s door open and a man got out, with an obvious leg injury – he fell up against the SUV and kind of rolled down the side of it towards the front of the vehicle.

By the time I got up and went to the door, I could no longer see him. Behind the house across the street was a large wooded area – there was a driveway running down the side of the house towards the back. We called 911 to report it and then we all trooped outside to look; a woman had pulled over into our driveway so we chatted with her while we waited.

Within 5 or 10 minutes, the cops arrived and began searching for the driver, who was nowhere to be found. They told us the SUV had just been stolen from someone down the street. I told them that he was obviously injured but that was all I knew. They searched and searched and searched, and finally determined that he must have gone down the driveway into the woods. So they sent a car around to the other side of the woods to search from that side. They even had a helicopter up looking for him.

After about 45 minutes, another cop car pulled up with a canine unit. They brought the dog out and had him jump into the SUV to get the man’s scent. He jumped back down and went directly to the tree at the front of the SUV!

Turns out, the guy had buried himself in the leaves and was there the whole time!!!! They had never even looked there!!! We also found out he was an illegal – sometimes I swore half of Manassas was made up of illegals, there were so many, including MS-13!

HB and SIL had already made their decision by then to move to Nebraska. She was pregnant with Piper and wouldn’t be able to work and SIL had been laid off from his job. I had not yet decided to join them but, in March of 2009, I also lost my job as General Manager at ResoleAmerica. I decided God was telling me it was time to go home!!!!