Saturday, December 09, 2006

James Kim, Kati Kim -- Legendary heroes


Perhaps you have felt as badly as I have about the Kim Family and the death of James Kim. I started crying when his body was found and I’ve cried and cried off-and-on for the past 24+ hours. I haven’t cried about anything in years. For some reason this tragic story resonates so with me. Not only the tragedy of James' death, but the incredible resourcefulness of Kati to have had the presence of mind to breast-feed both of the girls, the idea to burn the tires, using the umbrella to signal to rescuers, so many things.

Their family’s story will become a legend for all time. The sweetness of their smiles, the brightness in their eyes – James’, Kati’s, and the children’s – so much life and love.

Part of what strikes me is James’ resemblance to Bruce Lee. I loved Bruce Lee and have been fascinated by his life for so long.

Something about James also reminded me of John Lennon (the shots with the sunglasses with him and Kati). And then there is the incredible irony too that their one store in San Francisco, called “Doe” has a forest theme, and then for them to become entrapped in the forest with both the most tragic outcome and the most joyous outcome concurrently. My heart just breaks and aches for all of them.

An opera must be written about the love story, the tragedy, the will to survive, the crushing loss, the miraculous survival…and now the even more searing pain on learning that the family's entrapment came about as a consequence of someone's vandalism, cutting a lock and opening a gate to the closed-off logging road they had the misadventure of traveling down.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

The latest report now is that James had actually covered more than 16 miles on foot in his desperate attempt to get help for his family...

Anonymous said...

Now they're reporting he traveled over 16 miles!!!

Anonymous said...

It only seems to get worse. Today details of the police report surrounding this case have been revealed indicating that a cell phone ping had given some IT guys a good fix on the location of James and Kati Kim and their family on Bear Creek Road, but the tip and map provided went unheeded for two additional days. The other thing was that the hotel they had stayed at in Portland refused to provided records indicating the time they checked out to the OSP. That also contributed to time lost and a less effective search to rescue the family.