A Modern Day Super Hero: The Journey of James Kim
By Miguel Guanipa (01/06/07)
I would never doubt that while in the tender embrace of his 4 year old daughter, James Kim may have listened as she softly uttered in the most disarmingly transparent and innocent way that he was the best Dad ever. And we owe a debt of gratitude to people like Kim who actually fit that profile.
The story of this 35-year-old San Francisco website editor’s emergence as a true family hero began when Kim and his family went to visit a relative for thanksgiving last year.
On the way back the Kims missed a turn in the middle of a fierce winter storm and their car got stuck in a snow bank. After James was able to pull the car out they continued to travel for about 15 more miles in a narrow road used mostly by loggers, hoping to get their moorings. To better see where he was driving, Kim kept his door open in the midst of the storm. He tried several times unsuccessfully to reach someone in his cell phone, but they had ventured so deep into the Mountains of Oregon that he could not get any reception. Eventually the car lost traction and the Kims were left stranded in a fork on the road which they were traveling.
Kim, his wife Kati, their infant daughter Sabine and their 4-year-old daughter Penelope, stayed in their car for three days. Kati used the baby food and bottled water they had stored for the trip to feed the children and James occasionally turned the engine on to keep everyone warm. When the food and water ran out they melted snow for drinking and Kati nursed the children for nourishment. At one point they heard a helicopter in the distance but the dense fog prevented them from seeing where the noise was coming from. Kim burned a tire with the hope that they would be seen and rescued, but it was to no avail.
After a week had passed and the food ran out, Kim built a large fire for his family, dressed himself in several layers of clothing, and left on foot to seek help. He carried a map, and on it he tracked a creek that would take him to a nearby town. The only problem was that he was following a different creek than the one he saw on the map.
Kim spent four days on foot, sometimes crawling through the intractable terrain of the Oregon Mountains. He covered what ended up to be a circuitous route of about 16 miles of impenetrable brush, jagged rocks and unforgiving weather conditions, until he finally succumbed to the elements and fell down a steep canyon. He was found floating on his back in a shallow edge of a creek, about a mile away from where his family had been rescued, nestled between the mossy river rocks where he had slipped. No one knows if Kim had become disoriented or was actually returning to his stranded family who, unbeknownst to him, had been rescued only two days after he started his arduous journey.
The rescuers determined the cause of death as exposure and hypothermia. Those who had recovered Kim’s body were astounded at Kim’s ability to have even survived such an ordeal for as long as he did.
Some of the rescuers who had been apprised of Kim’s undertaking concluded that his quest had been nothing less than extraordinary. In fact they reckoned that the conditions under which Kim had survived for as long as he did would take nothing short of super human effort. Upon hearing about his death a close friend of Kim even commented that Kim was “a real superhero."
James Kim has resurrected the notion that everyday heroes are made of nothing more than the willingness to do the right thing at the right time. For Kim, there was no question in his mind that his choice was the only option if his family was to survive, and although the Kim family may feel that they have lost a father - a very loving one at that - the world has gained a hero; one that reminds us of the meaning of true love - a love that is greater than life, and makes ordinary people sacrifice themselves for the sake of their loved ones.
Most of us hope that at the end of our lives, someone may say that ours was a life marked by courage and devotion to the things that matter most. Those qualities were embodied in the person of James Kim; a real super-hero indeed.
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