Cold Case Files - I SURVIVED: I Need Them to Find DNA Underneath My Fingernails

Episode Date: May 10, 2025

Stephanie’s ex husband attacks her in her home where he shoots her in the head three times. Craig and Crystal are in the library of Columbine High school when two shooters commit mass murder. Rich and Laura are with their five children on a hike in the Sequoia National Forest when they are attacked by a swarm of bees.This Episode is sponsored by BetterHelpBetterHelp: Visit BetterHelp.com/SURVIVED to get 10% off your first month!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hi, iSurvive listeners. I'm Marisa Pinson. And if you're enjoying this show, I just want to remind you that episodes of iSurvived, as well as the A&E Classic podcast, Cold Case Files, City Confidential, and American Justice, are all available ad free on the new A&E Crime and Investigation channel on Apple Podcasts and Apple Plus

for just $4.99 a month or $39.99 a year. And now onto the show. This episode contains subject matter that may be disturbing to some listeners. Listener discretion is advised. When he laid me down, he laid me right in the middle of the grass and he shot two more times at my head. Real people. I just kept thinking that she can't die. She can't die. The mother of my children, she can't die. Who faced death.

They came underneath a table where someone was and said peek-a-boo and then shot him. And lived to tell how. I think to myself, I need DNA evidence. I need DNA, I'm gonna die. I need them to find DNA underneath my fingernails. This is I Surv DNA. I'm gonna die. I need them to find DNA underneath my fingernails. This is I Survived. It's May 2006 in Puyallup, Washington.

Stephanie has been dating her boyfriend, an ex-Marine, for two and a half years. The couple, who each have children of their own, are about to get married. Our relationship was off and on. I had broken up with him a few times and it just never felt right. Each time I just took him back. It was either he was upset or distraught or he was outside my house and it was just really bad situations and so I'd always go back. A month before we got married, Cesar and I were making plans and he came and put his

hand up to my neck and put a gun to my head. He said, you're going to marry me whether you want to or not. I think at that point I just figured that I made him do that because I was so wishy washy. I kept breaking up and then taking him back and breaking him up and taking him back. So I figured that I kind of dug my own hole and I would just have to live with it. Stephanie married Cesar and the couple were together for 45 days. The house that we had, I'd never had the backyard done. And I decided to surprise him.

So when he went to work, I called, had dirt dumped, and redid the backyard, laid grass, everything. When he came home and he saw that, he had a fit. He looked at me and I'll never forget his face to me. It looked like a snake and I remember him just saying, you didn't ask me and he was like, you make me sick. Don't ever talk to me again and if you leave I'll never chase you. I'll never chase you again. And at that point I just thought this is my out. This is my opportunity to go.

Stephanie divorced Cesar, but he continued stalking her. She moved to a new house in the same town hoping to hide from him. I ended up going home and it's one o'clock in the morning and I ended up just going into the house. I went and got dressed for bed and basically laid down. And once I laid down, I got a phone call. I answered it and it was Cesar. Cesar was calling Stephanie on her mobile phone. She hadn't spoken to him for over six months. and it was Cesar. Cesar was calling Stephanie on her mobile phone. She hadn't spoken to him for over six months.

He's just started on what our normal conversations would be like, where you should have never married me, and you're this, and you're that. And I hung up the phone. And I just remember laying there getting this really weird feeling. So I get up and I remember setting the alarm to my house. So as I turned around, that's when Cesar was standing there. He's dressed with a black bandana around his face, and he's dressed in all black, and he's dressed with a black ski cap. I mean, I just, I'm like, I'm looking at him like,

what are you doing? You know? What are you doing? And he hit me over the head with a wine bottle. I remember just collapsing. And when I collapsed, I remember him just hitting me repeatedly over the head with the butt of his gun. I just remember him wailing on me and wailing on me. And I don't know if it was my adrenaline or what it was, but I remember just standing right back up.

And I remember getting out of the bathroom, and he's following me behind, you know, behind me with the gun. And I remember just blood splotting out everywhere. And I remember thinking to splottin' out everywhere, and I remember thinkin' to myself, oh my gosh, I just moved in this house, and there's just blood everywhere, you know? It's going on my new carpet, you know? And I'm just going around, and I'm just frantic.

And he's standing there with a gun in front of my head, and he tells me, I'm gonna kill you, and your kids are gonna come home, and they're gonna kill you and your kids are gonna come home and they're gonna find you and I just said Please just take me somewhere else and He says go get some pants on and get some pants

I just put anything on and I'm walking out and he's following behind me and I Go back in the room and I'm thinking, I need to trigger something. I need him to wake up. I need him to think, what am I doing? So I say, what about your daughter? And I say her name. And he just shut up, shut up.

And we used to go to church every Sunday, every Wednesday. So I get down on my knees and I pray. And I said, Lord, please forgive this man for what he is about to do. He hits me some more. And every time he would hit me, he'd hit me with just the butt of the gun, just over and over again on my head. And I'd just get back up. And I ran out my bedroom door.

I ran down my stairs so fast that I ran into the wall. He ended up catching me and he just, I just remember him beating me so bad and it was, the force was horrible. Just him hitting me over and over and I kept standing up and he kept saying, turn off the alarm, turn off the alarm. And he kicked me. He kicked me. And I felt like I was in the matrix. I flew back in slow motion, and I had the wind knocked out of me.

I think to myself, I need DNA evidence. I need DNA. I'm going to die. I need them to find DNA underneath my fingernails. And I remember lunging at him and he was wearing a turtleneck. So I remember like lunging and like trying to dig through his turtleneck to try to scratch him. Stephanie broke free and ran to the front door. The door had two locks on it. And I somehow unlocked the door and ran out.

And when I ran around, he ran towards the back. And we ended up meeting face to face. And that's when he shot me for the first time. It went through my chest. And I remember it going all the way through. And I remember feeling my fluids just come out the back. I fell to the side and he shot a second time and it went through my hand. And I remember thinking to myself,

why did he just shoot me in the hand? You know, what was the point of that? And I remember laying there thinking, okay, I need to play dead. If I play dead, maybe he'll leave. I just laid there, kind of stopped breathing for as much as I could, and all of a sudden I heard footprints. It was him, I guess he had left. And I remember just what I felt like was forever. I got up and just kind of looked around.

I didn't see anybody. And I went to the back of the neighbor's house. And I remember going to the sliding glass door, and I remember just banging on it. Help me, help me, please help me. He must have heard me because he had come back around. And that's when he shot me in the back of the head. At that point, I just remember feeling lifeless.

I fell on the patio, and I remember him pulling me by my hair and dragging me down the steps. And at that particular point, you know, I mean, it's amazing the things that you think of, you know. I'm thinking, wow, these extensions in my hair are holding up really good, you know. And as he's dragging my body into the middle of my neighbor's lawn. I bled so bad that my orange shirt was black and my hair was tousled all over my face and I had bark in my mouth.

When he laid me down, he laid me right in the middle of the grass and he shot two more times at my head. I laid there so long that I figured I'm either going to bleed to death and die or you know or he's going to hear me and he's going to come back and so finally after I thought was a very long time I got up and I walked a few steps and I passed out. I would get up a little bit more and then pass out. And I must have done that three or four times. Until the last time I was so mad at myself and I said, you're going to make it to this house because that's all you have to do.

Once you get there, it's all over. Stephanie had already tried in vain to alert one of her neighbors. I ended up going to a different neighbor's house. Then I went to the front door and I remember banging on their door. And I could hear them fly down the stairs, basically fall down the stairs. And I heard them go, we called 911. And they said, I'm sorry, but I can't let you in. And I just said, that's okay.

This is who did it. Jerome Cesar Alverto. This is his date of birth. This is where he lives. This is the cars he drives. I gave him as much information and I said, could you call my sister? And I gave him the phone number. And I just, could you call my sister? And I gave him the phone number.

And I just laid there. Police officers rushed to the scene. When they did come, they flew by the house. And then they flew by again. They flew by like five times. So I finally had to lift my leg. I lifted my leg to flag them down. The police officer came, I told him exactly who did it. He looked at me and he says, you know you're not gonna

make it right. And I said, I know. And right then I just felt at peace. They put me in the ambulance and I'll never forget when I'm laying there and they're asking me you know where I was shot and what had happened and I remember hearing on the radio we caught him. They found him a few blocks from his house in his car and they found him with my blood all over his clothes. They found him with other weapons in his car. And they also found a book, which was a little spiral notebook, and it was labeled list of options, and it had all the different ways that he was going to kill me. One of the shots had collapsed Stephanie's lung, while another had exited the top of

her skull. Despite her horrific injuries, Stephanie recovered in the hospital. My parents went to my house to clean it up because I had blood everywhere and they didn't want me to go home to that. And when they were cleaning up, they found knives planted in various locations, some underneath my bed, some in my closet area, all throughout the house, and came back and asked me, like, did you put these here? And I said no. So obviously he had been in my house before. Jerome Cesar Alverto was convicted of attempted murder and sentenced to 25 years in prison.

How does a bullet go in the back of your neck and travel out the back of your skull and not blow your brains off? I don't know. I survived for my children. I was shot with a.45 by an ex-marine, and I'm alive today, I think, because God veered every bullet. I got down on my knees and I prayed, and I'm here for a reason. I'm here to maybe somebody can relate with my story. It's a miracle.

can relate with my story. It's a miracle. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. Taking care of your mental health is just as important as looking after your physical health. Over the years, it's been great to see the shift in how society talks about therapy. What once felt taboo is now becoming a more open, accepted conversation. But we still have a long way to go. In fact, 26% of Americans say they've avoided seeking mental health support because they're afraid of being judged. When someone hesitates to get help, it doesn't just impact them. It can

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It's all online, so it's convenient and affordable, and you can switch therapists anytime at no extra cost. Over 5 million people worldwide have used BetterHelp to take charge of their mental health. We're all better with help. Visit betterhelp.com slash survive to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P, dot com slash survived. It's April, 1999 in Columbine, Colorado.

Craig and Crystal are sophomore and junior students at Columbine High School. Columbine was a big school, it was 2,000 kids. It was your typical American suburban school. It was a volatile place just like any other high school. It's hard to fit in to be accepted and so I think that that can sometimes be a recipe for disaster. Craig and Crystal were both studying in the school library. I found my friend Isaiah. We were talking and joking around. Matt Kector was sitting at the table, and he had his science book out, and he was studying.

I heard some popping noises coming from outside the school, and I didn't know what it was. Absolute chaos started to break out in and around the school. Teacher came running through the library doors. She looked panicked. She looked very afraid. She was screaming, there's two boys with guns and bombs. They're shooting students. Get under your tables. Hide. It was near the end of the school year so I thought some seniors were pulling a prank. They brought some firecrackers to school. The shooters were Columbine students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold.

The pair had already killed two students and wounded 10 more. Me and Matt got underneath the table. And then Isaiah was walking by and I said, you know, hey Isaiah. You know, Isaiah got and he got in right in between me and Matt. There wasn't a lot of room underneath of the tables. Felt as though our arms and our legs were sticking out. I saw a friend of mine or a classmate of mine rather. He came stumbling through the door

and he was kind of holding on to his shoulder rather tightly. Blood was beginning to soak through his t-shirt, and I saw that he had been shot. I'm still mixed up in my head. I'm thinking there's seniors, and they're pulling a prank, but they're angry. The moment that it became real, all of a sudden where it was not a prank, this wasn't a joke that was happening,

was when the shooters came into the library. I was on the far side of the room in the library, and so my back was against the entrance where the shooters walked into. And so I didn't see them come in, but I heard them come in, and they were immediately shooting off their guns. At that moment, it was not a joke,

and that is when I was scared completely for my life. Crystal was hiding under a desk in the middle section of the library. I heard their voices and they sounded so haunting and so evil and just scary. They said, everybody's about to die. We're about to blow this library up. The gunmen had made bombs using lengths of pipe

and gunpowder. They began detonating the pipe bombs in the library. A pipe bomb exploded near our table. I remember little pieces of shrapnel hitting my legs. The fire alarms immediately started just ringing out the emergency, and the strobe lights were flashing. Harris and Klebold began gunning down students at point blank range.

They went over to a computer, they shot a kid who had a disability, his name was Kyle Velasquez, everybody called him a big teddy bear. One of them says to the other, get anybody else with a white baseball cap on. A lot of jocks wore white baseball caps. I had one on that day.

As soon as he said that, I'm underneath the table, very scared, I take off my cap and I put it underneath my shirt. They were almost playing like they were in a part in a movie, like they were acting. Talking back and forth to one another, jumping up on tables. They came underneath a table where someone was and said, peek-a-boo, and then shot him.

They treated it like it was a game. It wasn't a game. It was real. I thought that this might be my last time on Earth. I thought that I might be dead. Isaiah was one of the very few black students in our school. So one of them calls the other one over and says, hey, there's a over here.

And then they start saying all these stuff to Isaiah. And Isaiah is slowly backing up. The last thing that he said was, I want to see my mom. They shot Isaiah with the shotgun to the head. And then they shot Matt in the stomach with the shotgun. Now, Matt looked like a jock. So I assume that's why they shot him. I sat there listening to as Isaiah was gurgling and taking

his last breaths, and Matt too. I decided to kind of play dead. I just don't want to draw any attention to myself. So I'm going to be as still as I can be. They went over to the far side of the room and they were asking one girl if she believed in God. And then I heard a bunch of shots and then I didn't hear her say anything anymore. Crystal was hiding under a desk in the library's middle section.

One girl yelled out at one point and said, why are you doing this to us? Why are you doing this? And they said, we've waited our whole lives to do this. This is for all you've picked on us and made fun of us. It didn't matter if you were a good person or a bad person. It didn't matter if they, you were a good person or bad person, didn't matter if you knew them. They were gonna let everybody else feel their pain, they were gonna let everybody else suffer for them. One of them unsheathed a knife and I remember one of them said, I've always wanted to stab someone to death. They were breaking all the computers with their guns

and they were breaking all of the glass. They were shooting just rapid fire at the walls and the books and it just, things were ricocheting and bouncing off. And it was just, it was absolute chaos. The only thing that I knew to do is to pray. I couldn't think to do anything else. So I just asked God to take away my fear, because it was too much. They started talking about how they had ran out of ammunition.

It was almost as if they knew their bullets and their things were gone, but they had left more in another part of the school. They left the library still trying to do as much damage as they could by smashing things up and throwing chairs. The two teenage gunmen had murdered 10 students in the library. Not every student that they shot, not every student was killed and died. So you would hear people almost writhing in pain and just crying out in fear.

All of a sudden I felt like I could move a little bit and think a little bit. And then I felt like this thing telling me, get out of there. So I stand up, there's nobody else standing up. I turn around underneath the table and there's a girl and she's had her shoulder completely blown off by a shotgun blast and I literally can see her bone. She's rocking back and forth and she's saying, help me, help me. So I help pick her up. I look around the room I see the shooters are gone and I yell at everybody I said let's get out of here I think they're gone. Craig carried the injured girl towards the door. All the students were

bottlenecking out one door to try and get out and it was just chaos because we knew I think each and every one of us knew, that those boys were coming back. When we run out of the school, there's only one single cop car there. As soon as we get behind that car, the two shooters come back to the library and start exchanging gunfire with the police. The gunmen were firing at the police out of the windows of the library. The gunmen were firing at the police out of the windows of the library. The cops are, they're focused on the two shooters. Our students were taking care of each other. We were taking off some of our clothes and we're tying up some of the kids that had been wounded. The two shooters committed suicide in the library.

More police cars arrived and began driving students to safety. I got into the last carload, drove off into the middle of a field just behind our school, and all the kids jumped out of the car and they scattered in every direction like ants. And I didn't know where to go. Craig's sister, Rachel, was still unaccounted for. I was walking around the street and I was looking for Rachel. And then I started to go around and I started to ask people if they'd seen my sister. You know, I, you know, if you've seen Rachel, you know, just people that I knew.

And nobody, nobody had seen her. Craig went home to wait for news of his sister. We're waiting, we're waiting. We wait all, it's turning night. People are like bringing food in. Just sat on this piano bench for a long time. At this point, I'm thinking that Rachel's dead. And I was feeling pretty tired. So I asked my mom if I could go to bed. She's like, yeah, go to bed, great.

So I went to bed. I had these crazy dreams. I slept where that I would sleep, which not being home. Woke up. And then, uh... My mom told me... that the police called and said Rachel was the first one to shout. They told me she was killed right outside the school library.

The popping noises that I heard right outside the school library were the popping noises that were that were taking her life. Twelve students and one teacher lost their lives at Columbine High School on April 20th, 1999. Everything about what I had known for 16 years of my life was suddenly stripped away. It was gone. I didn't feel safe anymore.

I felt like I was forced to grow up far too quickly. It was almost as if my childhood was taken from me. The massacre is the sixth deadliest school shooting in United States history. For a year after the shooting, I was so angry. I hated those two shooters. And I carried around that anger and hatred for a real long time.

But it started to affect me. It started to make me a better person. And it started to affect me. It started to make me a better person. And it started to affect my family. I started to take out all my anger out on them. And so I had a mentor that came into my life and he told me something that was powerful and true. He said that forgiveness was like setting a prisoner free and finding out that prisoner is you.

And I realized I needed to let go of all the anger and hate towards him. So I chose to forgive the two shooters. I survived because I believe that God heard my prayers, that he gave me a second chance at life, the second chance of life that I prayed for. After the shooting, Crystal traveled to Kosovo to help children affected by war.

Craig and his family now run Rachel's Challenge, a nonprofit organization promoting compassion among students. It has become the largest school assembly program in the United States. I survived because I have a purpose. I'm meant to do some things here on this world that are meant to be done.

And I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna do it in honor of Rachel, and I'm gonna do it in honor of my friends. I'm gonna live my life to the fullest, and I am. For weeks now, New Jersey residents have been played by unexplained drones flying overhead. Is there intelligent alien life? And if so, has the government been covering it up. All right UFO sightings the military can't explain

congressional hearings and a gun whistleblower what does it all mean what does it all mean we're here to try and figure it all out with our new ancient aliens podcast there is a doorway in the universe beyond it is the promise of truth. It demands we question everything we have ever been taught. The evidence is all around us. The future is right before our eyes. We are not alone. We have never been alone. Listen to the Ancient Aliens Podcast, available wherever you get your podcasts. It's June 2001 in Sequoia National Park. Rich and Laura have five-year-old triplets

and two children aged seven and nine. My wife and I decided we want to go on a vacation, go on an outdoor setting, and we thought we'd go to the mountains. And I thought, well, let's go to the Sequoia National Forest since that's where I used to go just about every year as a small child. When we got there, it was beautiful. No one was there, but there was a picnic table and had a little barbecue. The kids were playing, and there was a picnic table and had a little barbecue. The kids were playing and it was just, it was a gorgeous day. It was a nice time to be outside.

The family decided to go for a hike in the forest. We kind of got in a single file line and we started hiking kind of along the river a little bit and then we started going up this little hill and then there was a bunch of sequoia trees and big pine trees and right into the forest. I don't know which one of the girls screamed first. I don't know if it was Sarah or Brianne or maybe maybe it was my wife. All of a sudden there was like a black cloud around us. These bees just came from everywhere and it was so loud it was like a train. It was like a train, like I was standing next to the train.

The family had disturbed a beehive in a fallen log, and the enraged insects started stinging them repeatedly. And I just thought to myself, God, I can't think. I can't think, I can't hear, I can't see. All of a sudden these bees were so intense. They were all over my head, they were in my eyes, they were up inside of my glasses. It was so loud and everybody was screaming and the boys were yelling and the girls were crying so I just told everybody, just run as fast as you can, just run.

I had to reach down in my glasses and scoop them out of my eyes so I could see her and they were stinging my eyelids. I thought I was picking her up but it was like I had this big mound of bees in my hand and I thought I pulled her ponytail off, but it was just this big mound of bees that were all on my hands and I had to wipe them off my hand. And then I reached down to get her and she was still on the ground. I picked her up. Rich's wife Laura was fleeing with their four other children. The only two I could see in front of me were Eric and Brianne, and so we just kept running and we didn't even know where we were going.

I just remember this feeling of being helpless. We just kept running and running and running, and we came to these big pine trees that had fallen and they were dead and they had these jagged branches. And I just kept telling the kids run and the bees just kept, they wouldn't leave us alone. They came with us and they had these jagged branches. And I just kept telling the kids run, and the bees just kept, they wouldn't leave us alone. They came with us and they were everywhere. They were in our shirts, in our pants, in our socks, everywhere. And the kids were crying and they were screaming,

and we had to climb over these pine trees. And I don't know how the kids got over them, but the kids just all climbed over them. And Laura was kind of grasping for air a little bit. She was kind of huffing and puffing, and I just thought, man of grasping for air a little bit. She was kind of huffing and puffing and I just thought, man, she's really having a hard time. Laura was unaware that she was allergic to bees and her throat began swelling up. I've always counted the kids. Ever since they were born, when the triplets were born,

I started counting the kids. Every time we'd get in the car, I'd count them, one, two, three, four, five, to make sure we had all the kids. And I counted them. You know, I was one short. And I thought to myself, oh my God. And it was Ryan. Ryan, aged nine, was Rich and Laura's eldest son. And I just kept thinking, oh my God, where's Ryan?

That was my thought at that moment. We're missing, you know, Ryan's not here. What if he's back there and he's, you know, with all the bees? I just thought to myself, how could I let this happen? I've got all these small kids, I've got a wonderful family. How could I let this happen? The bees were everywhere.

It was so thick of bees. All I could hear was just buzzing and the sound. It was just terrifying. There were clumps of bees on us, on our back, on our back of our neck, on our hair, and we just couldn't get away from them. I just remember trying to wipe them off, and it just felt like they just kept coming back

and kept coming back. The whole family had each been stung hundreds of times. So I yelled down the river. I yelled as loud as I can his name. And way in the distance, I could hear, I could hear him calling me, Dad I'm here, I'm here. And I yelled, are you okay? And he said yes. And I said, can you get across the river?

And he said yes. And Laura was really having a tough time. She had her hands on her throat and she was really, really grasping for air. Her throat was beginning to close up from swelling. And I said, Laura, can you get across the river? And she said, nothing. She just looked at me and I said, Laura, I can't help you. I have these big small kids.

I'm going to get them across the river. You have to get yourself across the river. Rich's youngest children were five-year-old triplets. The river was waist-deep and extremely cold. I remember standing there and thinking, I've just got to do this. I've got to get across the river. I got in the water and I remember it being cold. I remember the pain of the bee stings.

It was the most frightening thing that I've ever had to do. And I got the small kids and I carried them across the river. And the river was really super cold and the kids were crying. The bees never left us. They just kept coming around. I don't know if they're coming out from our clothes, if they're coming out from in our hair, but they were still flying around us. They never left us and the stings were just,

the pain was just unbelievable. We came back to the picnic area and I knew we were really close. We were really close to that car. There was a little hill we had to get up and I just kept pushing everybody, pushing everybody because I knew, I just knew we had just moments to get Laura, get her some medical attention.

We got to the car and Ryan had beat us to the car. And Ryan actually was doing pretty good. So the kids just jumped in the car. They just piled in the car. And I ran around to the driver's side to get in the car. And I started climbing in and I looked over and Laura was in the car. She was standing at the passenger side. So I went over there to help her get in, and that's when I realized how bad she was. She wasn't breathing at that point.

She was just grasping for air, and she couldn't get in the car. I felt like my throat was closing up, and I remember my hands being on my throat, and I just remember coughing and coughing, and I was wondering, why am I coughing so much? What's happening? What's going on? The kids were screaming.

Their bees were in the car. They were buzzing around in the car. Rich started the car and headed for a fire station four miles away. I looked over at Laura, and she was slumped over. And in her breathing, I've never heard anybody breathe like this. But I knew it was bad.

It was like a gargle. I'll never heard anybody breathe like this. But I knew it was bad. It was like a gargle. I'll never forget those breaths. I looked over and her eyes were closed, and she was really struggling just to live. I just kept thinking that she can't die. She can't die. The mother of my children, she can't die. There was no way, I brought my family into this spot

and there was no way I was gonna allow that to happen. The family were in their car speeding to get help. Rich kept saying, I know there's a fire station, we're gonna go get help for you, we're gonna go get help. And I just was trying to hold on to every breath. I felt a sense of panic. I felt a sense of being overwhelmed with the pain of the coughing.

I just kept going and I got us to the fire station. I ran around to the other side and the kids had already started to go inside the office to the fire station. So as I came around to help her out, the emergency workers, as soon as the kids came in, they saw that there was a problem and they came running out. I just watched them as they took her and I just thought to myself, thank God, thank God she got here and she's alive. They brought me into the room that they had set up.

It was much like an emergency room. They had asked me, have you ever been stung by a bee? And I said, no. And they said, well, you're allergic to bees. And this could have been fatal. After a while, the kids kind of started to calm down a little bit in the fire station. So I thought, you know what?

I'm gonna go check on Laura. So I walked over and I opened the door into the emergency room. And there she was and she had all kinds of things plugged into her and she had oxygen on and she was laying there in the bed and they were still, they still there tending to her and working on her. And she looked up at me. And that was the first time since this happened

that her eyes were really open. And she was breathing. And I thought, we did it. We did it. We did it. Rich, Laura, and their children sustained between three and four hundred stings each. They no longer take their vacations in the mountains. I survived because I wanted to live. I wanted to be with my family. I wanted to have many more happy memories with my kids. I survived because I have five children and I love my wife. And there was nothing gonna get in our way from our family surviving and living on. Are you looking for your next case? Pluto TV has all your favorite crime dramas streaming for free.

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