It’s A Miracle: Real Life Inspirational Stories, Extraordinary Events and Everyday Wonders

“I went to the orphanage there to see them,” remembers Ron, “and they were sitting in a double stroller. And the only way to describe it is that they were even more beautiful than even I expected.

“On the plane back, I looked down at these two little guys as they were sleeping, and it just hit me like a lightning bolt, you know … that that’s the purpose. That’s the purpose that God had. That’s why I lost my leg,” says Ron. “Because if I hadn’t, I probably wouldn’t have pursued those two little boys. They wouldn’t have jumped out at me like they did.”

Ron finally felt that he’d found a reason for all of his suffering. He knew that through his own experience, he could give his sons the confidence to rise above their disabilities.

“They tell me often that they wish they could have real legs,” Ron admits. “And when they tell me that, I tell them, well, you know, we’re dealt with what we’re dealt with, and we just have to make the most of it.”

Today the boys, Max and Andy, are fourteen, and they both realize what a special gift their father has given them.

Says Andy, “Dad adopted us because he felt like he can help us. Because, if you have problems, he’ll know what to do.”

“My dad’s my favorite person in the world because he has an artificial leg like I do, and he loves me a lot,” adds Max.

That love has made it possible for Max and Andy Greenfield to have the advantage of a full and active life.

“It doesn’t keep me from doing what I want to do,” says Andy. “I can ride my skateboard, or bike, and sometimes I ride my rollerblades. And I go swimming.”

As Ron looks back on his experience, he is awed by the miracles that have touched his life.

“It’s been a multitude of miracles,” he says. “Surviving the crash, surviving the Vietnamese, and then, I think the final miracle is Andy and Max.

“God put me in the right place at the right time to do another miracle.”

BLIND AMBITION

In early 1993, Lisa Fittipaldi was the picture of success. She had a loving husband, a thriving career, and a very busy schedule.

“At the time,” says Lisa, “I was working forty or fifty hours a week as a professional, and driving to work, and going grocery shopping, and doing the normal things that we all do.”

And then, in March, Lisa’s life was suddenly thrown out of focus.

“I was driving down 1–35,” Lisa recounts, “and there was a semi in front of me, and all of a sudden, the semi disappeared.”

For one terrifying moment, Lisa went completely blind. She dismissed the incident, but a few weeks later, it happened again. Deeply shaken, she called her husband, A1.

“She explained the situation to me,” recalls A1, “that she was driving, and all of a sudden her vision just blacked out, and she almost hit a truck.”

Lisa refused to get back behind the wheel, and during the next month, the episodes became more frequent.

“I thought I was having a brain aneurysm, because one minute I would see something, and the next minute I wouldn’t see it,” Lisa says. “Then the colors would start fading away, and everything became a milky color, like it had a handkerchief over it.”

But her doctors could not pinpoint the exact cause of the problem.

Dr. Michael Nacol explains, “Initially, when she was seen by her eye doctor, she started out with a corneal irregularity that made her vision distorted. Not only did she have hazy vision but her vision field was decreased.”

Lisa underwent several surgeries to cure her condition, but her eyesight continued to deteriorate. And slowly, her world disappeared into complete darkness.

“It was like a grey-black obscurity,” describes Lisa. “Even talking about it makes my stomach go into knots. It is incredibly hard to even describe the kind of panic you have.”

Lisa was eventually diagnosed with a rare form of vasculitis, a disease that was attacking the nerves in her eyes, and that would leave her legally and permanently blind.

“The first thought I had was,” says Lisa, “my life is over. Simple as that. You can’t see, what can you possibly do? Seventy percent of everything you do is done with your eyes first, whether you notice it or not.”

“She broke down into tears,” A1 remembers, “and pretty much knew that in a very short period of time, her world as she knew it was gonna go away. And that’s a hard thing to take.”

Lisa tried desperately to adjust to a life in the shadows. But even the simplest activities had become an enormous challenge.

“After a while,” admits Lisa, “you feel like it’s just not worth the effort. The world is dark, let’s just stay in the bedroom because the space is comfortable, and you know where you are, and why move?”

Adds A1, “She didn’t want to have to fend for herself. It was like, hang up a towel for me, or get me this, or get me that. I think I started getting a little angry at having to do for her when I knew she could care for herself.”

And then, in May of 1995, Lisa received a phone call from a friend asking her to join her at a two-week painting seminar in Louisiana.

“She said, ‘There’s a man out there, and he’s supposed to be very motivational,’” recalls Lisa. “‘And you just sleep in a dormitory and you get away from A1, ’cause you’ve been with him day and night now for a year.’ And I said, Okay, I can do this.”

“The friend never showed up,” A1 continues. “So Lisa, rather than canceling the class, wound up saying, ‘Would you drive me to Louisiana?’”

Lisa attended the seminar on her own, and the two weeks away helped boost her confidence. Although some of her classmates expressed skepticism about a blind person’s ability to paint, Lisa became determined to prove them wrong.

“I said, Well, why not?” recounts Lisa. “Why can’t I do this? If I learned how to get dressed again, and I learned how to eat with a knife and fork again, why can’t I paint?”

“Can darks be luminous, bright, and powerful all at the same time? Yes,” says Al.

With Al’s help, Lisa began absorbing everything there was to know about painting.

“We went through hundreds of volumes of art books, magazines, catalogs,” Al says.

“That’s when I realized how difficult it was to paint if you can’t see what you’re doing,” explains Lisa. “You can’t verify in front of you what you’ve painted. And that’s when I started to teach myself how to feel if a paint pigment and watercolor was yellow, versus blue, versus red.”

Once Lisa memorized the various color formulas, she perfected a technique called “mental mapping,” which helped her find where she was on the canvas. Soon, Lisa was creating beautiful life scenes in intricate detail. And before long, she was displaying and selling her work at art fairs around the country. Lisa’s mysterious ability shocked everyone, including her close friend, Claudia Lane.

“I couldn’t fathom how she could paint with such depth and detail,” says Claudia. “I couldn’t even speak. I didn’t know what to say at that point because it was so amazing. It was like watching a miracle.”

In the summer of 1999, Lisa caught the attention of Jason Siegel, a gallery owner from Austin, Texas.

“One day I received a packet in the mail,” recalls Jason. “I get packets from artists asking me to review their work and consider representing them. And I was very intrigued with the work, you know, very intrigued that she was blind and that she could paint realism.”

Jason arranged to meet Lisa for lunch and quickly agreed to represent her. The very next day, he sold one of her paintings.

“When I would show people these paintings,” says Jason, “I’d say, ‘What do you think of this painting?’ And they’d say, ‘Oh, that’s a beautiful painting. I really like it.’ And I’d say, ‘Well, what would you say if I told you this artist happens to be blind?’ And they’d just be blown away by that and want to know the rest of the story.”

Seven years after her odyssey began, Lisa has become a full-time artist, painting seven hours a day, seven days a week in her studio, “Blind Ambition,” and selling her work through one of the largest galleries in the country. Her incredible transformation amazes even those closest to her.

“It blows you away,” Jason says, “that somebody who can’t even see can paint these most amazing paintings, and get these compositions, and balance—all these things other artists are trying to achieve in their paintings.”

“How she does this is a miracle,” adds Claudia. “She sketches it out in pencil. She puts the color on and she gets this incredible piece of art that is totally unexplainable.”

A1 agrees, “I’m not really sure there is an explanation as to how someone is given a gift. What Lisa has given to me, and what I know she has given to others, is hope for the future. A feeling that life is wonderful and that you should live every moment to the fullest because you never know what’s going to happen.”

“I’m just very fortunate,” concludes Lisa. “There’s always been an angel on my shoulder—or a leprechaun, probably, knowing me. One day I would like to be noted as a good painter, a good artist. That’s what I’m striving for.”

ALL GOD’S CREATURES

BORIS AND THE BIG APPLE

In 1996, Barbara Listenik was living in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, with her constant companion Boris, a beautiful mixed-breed boxer.

“I got Boris when he was two years old. He’s the most lovable dog in the whole wide world. He knows when I’m happy. He knows when I’m sad. He’s a very big part of my life. I don’t have children and I’m not married, so he’s like my child. He’s my best friend,” Barbara says.

Just before Christmas, Barbara made arrangements to move to Brooklyn, New York. She was renting a moving van, but decided to send Boris via airfreight to spare him the long drive.

“Boris had never flown before, so I was very worried for him. I did everything that I thought was necessary to get him there safely. I did everything the airline recommended as well.”

That included removing Boris’s identification collar so it wouldn’t get snagged during the flight. Barbara gave Boris one last hug and lured him into the crate with his favorite toy bunny. She was worried for her best friend’s comfort but excited to start her new life with him in Brooklyn.

“My thoughts when Boris was in the air were, Please, please, let him get there safely.”

But when she arrived at LaGuardia Airport to pick him up, her fears became reality.

“The airport staff took me in back and they said, ‘Miss, there’s a little bit of a problem. There was an accident.’ Then the supervisor walks up to a bloody, crunched-up, empty carrier. I knew that they must have dropped him or driven something into him. And my immediate thought was, Oh, my God, is he alive or dead?”

The supervisor told her that Boris had been seen running around on the tarmac and that they had their cargo crew personnel chasing him right then.

“Well,” said Barbara, “he’s going to keep running. You’re never going to get him. He’s scared to death. Just let me go out there—one whistle and he’ll come running to me.”

The supervisor insisted that they had the situation under control. And for the next two hours, Barbara waited anxiously for some word of her injured dog. When the supervisor finally came back out, he had bad news—Boris had evaded the cargo crew and crossed the fence from the tarmac onto the highway. He had last been seen running over the overpass into Corona, Queens.

“You idiots!” screamed Barbara. She ran from the airport in tears and jumped in the car. Alone and heartbroken in a strange city, she drove in circles, searching for Boris. He was lost somewhere off the eastern edge of Manhattan and if Barbara didn’t locate him quickly, he could end up anywhere in New York City.

“Boris had never been in the noisy streets. He’d never been in New York City. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack. At first I was looking for his body, and then some kid said he saw this dog that was tan-and-white, running like a bullet. That gave me hope. I said to myself, He’s alive. He’s alive.”

Alive but lost in one of the largest cities in the world.

“I searched all night in the rain and the cold, just walking up and down the streets, calling his name. And on Christmas Eve, I really realized how impossible the situation was. Here I was, this tiny little speck of dust in this big city looking for a lost dog. I’ve never felt so alone in my entire life. I didn’t know what to do. I just kept calling for him, ‘Boris, I know you’re out there. Please come home.’”

On Christmas morning, Barbara returned to the airport.

“I went to the supervisor and said, ‘Okay, we have a situation. What are we gonna do about this? You lost my dog.’ And the supervisor says, ‘Yes, miss, I’m filling out the form now.’ And he just reached under the desk and pulled out a baggage-claim form and said, ‘This is all we can do.’ ‘This is a baggage-claim form,’ I said. ‘Are you telling me my dog is baggage?’ I almost collapsed. My dog is considered baggage! I never knew in a million years that animals were considered luggage, and that the law hasn’t been changed since 1929. I said, ‘This is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard in my entire life! My dog is not a piece of luggage. He’s my baby. He’s like my child.’”

The supervisor just shrugged and apologized again. Immediately, Barbara ran home and went through her boxes, still unpacked, to find pictures of Boris. She pulled out her fax machine and started running off flyers. She spent the rest of Christmas Day putting up missing-dog posters throughout Corona, Queens.

That night, Barbara returned home even more exhausted and depressed. How could she possibly celebrate under the circumstances? Wiping away tears, she started decorating her tree. She swore to herself, I am not going to light this tree until he’s found. And I’m going to keep this tree until he sits next to it with me.

Barbara realized that the job was too big for just one person, so she tried a different approach.

“I asked myself what the best way was to get the word out that Boris was lost, and I said, Okay, let me call the newspaper.”

She found a sympathetic ear in New York Post reporter Laura Italiano, who found herself unexpectedly touched by Barbara’s story.

“Barbara called the New York Post absolutely frantic. Typically, we’re busy chasing murderers, political corruption. It took a special kind of story to get us to care about a little lost dog. And Barbara was the one who made that happen for us. The Post absolutely loved the story. It is a classic tabloid story. You have a clear-cut villain, this bungling airline, and a very sympathetic victim—a poor dog who had been lost. I think everyone’s heart went out to Barbara. This is a woman who doesn’t know New York City, knew no one in town, and she had this tremendous responsibility to find an animal in completely unfamiliar surroundings. You had to feel for her; you had to worry about her,” Laura says.

“I couldn’t believe how many people responded,” Barbara marveled. “It touched so many people’s hearts.”

One of those hearts belonged to Paula Forester, a professional psychic who saw Boris’s picture on a television news program. Paula was amazed at her reaction to the picture. “They did a close-up on his eyes, and pow. There was a psychic connection. I have worked psychically with animals before, but I have never felt such a strong and urgent connection to anything before that point.”

Paula immediately contacted Barbara.

“She told me that she was a psychic and that she was getting strong feelings from Boris. They were communicating. My first reaction was, Hey, lady, if you’re communicating with my dog, tell him to come home! She told me that she didn’t want a reward, she didn’t want pay, she just wanted to get Boris back to me. I didn’t believe in that hocus-pocus-type stuff, but I just wanted my baby home. I wasn’t going to turn away anyone volunteering to help find him.”

Paula turned out to be more than just a volunteer. She was a force to be reckoned with.

“She was pushing me, and I thought I was the aggressive one. She told me, ‘Come on, let’s go, you can do it, you can do it. Keep going, keep going.’ She was really doing the legwork, really going out there getting the flyers out.”

“I knew Boris was alive,” Paula said. “And I knew he was desperate to find Barbara again. He was very confused and very, very sad. Every time I linked in psychically to Boris, the sadness, confusion, and heartache were overwhelming.”

“We went from neighborhood to neighborhood. We just kept looking every night, in the cold. We just never stopped,” Barbara said.

“What really kept me going was this little dog that had a really big psychic voice that said, ‘Please help me,’” Paula said.

But after days of searching, Barbara’s hopes began to fade.

Barbara remembered, “New Year’s had come and gone, and it was so cold. With the wind-chill factor it was 25 below zero outside. All I could do was cry, I couldn’t imagine how Boris was surviving.”

Meanwhile, Barbara’s friends and family were worried sick about her and urged her to accept reality and get on with her life. But Barbara wouldn’t give up.

“Some people told me, ‘Oh, it’s only a dog,’” Barbara recalled. “You know, get over it, get another one. And I told them, ‘You don’t understand. There is no closure. I can’t live my life knowing that he’s out there, he’s cold, he’s hungry, he’s starving.’ I said, ‘I’m not gonna give up on him.’”

And the media was standing by Barbara’s decision.

Laura Italiano says, “We started running a story a week in the Post, and Barbara kept us well-fed with updates. She felt that if the newspaper kept up a steady drumbeat to search for this dog, that public attention wouldn’t just die down. And he wouldn’t die out there, unmourned, unsearched for.”

But all the publicity only produced more false leads. The phone rang around the clock with sightings of strays from people anxious to help, but all turned out to be dead ends. Barbara was completely physically and emotionally exhausted. She didn’t know how much longer she could continue.

Luckily, she had Paula Forester to help keep her spirits up. “Her energy just kept me going,” she said, “and really it was a godsend that she did come along.”

Paula said, “The worst thing you can do is get discouraged. I just knew he was out there. I told Barbara not to give up. I don’t care if it takes two months; I don’t care if it takes three months. The dog is coming home. Alive.”

Several weeks later, despite all of Laura Italiano’s best efforts, the publicity and the media attention hadn’t produced a single solid lead. But a strange recurring dream was about to change the parameters of the search.

Paula tossed and turned for hours every night, dreaming of Boris. She said, “I would get images of Boris sleeping in tires, of him having a bloody foot, starving and very cold. I knew that I was picking up what the dog was feeling. Boris was freezing and desperate.”

The dream eventually led Paula to an automotive shop in Queens.

“I must have driven by this one auto repair place a hundred times. I actually went up and approached one of the workers there, asking about a stray. The man was so busy, he really kind of brushed me off.”

It seemed like just another dead end. Unfortunately, at this point, the media was also beginning to question its involvement in the search. Even the indomitable Laura was giving up hope. “Maybe we were doing the wrong thing keeping this story going, because the more time that passed, the less likely it was that there would be a happy ending.”

Barbara had to make a tough decision. “I didn’t know whether to keep going on with this endless search or get on with my life. It was really getting to the point where reality started checking in with me. But Paula said to me, ‘Barbara, if you give up, this dog’s going to give up and die. The only reason he’s staying alive is because he knows you’re out there looking for him.’”

After weeks and weeks of searching, Paula received a tip on yet another sighting of Boris. Paula received a call at her apartment from a stranger in Queens, a man who said, “I think I have the dog that’s in the flyer. There’s been a stray dog living in this garbage-filled abandoned lot next to my house. And sometimes we throw leftovers over the fence because we feel sorry for him. It kind of looks like the dog in the picture.”

The call brought Paula back to a familiar location. The man’s apartment was next door to the automotive shop she’d visited days before. The man had brought the dog into the apartment. Paula stood in his apartment, looked at the dog, looked at the picture, then looked at the dog again. “His eyes were soulless, they were dead. He was filthy. He was a different color. He had a slash in his foot, almost all the way through. I walked up to him and said, ‘Boris, is that you?’ And then one ear went up and one ear went down. And I said, Oh, my God. It’s Boris after fifty-two days.”

Her hands shaking, Paula immediately called Barbara. “Barbara,” she said, “we have Boris.”

“I can’t go and look at any more dogs,” Barbara answered. “Are you sure it’s him? I’m so tired. I don’t know how much more I can take. Are you sure?”

“Somebody called me. He’s inside a house. This is definitely your dog. You gotta come here now.”

“Paula, I can’t go through this anymore,” Barbara said. She didn’t have an ounce of strength left.

“Look, I’m telling you. One ear up, one ear down. You’ve gotta come down here. He’s only a mile from the airport.”

“I’m on my way.”

Weeks of sorrow and worry were about to come to an end. “I went inside this apartment complex and there he was, this little dog coming around the corner peeking its head out at me. And I looked and I said, ‘That’s not my dog. Boris has beautiful eyes. He’s got a tan coat. This dog’s skinny.’”

“Barbara, please,” Paula begged. “Just look again.”

Barbara kneeled down and looked the limping, bedraggled dog in the eye. “Boris,” she called softly, “Boris, is that you?” And he looked up at her with one ear up and one ear down, and suddenly Barbara let out a yell. “Oh, my God, Boris, it is you! It’s you!” She was shaking all over, and suddenly her legs gave out. She found herself sitting on the floor with Boris licking her face, crying. Everyone else in the room was crying right along with her.

“I missed you so much,” Barbara told Boris tearfully. “I love you. I can’t believe they found you!”

“It was the most beautiful thing,” Paula remembered. “It was worth every minute of whatever I contributed as a part of this bigger picture. It was the best reward and the most miraculous. And it was a miracle. It was a chance in a billion.”

That night, Barbara kept her promise. After weeks of waiting, her Christmas tree was finally lit to welcome Boris home. “We’ll make it all better,” she told Boris. “Look at the pretty tree with the lights. You’re home. You’re home, baby!”

The next morning, a triumphant New York Post headline greeted all of New York City. And Boris immediately became a media darling.

A reporter said, “After six weeks of street life, the boxer was finally home. He’s a trooper. He held in there. I can’t believe it. All the while his owner kept faith. But it was a little magic that brought him home.”

And Paula Forester helped provide some of that magic. She and Barbara continue to be close friends, and today Barbara is far less skeptical of psychic phenomena.

“Our chances psychically or otherwise were one in a billion,” Paula says. “I could have been totally wrong through this whole thing. It was a miracle that Boris was found.”

“I’m a believer,” Barbara says. “There are some powers out there that you can’t dismiss. To find a lost dog in New York City? Anything could have happened to him. Anything. For me to be reunited with him is a total miracle to me.”