Chapter 10 - The Families
The families remembered.
They remembered for a long time.
The woman in the stained sweatshirt — her name was Diana Reyes — remembered for years. She wrote to Audrey Mills on a piece of notebook paper that her daughter had bought at the school supply store that the shelter had set up for the kids. She wrote:
"Captain Mills — I want you to know that my kids are warm. I want you to know that they are sleeping. I want you to know that I have a place to live now — a FEMA trailer — and that we are going to be okay. And I want you to know that when I heard what happened to you, I was not surprised. I was not surprised that the Army did not want you to stay. I was surprised that you stayed. My daughter asked me the other day what a hero is. And I told her that a hero is someone who stays. And my daughter said, 'Like the captain.' And I said yes. Like the captain. — Diana Reyes."
Audrey wrote back. She wrote on state headquarters stationery. She wrote:
"Ms. Reyes — I want you to know that I received your letter. I want you to know that I read it. I want you to know that I keep it in my desk. I want you to know that I think about your daughter and about what you told her. And I want you to know that I am not a hero. I am a soldier. I am a soldier who happened to be standing in the right place at the right time. But if you want to tell your daughter that I am a hero — if she needs that — then please tell her. But also tell her something else. Tell her that a hero is not someone who stands in front of a colonel. A hero is someone who does the right thing because it is the right thing. Your daughter already knows how to do that. She is watching you do it every day. She is watching you build a life out of a FEMA trailer. She is watching you be a mother. That is what a hero is. — Captain Audrey Mills."
Diana Reyes kept the letter. She kept it for years. She kept it until her daughter grew up and went to nursing school and then came home one day and said, "Mom, I want to be a nurse." And Diana Reyes said, "Why a nurse?" And her daughter said, "Because I want to be someone who stays."
The families of Sacramento did not forget. They did not forget because the families of Sacramento were the kind of people who remembered. They remembered the captain. They remembered the firefighter. They remembered the blanket. They remembered the empty box.
They remembered.
And they told their children.
And their children told their children.
And the story of a captain who refused to leave a relief depot in the middle of a wildfire became, over the years, a story that the families of Sacramento told to their children when the children asked what a hero was.
A hero, the families of Sacramento said, was a captain in the California Army National Guard who had stood at a distribution table in front of a colonel and an empty box and a line of eleven hundred evacuees and said, "No, sir. I will not."
That was what a hero was.
May you like
That was all a hero ever was.
And the families of Sacramento would remember it for the rest of their lives.
