April 13, 2022 • 37 mins
This time, at a summer camp in California, Sarah Delashmit is a counselor. She becomes fast friends with Erin Johnson, a 23-year-old woman who was born with cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair. Over the next decade, Erin supports Sarah, from afar, through setback after setback: a brain tumor, an Ebola infection, and multiple children born prematurely and dying. Erin mourns Sarah’s losses as if they were her own, and ultimately faces an even greater devastation.
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
Inside a fellowship hall at a church in Petersburg, Virginia.
About fifty to a hundred people sit at long folding
tables eating lunch. The church serves a community meal every Wednesday.
On this day, a teenager who volunteers at the church
is making her way around the table, saying hello to
the guests. I'll call her Naomi. Naomi's not her real name,
(00:33):
which she wanted to keep private. I just walk around
and shake hands the star small toe, you know. For myself.
I love the one people came in with children because
you know, I get to pull you with her and
what talks to things like that. She wants everyone to
feel welcome, regardless of the circumstances that brought them to
a meal at a church hall in the middle of
the week. It's the spring of two thousand thirteen, three
(00:58):
years before the incident at Camp Summit. Naomi is a
nineteen year old college student at Virginia State University. The
church is near campus. We talked about it, you know, Jesus,
you know, um asking everybody you know, if you know,
have a church home and things like that, not so
much to recruit them on sut of church because we
(01:18):
weren't member that the church. I say it was just
about and saying she especially loves being a part of
the church choir. She's at her happiest when she's singing.
It's as if music is her direct connection to Heaven,
we arning love. As she makes her way from person
(01:43):
to person, she spots a woman sitting by herself. Naomi
has never seen her before, and she's hard to miss.
This is a traditionally African American congregation. The visitor is
a white woman with short brown hair. She's wearing a
(02:03):
sun dress, no makeup, and she seems well, she seems
like somebody he's having a bad day. She kind of
say it. She looked like she was out of it.
We were there to witness, we were there to help,
so you know, I took it upon myself to be
time to reach out. The absolute first words that she
said to me was giving me her name. She said
my name was Sarah. So that was the first thing
(02:25):
that she said to me. And she confides she's pregnant.
As Sarah eats her lunch, she tells Naomi that her
boyfriend is emotionally abusive to her, claims the baby isn't his.
She says she's embarrassed to be in a church pregnant
and unmarried. So immediately, like I said, my right off
(02:45):
went off, because so is it somebody who really needs help?
This somebody really probably just needs somebody. Naomi is deeply religious,
and in that moment, she knows Sarah needs her. It's
why God brought them together. She was, you know, along
by herself, and I felt like, oh, I'm a helper.
After the meal is done, they say goodbye and exchange numbers.
(03:08):
A couple of days later, Naomi sends a text, how
are you in the baby doing? Sarah answers it was
super long. All her messages were always long. She could
never send on one liner. It was always parag long,
long paragrams in visceral detail. Sarah tells Naomi that she's
having morning sickness and that her boyfriend isn't being supportive.
(03:29):
Naomi feels for her. As the weeks passed, Naomi says
she loves babies and that she herself has been adopted,
and Sarah says, hey, I'm adopted too. They start to
exchange texts every day. All day. I would always wake
up two messages from her. No, you know whatever, time.
(03:51):
It was even if I slept to seven, I wouldever,
you know, if I sleep seven and eight, wake up
is a message. It started coming in like four o'clock
or something. So from then she protects me first, and
it was always um about the baby, about you know
how her night was, you know, things of their nature.
Several times when I'll be going about my day as
a student and if I take too long to text her,
(04:13):
I would get like messages. They meet up a couple
of times a week. She begins to reveal more to
Naomi about her life, and it's weighty stuff for a
college student to take in. Sarah says that she had
been raised in foster care that should run away and
been hauled back every time, even raped. She was never
(04:33):
interested in my life story. So at a certain point
it was like I just shut up because her life
stuck way more than mine. So let me just help her.
You know, everything she went through was a hundred a
million percent worse. I'm a Christian. I told her so
many times I don't have enough changes, and so see
how how many times I told her that she can
be sure God knows her name. As Sarah and Naomi's
(04:56):
friendship deepens. She starts getting texts from Mason, the a friend.
She portrayed him as a jerk, but he would text
me and be like it was almost like he was
the sweetest do ever. So I didn't know what to believe.
So it was real confusing. That July, Naomi takes Sarah
out to dinner for her birthday, to a seafood restaurant.
It's a stretch for her student budget, but she wants
(05:16):
her new friend to feel special. But even before they order,
Sarah says she's feeling nauseated at the smell of the
fish and races to the women's room. She owys in
the bedroom to the last all the big one, and
immediately like you also weren't even she's jagging and it's
totally hugging and totally and I'm confided her the best
I can, because I mean it was horrible and you know,
(05:37):
she's all read and she's struggling. They leave without eating,
but it's just as well since it wasn't Sarah's birthday anyway.
She was actually born in December. A month later, in
a barrage of rapid fire texts, Sarah tells Naomi that
she's miscarried. She had been trying to reach Naomi the
(05:58):
whole time she was in the stress, but Naomi was
away from her phone. I feel horrible because the way
that she has portrayed herself to be and somebody who
has nobody, her baby father, Mason, is a piece of trash.
She has abandonment issues and emotional issues. So here's somebody
who has nobody's never had anybody, and she miscarried and
I wasn't there for her. I'm like the only friend
(06:20):
that I knew of in the world who was just like,
really really there for She never had a mom, so
she had the opportunity to be a mother, but she
lost it. So I cried for all that I forgot
crossfall those reasons because I know how much you mean
tour Um. Not having a mother, wanted to be a
mother meant a lot to her. So I cried to that.
I cried because I wasn't there for he, and I
just my heart went out to work. I just I
was devastated. In September of two thousand thirteen, the brother
(06:44):
of one of Naomi's good friends is killed. Her friend
asked Naomi to sing at the funeral, but the day
of the service, Sarah is having a meltdown something about Mason.
She sits in Naomi's car sobbing. Nao Me misses the funeral.
(07:10):
Sarah is soon expecting again. She seems to relish the
role of a pregnant person in trouble. The second pregnancy
appears just a month later, but Naomi's young and doesn't
think twice about it. Sarah proudly shows her the ultrasound,
She rubs her belly and talks to the baby. Naomi
vows to be there for her this time. She absolutely
(07:32):
loved being pregnant. The attention she got from me was
top not It's as if Naomi has to constantly show
Sarah what a good friend she is. From crisis to crisis,
My life revolved around her, like for you every day
from the moment I woke up. I'll put it that way,
because of course, when I was sleep I can't answer,
but when a moment I woke up, it was um.
(07:54):
To be Sarah's friend is to be overwhelmed with one
emotionally draining situation after or another, no time to really
stop and reflect on her unbelievable space of bad luck.
A few months later, in January of two thousand fourteen,
Naomi gets a text from Sarah saying that she's gone
to the bathroom and seen a lot of blood. Naomi panics, Yeah,
(08:19):
I was scared because, like I said, I didn't want it.
I didn't want it to mister. I didn't want it
to be nothing like that, because like I said, I
saw it to go through the first time, and then
she also played the whole Mason blames her so the
baby being you know, she claimed he used to call
her murderer. Sarah tells Naomi that she's going to the
hospital and then one word messages pop up on Naomi's phone,
(08:41):
scared blood. She tells Naomi that she's on her way
to Southside Hospital. Naomi and another friend jump in her
car and dashed to meet Sarah there, but when they
get to the e R, the front desk says that
no one has come in with a possible miscarriage. She
spells Sarah's last name for the guy behind the desk,
(09:03):
the lashman, and watches as he types it into the system.
He looks up nothing. Naomi is confused. She sents Sarah
a text Southside Hospital with a question mark minutes passed
(09:25):
and Sarah does not respond. The silence is deafening, and
then it just that's when it just hit me, waitness,
she's nothing to me. That's like that had to be
the only huge that may have been a moment that
you know, God decided to show me because it nothing
else may say. I think it was just meant for
me to know right there in that moment, for whatever
(09:46):
reason me doing that, it was just it was just
meant for me to know the end that she was
lying to me. Naomi asks her why she lied about
going to the hospital. I never heard from R again.
I promised you I ain't hear nothing else. She said nothing.
It's when I asked her why she died, she said
nothing else. Naomi gradually realizes that nothing Sarah told her
(10:09):
had been real for years. She tries to process what happened,
how her emotions had been toyed with, how she missed
a funeral for someone she cared about over a lie.
How could she believed all of it, all of Sarah's
stories for so long. She was finally starting to put
the ordeal out of her mind, until the day she
(10:31):
learned that she was not the only one and all
the feelings of betrayal came rushing back, and I was
also like, Okay, so the other people here who you know?
She made them feel like she made them feel like
she made me feel And I just I didn't get it.
I didn't understand, like, how one person, how one what?
What did she get out of it? I realized it
(10:51):
was a whole bunch of other people. I was like, WHOA,
She'd been busy. A year and a half after Sarah
vanished from nay Amy's life, she turned up at Camp Summit,
the place she meant Bethany. But Bethany and the other
camp staff weren't the only one shocked. The day that
Sarah rose from her wheelchair and disappeared, there was one
(11:15):
more person, and her life was about to be turned
upside down. I'm Laura Belle. You're listening to Sympathy Pains.
This is episode two. Aaron. In two thousand five, a
(11:37):
full decade before Sarah arrived as a camper at Camp Summit,
she volunteered to be a counselor at a similar place
in southern California, a summer camp where people with disabilities
could fully enjoy the outdoors. At the time, she was
a junior in college. One of the campers that year
(11:59):
was named Aaron Johnson. At twenty three, Aaron and Sarah
were close to the same age. Aaron was born three
months premature, weighing just two pounds. She has cerebral palsy,
which affects her ability to speak and move. Good says
that I had only me worse today. Aaron gets around
(12:21):
with a wheelchair and lives in a boarding care home
in southern California. She talks warmly about her childhood surrounded
by great friends and parents who doated on her. I
is very outgoing, compassionate about a lot. I've been told
they'm very giving and very loving on Sundays. I'm not
(12:42):
so sure that people who always tell me that's what
I and I love psychology and dying two people and
how they work. She first went to camp in two
thousand four. She was a little scared at first, but
the anxiety soon evaporated. The camp is about an hour
and a half from Los Angeles in the San Bernardino
(13:05):
National Forest, with towering trees and panoramic views of the mountains.
A camper people with disabilities. It's very inclusive because out
in the real world, like like a videos. Aaron tells
me that it camps like this, a bond forms between
(13:25):
counselor and camper that other people might not fully understand.
There's a deep trust that comes from someone else tending
to those things you need daily. If you disabled, people
that take care of you, and they take care of
you well, and they genuinely treat you like they care
about you other than physically caring for you, you tend
(13:47):
to really admire them very quickly, because you can be
in situations where there are people who maybe don't take
care of you the best. The camp was free being.
Aaron really loved feeding and grooming the horses. The second
year she went to camp, in two thousand five, she
(14:07):
meant a new counselor named Sarah. Do you remember your
first meeting? Oh, yeah, very well. She's very very quiet.
It took her about ever the first saying on her
I thought she's good to me because she was very quiet,
(14:27):
very like drawn day shy. She talked about her family,
saying that both her parents were doctors. Aaron remembers one
thing that really stood out Sarah's eyes, the bluest eyes.
One evening, a couple of days into camp, it was
casino night. Aaron was in the recreation hall. She felt
(14:48):
awkward because she couldn't manage the games by herself. Seeing
Aaron looking uncomfortable, a staff member asked if she needed help.
She said, Sarah over Aaron and Sarah hid it off
right away. She wanted to go in all my antivities
with me. When I couldn't sleep in the middle of
(15:09):
the night, I was with her, which she couldn't sleeve.
She came to me. We always walked back to the
cabinet after meals together. People used to joke that escessially
that first year, that wish she was I was, and
vice versa, like if you could find one of us,
you found the other one. When the counselors took breaks,
(15:32):
Sarah would come find Aaron. When it came time for
Aaron to wash her hair, Sarah instantly volunteered. When Aaron
would change from her wheelchair to the bed, Sarah would
be by her side. They had a connection. They did
fun things like play sports. No quite a few people
that's show have pretty decent relation to the people that
(15:57):
have been their counselors in the hat vice for so
with the campers, especially if the campers are fully mentally
aware and everything like that. It can be very bonding
and kind of just brings you together and kind of
just forms of friendship that tends to stay, if not
(16:18):
for the rest of her life, for a room all time.
At the end of the week, it came time to
say goodbye. Sarah walked with Aaron to the parking lot
where her parents were waiting by the car. It was
very hard for us emotionally to leave. She was crying.
(16:41):
Aaron introduced Sarah to her parents, rolled back closer and
I said, Mom, this is Sarah. Can we keep her?
And my mom kind of get Golden said sure. They
did keep Sarah in their hearts, if not their home.
The French a blasted another ten plus years, and Aaron
(17:03):
got way more than she ever imagined. After their tearful
departure in the parking lot, Aaron went home. When she
opened up her bags to unpack, she found a surprise.
Aaron had told Sarah that the combination of peanut butter
and chocolate was her favorite candy, but Sarah had told
(17:24):
Aaron that she had a severe peanut allergy and couldn't
get near anything like that throughout my suit. In my
purse in my bag, the peanut butter white up lady
said a regularly. She thought, wow, Sarah risked anaphylactic shock
just to make her happy. The camp was within driving
(17:45):
distance of Aaron's house, so she went to see Sarah occasionally,
each time with an emotional parting. Until Sarah had to
return to college in Illinois. Aaron learned more about Sarah's life,
and it was interesting. Did she tell you anything about
her childhood? She had said that she had been playing
(18:09):
boarding school when she was staying because her parents wanted
her to be a competitive skier, an Olympic skier. In fact,
her Olympic career was supposedly stopped, so she was going
to be on the Olympic ski team. But then she
got ebola. Yes, that was Sarah's first big lie to Aaron,
(18:35):
after a series of smaller embellishments about her childhood. It
was in September of two thousand five. Sarah had just
returned to college. One day, she sent Aaron a message
saying that she felt nauseated and had a high fever.
She was heading to the doctor. Once she got there,
she was immediately admitted for an infection with the abola virus. Well,
(18:58):
I would imagine it was kind of shocking on your end.
Supposedly there was this outbreaking St. Louis because of these
monkeys they had they sected it at school, and Sarah's
telling she was working at a lab dissecting monkeys infected
with ebola and somehow she got infected. This was before
(19:20):
the sweeping outbreaks in Africa dominated headlines. Aaron had never
heard of ebola and really didn't think to google it.
She just knew it sounded horrible. Besides, she loved Sarah
and thought Sarah loved her, so she wasn't preoccupied with skepticism,
just worry. And then Sarah told her that she wouldn't
(19:42):
be able to contact her for a while because the
doctors were putting her into a coma so her body
could better battle the infection. But Aaron kept getting updates
about Sarah's condition from Sarah's little sister, Gabby. Her kid's
sister also happened to be disabled. She used to wheelchair
because she had a rare inherited neuromuscular condition called spinal
(20:05):
muscular atrophy or s M. A. Gabby sent messages to
Aaron saying that Sarah was still unconscious in the hospital.
They spoke on the phone, having conversations about how worried
they were. This went on for five weeks, and then
what happens at the end of that five weeks the
(20:27):
week Sarah, I've had the coma and Sarah has lost
a good amount ror hearing because of the boy. She
was talking to Gabby one day and Gabby suddenly got
another call and she goes out, it's Sarah. Do you
wanna Gabby asked if Aaron wanted a three way call
(20:50):
so they could all talk. Aaron was thrilled. She hadn't
spoken to Sarah since she had woken up from the coma.
So Aaron was on a call thinking that she was
speaking to both Sarah and her sister Gabby, but of
course Sarah and Gabby were one and the same. That's amazing.
So she pulled off a conversation where she's herself and
(21:17):
another person in the same conversation. It's not the only
time that takes a lot of discipline. In January of
two thousand and six, in Aaron's world, Sarah was out
(21:37):
of the coma, but she had complications from ebola. Not
only was her hearing damaged, she now used a wheelchair
because of the neurological complications from the infection. She told
Aaron it was Gian Beret syndrome, an autoimmune reaction that
actually can follow a viral infection, although it's rare. And
(21:57):
then tragedy struck, Sarah told Aaron that Gabby had died
of pneumonia. To Aaron, Gabby was real. She texted with her,
talked to her, felt close to her because they both
faced the challenges of an inaccessible world as wheelchair users.
With Aaron's big, bottomless heart, she loved Gabby. She was
(22:20):
her best friend's little sister. It was very hard. It
felt like I actually lost someone that was a member
of my family. And she played the part very very
well on the grieving big sister. She played it so well.
Sarah said that she was having a hard time getting
over Gabby's death. So in March of two thousand and six,
(22:43):
Sarah came to Aaron's house for spring break. Sir, he
came to a house under the pretense that she could
not deal with her little sisters death unless she saw me,
because I was in person understand how much that she
loved her sister, and she knew that her sister like
(23:08):
that too. Sarah was good at that. You're the only
one who really understands. Sarah arrived at Aaron's house using
a wheelchair. They talked and hung out while Aaron's parents
tried to spoil them to make them feel better. They
grieved over Gabby. Aaron's grief was genuine. Sometime after springbreak,
(23:31):
Sarah told Aaron that she had recovered from her ebola complications.
After all she had gone through, she could walk again,
and she wanted to return to the camp as a counselor.
So a year after they first met, Aaron and Sarah
were back together again. At the camp. Everyone knew like
Sarah and I were insipable, so they put us together.
(23:57):
The two of them had another great summer and returned
to Illinois for her senior year of college. But soon
after going back, Sarah had news she was pregnant. Aaron
didn't know it then, but it would be the first
of many. None of Sarah's pregnancies were ever no. Sarah
(24:17):
told Aaron that she had briefly dated a guy who
was a friend of Gabby's. He was out of the picture,
but Sarah was pregnant with twins. One of the twins died,
but the surviving baby had a heart condition, so he
had surgery in utero and was born premature that spring.
His name was Noah. Sarah said that she wanted Aaron
(24:40):
to be his godmother. He ended up being okay, answer
rising that at least she brought him home. He grew.
He needed a couple of years go by. Sarah sends
her snapshots as he's growing up. He's in struggling health,
and eventually Sarah tells Aaron that he's going to need
(25:02):
a heart transplant. Aaron worries about him deeply. This is
her godson, after all, she refers to him as her nephew,
and he had a heart transplant. One day in two
thousand eight, Aaron was on the phone with a friend
and Sarah tried to call. Aaron didn't answer, figuring that
she would call Sarah back later, and then the frantic
(25:24):
texts began. Noah was sick. She was rushing him to
the hospital. Aaron immediately called back, stricken with worry. Sarah
told her that he was rejecting his new heart. He
was tethered to machines and then he died. Once again.
Aaron had to mourn someone she loved, and she even thought,
(25:46):
why does this keep happening? After that, for the rest
of their friendship, there was not a time that Sarah
was not the mother of several young children or pregnant.
It was always multiples. And then my had I question that,
and she would I don't know if I want to
(26:06):
say smart enough, but she knew enough to have answers
for everything before you or who else she was talking
to was able to question them. Sarah was Aaron's best friend,
and she considered all these babies her own. She even
referred to them as her nieces and nephews. In two
(26:29):
thousand and ten, Aaron was so excited to find out
that Sarah was pregnant again, she posted a video to YouTube.
Hey guys, most of you who know me perfectly know
that one of the most important things in my life
is my family, non biological or biological. I have a
lot of friends who I considered to be family because
(26:53):
I'm an only child. Watching it now, it's easy for
Aaron to remember how she felt in that moment. I
wanted to tell the whole world, you know, I have
these amazing nieces and nephews and this amazing sister for
all intensive purposes. There's a reason that Sarah was well
(27:15):
versed in the lingo of pregnancies and could send Aaron
real pictures of ultrasounds and sick babies. By two thousand twelve,
in Sarah's actual life, she had earned her nursing degree
and was working in Oklahoma in a neo natal intensive
care unit. Or any of these pregnancies that she had
(27:36):
more memorable than any others, obviously the first one and
then the cloud pregnancy. After the quad babies were born,
Sarah had named one of the little girls after Aaron.
She named one of the girls him my first name
as her meddling, and then shortly after that baby was born,
(27:59):
Sarah had news for Aaron, her namesake, who had been
in the intensive care unit her whole life, had died,
just like so many others. By early two thousand and fourteen,
(28:20):
Sarah and Aaron had been friends for almost a decade.
This was just after Sarah had disappeared from Naomi's life
in Virginia. Naomi, you'll remember, is a friend who had
supported her through an abusive boyfriend and two miscarriages. Meanwhile,
Aaron was mourning the deaths of infants she loved his family,
even though she never saw them. Sarah had excuses for
(28:43):
why they couldn't come visit. They were with their grandparents.
Traveling with little ones was too much trouble. The kids
have colds. I'm sorry this happened to you, because I
can't imagine multiple people you care about dying over a
period of ten years or so. It just must have
been incredibly difficult. It was very taxi at times. But
(29:06):
I am very loyal to people who aren't care about
and sometimes to your fault. Obviously, Sara seemed to find
women like this who were loyal to their friends, even
friends with roller coaster lives. Sarah wasn't just having pregnancy
after pregnancy, in Aaron's eyes, she was also getting sick,
once with a brain tumor that left Sarah unable to speak. Yeah, basically,
(29:32):
are reading John not good at And so your mom
would get on and Sarah would mouse the words, and
your mom would tell you what Sarah said, and then
you would answer. So your mom's in this in these
conversations as well. During one of these skype calls, Aaron
watched in horror as Sarah began to have a seizure.
(29:54):
Aaron panicked everything and he wanted to jump through the
screen and older hand, or give her a hug, or
do something anything. And how long did this season go on?
Probably thirty seconds or maybe a little. At one point,
(30:16):
after they've been friends for a few years, Sarah returned
to using a wheelchair. She said she had developed s M, A,
the same rare condition that Gabby had. She came to
visit Aaron during that time and stayed for more than
a week. Aaron's mom, who also by this time loved Sarah,
was a caregiver to both women. Even though she herself
(30:38):
was not feeling well, she still struggled do those nineties
to do what she needed to do to make sure
that we got to visit and do some things together
now we wouldn't normally get to do. In two thousand fourteen,
(31:02):
Aaron's mom passed away. Aaron descended into a deep depression.
As the family made funeral plans, Aaron's dad secretly arranged
for one thing that he thought would make Aaron feel better,
a surprise visit from Sarah. Shortly before her mom's funeral.
(31:23):
Aaron was in her room, lying on her bed when
she heard someone say, does anyone need a sister. Aaron
looked at her phone, recognizing Sarah's voice and thinking she
had accidentally dialed her up. And then Aaron looked around
to see Sarah smiling in her wheelchair, and I just
was stunned for a few seconds, and then I was like, Sisty,
(31:46):
what are you doing here? She's like, what do you
think I'm doing here? Aaron gonna go to Wealth Service
with your mom. I'm not gonna let you go by
your's tail. Sarah was wearing pink, so was Aaron. It
had been Gabby's favorite color. Pink was the only color
in the world, basically for both of us. The next year,
(32:09):
in two thousand and fifteen, Sarah went to Camp Summit.
She arrived decked out in pink. She told Aaron all
about it. Aaron wanted to go to so they made
plans to attend together the following summer. In two thousand sixteen,
Aaron bought her plane tickets and registered. Aaron was especially
excited to meet Sarah's favorite counselor, Bethany. Bethany was the
(32:35):
one person I wanted to meet more than anything, because
Sarah talks so highly of her and how she took
give her and what a sweet person she was, which
is all true. And then that spring, Aaron's dad got
a call from the camp director. She said, I know
your daughter and Sarah are friends. There's something you need
(32:58):
to know about Sarah, and they broke the news. Sarah
wasn't disabled, never had been. Aaron was stunned. So then
he starts telling me about Sarah and my head's one
and I was like, wait, no, that's not too Her
(33:21):
dad said he thought she should call Sarah, but he
warned her, don't accept her to be honest, because she's
never really been honest with you. But maybe just in
the way that she answered you, you can kind of
get some closer and kind of realized why this is
all happening and what kind of person she really was.
(33:44):
They talked. Aaron remembers Sarah in tears, telling her that
she never meant to hurt her. What did you say
to her? I told her that it never would have
mattered what your life was, didn't matter if your family
was messed job where they're both your parents when doctors.
If not of this were true, it wouldn't have mattered
(34:06):
as long as you were as nice as you pluetraated
yourself to be at camp. Aaron would have been Sarah's
friend if she hadn't been an Olympic skier or a
bereft mother, or someone with a disability or brain cancer.
(34:26):
But for some reason, it wasn't enough for Sarah to
just be Sarah. I think she saw us go to
camp and be loved and taken care of and treated
like we were special in getting extra care and stuff,
and I think she in some extent wanted that because something,
(34:53):
in some ways, maybe some of that was missing in
her life and she was looking for that. She just
right the wrong way about it. Either that she's just
evil me and Bethany and so many other people who
didn't really she amally take money from, but our hearts
(35:14):
and our most our families and everything that money can't buy.
Even after Bethany, Aaron, Naomi and there were others, Sarah
wasn't finished. But her victims were about to find one another,
(35:35):
and that would change everything. I think that we were
both absolutely in shock at turning over the stone and
just seeing the enormity of it, the situation, how vast
and wide and deep and complex it was. But you
were fearful to like of just to be clear, some
kind of like fatal attraction moment, like she was going
(35:55):
to turn and just be. We were very afraid, and
both of the um police officers warned us to be.
I was terrified. I was terrified. That's on the next
episode of Sympathy Pains. Sympathy Pains is a production of
(36:17):
Neon Hum Media and I Heart Radio. I'm your host
Laura Beale I wrote and reported the episodes. Natalie Wrinn
is the lead producer. Our editor is Katherine st. Louis.
Associate producer is Rufaro Mazzarua. Our executive producer is Jonathan Hirsch.
Samantha Allison is our production manager. Fact checker is Jacqueline Colletti.
(36:40):
Jesse Perlstein composed the theme song and music heard throughout
the series. Additional tracks are by Epidemic Sound. Scott Somerville
is our engineer and sound designer. Special thanks to Stephanie
Serrano from I Heart Radio. Special thanks to Carry Lieberman
and beth Ann Macaluso. Exact getive producer at I Heart
(37:01):
Radio is Dylan Fagan.
Inside a fellowship hall at a church in Petersburg, Virginia.
About fifty to a hundred people sit at long folding
tables eating lunch. The church serves a community meal every Wednesday.
On this day, a teenager who volunteers at the church
is making her way around the table, saying hello to
the guests. I'll call her Naomi. Naomi's not her real name,
(00:33):
which she wanted to keep private. I just walk around
and shake hands the star small toe, you know. For myself.
I love the one people came in with children because
you know, I get to pull you with her and
what talks to things like that. She wants everyone to
feel welcome, regardless of the circumstances that brought them to
a meal at a church hall in the middle of
the week. It's the spring of two thousand thirteen, three
(00:58):
years before the incident at Camp Summit. Naomi is a
nineteen year old college student at Virginia State University. The
church is near campus. We talked about it, you know, Jesus,
you know, um asking everybody you know, if you know,
have a church home and things like that, not so
much to recruit them on sut of church because we
(01:18):
weren't member that the church. I say it was just
about and saying she especially loves being a part of
the church choir. She's at her happiest when she's singing.
It's as if music is her direct connection to Heaven,
we arning love. As she makes her way from person
(01:43):
to person, she spots a woman sitting by herself. Naomi
has never seen her before, and she's hard to miss.
This is a traditionally African American congregation. The visitor is
a white woman with short brown hair. She's wearing a
(02:03):
sun dress, no makeup, and she seems well, she seems
like somebody he's having a bad day. She kind of
say it. She looked like she was out of it.
We were there to witness, we were there to help,
so you know, I took it upon myself to be
time to reach out. The absolute first words that she
said to me was giving me her name. She said
my name was Sarah. So that was the first thing
(02:25):
that she said to me. And she confides she's pregnant.
As Sarah eats her lunch, she tells Naomi that her
boyfriend is emotionally abusive to her, claims the baby isn't his.
She says she's embarrassed to be in a church pregnant
and unmarried. So immediately, like I said, my right off
(02:45):
went off, because so is it somebody who really needs help?
This somebody really probably just needs somebody. Naomi is deeply religious,
and in that moment, she knows Sarah needs her. It's
why God brought them together. She was, you know, along
by herself, and I felt like, oh, I'm a helper.
After the meal is done, they say goodbye and exchange numbers.
(03:08):
A couple of days later, Naomi sends a text, how
are you in the baby doing? Sarah answers it was
super long. All her messages were always long. She could
never send on one liner. It was always parag long,
long paragrams in visceral detail. Sarah tells Naomi that she's
having morning sickness and that her boyfriend isn't being supportive.
(03:29):
Naomi feels for her. As the weeks passed, Naomi says
she loves babies and that she herself has been adopted,
and Sarah says, hey, I'm adopted too. They start to
exchange texts every day. All day. I would always wake
up two messages from her. No, you know whatever, time.
(03:51):
It was even if I slept to seven, I wouldever,
you know, if I sleep seven and eight, wake up
is a message. It started coming in like four o'clock
or something. So from then she protects me first, and
it was always um about the baby, about you know
how her night was, you know, things of their nature.
Several times when I'll be going about my day as
a student and if I take too long to text her,
(04:13):
I would get like messages. They meet up a couple
of times a week. She begins to reveal more to
Naomi about her life, and it's weighty stuff for a
college student to take in. Sarah says that she had
been raised in foster care that should run away and
been hauled back every time, even raped. She was never
(04:33):
interested in my life story. So at a certain point
it was like I just shut up because her life
stuck way more than mine. So let me just help her.
You know, everything she went through was a hundred a
million percent worse. I'm a Christian. I told her so
many times I don't have enough changes, and so see
how how many times I told her that she can
be sure God knows her name. As Sarah and Naomi's
(04:56):
friendship deepens. She starts getting texts from Mason, the a friend.
She portrayed him as a jerk, but he would text
me and be like it was almost like he was
the sweetest do ever. So I didn't know what to believe.
So it was real confusing. That July, Naomi takes Sarah
out to dinner for her birthday, to a seafood restaurant.
It's a stretch for her student budget, but she wants
(05:16):
her new friend to feel special. But even before they order,
Sarah says she's feeling nauseated at the smell of the
fish and races to the women's room. She owys in
the bedroom to the last all the big one, and
immediately like you also weren't even she's jagging and it's
totally hugging and totally and I'm confided her the best
I can, because I mean it was horrible and you know,
(05:37):
she's all read and she's struggling. They leave without eating,
but it's just as well since it wasn't Sarah's birthday anyway.
She was actually born in December. A month later, in
a barrage of rapid fire texts, Sarah tells Naomi that
she's miscarried. She had been trying to reach Naomi the
(05:58):
whole time she was in the stress, but Naomi was
away from her phone. I feel horrible because the way
that she has portrayed herself to be and somebody who
has nobody, her baby father, Mason, is a piece of trash.
She has abandonment issues and emotional issues. So here's somebody
who has nobody's never had anybody, and she miscarried and
I wasn't there for her. I'm like the only friend
(06:20):
that I knew of in the world who was just like,
really really there for She never had a mom, so
she had the opportunity to be a mother, but she
lost it. So I cried for all that I forgot
crossfall those reasons because I know how much you mean
tour Um. Not having a mother, wanted to be a
mother meant a lot to her. So I cried to that.
I cried because I wasn't there for he, and I
just my heart went out to work. I just I
was devastated. In September of two thousand thirteen, the brother
(06:44):
of one of Naomi's good friends is killed. Her friend
asked Naomi to sing at the funeral, but the day
of the service, Sarah is having a meltdown something about Mason.
She sits in Naomi's car sobbing. Nao Me misses the funeral.
(07:10):
Sarah is soon expecting again. She seems to relish the
role of a pregnant person in trouble. The second pregnancy
appears just a month later, but Naomi's young and doesn't
think twice about it. Sarah proudly shows her the ultrasound,
She rubs her belly and talks to the baby. Naomi
vows to be there for her this time. She absolutely
(07:32):
loved being pregnant. The attention she got from me was
top not It's as if Naomi has to constantly show
Sarah what a good friend she is. From crisis to crisis,
My life revolved around her, like for you every day
from the moment I woke up. I'll put it that way,
because of course, when I was sleep I can't answer,
but when a moment I woke up, it was um.
(07:54):
To be Sarah's friend is to be overwhelmed with one
emotionally draining situation after or another, no time to really
stop and reflect on her unbelievable space of bad luck.
A few months later, in January of two thousand fourteen,
Naomi gets a text from Sarah saying that she's gone
to the bathroom and seen a lot of blood. Naomi panics, Yeah,
(08:19):
I was scared because, like I said, I didn't want it.
I didn't want it to mister. I didn't want it
to be nothing like that, because like I said, I
saw it to go through the first time, and then
she also played the whole Mason blames her so the
baby being you know, she claimed he used to call
her murderer. Sarah tells Naomi that she's going to the
hospital and then one word messages pop up on Naomi's phone,
(08:41):
scared blood. She tells Naomi that she's on her way
to Southside Hospital. Naomi and another friend jump in her
car and dashed to meet Sarah there, but when they
get to the e R, the front desk says that
no one has come in with a possible miscarriage. She
spells Sarah's last name for the guy behind the desk,
(09:03):
the lashman, and watches as he types it into the system.
He looks up nothing. Naomi is confused. She sents Sarah
a text Southside Hospital with a question mark minutes passed
(09:25):
and Sarah does not respond. The silence is deafening, and
then it just that's when it just hit me, waitness,
she's nothing to me. That's like that had to be
the only huge that may have been a moment that
you know, God decided to show me because it nothing
else may say. I think it was just meant for
me to know right there in that moment, for whatever
(09:46):
reason me doing that, it was just it was just
meant for me to know the end that she was
lying to me. Naomi asks her why she lied about
going to the hospital. I never heard from R again.
I promised you I ain't hear nothing else. She said nothing.
It's when I asked her why she died, she said
nothing else. Naomi gradually realizes that nothing Sarah told her
(10:09):
had been real for years. She tries to process what happened,
how her emotions had been toyed with, how she missed
a funeral for someone she cared about over a lie.
How could she believed all of it, all of Sarah's
stories for so long. She was finally starting to put
the ordeal out of her mind, until the day she
(10:31):
learned that she was not the only one and all
the feelings of betrayal came rushing back, and I was
also like, Okay, so the other people here who you know?
She made them feel like she made them feel like
she made me feel And I just I didn't get it.
I didn't understand, like, how one person, how one what?
What did she get out of it? I realized it
(10:51):
was a whole bunch of other people. I was like, WHOA,
She'd been busy. A year and a half after Sarah
vanished from nay Amy's life, she turned up at Camp Summit,
the place she meant Bethany. But Bethany and the other
camp staff weren't the only one shocked. The day that
Sarah rose from her wheelchair and disappeared, there was one
(11:15):
more person, and her life was about to be turned
upside down. I'm Laura Belle. You're listening to Sympathy Pains.
This is episode two. Aaron. In two thousand five, a
(11:37):
full decade before Sarah arrived as a camper at Camp Summit,
she volunteered to be a counselor at a similar place
in southern California, a summer camp where people with disabilities
could fully enjoy the outdoors. At the time, she was
a junior in college. One of the campers that year
(11:59):
was named Aaron Johnson. At twenty three, Aaron and Sarah
were close to the same age. Aaron was born three
months premature, weighing just two pounds. She has cerebral palsy,
which affects her ability to speak and move. Good says
that I had only me worse today. Aaron gets around
(12:21):
with a wheelchair and lives in a boarding care home
in southern California. She talks warmly about her childhood surrounded
by great friends and parents who doated on her. I
is very outgoing, compassionate about a lot. I've been told
they'm very giving and very loving on Sundays. I'm not
(12:42):
so sure that people who always tell me that's what
I and I love psychology and dying two people and
how they work. She first went to camp in two
thousand four. She was a little scared at first, but
the anxiety soon evaporated. The camp is about an hour
and a half from Los Angeles in the San Bernardino
(13:05):
National Forest, with towering trees and panoramic views of the mountains.
A camper people with disabilities. It's very inclusive because out
in the real world, like like a videos. Aaron tells
me that it camps like this, a bond forms between
(13:25):
counselor and camper that other people might not fully understand.
There's a deep trust that comes from someone else tending
to those things you need daily. If you disabled, people
that take care of you, and they take care of
you well, and they genuinely treat you like they care
about you other than physically caring for you, you tend
(13:47):
to really admire them very quickly, because you can be
in situations where there are people who maybe don't take
care of you the best. The camp was free being.
Aaron really loved feeding and grooming the horses. The second
year she went to camp, in two thousand five, she
(14:07):
meant a new counselor named Sarah. Do you remember your
first meeting? Oh, yeah, very well. She's very very quiet.
It took her about ever the first saying on her
I thought she's good to me because she was very quiet,
(14:27):
very like drawn day shy. She talked about her family,
saying that both her parents were doctors. Aaron remembers one
thing that really stood out Sarah's eyes, the bluest eyes.
One evening, a couple of days into camp, it was
casino night. Aaron was in the recreation hall. She felt
(14:48):
awkward because she couldn't manage the games by herself. Seeing
Aaron looking uncomfortable, a staff member asked if she needed help.
She said, Sarah over Aaron and Sarah hid it off
right away. She wanted to go in all my antivities
with me. When I couldn't sleep in the middle of
(15:09):
the night, I was with her, which she couldn't sleeve.
She came to me. We always walked back to the
cabinet after meals together. People used to joke that escessially
that first year, that wish she was I was, and
vice versa, like if you could find one of us,
you found the other one. When the counselors took breaks,
(15:32):
Sarah would come find Aaron. When it came time for
Aaron to wash her hair, Sarah instantly volunteered. When Aaron
would change from her wheelchair to the bed, Sarah would
be by her side. They had a connection. They did
fun things like play sports. No quite a few people
that's show have pretty decent relation to the people that
(15:57):
have been their counselors in the hat vice for so
with the campers, especially if the campers are fully mentally
aware and everything like that. It can be very bonding
and kind of just brings you together and kind of
just forms of friendship that tends to stay, if not
(16:18):
for the rest of her life, for a room all time.
At the end of the week, it came time to
say goodbye. Sarah walked with Aaron to the parking lot
where her parents were waiting by the car. It was
very hard for us emotionally to leave. She was crying.
(16:41):
Aaron introduced Sarah to her parents, rolled back closer and
I said, Mom, this is Sarah. Can we keep her?
And my mom kind of get Golden said sure. They
did keep Sarah in their hearts, if not their home.
The French a blasted another ten plus years, and Aaron
(17:03):
got way more than she ever imagined. After their tearful
departure in the parking lot, Aaron went home. When she
opened up her bags to unpack, she found a surprise.
Aaron had told Sarah that the combination of peanut butter
and chocolate was her favorite candy, but Sarah had told
(17:24):
Aaron that she had a severe peanut allergy and couldn't
get near anything like that throughout my suit. In my
purse in my bag, the peanut butter white up lady
said a regularly. She thought, wow, Sarah risked anaphylactic shock
just to make her happy. The camp was within driving
(17:45):
distance of Aaron's house, so she went to see Sarah occasionally,
each time with an emotional parting. Until Sarah had to
return to college in Illinois. Aaron learned more about Sarah's life,
and it was interesting. Did she tell you anything about
her childhood? She had said that she had been playing
(18:09):
boarding school when she was staying because her parents wanted
her to be a competitive skier, an Olympic skier. In fact,
her Olympic career was supposedly stopped, so she was going
to be on the Olympic ski team. But then she
got ebola. Yes, that was Sarah's first big lie to Aaron,
(18:35):
after a series of smaller embellishments about her childhood. It
was in September of two thousand five. Sarah had just
returned to college. One day, she sent Aaron a message
saying that she felt nauseated and had a high fever.
She was heading to the doctor. Once she got there,
she was immediately admitted for an infection with the abola virus. Well,
(18:58):
I would imagine it was kind of shocking on your end.
Supposedly there was this outbreaking St. Louis because of these
monkeys they had they sected it at school, and Sarah's
telling she was working at a lab dissecting monkeys infected
with ebola and somehow she got infected. This was before
(19:20):
the sweeping outbreaks in Africa dominated headlines. Aaron had never
heard of ebola and really didn't think to google it.
She just knew it sounded horrible. Besides, she loved Sarah
and thought Sarah loved her, so she wasn't preoccupied with skepticism,
just worry. And then Sarah told her that she wouldn't
(19:42):
be able to contact her for a while because the
doctors were putting her into a coma so her body
could better battle the infection. But Aaron kept getting updates
about Sarah's condition from Sarah's little sister, Gabby. Her kid's
sister also happened to be disabled. She used to wheelchair
because she had a rare inherited neuromuscular condition called spinal
(20:05):
muscular atrophy or s M. A. Gabby sent messages to
Aaron saying that Sarah was still unconscious in the hospital.
They spoke on the phone, having conversations about how worried
they were. This went on for five weeks, and then
what happens at the end of that five weeks the
(20:27):
week Sarah, I've had the coma and Sarah has lost
a good amount ror hearing because of the boy. She
was talking to Gabby one day and Gabby suddenly got
another call and she goes out, it's Sarah. Do you
wanna Gabby asked if Aaron wanted a three way call
(20:50):
so they could all talk. Aaron was thrilled. She hadn't
spoken to Sarah since she had woken up from the coma.
So Aaron was on a call thinking that she was
speaking to both Sarah and her sister Gabby, but of
course Sarah and Gabby were one and the same. That's amazing.
So she pulled off a conversation where she's herself and
(21:17):
another person in the same conversation. It's not the only
time that takes a lot of discipline. In January of
two thousand and six, in Aaron's world, Sarah was out
(21:37):
of the coma, but she had complications from ebola. Not
only was her hearing damaged, she now used a wheelchair
because of the neurological complications from the infection. She told
Aaron it was Gian Beret syndrome, an autoimmune reaction that
actually can follow a viral infection, although it's rare. And
(21:57):
then tragedy struck, Sarah told Aaron that Gabby had died
of pneumonia. To Aaron, Gabby was real. She texted with her,
talked to her, felt close to her because they both
faced the challenges of an inaccessible world as wheelchair users.
With Aaron's big, bottomless heart, she loved Gabby. She was
(22:20):
her best friend's little sister. It was very hard. It
felt like I actually lost someone that was a member
of my family. And she played the part very very
well on the grieving big sister. She played it so well.
Sarah said that she was having a hard time getting
over Gabby's death. So in March of two thousand and six,
(22:43):
Sarah came to Aaron's house for spring break. Sir, he
came to a house under the pretense that she could
not deal with her little sisters death unless she saw me,
because I was in person understand how much that she
loved her sister, and she knew that her sister like
(23:08):
that too. Sarah was good at that. You're the only
one who really understands. Sarah arrived at Aaron's house using
a wheelchair. They talked and hung out while Aaron's parents
tried to spoil them to make them feel better. They
grieved over Gabby. Aaron's grief was genuine. Sometime after springbreak,
(23:31):
Sarah told Aaron that she had recovered from her ebola complications.
After all she had gone through, she could walk again,
and she wanted to return to the camp as a counselor.
So a year after they first met, Aaron and Sarah
were back together again. At the camp. Everyone knew like
Sarah and I were insipable, so they put us together.
(23:57):
The two of them had another great summer and returned
to Illinois for her senior year of college. But soon
after going back, Sarah had news she was pregnant. Aaron
didn't know it then, but it would be the first
of many. None of Sarah's pregnancies were ever no. Sarah
(24:17):
told Aaron that she had briefly dated a guy who
was a friend of Gabby's. He was out of the picture,
but Sarah was pregnant with twins. One of the twins died,
but the surviving baby had a heart condition, so he
had surgery in utero and was born premature that spring.
His name was Noah. Sarah said that she wanted Aaron
(24:40):
to be his godmother. He ended up being okay, answer
rising that at least she brought him home. He grew.
He needed a couple of years go by. Sarah sends
her snapshots as he's growing up. He's in struggling health,
and eventually Sarah tells Aaron that he's going to need
(25:02):
a heart transplant. Aaron worries about him deeply. This is
her godson, after all, she refers to him as her nephew,
and he had a heart transplant. One day in two
thousand eight, Aaron was on the phone with a friend
and Sarah tried to call. Aaron didn't answer, figuring that
she would call Sarah back later, and then the frantic
(25:24):
texts began. Noah was sick. She was rushing him to
the hospital. Aaron immediately called back, stricken with worry. Sarah
told her that he was rejecting his new heart. He
was tethered to machines and then he died. Once again.
Aaron had to mourn someone she loved, and she even thought,
(25:46):
why does this keep happening? After that, for the rest
of their friendship, there was not a time that Sarah
was not the mother of several young children or pregnant.
It was always multiples. And then my had I question that,
and she would I don't know if I want to
(26:06):
say smart enough, but she knew enough to have answers
for everything before you or who else she was talking
to was able to question them. Sarah was Aaron's best friend,
and she considered all these babies her own. She even
referred to them as her nieces and nephews. In two
(26:29):
thousand and ten, Aaron was so excited to find out
that Sarah was pregnant again, she posted a video to YouTube.
Hey guys, most of you who know me perfectly know
that one of the most important things in my life
is my family, non biological or biological. I have a
lot of friends who I considered to be family because
(26:53):
I'm an only child. Watching it now, it's easy for
Aaron to remember how she felt in that moment. I
wanted to tell the whole world, you know, I have
these amazing nieces and nephews and this amazing sister for
all intensive purposes. There's a reason that Sarah was well
(27:15):
versed in the lingo of pregnancies and could send Aaron
real pictures of ultrasounds and sick babies. By two thousand twelve,
in Sarah's actual life, she had earned her nursing degree
and was working in Oklahoma in a neo natal intensive
care unit. Or any of these pregnancies that she had
(27:36):
more memorable than any others, obviously the first one and
then the cloud pregnancy. After the quad babies were born,
Sarah had named one of the little girls after Aaron.
She named one of the girls him my first name
as her meddling, and then shortly after that baby was born,
(27:59):
Sarah had news for Aaron, her namesake, who had been
in the intensive care unit her whole life, had died,
just like so many others. By early two thousand and fourteen,
(28:20):
Sarah and Aaron had been friends for almost a decade.
This was just after Sarah had disappeared from Naomi's life
in Virginia. Naomi, you'll remember, is a friend who had
supported her through an abusive boyfriend and two miscarriages. Meanwhile,
Aaron was mourning the deaths of infants she loved his family,
even though she never saw them. Sarah had excuses for
(28:43):
why they couldn't come visit. They were with their grandparents.
Traveling with little ones was too much trouble. The kids
have colds. I'm sorry this happened to you, because I
can't imagine multiple people you care about dying over a
period of ten years or so. It just must have
been incredibly difficult. It was very taxi at times. But
(29:06):
I am very loyal to people who aren't care about
and sometimes to your fault. Obviously, Sara seemed to find
women like this who were loyal to their friends, even
friends with roller coaster lives. Sarah wasn't just having pregnancy
after pregnancy, in Aaron's eyes, she was also getting sick,
once with a brain tumor that left Sarah unable to speak. Yeah, basically,
(29:32):
are reading John not good at And so your mom
would get on and Sarah would mouse the words, and
your mom would tell you what Sarah said, and then
you would answer. So your mom's in this in these
conversations as well. During one of these skype calls, Aaron
watched in horror as Sarah began to have a seizure.
(29:54):
Aaron panicked everything and he wanted to jump through the
screen and older hand, or give her a hug, or
do something anything. And how long did this season go on?
Probably thirty seconds or maybe a little. At one point,
(30:16):
after they've been friends for a few years, Sarah returned
to using a wheelchair. She said she had developed s M, A,
the same rare condition that Gabby had. She came to
visit Aaron during that time and stayed for more than
a week. Aaron's mom, who also by this time loved Sarah,
was a caregiver to both women. Even though she herself
(30:38):
was not feeling well, she still struggled do those nineties
to do what she needed to do to make sure
that we got to visit and do some things together
now we wouldn't normally get to do. In two thousand fourteen,
(31:02):
Aaron's mom passed away. Aaron descended into a deep depression.
As the family made funeral plans, Aaron's dad secretly arranged
for one thing that he thought would make Aaron feel better,
a surprise visit from Sarah. Shortly before her mom's funeral.
(31:23):
Aaron was in her room, lying on her bed when
she heard someone say, does anyone need a sister. Aaron
looked at her phone, recognizing Sarah's voice and thinking she
had accidentally dialed her up. And then Aaron looked around
to see Sarah smiling in her wheelchair, and I just
was stunned for a few seconds, and then I was like, Sisty,
(31:46):
what are you doing here? She's like, what do you
think I'm doing here? Aaron gonna go to Wealth Service
with your mom. I'm not gonna let you go by
your's tail. Sarah was wearing pink, so was Aaron. It
had been Gabby's favorite color. Pink was the only color
in the world, basically for both of us. The next year,
(32:09):
in two thousand and fifteen, Sarah went to Camp Summit.
She arrived decked out in pink. She told Aaron all
about it. Aaron wanted to go to so they made
plans to attend together the following summer. In two thousand sixteen,
Aaron bought her plane tickets and registered. Aaron was especially
excited to meet Sarah's favorite counselor, Bethany. Bethany was the
(32:35):
one person I wanted to meet more than anything, because
Sarah talks so highly of her and how she took
give her and what a sweet person she was, which
is all true. And then that spring, Aaron's dad got
a call from the camp director. She said, I know
your daughter and Sarah are friends. There's something you need
(32:58):
to know about Sarah, and they broke the news. Sarah
wasn't disabled, never had been. Aaron was stunned. So then
he starts telling me about Sarah and my head's one
and I was like, wait, no, that's not too Her
(33:21):
dad said he thought she should call Sarah, but he
warned her, don't accept her to be honest, because she's
never really been honest with you. But maybe just in
the way that she answered you, you can kind of
get some closer and kind of realized why this is
all happening and what kind of person she really was.
(33:44):
They talked. Aaron remembers Sarah in tears, telling her that
she never meant to hurt her. What did you say
to her? I told her that it never would have
mattered what your life was, didn't matter if your family
was messed job where they're both your parents when doctors.
If not of this were true, it wouldn't have mattered
(34:06):
as long as you were as nice as you pluetraated
yourself to be at camp. Aaron would have been Sarah's
friend if she hadn't been an Olympic skier or a
bereft mother, or someone with a disability or brain cancer.
(34:26):
But for some reason, it wasn't enough for Sarah to
just be Sarah. I think she saw us go to
camp and be loved and taken care of and treated
like we were special in getting extra care and stuff,
and I think she in some extent wanted that because something,
(34:53):
in some ways, maybe some of that was missing in
her life and she was looking for that. She just
right the wrong way about it. Either that she's just
evil me and Bethany and so many other people who
didn't really she amally take money from, but our hearts
(35:14):
and our most our families and everything that money can't buy.
Even after Bethany, Aaron, Naomi and there were others, Sarah
wasn't finished. But her victims were about to find one another,
(35:35):
and that would change everything. I think that we were
both absolutely in shock at turning over the stone and
just seeing the enormity of it, the situation, how vast
and wide and deep and complex it was. But you
were fearful to like of just to be clear, some
kind of like fatal attraction moment, like she was going
(35:55):
to turn and just be. We were very afraid, and
both of the um police officers warned us to be.
I was terrified. I was terrified. That's on the next
episode of Sympathy Pains. Sympathy Pains is a production of
(36:17):
Neon Hum Media and I Heart Radio. I'm your host
Laura Beale I wrote and reported the episodes. Natalie Wrinn
is the lead producer. Our editor is Katherine st. Louis.
Associate producer is Rufaro Mazzarua. Our executive producer is Jonathan Hirsch.
Samantha Allison is our production manager. Fact checker is Jacqueline Colletti.
(36:40):
Jesse Perlstein composed the theme song and music heard throughout
the series. Additional tracks are by Epidemic Sound. Scott Somerville
is our engineer and sound designer. Special thanks to Stephanie
Serrano from I Heart Radio. Special thanks to Carry Lieberman
and beth Ann Macaluso. Exact getive producer at I Heart
(37:01):
Radio is Dylan Fagan.
Host
Laura Beil
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