May 20, 1986, started out for Desireé Rodriguez and her family as an idyllic morning.

At the time, Desireé’s father (a 30-year-old construction worker by the name of Thomas Rodriguez) had taken her, her mother, and sister as well an aunt and uncle out to Catalina Island for a day of sailing. The plan was to go out, fish, and bask in the summer sun before heading back home. In the evening, just as they were headed home the family was impacted by a dense fog. Desireé and her 5-year-old sister Trisha awoke from a nap on the boat to calls from her father to abandon ship and within minutes the entire family was lost at sea. Out in the water and away from their boat that had capsized.

 The family of six was stranded in the chilly Pacific water for hours and Desireé watched as her father first went to swim for rescue and never returned. In the hours that slowly stretched by Desireé witnessed the death of her sister, her mother, her uncle and then her aunt.

Decades have passed since her family’s accident but Desireé has lived to tell of the story thanks to the two men who rescued her.

In a recent piece by The New York times, Desireé was reunited with the two men who were remarkably able to save her after she spent a nightmarish 20 hours in the ocean.

Only 9-years-old at the time of the tragic events, Desireé recalls believing that her father would return with help when he first swam away from the boat. “My dad was like the superhero to me. I actually thought he would get help,” Desireé explained before calling the desperate hours that followed. After watching her family members die, she found herself all alone.

“At that point, I just kind of made the decision, I need to get away from this boat,” Desireé recalled to the New York Times. “I need to swim away, somewhere else. … Where? I don’t know.”

Just when Desireé decided to give up hope, the skipper of a commercial sportfishing boat spotted her orange life jacket in the water.

The boat’s first officer leapt into the water and fished Desireé out of the water. Desireé was ultimately transported back to San Pedro and never saw her rescuers again.

“I don’t think I would have lived, I’ll be honest with you. I think at that point, I was just kind of done,” Desireé explained in a recent interview about the incident. According to an article at the time that described the incident, Desireé had suffered no major physical injuries and was “in good spirits.” She left the hospital in San Pedro the next time.

“I had even hoped that my dad did make it somewhere,” Desireé explained of her thinking of the time. “Maybe he is living on an island and just got amnesia and didn’t know that he has a family. You know, you always have hope. But you get older, and reality sets in, and you’re like, OK. He didn’t make it.”

Paul Strasser and Mark Pisano, the two men who rescued her, ultimately earned commemorative plaques for their bravery from Mayor Tom Bradley. Desireé Rodriguez, now Desireé Campuzano, was adopted by another aunt and uncle who raised her. She went onto attend junior college in Fullerton, built herself a career in criminal justice, married and had a son. Still, she always wondered what had happened to the men who saved her.

It wasn’t until the COVID-19 pandemic that Strasser and Pisano came into contact with Philip Friedman who launched a podcast about his hobby as a fisherman.

“Friedman Adventures” which launched this past December, shares incredible stories from fishermen. Ine one episode Pisano spoke about the 1986 rescue.

“It’s kind of a weird story, kind of like there are some supernatural qualities,” Pisano explained of the experience on the podcast.

Friedman felt motivated to unite the two rescuers and Desireé. Ultimately a friend of Desireé’s heard the episode when it aired and made the connection. He reached out to Desireé and then Friedman and ultimately she and her rescuers were reunited.

“I was nervous at first,” Desireé said of meeting Strasser and Pisano “just seeing [the] guys and putting kind of finalization to the ‘what happened.’” The three were finally reunited during another episode of the podcast.

“I feel like she’s sort of our daughter, in a way, because we brought her back to life,” Strasser said during their reunion. “Even though we never knew each other.”

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It’s a truth universally acknowledged that when you get married you’re not just getting a partner, you’re getting a whole new family. Understanding this can mean all of the difference when it comes to the future of you and your new spouse. Those who get it will likely pursue their future with an understanding that compassion and love have to regularly extend to other members of their new family. Those who don’t… end up on Reddit with family woes.

One Reddit user recently posted a request for assurance that quickly went viral and comes with a pretty obvious family lesson to us all.

Reddit user, u/No-Permit-3219, recently posted in a subreddit in search of reassurance about a recent fall-out with her mother-in-law that occurred at her wedding.

“AITA for giving my MIL a Jersey Mike’s sub?” the user asked r/AmItheA–hole, a subreddit posters can use to get an opinion as to whether their behavior makes them the “a–hole” or not. In the post, the user detailed how her new family is being “torn apart” by her decision to provide her mother-in-law with a Jersey Mike’s sub at her wedding.

“I’ll start off by saying I don’t really have issues with my MIL. she can be a bit needy and demanding, but she isn’t a bad person,” she kicked off the post. “FIL on the other hand is horrible, and his main trigger is when he doesn’t think we ‘respect him’ or treat his wife right. We got married recently, and I wanted to serve my favorite foods at the wedding, lemon chicken and lemon cake. I was aware that not all guests would like that, but I felt that it was my day, and the less food options we had, the cheaper it was. For the average guest, I figured they could just live with it, but I didn’t want my MIL to starve and she HATEs lemon, can’t even put it in her mouth without gagging.

“I was trying to think of something she would eat that was cheap and easy. I know the buffalo chicken cheesesteak at Jersey Mike’s is her fave fast food meal, and I had a box of M&M’s for her. She did give me a weird look, but she ate it. Also I had it delivered, so it wasn’t just sitting there and getting soggy. FIL was furious. He said that I am selfish and disrespected him and his wife. He went on a rant about how tacky it was to have a wedding and not take the family into consideration, and that I wasted his money. MIL did tell him to stop yelling, but he called me a bitch on my wedding day.

“Now FIL is demanding an apology and his golden child isn’t speaking to me. Their other child is on my side, and MIL said she isn’t going to cause drama, but she does think it was disrespectful, and she would never do that with her own MIL. My husband is totally on my side, and I asked some bridesmaids, who feel like I did nothing wrong, and I was gracious to even get her something.”

Users on Reddit labeled the poster TA for her decision but Twitter users had a different opinion.

“It’s her favorite fast food meal, which is quite different from her favorite food,” one user on Twitter commented. “I prefer McDonald’s over Burger King or Wendy’s but would be pretty surprised to have a Big Mac and some candy served to me at my child’s FORMAL wedding that I paid for.”

The Daughter In Law with a Jersey Mike’s-loving mother-in-law went onto underline that even though her future parents-in-law were paying for the wedding she never broached the topic of a dinner menu.

Fortunately, the Reddit user has come to terms with the fact that she failed miserably and texted her mother-in-law an apology.

Here’s hoping that this Reddit user finds a way to turn her self-made sour lemonade into something sweet.

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