LEXINGTON, Ky. (LEX 18) — For La’Keisha Campbell, it was a moment that she will never forget. A knock at her door and a police officer standing on the other side with a heartbreaking message.
“He asked me, ‘Do you have a daughter by the name of Kimaria Spalding?’ And I said ‘yes.' And he said, ‘Well, I’m sorry to inform you, but she’s been in an accident,’ and I put my hand up to tell him not to speak anymore. And of course he had to finish and said ‘unfortunately she didn’t make it. She passed,'" La’Keisha recalls.
Kimaria was just 18 years old and was driving home from seeing her godmother in Bowling Green. Through her immense and understandable grief, La’Keisha – in time – felt something else.
“I did become angry. I was mad," she says. “But then I thought to myself, ‘What if God came and told me all about Kimaria but told me that I would lose her at the age of 18 and I’d have to endure that pain and loss, would I still want to be her mom?' And I was like, ‘Absolutely! Choose me!’ And then I found gratitude, and I learned to become grateful for the things that I was given versus the things that I might lose.”
It's that epiphany that made a difference. La’Keisha has focused that energy on helping others through social media, poetry, and public speaking. Turning tragedy into triumph, as she says, by encouraging students to go do the things Kimaria wasn’t able to.
“I’ve had students hold onto that, and they’ll send me like, ‘Hey, I’m graduating high school,’ or ‘I’m graduating college,’ or ‘Hey, I’ve gotten engaged…I had my first child.'"
“It’s really amazing to touch other people and allow what I’ve gone through to help others just understand that they’re not alone, that their loved one’s life mattered, their story matters.”
La’Keisha adds that her daughter’s high school holds a blood drive in her name every year, and every year, they have more potential donors than bags. We look forward to seeing how many more lives she can touch with her story.
