(CNN) – When a 26-year-old man died just months after retiring from the Navy, his young widow in San Diego was devastated.
But with her late husband’s military buddies already back at sea, she was also desperate. She didn’t know who to ask to help carry his coffin. So she turned to Craigslist, and found she wasn’t alone
A horse-drawn carriage arrives carrying Kenneth Nosik’s flag-draped casket. Waiting for him is a contingent of Navy pallbearers.
Nosik served aboard the guided-missile frigate USS Vandegrift. But the ship is now on deployment, so when he died suddenly…
“I didn’t have nobody to call who was in the military that could help me with carrying his casket to rest, so I put an ad on Craigslist,” said Yvonne Nosik.
The Navy wasn’t the only ones to answer the ad. Yuri Sitler saw Craigslist, too, and called her husband on the ship.
“They didn’t know, they had no idea, and I was the first person who told them,” Sitler said.
She even brought a cruise book showing both Nosik and her husband during a 2010 deployment.
“I felt like her husband called to me to be here,” Sitler said.
That calling was also felt by Leila Alhinn, whose 17-year-old daughter now has a chance at a new life thanks to a kidney, donated by Yvonne’s husband.
“Part of her family is in my daughter. I felt it was so genuine. I felt so close. I feel like she is my sister,” Alhinn said.
Her husband is gone; there are of course photos and a folded flag as reminders, but because of the organ donations…
“You are part of our family now,” Yvonne Nosik told Leila Alhinn.
“Okay,” Alhinn responded.
And an online plea for volunteers…
“I’m very thankful and very grateful,” Yvonne Nosik said.
As Yvonne put it, Ken Nosik finished his duty here and fulfilled his calling.
The donations of his other organs will help save the lives of three other people.
Source: http://www.kmph-kfre.com/story/18770770/widow-turns-to-craigslist-for-pallbearers
