Photo: Rebecca Tafaro Boyer
While Rebecca was busy covering her shift at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, David sent over a picture showing William in his car seat as they prepared to run errands. But the eagle-eyed nurse soon noticed that the straps of the seat were hanging loose and its chest clip was resting too low on William’s chest.
“When I actually looked at the picture he sent, I realized that the car seat really wasn’t safely secured,” Rebecca, 31, tells PEOPLE. “I just sent him a quick text and said, ‘Hey, fix the car seat,’ basically. And he did it — luckily.”
Courtesy Rebecca Tafaro Boyer
Just 15 minutes later, Rebecca received a call from David telling her a car steered into his path when making a left turn at an intersection — causing them to crash at 50 miles per hour.
The family’s car was totaled in the crash, but because David had taken the time to heed Rebecca’s instructions about securing the car seat, William didn’t even wake up from his nap during the accident. David, on the other hand, suffered dislocated toes and multiple breaks to his foot during the crash. He is expected to make a full recovery, though he’ll be off from work for a few weeks.
After the accident, Rebecca — who usually keeps her Facebook posts private — was inspired to write a public message that touted the importance of proper car seat installation. The post went viral, garnering more than 32,000 shares and 8,000 likes in two weeks.
“Lots of other moms have been tagging their husbands and saying, ‘See, the strap needs to be up top,’ ” Rebecca says of the response to her post. “This seems to be a common conversation that lots of people have.”
Courtesy: Rebecca Tafaro Boyer
Rebecca says other parents have reached out to her to say they found that they, too, have been making mistakes when placing their children in car seats and realized it thanks to her post.
“That’s the whole point of it,” Rebecca says. “It’s not to say, ‘Oh look at all this stuff I know.’ It’s, ‘Hey this happened and it did what it was supposed to do, and luckily my family’s fine.’ ”
While she initially felt her text to David could have been taken as being “overprotective,” Rebecca says the family is happy that a broken car — and foot — is all they had to worry about that day.
source: people.com
