Francisco Cofré survived one such shooting ten years ago in the United States. In that shooting his girlfriend, Racine Balbontín, died; and he was seriously wounded. They were there through a Working Holiday program. Now he tells how he built himself up, and now he wants to broadcast his message. “It upsets me when I see people who feel like dying at every problem. Things need to be overcome, suffered. I was able to do that and I don’t consider myself a superheroe,” he said.
SOURCE: “Original article by Carlos Matías Pérez published in the supplement Tendencias from the daily The Third One in Chile on January 26, 2019.”
Francisco Javier Cofré Fernández (35) says he was born twice. The first time on August 2, 1983 at the clinic Los Carrera in the quiet Quilpué. The second time on March 19, 2009 in the Intensive Care Unit of Sacred Heart Hospital in warm Pensacola, United States.
His second birth started happening on February 26 of that same year. That night he was at a gathering with other Chileans who lived in Destin, a beach town in Florida. He had arrived the previous December to work in a program called Working Holiday with his girlfriend, Racine Balbontín. That evening they were having a party when Dannie Roy Baker—a retired US citizen with psiquiatric problems and xenophobic ideas—showed up with a shotgun and shot at the group. The attack finished with Nicolás Corp and Racine Balbontín dead, plus three other Chileans wounded. One of them was Francisco Cofré, whose face was wounded and had to spend 21 days fighting for his life in the hospital.
Afterwards came the interviews for newspapers and newscasts around the world. His case was the worst among the survivors of the first hate crime committed against Chileans in the United States. When he was operated to retrieve the bullet in Pensacola, they realized the bullet had entered through the right cheek, traveled across the right side of the head, descended through the neck and was lodged in the back, near the spine. It did not hurt his motor functions, though he lost his sight in the right eye and hearing on the same side. “The doctor that took care of me in the United States said the bullet had made a letter “z” avoiding the main arteries. He didn’t talk about a miracle, but he did say that the trajectory was unexplainable. I don’t see it as a miracle either, but I truly believe I was very fortunate.” says Francisco, while sitting at a coffee shop in Las Condes. He looks to the left to show the scar that crosses the right side of his face. “Today I feel like the happiest and most fortunate man in the world after going through that massacre. That’s why I need to repay the rest of the group.”
Closing the Circle
This ending, a calm man, is the end of the story. Because during these ten years, Francisco had to go through a lot of things. He follows the chronological order and starts to remember that March in 2009, when he woke up at the Pensacola hospital, another beach town in Florida. After the shooting, he had been flown there in a helicopter since that hospital was the best equipped in the region to treat such a complicated case as his.
Then, he only had vague memories of that February 26: the get-together with the other Chileans at a condominium in Miramar Beach, then at midnight when they deciced to go with Racine thinking about a job interview the next day, the shots he heard when they were ready to leave the house. “I saw Racine covering her chest and bending over. It was then that I realized what was happenning. I ran and pushed her to the ground trying to encourage her to live. According to the doctors, she must have died seconds after the shot, since it went directly to her heart.” he tells us since now he knows what happened, but ten years ago his doctors chose to delay that information.
“When I was in intensive care, I worried about her. I felt I needed to go to her and give her my energy, to encourage her to get better. Every day I asked about her and was told that she was at a hospital in another city. They did not allow me to check my computer nor watch television. When I was out of intensive care, a psychologist at the hospital was going to tell me, but my father courageously said he would do it. That’s how I found out.” He said.
– What did you do after you found out she had died?
– I cried and cried; and selfishly, I told my parents that I should have died instead of her. I started looking in my computer for our pictures, the messages that we had sent each other. I cried and cried for hours.
– Afterwards, you stayed two more months at the hospital building yourself up physically and emotionally before returning to Chile.
– I feel I grew up again at the hospital. I was like a baby. Since the bullet had fractured my jaw, I had to be fed with a pump and I was unable to walk due to the damage to my ear which made me lose my balance. My parents came to keep me company, and with them, I started to learn to walk and eat again. My second birth was during this stage.
– How did you rebuild yourself after such an experience?
– First, I had to assume that Racine was not there and wasn’t coming back. Second, I never asked myself why it had happened to me. It had been a massacre that crudely happened.
In this story there is an inflexion point. Francisco dates it to April 2009, a little before being released to go back to Viña del Mar with his family. It was the same way that most of his milestones happened in this process: crying. He went to visit an oftalmologist that confirmed he would never be able to see with his right eye: the optic nerve had been irreparably damaged. “I don’t know if it was what he told me or the drop that over…. the glass, but I went to shit. I couldn’t stop crying. We went back to the hospital and my parents were also crying while they held my hands. After a while, I held their hands tightly and said, ‘No more suffering. I have two eyes and two ears, I can keep on seeing and hearing. There are thousands of people who are blind and deaf.” From that moment on, I decided to be and remain happy,” he recalls.
A few days later, when he could leave the hospital to go back to Chile, he visited Destin and the house where the attack had happened.
– Why did you go?
– To close the circle. That is part of the process to recognize what happened. There are certain ceremonies that one needs to perform to close such circles.
– Did you have more ceremonies like this one?
– Yes, when I arrived in Chile, I went to the cemetery and laid down on the tomb of my ex girlfriend. I talked to her and even caressed the grass. I had to do that and it worked. Now I can go back to the United States, to the hospital, to the house where I lived, to the place where this happened. Maybe I’ll become emotional, but it is not something that will hurt.
– Did you ever avoid the pain?
– Never. In Viña I continued looking at photographs and letters from her. I would jog at the beach, sit on the rocks and start talking to Racine. I would ask her to come in my dreams, or to send me a signal.
-¿Weren’t you afraid to have dreams that reminded you of the attack?
– I never had invasive dreams which happens often with post traumatic experiences. I asked a psychiatrist and he told me that it didn’t happen because I had accepted the fact. When you hide things, when you “erase and create a new account” or “ turn the page,” you are going to pay for what you didn’t overcome. And that doesn’t allow you to move on.
The signals
The first therapyst that saw Francisco in the hospital in Pensacola was named Matt. “At that time I could have been a little depressed, I didn’t feel like doing anything. It was normal after having gone through a massacre. Matt motivated me and I would go out in the wheel chair. That is how I started to recover,” he recalls.
– When you return to Chile, do you continue with the treatment?
– No. I was contacted by an organization in Valparaiso that helps victims of traumatic experiences and I decided to go. But when I visited the psychologist, she told me I was fine. So we focused the theraphy as a family wellness. I had suffered, buy maybe my family experienced the worst suffering. That theraphy lasted a month.
– Any other treatment?
– I didn’t refuse anything. I have never been esoteric, but I was open to everything. My aunts would bring noni oil or my sister would take care of me with reiki. I am catholic, but through this, I realized I believe more in energy. Today I am the happiest man in the world thanks to energy, prayers, and good wishes from people around the world. I received cards even from Indonesia.
– What is needed to come out ahead?
– This (he says touching his temple with his index). I realized that the brain is a tool so powerful that sometimes it plays against us and I decided that it would play in my favor.
– Is that the lesson learned?
– Yes. It upsets me when people lie down to die due to a problem and talk about “turning the page.” Things have to be overcome, they have to be suffered. I did and I don’t consider myself a super hero nor someone who is better than anybody else, I am like everybody else, I am one of the many.
– But there are hard to control situations, like hate. Racine’s assassine will spend the rest of his life in jail. How did you confront your feelings toward him?
– I am not very resentful. When I confronted what had happened and worried about my life becoming the same or better than before, I couldn’t reproach anything from anybody. He is an old schizophrenic guy whose head isn’t normal. I could sit by his side, pat his back and tell him: “Wow, it’s really bad that you are in jail.”
– Have you returned to the United States?
– Yes, two or three times. The first time, must have been in 2013 or 2014, was for work. Now I want to go back to the Pensacola Hospital to see if there still are some of the personnel who were there when I was there so I can thank them. I’d like to visit the room I lived in for two months. I remember people who worried about me, who smiled, and who changed me.
A Mission
Francisco Cofré works as a commercial engineer in the mining industry, is married to Ana María Vargas and has two children, Maximiliano, 5 years old, and Emilia, 11 months. He met his wife at a social gathering in September 2009 and by December they were in love. “I met the woman of my life. I wasn’t looking for anybody and I ended up enthralled. It was a complex situation because I loved Racine a lot and logically I projected with her,” he says.
– ¿Did you keep contact with her family?
– Yes, I was very close to them and tried to help them, until a moment came when I had to keep my distance because they saw their daughter in me and they wanted me to spend more time with them. One day, her brothers told me I needed to live my life. I took advantage of their advice and kept my distance.
– Start a new relationship must have generated a lot of doubts.
– I didn’t know if I was doing the right thing because it happened a few months after losing my long time girlfriend. Then I started asking Racine to signal me and one day she came in a dream. I was on a field and she approached me very happy. We didn’t say anything, but we hugged, looked at each other and she smiled. That brought me peace and I decided that everything was going to be alright.
– But, were you ready to start a new relationship?
– I think one has to accept losses and at that moment I had already done that. I knew I wasn’t with my girlfriend because she had been killed. I knew I had to start living my life and that I couldn’t change anything that had happened in the past, but I could change what would happen in the future.
-¿Did you feel judged when you started your relationship so soon?
– Never. Maybe because the way my friends are and the fact that people love me a lot. They were happy I was happy and approved my decision. Maybe it’s questionable how fast everything happened. We have all heard that after the loss of a partner, you must go through the bereavement, but I had suffered a lot. I casually met the person who is now with me and we have a precious family.
Francisco and Ana María decided to get married in 2012. When they went to request a date at the Civil Registrar in Viña del Mar, the first option they were given was like an epiphany: February 26. “That day keeps showing up. My two childdren were scheduled to be born on that date. That is why it isn’t a negative fact and every February 26 I thank my family, God, my friends and everyone who helped me recover. Now I want to spread this message and demonstrate that, if you want to, you can feel better,” he states.
This idea came to him some years ago. At the time he went through one of his seven reconstructive surgeries—six in Chile, one in the United States—that were done to his face and that were impacted by an osteomielitis, an infection to the medulla, that blocked healing. “I went to a mall with my mother and one person said, “Francisco, it is good you are with us. My family has been following you in the news and you can’t imagine how happy we are.” Then I realized that I can positively influence people’s lives.” He says about the project looking for someone who can teach him to structure and better communicate his message.
– Then, this second birth conveys a mission?
– Yes, if I am alive it must be for a reason. I want my life to be helpful to people who need it. I am looking for the means to accomplish that. I would like to prepare and give talks carrying my message.
– And what would be the message?
– That in life, as difficult as it might turn out, the ability to be better and be happy is always within us.
