Randi Marcucio lost just about everything Sunday when raging floodwaters undermined her Oxford, Connecticut, home.
The pieces of her life were washed away as the water from what was normally a babbling brook overtook her dream home.
One of those pieces somehow made it down the Housatonic River, and ended up 35 miles away, floating in the waves on Long Island Sound along Compo Beach in Westport.
Nancy Lewis was at Compo Beach on Monday and saw something floating in the water.
“I’m walking by the water’s edge with my friend and I see what looks like a photograph in the water,” Lewis said.
It was a sonogram image with the name “Marcucio, Randi” on it. Lewis looked up the name.
“My heart just broke, and just then reading her story, and that’s why I reached out to you, Heidi,” she said.
Lewis had seen an Instagram post from NBC Connecticut Today anchor Heidi Voight about Randi Marcucio’s story and wanted to help in any small way.
On Wednesday, Lewis came to Oxford to meet Marcucio and return the sonogram to her.
“I saw the devastation and read your story,” Lewis said as the two moms hugged. “A single mom, emergency room nurse, I figured you were somebody who’s always caring for other people. And I just wanted to see if there was anything that I could do for you. I mean — apart from this little sonogram that I found.”
“That’s him. Thank you!” Marcucio said recognizing the image of her now 3-year-old son, Rhylee.
For Randi’s father, Carl Marcucio, this was more than a chance encounter.
“For her to have been out at that beach, at that time, to see something like that, to think it wasn’t just a piece of garbage, pick it up, follow through – thank you so much – it’s a story in itself,” Carl said. “And it allows me to think that there is something greater than us. That has something to do with what goes on with these things.”
Though she has lost her property, Randi said she has many things to be grateful for.
“Rhylee and I are alive,” she said. “Several people are not. So, you know, maybe to honor those people who can’t move forward, Rhylee and I could just work on thriving, because we survived. So now it’s time to thrive for the people that can’t and their families. You know, this is the start. This is the middle. And we’ll finish out with a good long life in the end.”
