I'm 60 years old, not an idiot." When the interviewer asked what she thought of Mike Callahan, she was quiet for a moment and then she said, "He reminded me of someone who has decided very deliberately what kind of person he is." That's rarer than it should be and when you encounter it, it changes the room. The clip of her saying that was, by the end of the week, the most reshared clip of the entire story. More than the coffee cup moment. More than the patches.
More than Torres in the doorway. Harold did not do interviews. He told Brenda to tell anyone who asked that he was unavailable and when she asked him why, he said, "Because everything worth saying about that night I already said with eggs." And she could not argue with that. Dave Pelman did one interview on a Thursday afternoon from his kitchen table in Albuquerque with Carol sitting just off frame.
He told the story clearly and honestly and without performing either modesty or drama. When the interviewer asked why he'd stayed under the counter for so long, he said, "Because I was listening and what I was listening to was more important than anything I could have done by getting up." When the interviewer asked if he was glad he'd called Brenda about the footage, he said, "I'm glad I called my wife first. She helped me figure out what the right thing was before I did it." That's That's what she does. Carol Offrame made a sound that was exactly not crying.
The interviewer asked Dave what he sold for a living. Commercial kitchen equipment, he said. And how's business? I'm I'm actually taking a different territory, Dave said, closer to home, shorter drives.
He looked at the camera for a moment. I've got a son's games to get to. The footage of that interview got 600,000 views, which was modest by the week's numbers, but the comments on it were different from the comments on everything else. They were slower, more personal.
People writing things like, I've been on the road for 22 years and I called my wife after watching this and I don't know this man, but I think he just made me a better father. And sometimes the most important thing a person can do is stay under the counter and listen. Meanwhile, in Stockton, California, a woman named Deja Danton was feeding her daughter breakfast when her phone rang with a number she recognized and had not expected to see. She stared at it for a moment.
Rosie in the high chair made the sound she made when she wanted more oatmeal, a short, specific, imperious sound that Deja had come to think of as the most accurately self-expressive noise she had ever heard a human being make. Deja answered the phone. Hey, Leo said. His voice was different.