By Amanda Thomason September 17, 2021 at 2:32pm
The love a good mother has for her children is an unbreakable bond and extends beyond life itself. One very good mother recently made the ultimate sacrifice for her children, placing her in the ranks of other motherly heroes who have gone before her.
Mom-of-two, 40-year-old Mariely Chacón, was out on a boat with friends and her family on Sept. 3.
According to the U.K.’s Daily Mail, Chacón’s father, Humberto Chacón, said the trip was supposed to be “a family trip to entertain the children,” but turned into something much more horrible.
They were traveling from Higuerote, Venezuela, to Tortuga Island in the Caribbean when their boat was hit by a wave and broke apart.
In the scramble, Chacón was able to get her 6-year-old son, Jose David, and her 2-year-old daughter, Maria Beatriz Camblor Chacon, into a lifeboat.
Mom, children and their 25-year-old nanny, Verónica Martinez, floated for four days before being rescued. They had no flares, GPS or radio and were left to the mercy of the elements.
On the evening of Sept. 6, someone spotted the floating group off La Orchila, an island. A search team was assembled, but by the time the four were picked up at around 2:10 p.m. on Sept. 7, the mother had been dead for several hours.
When rescuers approached them, the two children were still clinging to their mother’s body, and the nanny was inside a cooler, trying to escape the sun.
Chacón had breastfed her children to keep them alive and drank her own urine, ultimately perishing from organ failure caused by dehydration, according to The Sun.
“The mother who died kept her children alive by breastfeeding them and drinking her own urine,” a spokesman for Venezuela’s National Maritime Authority INEA said, according to The Sun. “She died three or four hours before the rescue from dehydration after drinking no water for three days.”
The three survivors were taken to the hospital where they were treated for first-degree burns and dehydration.
Remis David Camblor, Chacón’s husband and the children’s father, is still missing, as are four others who were on board at the time of the accident. Rescuers have little hope of finding them.
Chacón’s funeral, held on Sept. 11, was shared on social media, and many have paid their respects.
Now many are hailing Chacón as the hero she was, for making the ultimate sacrifice and giving of herself to save her children.
Amanda holds an MA in Rhetoric and TESOL from Cal Poly Pomona. After teaching composition and logic for several years, she’s strayed into writing full-time and especially enjoys animal-related topics.
As of January 2019, Amanda has written over 1,000 stories for The Western Journal but doesn’t really know how. Graduating from California State Polytechnic University with a MA in Rhetoric/Composition and TESOL, she wrote her thesis about metacognitive development and the skill transfer between reading and writing in freshman students.
She has a slew of interests that keep her busy, including trying out new recipes, enjoying nature, discussing ridiculous topics, reading, drawing, people watching, developing curriculum, and writing bios. Sometimes she has red hair, sometimes she has brown hair, sometimes she’s had teal hair.
With a book on productive communication strategies in the works, Amanda is also writing and illustrating some children’s books with her husband, Edward.
Location
Austin, Texas
Languages Spoken
English und ein bißchen Deutsch
Topics of Expertise
Faith, Animals, Cooking