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| Misty Wallace shared her story with an Indianapolis Star reporting/photographry team. |
INDIANAPOLIS – Two teenagers’ lives took drastic
turns on that balmy October night in 1992 on the city’s southwest side.
Misty Wallace, a sports-active senior at Decatur
High School with aspirations to attend college, was using a pay telephone outside
a fast-food restaurant. After she hung up she saw a stranger rapidly moving toward
her. Keith Blackburn, a high-school dropout, had only one aspiration at the time
– to steal Wallace’s car.
Somehow, it took a deadlier twist.
He shot the 18-year-old in the face and left her for
dead on the pavement. Wallace’s car had been idling while she was on the phone,
but sputtered and died a few moments before Blackburn slipped behind its wheel.
He was unable to restart it so he hopped into the passenger side of a waiting
car, commandeered by an accomplice, and sped off into the night.
Wallace was hospitalized for several weeks fighting
for her life. She later would go on with her life, having a family, earning
certification as a medical assistant and joining the staff at Franciscan
St. Francis Weight Loss Center. However, gnawing unanswered questions lingered.
Blackburn eventually was arrested, convicted and incarcerated
in the state penitentiary. A few years into his sentence, he was guided and
converted to Christianity by a cellmate. Nearly nine years after he pulled the
trigger, he left prison with a new mission: to enter the seminary and become a
chaplain with the Indiana Department of Corrections.
Wallace’s and Blackburn’s paths would cross again.
In a random Facebook search nearly two years ago, Wallace located Blackburn.
She eventually composed a message to him. And he wrote back.
Then they met. Eventually, the victim found the
capacity to forgive her assailant. And his life was further transformed through
her forgiveness.
“I
went through all kinds of emotions over the past 20 years, until the past two
years,” Wallace said. “I, of course, wanted to know -- ‘why me? I’m still healing, yet I know I am a better
person. Keith making his life changes has made it easier, but I was at a point
in my life ready to forgive him.”
Wallace, who resides in Plainfield, Ind., and
Blackburn now share their stories
together in the program, Bridges to Life, designed to help victims work through their
pain. The effort also is geared to inmates to understand more personally the
impact of their actions.
Misty Wallace and Keith Blackburn recently sat down
with Katie
Couric (ABC’s “Katie” show)
to discuss her experiences 21-year-long odyssey to find answers to that fateful
night. The taped interview tentatively is scheduled to air 3 PM (EST),
Monday, March 25 on local ABC affiliate, WRTV-6.
