NORFOLK -- "They said I wouldn't be able to do it, and I did. I did," Joseph "Screwface" Charles tells 13News, as he stands in Norfolk International Airport.
Proving doubters wrong took the local music producer beyond the imagining of most people. He was on a mission to save his mother, Solange Charles. She and her husband live in Haiti. The earthquake that decimated the country left Solange trapped inside a building. Because of her injuries, doctors, eventually, would amputate her leg.
"You know, when I saw my mother, she was sitting in a pick-up truck, her face sunked in," says Screwface. "They said she wouldn't have made it through the night."
The trip came with a vast amount of obstacles. Congressman Glenn Nye, who joined family members at the airport Thursday night, dedicated a tremendous amount of time to clearing the way for Screwface to bring Solange to the United States. Nye and his staff worked with the State Department, military, and others to speed the process. Much of the journey required the music producer to draw on his own resourcefulness.
"I had to sneak into the country, basically," explains Screwface. "I came in through the Dominican Republic, and I had to pretty much bribe my way through the, the whole way was a bribe, because it's pretty unfortunate that people were capitalizing on the situation."
He elaborates, "I had to get a guy with a gun to protect me, paid him a lot of money, and they pulled me over, and then you had to pay them, and then you had to go inside Immigrations, pay that guy. Then, the other guy saw us. You had to pay him as well, and then you finally get in the country, and, then, you're on the other side. You've got to pay those few dollars."
To complicate things, Screwface had no idea where he was going. His father provided the name of the location where he was with the producer's mom. Screwface relied on locals to point him in the right direction. After finding his parents, he got Solange to a hospital. He says there were no beds. About 15 people were in each room, most with open wounds. Most of the doctors and nurses there to help did not speak the native language. Screwface did a lot of translating. The language barrier, a lack of communication between staff, and a lack of records made it a dangerous situation.
"I had to stand guard on my mother to make sure no one gave her any medication unless they had a chart," he says. "Just right next to my mom, there was a woman, another team came by, gave her some medicine, and she instantly died right next to her, and they put her in a bag and threw her outside with the other dead bodies."
Conditions were so bad, Screwface's father stayed behind to help in the hospital.
Mercy Medical Airlift, based in Virginia Beach, handled flight arrangements for the Charleses. The group collects unused frequent flyer miles to help in cases such as this.
"I just wish no one ever sees or goes through anything that I went through," says Screwface, looking as if he could pass out from exhaustion. "No one should ever see the things that I've seen, and the things that I went through in order to rescue my mother."
"God bless him and everything," Solange Charles says, beginning to tear up, "because he do a lot for me. He help me a lot."
Screwface says he will return to Haiti to aid in recovery. To that end, he established Second Wind Haiti, a foundation to help people reunite, reconnect, and rebuild.
