About Us: Surviving a Hippo Attack
High School Sweethearts—'Til Death Do Us Part
Sam and I have been together since high school. Sixteen years of knowing each other. Fourteen together. Quickly we became inseparable best friends. Married on a cliff in Portugal, September 2025. "Til' death do us part." Ten days later, on our honeymoon in Botswana, a hippo attacked Sam.
Watching the love of my life die in front of my eyes, I charged the hippo and punched it.
Miraculously, the hippo dropped Sam, but his intestines were protruding from his back. Stranded in the bush, it would be over thirteen hours before we were evacuated. With no pain relief for Sam.
The last thing Sam wrote, before the attack, was in his journal: "I feel like I have an obligation to do more good in the world because I am given so much joy and love. I feel confident that I can! Not sure how..."
He called that feeling Soulshine.
He didn't know yet how he'd act on it. Now, given a second chance at life, we do. Sam spends his days recovering and building—every piece he creates, every copy of the book we sell, goes toward a fund we're setting up to get kids a board of their own. Skate, surf, or snow.
We call it Liberty's Charity.
In honor of a man who got us our first surfboard, made the sport accessible to us, and taught us a little about life.