Originally appeared in The News & Observer:
Wearing a bright bathing suit, Kathi Korobko flits about her Cary kitchen like a butterfly, refusing to stop dinner preparations for a second to consider a suggestion that she has more in common with another winged creature - an angel.
"I love the Lord, I walk with the Lord, but I hope I'm more down to Earth than that," says a laughing Korobko, who has just come dripping from the backyard pool.
Down on Earth a few Sundays ago, she walked with the Lord into the hearts of another Cary family.
Gorgeous weather greeted Korobko as she awoke that Sunday. Her married daughter, Julie Volstad, was visiting from Georgia, and the two decided to walk home from the Cary Christian and Missionary Alliance Church that afternoon.
The women took off down Har-rison Avenue, soon passing First Baptist Church, where Julie spied a small, brunet boy tooling around the parking lot in a wheelchair.
"Hey, Ma, look at that," Julie said as Korobko stopped beside her. They paused not because the sight of a 25-pound child in a 130-pound wheelchair was unique to them but because it was all too familiar.
Korobko has a small, brunet son who has been through numerous wheelchairs in his 23 years of life.
This child, though, was only 2, and Korobko stood transfixed.
"I have to go talk to those people," Korobko told Julie. The two waited as the boy's parents chatted with other First Baptist members as he practiced maneuvering his chair.
"I felt really uncomfortable just standing there," Korobko says now, "but then I heard the boy's dad say, 'Kevin.' "
Pausing to let that revelation sink in, Korobko smiles, for Kevin is the name of her son, too.
"Here's one tiny example of how God works," says Korobko, who laughs easily and often. "He gave us this little connection to help us feel comfortable from the very start."
Korobko approached the couple, Glenn and Cindy Schaefer of Cary, asked about their Kevin and tried to offer emotional support to the mother just starting out on the path Korobko has traveled for more than 20 years.
Korobko's Kevin, one of only 23 metatrophic dwarves in the world, and Kevin Schaefer, who has spinal muscular atrophy, both have life expectancies of late teens or early 20s.
As they talked, Korobko noticed that the Schaefers' full-size van had no electrical wheelchair lift, only metal ramps they had borrowed.
The van, she was told, had put the Schaefers in a financial bind. They had left the question of a $5,000 wheelchair lift in God's hands, as they had a number of needs since Kevin was diagnosed with his genetic disorder in June 1995.
"We have a lift you can have," Korobko said nonchalantly to the stunned couple.
The Korobkos had recently bought a minivan, with a new wheelchair lift, and were planning to sell their full-size van, which had a 15-year-old lift stuck to its back.
Coincidence? "There's no such thing," Korobko scoffs. "God is so big. He's so awesome, just to see the different ways he works."
After exchanging phone numbers, the families parted, one to share an astonishing story of God's mercy with tearful relatives and friends and the other to keep what it considered its unremarkable generosity to itself.
"It doesn't feel big and wonderful to us," says Korobko. "I was raised to do what's called for ... and an awareness of others' needs is one of those things."
To the Schaefers, however, the Korobkos' act of kindness is nothing short of a miracle. They were trusting God for a wheelchair lift and He sent them one - by way of an angel named Kathi Korobko.
Burgetta Wheeler is assistant news editor.
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