Charged: The Eduardo Garcia Story

Filming?

Mmhmm?

Good morning.

I don't know if I should wave with my right hand

or try and wave with this hand.

Kinda hurts.

So maybe I'll just talk about today

and kind of today's significance

but I'll introduce myself to my camera first.

Eduardo Garcia, hi.

Today I'm going into an operation

where I've made a decision

to take off my own limb,

this big ole...

left arm of mine I've had for 30 years.

And I don't know if it's always done great things

but it's always done great things by me.

* When I grow up

* I want to be a forester

* Run through the moss on high heels

* That's what I'll do

* Throwing out a boomerang

* Waiting for it to come back to me

* That's what I'll have

* Staring at a sea shell

* Waiting for it

* To catch me or hold

-(heavy breathing) -(heart beating)

I remember coming to

and not being able to move my body.

But I remember knowing that I had to move my body.

From that point,

from waking up and rolling over onto my hands and knees,

there's a gap.

My next memory is the road.

I thought I was totally in a dream,

somewhere in the mountains.

There's no way I could be in this sensation

and not be in a dream state.

When I put it together that I wasn't dreaming

was I could hear birds.

I could hear my boots scuffing

and that was real, that was then.

And then it clicked.

I was out hunting today.

I came across this metal barrel

that was in the earth.

I looked in it,

there's this decomposing or decaying carcass.

I want to check it out, I'm curious,

I take my knife out.

But it hits me like I'm being electrocuted.

I need to get down, I need to get to a house,

I need to ask someone to call 911.

There was no warning,

it was just this dead bear in a metal can.

How was I supposed to know it was on live power?

The outdoors was my first love

and then cooking was my second.

It came from my environment.

It was a place of freedom.

Food became this language

that I could speak with anyone

from anywhere in the world.

A passion that was defining who I was in life

and everything was just coming together.

Something that you've worked your whole life for

and having it yanked out from underneath you.

I don't know how else to describe that.

My phone just started to buzz.

I'm with your brother,

he's been hurt.

I spoke to the surgeon

and he said that I should speak to Ed on the phone

because it might be the last time that I speak to him.

I asked him, "Is he alive, will he live?"

He said, "I've seen cases

"where people survive something like this."

He said, "But he would have some significant handicaps."

There is a lot of maladies

that come out of an electrocution

because we just don't know how it affects

all the other tissues in the body.

And he just wrote something like "I love you

and I don't want to lose my hand."

When Ed first arrived here,

he had several life- threatening injuries.

It was his hand

which is the entrance wound

and then it was the chest wall area, his ribs.

He had two areas on his head

which were exit wounds.

He also had a blow out on his left thigh.

I remember we landed

and the first thing I said

once I woke up when we landed was,

"So what time are we going home tonight?"

You know what I mean,

like I just had no idea how big this was.

Yeah, the amount of current that went through you

it's amazing that--

You're alive.

Yeah, so amazing.

Amazing I'm alive.

One sec, we'll clean it off.

So just when I look at it,

it just looks gnarly man,

black and funky and-- There's exposed tissue there

and there's concern that maybe you cut the ribs,

maybe not very alive either.

Baby, look at me and smile.

Smile.

It made me really sad to think of Ed waking up

without a hand and these horrific injuries

in a dark room by himself

with just a bunch of machines just beeping.

During the day is when everything's normal

and as soon as the night comes,

it's kind of when crazy stuff happens,

nightmares or whatever

like obviously Ed had a lot of nightmares

so I was really glad just to be there

so when he did stir in the night or whatever.

So really sleeping there in this chair

was way worth it

and I wouldn't have left.

Yes, he's right here with me.

He's in a little bit of pain

but nothing crazy, just happy.

That felt so good.

So that's you on the CT scanner.

It seemed like they really cared about each other.

I didn't actually know that they weren't dating

when I first met 'em.

I thought they were.

I could've been sleeping there

but is that what he needed?

My mom could've been there sleeping for a month.

Is that what he needed?

No, I think he needed Jen there.

We have to be supportive of one another

and if you're used to being the captain

like I was for example,

you have to let go of certain things

'cause it's really not about you that much at that point.

Being alive with a few handicaps

is much better than being dead.

That's for sure,

that's for damn sure.

Yeah.

Eduardo and Eugenio came in on August 4th, 1981,

seven and a half weeks premature.

We called them the boys.

Indra was two and a half years old.

We were living in Calabasas outside of Los Angeles.

Then, when they were three months old,

their father left

saying he would come back,

that he was gonna return to Mexico,

he was gonna return to this little island where he grew up.

I looked at Indra and then I looked at Eduardo and Eugenio

and I knew that I had to be there for them

and make the best of a difficult situation.

She's a very spiritual woman, my mom

and she founded a spiritual community in LA.

Almost the entire community moved to Montana,

I'm talking hundreds of people.

There was definitely like singing

about being Montana bound.

We welcome you to the heart

and we sing the song of gratitude.

Here, oh universe, I am grateful.

I just kind of think growing up that way

is a privilege.

There's others that saw our community,

definitely thought it was a little weird.

I always tell my mom that was the best move

she could've ever done

was getting us here.

For me it was almost like we moved

into the set of a National Geographic magazine.

The mountains had their own special magical allure

for a child's imagination.

We would spend our summers

fishing in Yellowstone,

running into the hills.

I definitely took to that very quickly

and made it my home.

Hello, Ed.

Hey.

No, we're filming this for

just documenting my recovery for us.

Cool.

Yeah.

It's pretty hard for a YouTube video.

I saw it as part of the recovery process to film.

It was really important to me

that he didn't come out the other end of it

and be like, why did you sign that way,

why did you sign this way,