He thought he was going to die.
He was having trouble breathing. As he lay wedged under a train seat and metal debris, with whatever energy he could summon and a heartbreaking economy of words, he scrawled a farewell in blood on the seat. "I {heart} my kids. I {heart} Leslie," he printed. The blood ink seemed to be running out as he got to the second sentence.
Capt. Robert Rosario, the firefighter who discovered that message, later choked up as he related the story for TV cameras.
Of all the images, sad or brave, pulled from the mangled wreckage of Wednesday's Metrolink train disaster, few captivated people more than this finger-painted testament of love. And none was more mysterious.
Who is the message writer? What happened to him? Who is Leslie?
Everyone wants to know. L.A. Fire Department spokesman Brian Humphrey said that the department has been inundated with inquiries -- "about 700 calls," he said Thursday -- from people who simply want to know who he is and how he is doing.
The mystery messenger was admitted to Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center, which received more than 100 phone calls from the public asking about him. "They mainly wanted to tell him that their prayers are with him," said hospital spokeswoman Adelaida De La Cerda.
He was discharged late Thursday and declined requests to talk with the media, she said.
This much is known: Leslie is his wife. And his name is John. And he may not want the rest of the world to know even that much about him -- no matter how much people crave that and more.
"I'm a private person," he said in a statement the hospital released for him, "and the message that I wrote was a private message to my wife and my kids because I didn't think I was going to make it."
Los Angeles Fire Department Capt. Carlos Calvillo said he understood why even strangers were moved.
"The fact that this guy in this situation had the amount of love he had for his family, and for him to realize 'I'm possibly going to die here' -- how could any words explain it?" asked Calvillo, who watched as one of the rescuers speaking before the cameras choked up during his account of John's rescue.
"That moved firefighters as big and tough as we are," Calvillo said. "We're big teddy bears. It tremendously affected the guys in the 27th."
