I am back in the United States after spending the last three days in Mexico City. On Thursday night at dinner one of our new partners, F., told me an amazing story:

A few weeks ago, F. was driving with his family to San Antonio, Texas, for Christmas. After about ten hours in the car, his 12-year old son started yelping--a scorpion had crawled into his son's pants and bit the kid four times.

Often after a scorpion bite, you have about two hours to live unless you get proper medical attention. F. and his family were basically on a road "in the middle of nowhere" and F., who grew up in scorpion country, knew immediately how urgent the situation was. By cell phone, he determined where the closest hospital was and began driving like a bat out of hell.

After driving for quite some time at 120 mph, F. passed a police car on the side of the road. It was night and perhaps the officer was not looking at the road, because he made no effort to come after F. But F. realized that the policeman could help, so he backtracked and asked the officer to drive his son to the hospital.

The officer saw the condition of F.'s kid and immediately realized the urgency. F.'s wife and kid got in the police car, which took off, with F. following in his own car. F. estimates that when he lost sight of the police car, it was going 140-150 mph.

The officer got in touch with the hospital, who agreed to send an ambulance. F's wife later said that the officer started the conversation with emergency dispatch in the short, clipped, code-and-acronym style of first-responders. But as F.'s son's condition deteriorated significantly, with both mother and police officer thinking that the kid was going to die within minutes, the officer switched over to full-on civilian "melt-down language," yelling into his radio that the ambulance driver "better f--king hurry the f--k up because we have a dying child in the back of my f---ing police car!!!!"

"Where have all the heroes gone?" F. and his wife learned the answer to this timeless question when the ambulance and the police car finally converged on the same spot on the highway, the paramedics pulled the child out of the police car, gave him the appropriate drugs, and saved his life. The total elapsed time since the bite was just a shade under two hours.

I can hardly imagine the stress of seeing your child minutes away from death and feeling fairly powerless to stop it. F. still has some significant stomach and intestinal problems caused by the wrenching stress of that night. The rest of his family, especially his son, will probably never forget it, and after seeing and hearing F. tell the story, I don't think I will either.