What changes your life?

Backstory.

"What made you become a police detective?" A student asked for their newspaper interview.
Keira thought back through her life. She was born in Baltimore by a not so nice and clean father and an all too forgiving mother. The mother knew the signs, she saw what could happen at the hospital she was a nurse at. Yet, her mother always stayed with her father, despite what that meant for Keira and her sister.
But one day things changed.

When Keira was 8, her mother took her and her younger sister, Riley, to the park. Keira fell after trying to be an acrobat on the junglegym and hit her arm on the way down. She was a pretty bruised up child and she began to bleed profusely. Her mother, knowing when to intervene and when to shake it off, grabbed Keira and told Riley to stay in sight. As Kalena Haven applied first aid in the car, Riley was busy playing and laughing and kicking the ball around. One time she hit the ball just a bit too far and went to grab it behind a tree... and the laughter, the kicking, everything was gone.

Keira's mom ran around the entire park looking for Riley, she called for her and Keira cried and searched as well. Kalena called Joshua, Keira's father, and explained what happened. She explained that she thought Riley was kidnapped. They called the cops, they did everything they could to get Riley back but they went mad with worry.

The police had no leads since both Kalena and Keira saw nothing. Keira focused on the laugh, she heard it in her dreams as she cried herself to sleep. Kalena focused on her work, she would be gone for days, hoping that one day she would come home and everything would be back to normal, Riley would be at home laughing and playing again.

Joshua refused to give up the search. He had been without a job for as long as Keira remembered, but after Riley disappeared, he lost himself in the paperwork and doing whatever he could to hunt her down while shooting up and pouring down the alcohol. It drove him and he followed every corner, every curve, every hunch. He ignored his wife and Keira. They were nonexistant to him after Riley. Keira never understood that, she was always daddy's favorite but then he wouldn't talk to her. Riley was all that mattered.

One day, 6 months later on Keira's 9th birthday, Kalena and Keira were baking a cake. Enjoying the day, not bringing up all who they missed, who they they lost. Joshua wasn't around, as he normally wasn't anymore. He was too busy looking into a new curve and found a very secure lead on the investigation. He called the police, he made them not give up as long as he didn't.

The lead he gave on Keira's birthday, brought home the best birthday gift Keira could have asked for. Her sister. Riley ran in, laughing and crying, hugging and holding her sister. "Happy Birthday" she choked over. Joshua looked smug, he found the missing link, he brought his family back together.

And he wasn't going to tear it back apart. He gave Riley the best gift he could give her to welcome home. He sobered, he cleaned up, and he became an inspirational story for people just like him around the world. He wrote a book, he spoke at conferences and he lived the rest of his life clean. He changed his life and devoted his time to researching new methodologies of a saving people as well as volunteering his free time to help the police.

Keira never knew what to think about her father before the change. it was like he was a different man. She learned that year that bad things can happen and good can come from it. But she believes that justice should be served. Following her fathers newer developed passion, she would join her father's volunteering with the police and followed in his footsteps. She went to college for behavioral psychology and criminal profiling and became a police detective to help find people just like those that captured her sister.

Riley ended up following her mothers passions of medicine. She became a special needs psychologist and helped those that have disheartened ideas and need to be brought back to reality. At times, her past affects her but she focuses on the positives and fights through the fact she has survived the worst already and her life was saved for a reason. Keira's mom, Kalena, later became an EMT and saved lives just like she wished she would have for her daughter.

Keira watched her entirely broken family turn into a family devoted to true happiness all because one of the most horrible thing happened to them and they found a way to turn it positive.