Beanie and Me: An Angel On Our Shoulders

Katie and Steve Sheppard have led married lives full of coincidence, fortuity, chance, and kismet. From their earliest days in college facing the uncertainties of the military draft to coping with a later-life diagnosis of Alzheimer's Disease, their days have been filled with remarkable events and outcomes that would seem to defy the odds. The two began to recognize the presence of an "angel on their shoulders," an observation first suggested to Steve by his mom when he was a young boy. That spirit served as an angel-in-residence throughout the whole of their lives. In their words, they have led a "fairy tale life."

The litany of unlikely, coincidental, incredible things that have happened to them along the way would fill a book like Ripley's Believe It or Not. It includes stories of adopting not one but two sets of twins from Korea, where the incidence of twin births was quite low; the unlikely circumstances of separately encountering both sets of birth parents during a subsequent visit to that country; the uncertainty of Steve's leaving an executive job with two kids in college and two on the way but with no plan in hand, only to find a life's calling the very next day; the unreal real estate chain of events that brought them back to reside in their college town; the acquisition of a home on Madeline Island on Lake Superior some thirty years after Steve's parents had owned it; Katie's improbable diagnosis in 2019, and the gifts that it has presented.

But their story is not only about unlikely events. It's a story of lifelong love between two people and the gratitude that they have felt for it. They've had an angel on their shoulders since the beginning. They know it. They acknowledge it. They can't explain it. They are immensely grateful for it, and they never doubt its presence--even when they are tested.