"Dear Dune and Kathryn,
It was a bright sunny day, I left my place in no rush at all to get to my morning meeting for the day. I had recently started commuting on my Yamaha R6 but had been racing off-road for most of my childhood. I had taken the off-ramp for Eleventh Avenue in Houghton and after pulling off at the robot and making my way two blocks down when I could see the woman at the stop street adjacent to my direction of travel, start to pull out… her timing was immaculate as she managed to hit me off of my bike. I am not certain what speed I was travelling at but I lost memory on impact. I first remember something for the first time being wheeled out of surgery for my broken collar bone. This was four days later…
Since then I’ve lost my job, my family, and the life that I knew how to live in what seems to be, in retrospect, the blink of an eye. I lost my faith, my trust in the social system and friends became as frequent as the weeks did that passed by. I landed up eventually on the street living day to day to survive. I had seen De Broglio ads on TV and knew that a firm with the type of funds to advertise the way that they had, would know if I had a case. Before the accident I was earning +- R45k a month… and I had lost all that I had worked for… including my will to live… so I thought I would give them a visit and see how strong my case would be if I had one at all. They have from the start guided me through the process of what is needed and when it is needed.
I have learnt more about myself in the two to three years that I have journeyed with De Broglio as a client than I have from any other experience I have been through. This is based on De Broglio knowing what needs to be done in order to understand the nature of my injury in order to get the maximum from my claim. Not once through the entire process did any action or lack thereof make me feel like this wasn’t going to end well. I take my hat off to people that are involved with my case.
The professionalism, the attention to detail and the necessary levels of empathy required in order to understand the seriousness of the loss incurred. Every meeting and appointment scheduled for me, all paperwork and necessary negotiations completed on my behalf. The perfect amount of direction when it came to being unfamiliar with what to do next. I basically just showed up where they needed and had scheduled for me to be and made sure to follow their instructions, no matter what. These people have changed my life. At the time of the court case taking place, I was staying in a domestic quarters at a mate’s house in Bryanston. I don’t have a fridge or a stove and live pretty much day to day. I work on a freelance level and to get back to the level I was at before the accident seems like an impossible task for me at the moment. I earn a tiny R8k a month now. I barely see my kids and I am unable to provide for them when once I was and there was very little hope for me in my mentality on actually making it in life.
I cry as I write this letter and am happy to do so because their performance is worth nothing less. The lives that these people save on a daily basis makes me understand why they do what they do. And in a day before I knew it without even having to step a foot into the courtroom it was done. I was handed a piece of paper with numbers on it that made me feel like all the suffering and pain was worth every second of it… as a matter of fact I felt overpaid in that moment... I burst into tears. It was as though someone had heard me during the time I was in pain and was waiting to catch me at the right moment.
Dune, Kathryn and Mr. Zidel. I am forever indebted to you and the work that you seem to think is just another day in the office. You have changed the very experience of my existence and have allowed for me to start my journey of repair and prosper and not even God did that for me. You guys have saved my very existence. I am and will forever be a De Broglio Ambassador because when I needed it most, and when not even family or friends could assist me out of lack of will, want or ability… De Broglio was there, all the way.
RAF now has a new meaning for me… Rise Against Failure!"
J.H.
1 November 2019