GRAPEVINE, Texas — Far East Africa is far from the world of motocross.
And yet, when Moses Smith first saw a bike as a kid in Ethiopia, he was hooked.
“One of our friends, they would come down from the city on dirt bikes and I remember thinking, 'That’s what I want to do when I’m older,’” Smith said.
Adopted at nine months by missionaries Shane and Allyson Smith, Moses grew up in Ethiopia and Kenya with an obsession for motorcycles.
After he first saw that dirt bike in Ethiopia, Moses tried to make his bicycle look like a motorcycle.
He finally got a real kid-sized motorcycle at age eight and really put things into high gear when he and the parents moved to Texas five years ago.
“The minute he was walking, he was completely obsessed,” Allyson said. “Everybody knows it.”
“But I think things kind of changed when he was at the race track that particular day,” Shane said.
While practicing last fall, Moses took a fall. He thought he’d just had the wind knocked out of him. So, he waited.
But instead of taking another ride on his bike, he took a ride to the emergency room.
He was brought to Baylor Scott and White Grapevine with a critically lacerated liver.
“These kinds of patients don’t always survive to the hospital,” said trauma surgeon Ryan Balogh.
Dr. Balogh said Moses’ liver was shattered into pieces and yet, through his pain, Moses got out one request.
“He was immediately like, ‘Please don’t take this from me,’” Shane said. “'This is what I love and this is my passion and I want to keep doing it.’”
Reluctantly, they agreed and just a few months after his brush with death, and with a regenerated liver, Moses was back on his bike.
This time, much more careful and grateful.
“Almost losing it and losing my life is just something you can’t take for granted and you’ve got to be grateful for every single moment you get because you never know when it could be your last,” he said.
That’s why, last week, Moses stopped by the hospital to say thank you to Dr. Balogh and the team who saved him.
Because, Moses says, to pursue a dream, it’s not just good to have the help of others. Oftentimes, it’s vital.