I love my life, Dad. I love my life.
Alexander Brangman never expected that those would be his daughter’s last words to him– but on September 7, 2014, two police officers showed up at his door to deliver unthinkable news. Jewel, a 26-year-old model and gymnastics coach about to start her Ph.D. program, had been in a four-car collision in Los Angeles. Everyone else had walked away from the crash, but Jewel was on life support. He had to drive to the hospital and make the terrible decision to stop the machinery and let his daughter go, although he had no idea how he was supposed to walk out of that hospital without her. The rest of the world kept right on moving, but his life had stopped.
Months passed before Alexander found out the heartbreaking truth about what caused her death: a faulty Takata airbag that exploded and sent metal shrapnel into her neck. The company that rented the car to Jewel had received several recall notices, but hadn’t bothered to have the airbag replaced– and a loophole in the law allowed them to get away with it. Further investigation revealed that Jewel was not the first to die from this type of airbag injury: she was the eighth. She would also not be the last.
Alexander pulled himself from the depths of his grief to seek justice for his daughter and for all the other past and future victims. After learning that Honda and Takata knew about the faulty airbags for nearly 10 years and had destroyed evidence, he realized that what really killed his daughter was corporate greed. Now a devoted consumer safety advocate, Alexander’s mission is to be Jewel’s voice and to save other people’s lives.