Personal Message From
Ifida Known's Mother 

Dear Friend,

This letter is about my daughter, Ifida Known, and her precious life.  God blessed her Dad and me with our first born.  She came into this world a month early and even on day-one, she learned to overcome the naysayers and those with negative attitudes.  As a “blue-baby” and no incubator in the hospital, she quickly learned to turn a mess into a message with a full set of lungs.  That seems like yesterday and she has overcome a lot of challenges throughout her years.

She was an achiever even as a little baby.  She did not want to be on the charts of normalcy and challenged me with her adventures even in her first year of birth.  When she was five months old and just learning to stand up on her own, in the days when car seats hadn’t been invented and seatbelts were just emerging…her dad was driving and I had her standing on my lap in the front seat when I heard an inner-voice say, “Sit her down and hold her tight – now.”  No sooner did I act on my promptings when our car was hit head-on by another vehicle that had drifted into our lane in the dense fog of the night.  Her life was saved from going through the front windshield of the family car because I had listened to that still-small voice.  I knew right then that this child had a message to share and nothing was going to keep her from doing it.

As an infant she was very inquisitive, attentive, and active though she didn’t start speaking until later than most.  Once she did, we learned that she was an incredible listener, picked up many details and had a lot of important insights and information to share.  She was a naturally gifted teacher and educator.

Fast forward to the frigid cold winter of third grade, she fell through the ice of a swift moving creek with just a small gap of air to breathe between the water and a thick, 10-inch casing of ice that just seconds before was her ice skating arena.  Not panicking, she found a small pocket of air to breath as her siblings and friends worked feverishly to break the ice closer to the edge for her to surface and assist in pulling her from the freezing water.

In her late teens, she was T-boned/ broadsided by an 18-wheeler rolling down the interstate at about 75+mph.  She was driving a small, 4-door Dodge Omni.  After having the front white grill of the semi slam into the entire left side of her car where she was able to touch the truck’s grill through her opened window, not once, but twice, she maneuvered the car out from in front of the semi and did a couple of “donuts” in the grassy median of the highway.  Not until the semi-driver saw her car doing 360's in the grass did he realize he had just hit a “small 4-wheeler.”  He said he originally thought he had just hit a bump in the road. 

In the winter of her 21st year she was caught in a pure white-out blizzard on a number of abandoned back-country roads in a small Volkswagen Beetle with no working heater and a fast dying battery.  She had very little food and water but enough of a stubborn determination to keep moving forward, pushing the car out of several snow-banks when necessary until she arrived at a safe destination, only to find that the friends she was to meet had left and the roads she needed to travel had been closed by the State Police. 

At 24 years of age, her car burst into flames and burned as she was driving home from a full day of teaching and a late night of coaching a high school basketball team.  She later learned that the catalytic converter had backed up and caused a chain reaction ultimately causing the passenger’s side carpet and floorboard to smoke, smolder and eventually burst into flames, just missing the fuel line. 

Then a few years later she experienced her second case of identity theft when a former friend that she shared a house with stole her identity and ruined her nearly perfect credit.  Even telling the police and various businesses that she knew the identity thief who opened all of the new accounts in Ifida’s name, the response she got was, unless the financial expense to the business was greater than $50,000 they wouldn’t do anything about it because it wasn’t worth their efforts, time and expenses versus just claiming it as a “bad debt” regardless of what it did to Ifida’s reputation, financial situation, and credit score.

Ifida has always been one to pull herself upwards in times of struggle and knew that the next moment would bring goodness in life.  I’ll never forget the time that she called me four years ago and told me about the security breach (no fault of her own) which cost her business and livelihood.  Now me, I was more than disheartened and I am sure she was in a way.  Her tenacity and research rewarded her.  Instead of taking it as a negative, she changed it into a positive experience through altering her focus, changed her business focus and rose above the uncertainty.  Interviewing 1000s of experts, victims, and former identity thieves, and combining that information with her various experiences in safety, security, education and with medical and financial information and data, she is once again turning a mess into a message.

Why am I telling you all about these life experiences?  Because I know that each of us has a specific purpose to fulfill.  In retrospect, every step she has taken has prepared her for her next experience in life.  She has been blessed in being able to turn what she experiences and learns into information that we can all learn from and apply in our own lives today.  She is able to take her life lessons and even those of others, analyze what happened and rise above the misfortune.  Her passion, insight, experiences and desire to assist and educate others outweighs the pain, sorrow and sleepless nights that she has endured.  I know that it is her mission to help people lead happier, safer, and more successful lives –  professionally and personally. 

Throughout her life she has embodied Viktor Frankl’s quote: 

I share this with you from the bottom of my heart.  There are ups and some downs in her life but it is with great love and passion that she shares her knowledge to assist you in making your life better.  Her dad and I have watched her grow over the years, watched her ups and downs, and how she continues to flourish, put aside her adversity and strives to reach her goals.   

So, regardless of how and where you know my daughter, known what she’s endured, celebrated her successes or assisted in her overcoming her trials, know that what she has to say comes from her heart and her desire to assist you in living a better life.

From teachers to business professionals, politicians to athletes, motivators to movie stars ... every one of us needs to learn how to maintain our privacy, safety, security, identity and asset protection and Ifida is doing all that she can so you will never have to say, “If I’da known, I would have done that differently.”

Thank you.

Sincerely,

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