Ripped Open

In January 2019, David Hernandez got the call at eleven p. m. His daughter Sofia, a first-year teacher in Anchorage, had been rushed into emergency surgery. David was in Portland, 2,400 miles south. Every flight was grounded by an Arctic front that had shut down half the airports on the West Coast. So David drove. Thirty-seven hours through whiteout conditions, black ice, and mountain passes across three states.…