Keeping the faith through cancer, pain, death, now theft

The cancer that had been trying to kill Lara Larson for years finally got the upper hand, but the Wauconda mother of seven took time to draw a smiley face on the handwritten note she tucked inside the Bible she sent after I wrote about her in 2003.

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart," Lara wrote, pointing me to the biblical verses of 2 Corinthians 4: 8-9. "We are hard-pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed."

A year after Lara died in 2004, her husband, Rob, working several jobs as a handyman and cleaner, was in a horrific morning car crash that broke his neck and left him at death's door for a couple of weeks and in intensive care for a month.

Friday, on what would have been Lara's 41st birthday, Rob talks about the arrest the day before of a longtime friend he met through church, who is charged with stealing more than $100,000 from Lara's estate and with using Rob's credit card to steal another $14,000.

"Keep positive. It's a present," Rob says, repeating his dead wife's mantra about life.

But when your wife dies at 36 of a long, painful illness, leaving you to care for seven kids, and you are almost killed in a traffic accident that forces you to lose months of income, and then a church friend is charged with robbing you blind, doesn't that make you want - as Satan in the biblical book of Job suggests - to "curse God" just a tad?

Rob chuckles.

"I know I'm saved by grace, and God has a plan," Rob says. "Some people say, 'Why does this stuff happen to you?' I don't know why I was chosen. But I can take it. I'm still here."

Only after a short pause does he acknowledge, "It's been hard."

The years of fighting cancer and watching Mom die took a toll on the kids, Rob admits. He remarried last November, and Rob and his wife, Carly, a nurse, now have a joint family of nine kids between the ages of 8 and 18, eight of them still at home. It was during their move to a house near Kenosha, Wis., that they discovered that more than $250,000 was missing from the trust established with Lara's life insurance and other proceeds, Rob says.

A probe led by Lou Archbold, an investigator for the Lake County state's attorney's office, resulted in Thursday's arrest of Jon Lindvall, 46, the owner of gift shops in the area. Lindvall, of Lake Zurich, is charged with theft of more than $100,000 and with unlawful use of a credit card. Lindvall, who met Rob through church, became executor of the estate.

"After Lara passed away everybody started talking about money, and it was very stressful," Rob says. "I was exhausted, tired of it."

In a phone interview on Friday, Lindvall says his longtime friend is "evil" and lied to prosecutors.

"I am not the bad guy here, sir," Lindvall says. The money "is all there."

Lindvall "essentially used the victim's money as his own," Archbold told Daily Herald legal affairs writer Tony Gordon after the charges were filed. "We believe everything he took went to support his business."

Both sides say they are waiting for justice.

"I think the church is saddened. We live in this world where this just happens," says Len Sabourin, interim pastor of the Evangelical Free Church of Wauconda, where the Larson family and Lindvall attended around the time of Lara's death. A longtime teacher and coach in the area before he took over the pastor duties, Sabourin remembers Lara's unflinching faith.

"A lot of times through trials and tribulations that come your way, you grow to trust God more, or you can become bitter against him," Sabourin says. "A person of faith, says, 'Oh, I see how God is teaching me to be more Christ-like.'- The faith, as we look at it, comes before all the trials come your way."

Rob says his faith is not shaken.

"Hey, bad things happen to good people. God knows. If we can serve God in those times of trials, that's when the truth comes," Rob says. "I pray for wisdom, and here I am smack dab in the middle of it. I get some truth through this suffering."

One of those truths is that the world doesn't all play by the rules in the Bible.

"I'm just too trusting. As Carly says, I see the good in people that isn't there. I'm guilty of that. It's just the way I want to live my life," Rob says, adding, "I've got to wise up."

But just like Job refused to curse about the things taken from him, Rob focuses on what he has.

"It's all good," Rob says, noting he still has his family and his God. "Through endurance, every day, God reveals himself. I know God is bigger than all my problems."

Pain: Charged man says friend lied to prosecutors