Louis Saia was born into a large, close-knit Sicilian Italian family in the New Orleans area. "I went to Catholic schools and practiced religion as an obligation until I got out of the house," Louis admits. He finished college, then worked in the family trucking business. Even after marrying and starting a family, he hung out with other tough young men who were not exactly looking for trouble but were never at a loss when it came. In 1986, the Saia family sold their business, and the buyer asked Louis to stay on and run it as president. He did so for six years, then tried to buy the company back. He failed and decided to resign.
Despite his rough exterior, Louis had always been extremely talented and inventive. Now he worked on developing a "pallet reefer," which was actually a new way of shipping refrigerated products. "In my travels I had noticed that there was a huge market for fresh seafood in the South, yet no really practical way to ship it out every day. It took a week to fill a big refrigerated truck with perishables, and by that time, the seafood wasn't fresh anymore." Louis designed a stackable shipping container, cooled by its own compressor, like a refrigerator. It could be filled by a forklift and immediately shipped alongside any other kind of load. He took out four patents on his designs.
Pallet Reefer Company was an instant hit. Louis was soon receiving calls from trucking firms that wanted to order the device. It was time to take in a financial partner, he decided, so he could manufacture his invention on a large-scale basis. A major corporation bought a 50-percent share of Louis's invention and promised to finance its development with $25 million. In 1994, however, a larger firm bought out the corporation, and the executives who had negotiated the original arrangements with Louis were gone. The new company wasn't sure it wanted to be in the trucking business. It would spend time learning what Louis was doing, he was told. Perhaps it would sell its half back to him.
Louis was impatient to get started. "But my staff and I spent the next several months answering all their questions and taking them to visit potential customers. Everyone was enthusiastic. The boss of one trucking firm in California said he would buy one thousand units immediately, if he could." At that day's end, in a trucking parking lot, the executives approached Louis. "We don't like owning 50 percent," the company representative told Louis. "We'd like to own it all." Louis was stunned. "I don't think I want to sell," he told them. "We'll give you $2 million," someone else said.
"But we'll easily earn that this year alone, and we have fifteen years left on my patents," Louis protested.
"You don't get it," the rep replied. "If you don't take the $2 million now, when we're through with you, you'll have nothing. You'll be bankrupt."
The men stared at Louis. It was the age-old game, the powerful against the small. These executives had seen the value of his invention and were simply going to take it. Shocked, he drove out of the parking lot and hopped a plane for New Orleans.
"It's important to understand where I was spiritually, at this point," Louis says. "My ambition wasn't eternal life but to be a rich and powerful businessman. I went to church maybe once or twice a year. If good things happened, it was due to me, not to God. I hung around with a bad crowd and was a deplorable example for my children." Now, perhaps, he would reap what he had sowed, but not without a fight. Instead of accepting the company's offer, Louis and his wife, Cindy, decided to sue for breach of contract.
"The next year was a nightmare," Louis says. "We had litigation in three cities at the same time. I hired lawyers, sold some property, mortgaged my house, borrowed on every asset, and even borrowed from my family." (A patent case that goes to trial can cost more than $500,000, and Louis was involved in several cases at the same time.) He thought he had known what stress was all about, but as things dragged on, he suffered panic attacks that kept him up all night and painful stomach ulcers. "I started to drink to relieve the symptoms and took five or six Valiums every day. But nothing helped. Each night I would pace around the island in our kitchen, so many times that eventually I wore away the stain on the wood floor."
Worse than the worry was the anger. These men were stealing his business, just as they'd promised, harming his family and his workers (who by now were not even drawing salaries). In his worse moments, Louis actually thought about hiring hit men. He had connections, and fighting this kind of evil wouldn't be a sin, would it? Although Louis had been away from God for a long time, his conscience had been formed correctly. He abandoned that idea.
Louis and Cindy were down to $60 in their checking account one Sunday morning. "Louis, come with me," she asked.
"Cindy," he said, pointing to the worn wooden trail on the kitchen floor. "See that? I can't sit down for five minutes-how could I last a whole hour in church?" He felt as if he would explode from the inside at any moment, and he was out of Valium. Death would have been welcome. He would go running, he decided. Anything to get out of the house.
Louis ran down the gravel road behind his house as fast as he could, trying to outrun the feelings, the terrible apprehension that now ruled his life. Like a broken record, the anxiety played in his mind. How? Why? What to do? His small office building was at the back of his property, and as he turned toward it, he noticed someone standing on the porch. His secretary? But it was Sunday. Getting a little closer, Louis realized that the woman was not his secretary. She was no one he had ever seen before. She wore an oldfashioned white gown and veil, and a little bit of her light-brown hair blew in the breeze. She had extremely blue eyes.
"I got scared," Louis says. "I was too close, seeing too much, and I knew I wasn't hallucinating." He would run right past her, he decided. But as he approached the porch, he met her eyes and was stopped cold in his tracks. He stared at her. Why was she here? She seemed to read his mind. "I am praying to protect you," she said quietly. "Just have faith in my son, Jesus."
Louis could hardly believe his ears. In his usual decisive way, he walked right up to her. "When I got close, she looked as human as anyone. Then I went to touch her arm, but there was nothing solid there." It was then that he fell to his knees, praying to God in a way he never had before. In moments he was flooded with joy. He opened his eyes, and the lady was gone. But the bliss remained. "In an instant, I had gone from the worst despair I'd ever encountered to the best moment of my life. I had been dying from stress because of living the wrong way. And she said everything I needed to hear."
Cindy was astonished when she returned from church and found a calm and smiling husband. Some of his family dropped by as well. "What happened to you?" everyone wanted to know. "I saw the Blessed Mother Mary on the porch this morning," Louis announced. His family exchanged glances. Obviously the stress had finally caught up with him. Should they bring him to the hospital?
But days passed, and Louis remained joyful. For many years he had not prayed, but now he couldn't stop. Praise broke from his lips at unexpected moments. He was happy to be alive, appreciative of his wife and family, aware of an occasional unexpected scent of roses. The lady's words echoed in his spirit, the only words he had ever needed to know: "Just have faith in my son, Jesus."
What, specifically, did this mean? Amazingly, Louis wasn't concerned about it. He would be guided wherever the Lord wished him to be, at the helm of a company or driving a truck, living in splendor or poverty, it mattered not. His healing had begun. He would wait upon the Lord.
Gradually the answers came. He was to pursue his court cases, and ,the money to do so would be supplied. Soon new lawyers appeared, willing to take his case on a contingency basis, and a bank vice president decided to lend him $5 million with no collateral. In March 1996, despite their lawyer's advice to stay home, Louis and Cindy went to Delaware. Because of the deadlock between Louis and the corporation that owned half his invention, the corporation had petitioned a Delaware court to liquidate the company that it had formed with Louis. If liquidation happened, it would force the sale of his patent, which the company could then acquire inexpensively. The judge, Louis was told, had already indicated that he would rule for the corporation, and there was no need for Louis's presence. "But the aroma of roses was especially strong that previous week," Louis says, "and I decided to trust it, and go."
In court, Louis prayed calmly, despite the smirking of his opponents. Lord, he found himself asking, please let the judge know that these people are using his court to steal. The case lasted several days, and it was obvious that Louis was going to lose. Then, the judge delivered his verdict. "What if these people are using my court to steal?" he asked, using the exact words Louis had used. In a stunning surprise, the judge ruled against liquidation. Arbitration was the only way to settle the dispute.
They had won this round! Out of court, Louis could no longer stem the tears. He dropped to his knees on the sidewalk in Rodney Square and wept. Passersby stopped to help, assuming he was ill. But Cindy waved them on. Tears could be joyful as well as sad. And Louis had much to be joyful about.
Just a few weeks later, a priest whom Louis had never met came to visit him. The priest had a strange story. "In a vision, I saw you kneeling on a sidewalk. You were wearing a navy blue suit, white shirt, and a yellow tie." Yes, Louis thought-the exact clothes he had been wearing that amazing day in Delaware.
"Standing in front of you, about nine feel tall with wings about fifteen feet high, was a magnificent angel," the priest said. "I believe it was Michael. His sword was drawn and touching your head. He was doing battle for you. I wanted you to know."
Louis was stunned. "I had never thought of the power of angels, about how they protect us, not only against physical danger, but other kinds of evil." He had one question for the priest. "What day did you have the vision?" he asked. It was the same day Louis had fallen on his knees in Delaware.
Other cases followed, and Louis was the victor in every one. By the time all litigation had ended, his patents had been restored to him and the corporation owed him $26 million dollars in damages and costs. He was able to pay his lawyers, open a factory to begin production of his pallet reefer, and make large donations to charity. He turned his office into a small chapel-holy ground-and welcomed people who wished to pray there.
Louis also commissioned an artist to paint a picture of the archangel Michael as described by the priest. The picture was reprinted on cards, which Louis carried with him at all times. "I would go up and down the French Quarter, giving cards to the prostitutes and drug addicts who hang out there," he says. "I told Michael I would be his lowliest foot soldier. Whatever he wanted me to do for him, I would."
Soon Louis had built his own trucking firm, and he decided to put the same picture of Michael on the side of his fleet of trucks. Today more than seventy trucks bear the logo of the St. Michael's Express as they crisscross the country, a ministry on wheels. "Prospective drivers see the angel image and they call," Louis says. "The image strikes a chord with drivers who have certain values, and they're the kind we want working for us." Drivers also carry holy cards and are instructed to give them to anyone who asks .
Louis continues to await assignments from the archangel Michael, and he gives thanks each day for what his life has become. "I was certainly happy about the court verdicts," he says, "but nothing comes close to the real victory I experienced-my conversion. And it deepens my appreciation for what faith can do for us, especially in no-hope situations, like a major illness, a child on drugs. There is no such thing as no hope. God can do anything."
So if you happen to be traveling on a super highway and you pass a truck sporting the name St. Michael's Express, give the driver a wave. Like you, he and his boss believe in angels .
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