In The Pipeline:

Editor’s note: This is the second part on Christopher Hernandez, the local 17-year-old who was killed in a car accident last summer.

Chris and Dawn Hernandez sit together on this late Saturday afternoon, comforting each other. Wistfully, they smile, shed the occasional tear and recall wonderful memories of their son Christopher. They also talk about the signs they’ve been getting from their son. You read about one of these remarkable occurrences in this column last week. This is another, sent to them recently from a friend, via e-mail:

“I know you will find this hard to believe. I am still having a tough time believing it myself. I am the world’s biggest ‘Doubting Thomas’ when it comes to things like this and they NEVER happen to me. So I have been debating in my head for the past hour and a half if I should tell you or not. As I got back to my car and Blackberry, I think God told me that I must tell you this. I hope it will be uplifting and not upsetting for you.

“About 1 o’clock this afternoon, I decided to go walk on the beach. I started at Stone Steps Beach near my house and headed south toward Moonlight Beach in Encinitas. South of Moonlight, I walked through a stretch of beach that was hosting a surfing contest, with all kinds of parents on the beach watching and photographing their kids surfing. About 15 minutes farther south, around 2 o’clock, I was on a stretch of beach with no one on it for a quarter mile in either direction. The tide was out about as far as it gets here, and the beach was very smooth, clean, empty and quiet except for the waves. Sunny, not a cloud in the sky and no wind. Also strange, no seaweed at all. Every time I’ve been lately, you had to walk around it. By this time, I had been walking fast for half an hour and had worked up a sweat.

“As I’m walking, I notice up ahead of me just above the water line some writing in the sand, almost touching the water’s edge. In 4-foot-high capital block letters in the direction I am walking, I read ‘CHRISTOPHER.’ There were no people for hundreds of yards and no footprints around the name.

“I started thinking about your son and your family and what a struggle you must be having. I said a couple of prayers for all of you, and then I heard a voice saying, ‘Tell my dad I’m fine!’ I thought WOW things like that don’t happen to me — must be imagining. Then I heard it again more emphatically: ‘Tell my dad I’m fine!’ Even though I had been hot and sweating, I got chills and goose bumps and I am now again just thinking about it.

“For the next hour, I kept walking and thinking. I kept asking myself if I should tell you or not and had pretty much convinced myself not to tell you out of fear of having you think I’m crazy. As I got back to my car, something told me that I had to tell you. Hopefully I’m doing the right thing and this will bring you some comfort. Chris, you know me. I am not super religious or emotional. Usually way too logical — so it was tough for me to have this happen and tell you about it, but I promise this really happened to me in the past two hours.”

The Hernandezes marvel at these moments, and gain strength from the thoughts of their son.

To that end, they’ve created Christopher’s Way, an organization that gives this as its mission statement: “Christopher’s Way Foundation was established to provide education and awareness to educators and parents about a neurological disorder known as dysgraphia. People challenged with dysgraphia have tremendous difficulty with writing and drawing.

“Christopher Michael Hernandez II is the inspiration for the foundation. An honor student, Eagle Scout, musician, poet and dysgraphia sufferer.”

As explained at christophersway.org, “Dysgraphia is a neurological disorder characterized by writing disabilities. Specifically, the disorder causes a person’s writing to be distorted or incorrect. In children, the disorder generally emerges when they are first introduced to writing. They make inappropriately sized and spaced letters, or write wrong or misspelled words, even thorough instruction has been provided.”

Chris and Dawn Hernandez are taking their loss and creating gain from it — by helping others who shared the condition Christopher had. They’re also keeping their eyes and ears open for more faith-affirming signs from above that let them know their son is at peace.

“We feel Christopher is with us at all times,” Dawn says.

“We always knew it,” Chris adds. “But these moments when it becomes clear, they’re extra comforting — they help us to go on to the next day.”

CHRIS EPTING is the author of 14 books, including the new “Huntington Beach Then & Now.” You can write him at [email protected] .