Caroline Larocca Hammond (49) and Robin Miles (53)
Sometimes it takes a crisis to define a friendship. Other times, a crisis is made bearable by a solid, secure, trusting friendship. Caroline Hammond and Robin Miles have been best friends since about 2012. They met in 2010, but their mutual admiration wasn’t immediate.
They have a lot of the same friends, shared the Mama Gina School of Womanly Arts together and “watched each other grow,” says Robin.
“I’ll risk saying maybe we’ve grown more than most,” says Caroline. “We live life intensely, take each other higher.” And, Robin points out strongly, “We call each other out on the BS. We weren’t close, didn’t connect and then we did. … We continued to see who showed up without judgment or agenda.”
Caroline owns Caroline LaRocca Event Design and Robin is an interior designer (Interior Details) with a new specialty called Love & Lust, concentrating on “boudoir collections.” They are both successful, driven women.
They developed what Caroline calls an “impenetrable circle” of friends and what Caroline’s teen-aged daughter, Sarabeth, called “a great bubble of love.”
That bubble showed it was made of steel when Sarabeth was killed in an automobile accident in late December, 2016. “It was a defining moment,” says Caroline, who was devastated, first by the three-day wait to discover what had happened to her missing daughter, then to be told of the awful wreck and her death. Caroline and Robin were together when Sarabeth didn’t come home and Robin stayed the night, awaiting a call.
Close friend Melinda Cohen also held vigil and was supportive. She and Robin became family spokespeople, dealing with the media and calls from people expressing support. “I saw a side of Robin I didn’t know,” says Caroline. “She felt it was her job [to support]. She put together the search effort, edited who came and went. She knew she had a mission and she played so many roles.”
After the crisis with Sarabeth’s death, Robin’s grandmother—with whom she was close—died and Robin and Caroline were together for that grief. “We’re always in each other’s lives,” says Robin. “We see our lives as intertwined and we have lived lifetimes in a week.”
“We live big,” says Caroline.
“Soul sisters,” counters Robin. “There is a depth of intensity, this knowing, knowing when things are off or good or there’s something to discuss, explore or be left alone.
“It’s like a marriage where you don’t allow petty stuff to stand in the way of a beautiful connection. … We are who we are and some love that, others think it’s too much. We live our lives big and full and we don’t dim our light.”
That’s because they’re best friends.
