by Dorothy Cady
Oklahoma, USA
It was December 2003. It had been balmy the day before, but it was below freezing now. The Oklahoma roads were icy tonight, and few people were out on them. Our son had just left our house to take his friend home before the weather worsened. When the phone rang, I knew something wasn’t right.
“Mom. We found a body in the road. No, at the curve. Yes, we’re fine.”
Because we lived up a dirt road with few other houses around, there was no telling where the body had come from, whether or not it was a trick, or if someone truly needed help. My husband, our son-in-law, Jon, and I rushed the two miles to the site.
Our son Ray and his friend, Merrick, stood coatless and shirtless next to Ray’s car, which he had turned to train its headlights on the body on the side of the road. It lay covered with every piece of clothing the two boys could afford to remove and remain modest. The boys shivered. My husband checked for a pulse. The body was breathing. My son and his friend had done their best to keep him warm.
“I drove right past him,” Ray told me. “I thought someone had tossed out some clothing or lost it off their truck. I looked in the rearview mirror and the heap didn’t look right. So I went back. That’s when we discovered there was a person in there.”
We called the police and told the two young men to get into our car to remove the chill. But they wouldn’t go. They crouched by the man and waited, talking to him, hoping to keep him conscious until the police arrived, both wanting to know if he’d survive.
“He’d have frozen to death if your son hadn’t found him,” the officer told us. “His truck is down the road a bit in the ditch. Looks like he thought he could walk and get help. You go now. We’ll take it from here.”
Once the ambulance arrived, I asked the officers if it was OK to collect the coats and shirts the two boys had donated to keep the man warm. The stranger was blanketed and the clothing returned. My son and his friend dressed again and went on. We went home.
Though the two young men were worried about their own safety when they realized what they had found, they kept their heads and helped a man who wasn’t able to help himself. We still don’t know who he was and probably never will, but that doesn’t matter. The man is alive because my son and his friend noticed something didn’t look right and had the courage to check it out instead of just driving on.
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You must be so proud of both young men – thank you for sharing
What an incredible story. Thanks for sharing
Your son (and his friend) were that man’s angels that night. ‘Something’ told your son that something was wrong and he listened to that ‘something’ and went back. I hope I remember this if I should ever come across something that doesn’t ‘seem’ right.
My comment is not about the story, which is wonderful, but about something I think every time I see these: why are they so old? Are there no longer heroic stories to be told?
We’re not getting submissions. When HeroicStories was started it was difficult/cumbersome to get your story posted online, so we collected and provided that as a kind of service. Today it’s trivial to post on social media and get exposure for your story. So, for now, we’re simply re-running our collection of stories, adding audio narration to those that don’t have it.