Thank you, Good Samaritans ~ July 17, 2003

David Heiller 

The Good Samaritans came through again: It happened last Friday afternoon.

Our daughter, Malika, was on her way to a wedding in Redwood Falls. About half way there, she had a fender bender. It wasn’t a bad one, but it did something to the car she was driving so that she could not shift out of drive.

She was an adult, but
when things go really wrong:
this is who she is in your heart.

It’s an automatic transmission, so Mollie was fine as long as she didn’t shut the engine off.

So she pulled off the road and shut the engine off.

She claims I told her to do that. Maybe I did. When she called Cindy and me, we might have panicked a bit. We were traveling ourselves, and felt very helpless trying to talk our daughter through the situation while we were in our own vehicle.

So Mollie was stuck on the side of Highway 2, somewhere east of Cass Lake, in a car that wouldn’t start.

I called Sebald Motors, thinking they might have a solution for me. They’ve saved me more than once. But about all Rich Thomsen could do was diagnose the problem over the phone. “Sounds like a shift cable,” he said.

We don’t have AAA, so that tow-truck option was out. We didn’t have a phone book for the Cass Lake area. It appeared that Mollie was on her own in the middle of nowhere, and that was scary.

Enter the Good Samaritans.

A middle-aged couple that was heading the other direction stopped. Mollie told them what had happened. So they turned around and drove her into Cass Lake—10 or 15 miles, Mollie said. The man found a garage with a tow truck and arranged for a tow. Then they were back on their way. They were going to a wedding.

Mollie filled us in on all this as it was happening in a couple short phone calls. As she did, relief washed over me like a cool wave on a hot day, and I thought to myself, “I knew that would happen.”

I had for a few tense minutes forgotten about the goodness of my fellow man and woman.

They did what you or I probably would have done, what we have done in the past and will probably end up doing a time or two in the future, if we are lucky.

Yes, it’s good to be on both the giving and receiving end of that line.

Parents: Moms, Dads always
want to be there for their kids.
But sometimes we can only be
grateful for the ones who are willing
to be there when we can't be.

The tow truck took Mollie and the car to Bemidji, to a Ford dealership, where it turned out that Rich was right, it needed a new shift cable. Another Samaritan appeared there, a receptionist who drove Mollie to a store and restaurant where she could pass the time.

Then there was the Samaritan at the motel who let Mollie watch TV in the lobby until Cindy could arrive with a ride home.

I don’t know the names of any of the Good Samaritans that helped our daughter. But they proved that some things haven’t changed for about 2,000 years.

We live in bad times right now. Soldiers are dying in a senseless war every day. People are losing their jobs. We are fearful of the next shoe that will drop.

But people are good, and that is a priceless thing to keep in mind. The people who helped Mollie brought that fundamental truth back to Cindy and me.

For their help, and for their reminder, I give them my thanks.