Man hears call for help, finds woman in wheelchair stuck

The road leading to Mary Spurgeon's place at the Hunt Park Apartments doesn't look all that daunting. It's about a half-mile long, and has a couple of small hills. It would take maybe 10 minutes to walk.

Covered with snow and ice, though, it morphs into Mount Everest. That's what it looked like to Spurgeon, a wheelchair-bound 59-year-old who found herself stuck late Friday afternoon after being dropped off by a Trans-Aid bus driver.

"I thought I could make it and started out in low gear, but I only made it about 25 feet before my tires started spinning," said Spurgeon, who uses a motorized wheelchair. "It just wouldn't move. I was stuck, and there wasn't a soul out there."

Fright gave way to panic as she struggled. Wet snow piled up on her. She was soaked to the skin and shivering. Her wheels dug further into the slush. Frantic, she cried out for help.

Out of nowhere, a young man appeared. He wrapped his jacket around Spurgeon and started pushing.

"All he had on was a T-shirt. I thought he was going to freeze to death," Spurgeon said. "That young man, he just came out of nowhere."

Neighbor helping neighbor

Spurgeon would have preferred to stay home, but she didn't have a choice. She has to go for her dialysis treatments every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Trans-Aid -- a service provided to the elderly and people with disabilities by the Winston-Salem Transit Authority -- gets her there.

Late Friday afternoon, Spurgeon was among the first riders scheduled for drop-off. When the snow started piling up and the roads became more treacherous by the minute, the driver faced a dilemma: Should he risk getting stuck, or should he drop Spurgeon off?

"When he couldn't get up the hill -- there was a lot of snow there -- the driver asked her if he could drop her off, if she thought she could get home," said Art Barnes, WSTA's general manager, who had an onboard tape recording of the incident reviewed by staff members Tuesday. "She answered in the affirmative."

The driver -- Barnes didn't identify him -- then called a WSTA dispatcher to ask someone to call Spurgeon's apartment. No one answered, but Spurgeon got off the bus and started for home.

A little while later, Kenneth Oliver was getting out of his car at the nearby Brandemere Apartments. Out for a few hours, he had decided to forego a trip to Thomasville to see his daughter because of the nasty weather.

When Oliver got out of the car, his wife asked if he heard somebody calling for help. He did, and he took off. Oliver expected to find a stranded motorist. He found Spurgeon.

"I just thought, ‘I've got to get her out of the snow,'" he said. "She couldn't move her hands, and the joystick thing was stuck."

He looked at the falling snow, the slick roadway and the remaining distance -- a few hundred yards -- and knew what he had to do. He gave Spurgeon his jacket and scarf and started pushing. Spurgeon and her chair together certainly weigh at least 150 pounds.

With the snow factored in, the task wasn't easy.

"I wouldn't want my grandmamma out like that," he said. "You don't leave somebody out like that, even if they say it's OK. After going to the doctor (for dialysis) like that, she might have been out of it."

Neighbors at the Hunt Park Apartments were just gathering for an early Christmas get-together when Oliver and Spurgeon arrived.

They rushed to peel her wet clothes off and get her warmed up as Spurgeon recounted her story. She estimated that she was outside for at least 45 minutes.

"She was shivering bad, out there in the cold like that," said Juanita Dawkins, one of Spurgeon's neighbors. "We were surprised, stunned, angry, all of that.… I wouldn't have left a dog out there in that weather, much less a person."

Guardian angel

Almost a week after her ordeal, Spurgeon is still upset. She has replayed the events in her head, and has come to the conclusion that her driver should have tried harder to get her all the way home.

"He had a radio, and a way to contact his people," she said. "I didn't even have a cell phone."

Barnes said that his driver didn't do anything wrong. He noted that Trans-Aid isn't equipped for snow.

"We had a couple of choices, none of them good,'' Barnes said. "Do we go back to the dialysis center -- which would have solved nothing -- and then come back and get her and nothing (on the road) would have changed? Or do we go back to our administrative offices, and then what?''

The hills in the area are pretty steep. It's not difficult to imagine a worried Spurgeon considering her (all bad) options, then saying she thought she could make it. Nor it is hard to picture a stressed-out driver pulling away as soon as he saw Spurgeon moving.

When it snows around here, people do things they wouldn't do otherwise. The best decision Friday was made by a 27-year-old who heard a woman in trouble. The residents at Hunt Park took up a collection for Oliver -- he is unemployed and struggling to find work -- and presented it to him Tuesday night.

"I truly believe the Lord sent him to me," Spurgeon said. "I feel God sent him to get me home."

ssexton@wsjournal.com



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