A North Delta woman is looking to thank the Good Samaritans who stopped to help her after she took a terrible fall while walking her dog last month.
Linda Brown, 69, was walking along 92nd Street at around 10:45 a.m. on Nov. 5 when she slipped on an inclined metal utility access cover at the southeast corner of 117th Street, shattering her leg and wrist.
“I don’t know how it happened because I went down like a ton of bricks and my foot was sheared — both the tibia and the fibula were broken and my foot was laying to one side. I couldn’t move it and all I could do was scream,” Brown said.
But as horribly painful and terrifying as her ordeal was, she says the kindness shown by a handful of strangers that morning went “above and beyond,” and she’s now on a mission to find and thank each of them personally.
In particular, Brown is trying to find four civilians and a paramedic, and she’s hoping someone out there can help put her in touch.
“What they did … was so wonderful. I was in tears the whole time, I felt I was so cared for by these people,” she said.
“I was just screaming, ‘Help me, help me!’ That’a all I can remember really. And before I knew it there was a woman on my left side that was holding my dog and a man on my right side that was holding my hand, and he said, ‘I already called the ambulance, is there somebody else I can call?’”
Brown described the pair as a “beautiful” South Asian woman perhaps 20 years old and a South Asian man in his early or mid 20s wearing a black turban.
At her feet were two other men, one South Asian and wearing a black baseball hat and black sweat top, the other Caucasian with light-coloured hair and wearing a silver t-shirt.
One of the men went to get her husband, who has mobility issues and was several blocks behind pushing their grand daughter in a stroller, and let him know what had happened.
While they all waited for an ambulance to arrive, a Canada post truck stopped and the driver got out and covered her with his yellow rain jacket.
“I am just so grateful to all these people,” she said.
Brown’s daughter Sarah was only five blocks away and arrived shortly after the man in the turban called her. She returned the rain jacket to the postal worker and covered her mother in horse blankets from her car.
When Delta firefighters arrived on scene, one of them — Brown remembers he was named Kevin — slipped on the same metal plate before giving her some gas to help with pain. Shortly after, paramedics showed up, including one named Liam.
“They were all kind, very kind, but this Liam was right in my face, talking to me, telling this is what happened, this is what’s going to happen … he was just talking to me like he was mesmerizing me.”
Brown said she passed out as the firefighters and paramedics were working to remove her shoe — “The pain was excruciating” — but when she came to her leg and arm were on boards and Liam resumed talking her through what they were going to be doing and how.
Liam then stayed with her as they put her in the ambulance and took her to the hospital, and didn’t leave her side until after her injuries had been x-rayed and she was admitted to acute care.
“He was just so kind, they were all so kind, above and beyond the call of duty. These guys are heroes, in more ways than one. They could have made it cut-and-dry and in-and-out. I was a terrified 69-year-old woman and it was wonderful [how they cared for me].”
So far though, Brown hasn’t had any luck tracking Liam down to thank him.
“I went to the ambulance station on 120th and brought pastries and a thank-you card and a picture [of him], but the guy said no, he didn’t know a Liam.”
Brown said the impression she got was that Liam could have come from a station in another city and just been in the area when his ambulance got the call.
“I don’t know how to find him to thank him personally, or those four people who helped me at the scene of. And I don’t have a picture of them unfortunately,” she said.
“There’s [been] no closure. These people were above and beyond being kind.”
The firefighters who helped her that day were much easier to find.
“We went to the fire hall and gave them pastries and a thank-you card, and I blew-up a picture so they would know who I was talking about. One of the guys said, ‘Oh yeah, that one’s my brother and that one’s Kevin,’ and I said, ‘Please pass on my regards to them.”
Brown asks that anyone who thinks they might know Liam or the four civilians who helped her that day either call or email the North Delta Reporter (604-575-5346 or editor@northdeltareporter.com), and the paper will pass on to her their contact information.
(CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified Liam as a student paramedic. The story has now been updated to reflect that he was, in fact, a fully-certified paramedic.)
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editor@northdeltareporter.com
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