He didn’t have wings or a halo, but the man in the puffy black coat who emerged out of the snowstorm that night sure looked like an angel to me. I had been flooring my accelerator over and over, trying to propel my Honda Accord up a steep hill covered in a sheer sheet of ice. Each time my tires would emit a shrill squeal of determination, igniting hope in my heart. But then my car would give out, exhausted, sliding back down the hill and dragging my spirit down with it.
It was Tuesday, January 28, 2014, and I had left Ohio early that morning to head back home to Apollo Beach. The day had been frigid, but I-75 was clear and dry, the sun was shining, and I was making excellent time, singing at the top of my lungs to the tunes of Carrie Underwood. Then I hit it — the traffic jam on the northern outskirts of Atlanta that I would later learn was being called “the rush hour from hell” — a gridlock so extensive that it paralyzed the entire city.
No laughing matter
Born and raised in Ohio, I was used to winter road conditions and might have laughed at the idea that a couple of inches of snow could immobilize a city the size of Atlanta. But I wasn’t laughing now. Luckily, there was an exit 200 yards ahead of me, so I got off the freeway and made my way to the nearest Waffle House, where I was shocked to see scores of people camped out on the floor, wrapped in coats and blankets. “What the heck was going on?” I wondered.
Deciding now to find a motel, I headed down the highway and turned on to a hilly, two-lane road that looked like it might lead to some commercial development. Instead, I seemed to be in some sort of remote rural area. The snow was deeper and the tree branches looked like ominous spider fingers reaching toward the sky.
“Ma’am, can I help you?” asked the man. I could barely make out the shadowy figure as he appeared out of the darkness and approached my car. He wore a knit cap with a flannel scarf across his face, leaving only his eyes and eyebrows exposed, crusted with ice.
I rolled down my window as a blast of cold air assaulted my face. Clad only in a T-shirt, jeans and flip-flops (anticipating my arrival in Florida), I must have looked ridiculous. “I’m trying to make it up this hill,” I told him. “I need to find a motel.”
The man looked down at his feet. “I’m sorry to tell you this,” he said, “but there isn’t a motel room within 200 miles of here. The roads are blocked in every direction. It’s a real mess.”
I struggled to comprehend what he was saying. “But I know how to drive in snow,” I said. “If I can just get past this hill …. ”
The man was looking at me with sympathetic eyes. “Ma’am,” he said, “I think you’d better come home with me.” I looked down at my gas needle sitting on empty and felt a sudden jolt of panic shoot through my body. The man was dialing his phone.
Admitting defeat
Through the receiver came a woman’s voice, a soft southern drawl, soothing but firm. She said her name was Debra, and that her husband Greg had been out all evening digging people out of ditches and pushing cars up icy inclines. They were a Christian family with three children. She assured me I’d be safe.
My mind was spinning with the absurdity of it all. Go home with this strange man? He could be a serial killer for all I knew. But the facts were these: I was nearly out of gas. I had no blankets in my car, not even a warm coat or sweater. I realized I was beat.
Greg helped me change from my flip-flops to tennis shoes, draped his puffy parka around my shoulders, and we set off in the darkness, puffing steam from our cheeks into the cold night air. It seemed like hours before we finally arrived on a snow-covered street in what looked like a pleasant suburban neighborhood. “This is it,” said Greg.
Debra had hot soup on the stove and a space heater blazing in the kitchen when we arrived. My hair hung in scraggly icicles across my forehead, and my teeth chattered when I tried to talk. The kids gathered around the kitchen table, staring wide-eyed at the bedraggled stranger that their dad had brought in from the cold. I slept that night in a warm bedroom with an electric blanket and a cinnamon candle burning on the nightstand. As I sank into the soft sheets of the strange bed, a sob of relief involuntarily escaped from my chest.
The next morning we awoke to the TV blaring with state and city officials debating about who was to blame for the massive traffic jam. The mayor blamed the governor, the governor blamed the National Weather Service, while schoolteachers lamented the fact that hundreds of children spent the night on gymnasium floors, separated from their parents. Stranded drivers slept in their cars. Others sought shelter in Home Depots or 24-hour CVS stores. One woman gave birth to a baby girl in her car.
Back to life
By the time I was finally able to escape the city that day, the cold sun was sinking into the skyline. Greg led the way in his Jeep Cherokee, guiding me to an on-ramp where he felt I could enter the freeway safely. What I saw looked like a scene out of a science-fiction horror movie. Hundreds of cars, trucks and tractor trailers had been abandoned, some pulled off to the side of the road, others sitting smack dab in the middle of the city’s multi-laned highway. Winter clouds cast a grim shadow over the scene, giving it the look of death. I maneuvered my way around empty vehicles, anxious to get to the other side of this God-forsaken city, back to the warmth of sunny Florida … back to life.
Sick at heart
I was home in time to celebrate my birthday the next day with friends at Circles, where I recounted my harrowing experience over warm lobster bisque and wine. I vowed to send the kind-hearted couple a nice “thank you” gift for their selfless act of compassion — maybe a basket of wine and cheese, or a tropical flower arrangement. But later that night, as I finished unpacking my suitcase, I discovered that the scrap of paper on which I’d hastily written their phone number had disappeared.
Sick at heart, I searched my luggage, my car and the pockets of my jeans, with no luck. I had no way to reach Greg and Debra, didn’t even know their last name. It seemed that my Guardian Angel had evaporated overnight into thin air, as quietly and mysteriously as he had come.
A long shot
Over the past two years, the faces of the Good Samaritan couple have never left my mind. For awhile, I searched every avenue I could think of to find them — Facebook, Instagram, and people-finder websites. I watched the movie Pay it Forward and thought that if I couldn’t find them, maybe I could somehow pay it forward to someone else. But how?
All I could come up with was to write this story. Maybe it would inspire someone to do something kind for a neighbor or help out a friend in need. Better yet, maybe someone out there might read it and recognize them — a young couple named Greg and Debra who live in a comfy suburb on the northern edge of Atlanta. A Guardian Angel in a puffy black coat who came out in a snowstorm two years ago on a cold and crazy night to save me. It’s a long shot, I know — but here it is.
