This story takes place about ten years ago, so I was approx. six years post injury. At that time I had a 2003 Gmc Safari minivan with a side entry lift, raised roof and door. In my attempt to make the van as cool as possible, I purchased a set of wider, aluminum wheels to put on the van from the local wheel shop. To make things easier my dad put my new wheels in his truck and drove to Walmart and had a set of tires mounted on the them . Later that day I was getting home from a disabled water ski event at Creve Coeur lake and my dad jacked up my van, took my old tires and wheels off, then mounted my new set of wheels and tires. That evening I drove to my girlfriends house and parked my van top spend the night.
The next day my girlfriend at the time had to work so I got in the van to leave and proceeded driving down the two lane road. I made it about 2 miles and I heard some loud clicking and immediately slowed down , but as I looked in my mirror cars were lining up behind me. I saw a fire station just ahead and then it happened........a loud bang and the entire van went down to one side and I skidded to a stop as far to the side of the road I could get. I wasn't positive what happened, but I assumed a wheel had came off the van. People started driving by me and saying and doing what they do at accidents until one car stopped and a man got out and approached me. He's like "your wheel came off, you want me to get it?" I was grateful and told him that would be great. After he rolled the wheel to my van I told him my dad was on the way, but I had a jack in the back and I asked him if he could start jacking it up. He agreed and jacked the van up, but couldn't get the van high enough to put the wheel on. By this time his wife and kids were out helping to and they all had their church clothes on. My father pulled up backwards in front of my van and came towards situation with another jack. He put the second jack under the frame and was able to get it high enough to put the wheel on but we had another problem now.............no lug nuts! Luckily he thought to take one lug nut off each wheel to put the fourth wheel back on. Then they bungeed my running board that was hanging off and I was ready to drive away. The guys wife was directing traffic the whole time while the men worked. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the mans white shirt had grease on it. I told the family how thankful I was and that they had saved me that day. I drove off pretty quick to avoid any tow trucks or police that may have been called. About a month later I was rolling in the mall and saw the family that helped me walking towards me. I thanked them again and rolled on about my business. I think its pretty crazy that a family on their way to church in their Sunday best attire stopped and helped me out of such a crazy situation. So its easy to talk about the times Ive been blocked or screwed over in some way, but I wanted to point out a family that did the right thing just because they should...........no money or anything else..........just did it because it was the right thing to do. Ron
