You’re 19, you’re driving down Highway 2 during rush hour on the Friday of a long weekend, your driver’s side front tire just exploded, you don’t know what to do and you’re moderately terrified.
Yet somehow, you are not alone.
Abby Christensen did not know how to change a tire when she left St. Albert for her summer job with Sturgeon County in Morinville Aug. 2. This surely added to her anxiety when her black Nissan sedan decided to make the first flat tire of her driving career a doozy on the way home that evening.
“I mean, obviously it was like, really terrifying,” she said last Wednesday, Aug. 28. “I just was really scared.”
It was about 4:30 p.m. just north of the Highway 37 junction. Abby, an education student at Augustana University in Camrose, was able to steer the car to the side of the road safely. She raised her parents, who were at a regular family summer spot in Big Valley about three hours away, on her cellphone. But she wasn’t on the line long before a couple pulled over to help.
A woman came to her door, spoke to her and calmed her down. This is where the doozy level ratchets up like a tire jack on the side of the highway. While they were talking, the woman's companion not only changed the flat, but put the "doughnut" emergency spare on the rear axle and moved one of the good tires to the front. (For the uninitiated, this is the correct way to swap out a front tire in an emergency, giving the driver more traction and putting less weight and braking stress on the smaller spare."
What’s more, he did it while kneeling halfway, if not fully, in the live lane to the car’s left.
“I think it was just super nice of him,” Abby said. “I was like, really shocked by how kind it was of him.”
Abby said they must have seen the tire go, since they were travelling behind her and pulled over immediately.
Her parents urged her to get the Good Samaritans’ contact information so they could properly thank them, but to no avail. The impromptu pit crew disappeared as quickly as they had materialized.
“She’s a 19-year-old girl who's never experienced anything like this,” mom Susanne Christensen, a teacher in St. Albert, said. “So, she was very upset and unfortunately has no clue how to change a tire. We said like, ‘please, please get their names. You know, their contact information because we would like to thank them.’ And they just said no.
“So many people just blew past her and these people stopped and just helped her, immensely calming her down and fixing the tire and making sure that it was safe by putting the doughnut on the back, they just went so far above and beyond what we would ever have had hoped.”
Speaking of above and beyond, the Christensens are grateful they were able to thank another fellow who helped Abby. The brother-in-law of a family friend, who works at a tire business, took his Friday evening to pick up two new tires, put them on Abby’s rims and send her on her way.
His reward remains confidential, but it’s safe to say it’s unlikely he went thirsty over the August long weekend.
A rough week
For Susanne, the kindness of the couple was put in stark contrast by the rest of her family’s week. While she and her husband were on that slightly frantic phone call with Abby, their family dog, Ozzy, got out and was bitten on his front leg “down to the bone” by a German shepherd. He’s still wearing a cone a month later.
“He went because we weren't paying attention to him, we were paying attention to our child and freaking out about her being on the highway.”
Just a few days later, Susanne’s live-in father lost his battle with cancer at 84.
“The last month has really been a lot,” she said. “The kindness of those people, I think it even meant more to us then because it was just an awful time.”
Hope remains for the Christensens that they can reconnect with the helpful couple and at least buy them dinner. A Facebook post received some comments, but no hard leads.
If you think you who they are, you can contact this newspaper.
“Sometimes you don't see the best in in society, and so this was just such a great example of an amazing, kind act,” Susanne said. “I don't know their situation. I just have so much appreciation for doing that act for our daughter and, you know, going so far above and beyond that. I just really wanted to thank them and be able to do something for them.”
