WINTER PARK, Fla. — A Florida woman says she’s alive today because of the kindness of a stranger from West Virginia and she would really like to find him.
Lisa Churchill of Winter Park suffered a number of injuries in an accident on a Massachusetts highway on June 18, 2017. She was visiting family in the area and traveling with her sister. Around 1 a.m. they came upon a van parked broadside on the highway by a drunken driver.
“We slammed the vehicle at 65 miles an hour. I went into the windshield and fell back into the car,” Churchill told MetroNews from her Florida home. “My sister dragged me out of the car, but she was hurt too and couldn’t move me any further. The next thing I knew I was being scooped up and carried across the guardrail. The man said to me, ‘My name is Tim, I’m a firefighter from West Virginia, don’t be scared.'”
Moments after she was moved out of the road another car came crashing down the guardrail where Churchill had be lying. It’s almost certain she would have been killed by the second accident had she not been moved.
“I could hear and feel my head swelling. He was telling me to look in his eyes. I kept telling him I wasn’t ready to die,” Churchill explained. “He just said, ‘I’m not leaving you until they put you in that ambulance and I know you’re okay.'”
Tim, the Good Samaritan firefighter from West Virginia, was as good as his word.
“He held my hand until I got in the ambulance,” she said. “I was squeezing his hand pretty tightly and then he was just gone. I haven’t been able to get any information about him at all.”
Now, almost a month after the wreck, Lisa put out he call on social media in hopes of locating Tim. So far, she hasn’t had any luck, but the response on Facebook has been overwhelming.
“It looks like it’s been shared in every corner of West Virginia and several other states. I didn’t know by putting that up there all of this was going to happen,” she said. “I just really want to thank this guy and let him know I’m alive. The last time he saw me they were putting me in an ambulance.”
Lisa’s husband Wesley would also like to meet Tim. Wesley was back in Florida when the wreck occurred. He was in bed with his phone turned off, but something caused him to have an uneasy feeling and he turned it on.
“Everybody was trying to get hold of me and about 11 o’clock I got a phone call telling me my wife was in an accident and she almost died,” said Wesley choking back tears. “I owe him my life. He saved my life, not just my wife’s.”
If you happen to know Tim’s full identity and contact information, you can send an email here and MetroNews can put you in touch with Lisa and Wesley.