At the speed I was driving Saturday on the Indiana Toll Road, all I could see was a woman walking on the shoulder carrying a red gas can.
A minute earlier, I noticed an abandoned vehicle on the same eastbound shoulder, just past Broadway in Gary. I slowed down to watch the woman’s image disappear in my rear-view mirror. A moment later, she was gone from my view.
But not from my mind. Or my fiancée’s mind. We looked at each other.
“What should we do?” I asked her while slowing down our vehicle.
Without saying anything more, I thought of our options.
We could turn around at the next exchange, and then turn around again, to try and find the woman to offer her a ride. Or we could stop on the side of the toll road and wait for her to eventually catch up.
Then again, we could continue driving to Valparaiso, returning home from a Chicago Bears game at Soldier Field, and eventually forget about the woman walking with a gas can. This attitude appeared to work just fine for the hundreds of other motorists who zoomed past the woman. Not one of them stopped.
Did any of them also contemplate these options? Did all of them? I don’t know.
My fiancée, Karen, voiced what both of us were thinking.
“If Sarah ran out of gas while driving her car, I’d want someone to stop and help her,” Karen said, referring to her 17-year-old daughter who’s now driving.
As Karen peeked in her side mirror to look for that woman, I pulled our car onto the shoulder of the toll road. I looked to see if any other motorist stopped to pick her up. Not one of them even slowed down.
My knee-jerk thought was to call 911 or Hoosier Helpers to report the woman’s situation. This would at least clear my conscience.
The sun was setting, and the nearest gas station was likely on U.S. 12 in Miller, a few miles from the woman’s vehicle. It would be dangerously dark by the time she reached any gas station by foot.
My other thought was strictly about our safety if we offered her a ride. I had no idea who she was, where she was from, or her personal story. Where would I take her? Would I feel obliged to drive her back to her vehicle? What if she was drunk or on drugs?
Rationalizations seeped into my head, suggesting I continue driving home. Shameful, I know.
“What are you going to do?” Karen asked.
I hopped out of our car, made room in the back seat, and started jogging toward the woman. I reached her about a quarter mile away.
“Are you OK?” I yelled as vehicles hurled past us.
“I ran out of gas, and my cellphone is dead,” she replied.
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I told her my name. She told me hers, Loretta.
“God bless you for stopping for me,” she said, her eyes tearing up.
“No problem,” I replied, thinking about all those rationalizations to not help her.
We hurriedly walked together toward my car. Along the way, I asked her a few more questions.
Loretta told me she lives in Miller. She was returning home from Chicago, where she used to live. She thought her vehicle could make it home while running on fumes. It ran out of gas just after Broadway, where she should have exited, she said.
“It would have been safer than this,” Loretta yelled.
We got back to my car and I introduced her to Karen. Loretta told us more about herself.
She said she’s a mother of 10 kids, including three adopted children. Her youngest child was at her mother’s home while she drove to Chicago earlier that day to attend church.
“Do you go to church?” Loretta asked me.
“No, I don’t,” I replied, looking at her in my rear view mirror.
“Well, God bless you for helping me,” Loretta said, again getting emotional.
“I’m agnostic, so for some reason God sent me to help you,” I replied. “The lord does work in mysterious ways, huh?”
She laughed. We laughed.
I drove to the nearest gas station in Miller. Loretta asked to use our phone so she could call someone to bring her money to buy gas, and to drive her back to her car.
I told her there’s no need for that. We could drive her back to her car.
I filled up her gas can and we got back on the toll road, heading toward her vehicle. I emptied the gas can into her car’s tank and it started right up. I told her that this was a wondrous thing because I possess no auto mechanic skills.
Loretta thanked us again as traffic sped past. She slid into her driver seat. I hugged her goodbye. She slowly drove off. I hopped back into my car.
“Aren’t you glad we stopped?” Karen asked me. “We would have always regretted it if we didn’t.”
She was right. She usually is.
Truth be told, if Karen wasn’t with me I don’t think I would have pulled over to help Loretta. I couldn’t shake this nagging thought while driving home.
My seemingly selfless actions didn’t reflect my obviously selfish thoughts just a few minutes earlier. I was overly cautious and wrongly indifferent, thinking only of me and mine, not of Loretta and her difficult situation.
I wondered how many other people harbor similar thoughts when it comes to helping others in need. It’s so easy to justify our fear or apathy.
Is our society as cautious, selfish or fearful as I was that day? Or am I in the minority? Do all those vehicles zooming past Loretta represent the worst in us? Or is that an honest snapshot of who we are as a people?
Either way, we can thank Loretta for compelling us to pull over and think about it.