Thank you for the Good Samaritans – Top Media News

Everyone should be as lucky as I am to have wonderful neighbors who are good Samaritans. Every day.

Chief among them is my housemate, Tom Richter, whose house is next door to mine. We share a driveway. Tom came to my rescue many times – or picked me up when I fell a few times and couldn’t get my legs to pick me up. And recently I had to go into the house and get another key from my Lexus and bring it to me so I could drive the car to get home.

On Sunday, as I walked out to my car across from Jaime, having just had lunch with my best friend forever, Debbie Wolfe, Esq., and her daughter Michelle, with our special waitress Jessica, my Lexus electronic key had a strange new red message – “Closed ” – and all four doors were closed and would not open. So I had Debbie pull out her cell phone and dial Tom’s number. Once again, thank heavens he was home. And he went to my house, took another electronic key and met us at Jaime’s. Only the new key also had a red locked sign and it couldn’t open any of the doors.

But between Debbie and Tom, they opened one of the two electronic key boxes and found the only key. But there was no keyhole on the passenger side. Tom went around the driver’s side – and found a keyhole! Sure enough, it worked – and once inside the Lexus, he somehow got the engine to start. Wow you!

And then he comes into my house, catches my cat or cats, puts them in carrier bags, drives us to Bryn Mawr Vet Hospital, waits in his car in the parking lot while I escort one or both of the kitties. inside to get checked out. And then he takes us home, brings the cat or cats in bags to my house and lets them loose.

At first I would send him food – or a plant as a thank you. But he told me to please stop doing that. He just loves helping me out – which is great since my husband is still overseas.

Last week I had an appointment with my new pulmonologist, Dr. Susan Gregory, in Lankenau. I pulled up and parked in Lot B. On the way, the Lankenau Transport Desk managed to send a worker with a wheelchair in time to meet me at the elevator. But then no one came back to push me in the wheelchair back to the parking lot (the corridors are soooo long!).

I needed to leave something in the lab on the first floor, so one of Dr. Gregory’s assistants volunteered to push me into the lab. But she had to go back to her desk. The “instant” stop turned into an hour of waiting to register. Apparently, you can’t raise something just like that, even with the doctor’s documents. And in front of me there were about 20 patients waiting for registration.

Suddenly, another neighbor of mine, Rick Kasarich, appeared from around the corner in the lab! He was preparing to leave. I asked him – if he didn’t have any back problems – if he could push me in my wheelchair down the hall, to the elevator and up to the garage floor where my car was parked. I have written about his wonderful wife Michelle in other columns. She was the one who booked me in for the Pfizer boosters and walked me past Blue Bell both times out to get my shots. But last Friday, Rich saved a life.

Another wonderful former neighbor of mine who drove me to Penn Radnor and Lankenau several times, Maureen Schutz, who picked up groceries for me, is recovering from a broken left arm. She tripped at the Blue Mercury store on Suburban Square and has been in a sling for a month, hoping to recover without surgery. Hope so! And I hope she finally gets a call from Blue Mercury’s manager to see how she’s doing.

Rosa Serota lives a few blocks away and has delivered her famous pasta to me several times. Thank you, Rosa! I hope that some of my readers also have unusually good Samaritans living near them.

Bonnie Squires is a communications consultant who writes weekly for Main Line Media News. She can be contacted at www.bonniesquires.com. She hosts the TV show “Bonnie’s Beat” on MLTV- MAIN LINE