Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Good Samaritan gone wrong

Inspired by another thread about helping someone out of a jam on the road...

Has anyone had a time when you stopped to help and it all just went to hell?


My wife wonders why I always try to stop and help people, especially after what happened to me about 12 years ago. It was a brutal cold night in the middle of winter in Wyoming. I was driving across Shirley Basin and then Old Hwy 30 towards Laramie when I saw a guy with his flashers on and his hood up.

It was 20 below zero and the wind was howling. This is the kind of weather people die in, so I stopped and got out to help. The guy had blown a water pump and had driven his truck as far as he could, hoping to make it to Laramie. He lost heat almost immediately and then finally his engine overheated and failed. I grabbed his stuff and loaded him and his dog into my Wagoneer and THEN things got really interesting. Within about 5 minutes, I figured out this guy was Batchit CRAZY. He told me he was on lithium but he felt better when he didn't take it - just babbled non-stop for the longest 40 minutes of my life. All I could think about was I picked this ONE day to leave my 686 at home (and getting this crazy mo-fo OUT of my truck). The guy got more and more agitated about getting back to his truck that night, getting really pushy about me helping get some coolant and go back out. (No way in HELL)

I offered to drop him at a motel, but he said he didn't have any money. It was close to midnight. I asked the guy if there was anyone he could call and he said no - no one. I ended up taking the guy to a cheap motel, paid $50 for his room, handed him a 20 for food and got the hell away from him. He asked for my address to pay me back and just waived him off. I felt good that adventure only cost me $70.

Now I only stop if it's an accident or if I'm carrying.

Back in 1980 and my senior year in high school I stopped on a duck drowning rainy night in a similar situation. The guy has blown the engine on an old van and he had a dog with him also. He needed to get to Caney, Kansas and the town was up the road from where I was headed so I offered a ride to as far as I was going. As soon as that batsh!t crazy bastard got in my truck he started talking all kinds of crazy [bleep] about the people he killed in the war and voices he heard in his head. At that point I started screaming about wanting to kill myself, punched the gas to the floor and started weaving all over the road talking about hitting a bridge abutment and going out in a fireball. This dude started begging me to not kill myself, to slow down and then he demanded that I stop or he was going to jump out. I slammed on the breaks and before I could come to a complete stop he jumped out and called his dog and fled into the dark and damp night. Once I quit shaking I started laughing my a$$ off and went on my way much wiser than I had been.

Perry

Oh yeah. I used to drive about 40 miles each way to work over some pretty lonely stretches of road. My shift had me coming home around 2:30 in the morning, and had several encounters with drunk or doped up weirdos. Was sure one was gonna puke in my truck before I could drop him off - thankfully he didn't, cause I was thinking about working him over with a tire iron if he had... another wanted me to carry him here and there, and didn't really seem to know where he was going. After about 20 miles out of the way and the third or fourth stop to beat on somebodies' door, I drove off and left him there.

The only person I've known of who was on lithium said the same thing to his parents about two weeks before he murdered them. The next bullet in the cylinder he saved for himself.

Be careful...Do gooderdom can be costly.

You know, that's a scary scenario. You see a disabled vehicle and a motorist stranded in sub zero conditions, and empathy compels you to help out.

As illustrated, there are some strange people out there and mental health issues are NOT uncommon.

What else to do? Grab the cell phone and report a stranded motorist to 911. That is assuming you have cell service in the outback. Note the mile marker and call as soon as you have service.

I think that is better than having to potentially wrestle or shoot a wacko.

Now I just had the opposite experience. About 6 years ago I was up chucker hunting with a young friend north of Susanville CA. The terrain was so bad up there I had blown a couple of tires on rocks. To make a long story short, I had one good tire left and was going to Susanville to get some replacement ones. Along with that at 72 years of age at the time I was trying to do stuff that a guy my age shouldn't try with had resulted is a sprained back. As I hit the main road bam, another tire blew out. [bleep]!!! As I climbed out I saw a truck coming. Young guy in his mid twenties climbed out and insisted on me letting him changed my tire. After he did it I offered him twenty bucks which he refused and said he was glad to help and drove away. That was really the high-light of the trip.

Erik, your experience is all to real and am glad you got out of it OK even if it did unexpectedly cost you $70. I've been stopping to help or rescue folks on the road ever since we came west in 1961 - many of these roadways are desolate. All in all, it has worked to the good - but there have been a couple of potentially dangerous developments and one that easily could have been fatal. Almost all are rewarding and there have been a couple of humorous events as well.

By now my kids and wife have been discouraging the practice (am I becoming old and feeble?) and, recently this summer, upon seeing someone stopped alongside one of these mountain roads late at night with hood up, I heard a firm "no, do not stop". Went back after sunrise and the car was gone, so figured we had not been needed. Conditions these days do give one pause.

Out here where we live, you just don't pass up people with car trouble or health problems. I guess that we have just been lucky, but the worst we have had to deal with were a few folks who were, at worst, eccentric. At age 72, I don't jump out and start changing tires or doing heavy manual labor, but I do see if there is anything that I can do to help. It sometimes plays hob with your itinerary, but (so far) I have never wished that I hadn't stopped.

I guess it's just habit to help someone broke down on the highway. I'm not quite as old as you Ben, but we were just brought up that way.

Not quite the same thing, but there was a man that lived about 1/4 mile up the road from us that had lost a leg in an accident. Will, the man's first name, didn't drive and would walk to town, about 1/2 mile, hobbling along on that peg leg, to buy groceries. There is no telling how many times I drove him to and from town. Didn't think anything of it, it was just the thing to do.

Stopping to help someone can cut both ways. The Tison gang in AZ killed the family that stopped to help them including the little kids and stole their car.

I'm glad the stories above worked out okay. I usually stop and offer to help unless there is family with me.

Will probably get bumped off some day for doing it.

I've pulled a fair number of vehicles stuck in the snow. Haven't had a bad experience yet, not even the officer that got his APD cruiser stuck.

Back in my college days a bunch of us rented a house on the Jersey shore, one night when out for a stroll headed toward the boardwalk and the beach we come upon a 20 something blond obviously locked out of what we thought was her car. One of the guys who happened to be the least mechanically inclined volunteered our services to help. The car was a shiny new red Toyota, the design of the door latches made it very difficult to unlock. I was finally successful in getting a coathanger wire in the window and unlocking the door on the far side. Thinking that was that, the girl said getting in the car was only the start as her purse with the keys was locked in the trunk. Getting into the trunk required removing the rear seat backrest and package shelf. This revealed two triangular holes in the sheetmetal frame barely big enough to get my arm thru. To add to the problem her purse was in the spare tire well beneath the trunk carpeting. Working with a mirror in one hole and a flashlight to illuminate my periscope I could barely see well enough to locate the purse once the carpet was dislodged. Success at last I thought after about an hours work in the humid summer night. Then she lays the kicker on me, the car didn't belong to her, it was her boyfriend's. Glad he didn't come along when I had his car looking a fugutive from the local chop shop. She did buy us dinner to show her thanks.

This thread has been a nice change of pace. My thanks to the OP.

gunswizard's post reminded me of a tale a coworker from long ago told me about.

Chris, the coworker, had been in the Army and was stationed I don't know where, but he told me tales of being on leave in some Latin area and going to the donkey or burro and women shows and it was while in one of these areas that he and the buddies he was on leave with one night came across a couple Latino guys pushing a car, trying to get it to start. Chris and his buds were in good spirits and saw that these 2 guys could use a hand, so despite the language barrier, they showed their good intentions and helped push the car until it fired up, at which time the 2 Latinos jumped in and started driving away while shouting, "Thank you Americanos for helping to steal car".