It was a sunny Sunday morning as I waited in traffic for the light to change when the sounds of tires screeching interrupted my music.
I instinctively peered into my rearview mirror to see a female on a bicycle dancing to music playing on her headphones unaware of the threatening sounds of injury as the skidding auto approached her bike.
I scream aloud, “Watch out,” hoping my tenor voice would be loud enough to warn her as I sounded the horn on my car. But the headphones covering her ears blocked out the pending doom from her consciousness.
With the fear building within me, I cringed closing my eyes to avoid witnessing a horrible accident when out of nowhere a man in a dark jacket and pants jumped from his car pushing the woman from her bicycle and the path of the car.
The skidding car impacted the bike, and I heard the metal colliding with my rear bumper, while the car stopped short of hitting my vehicle. I immediately ran to inspect the damage to find the mangled front bicycle wheel embedded in my tailgate and the rear wheel and frame puncturing the car’s bumper.
I was relieved to see the lady laying on the ground looking stunned as to what had happened. Her hero was laying behind her with his left leg revealing an unusual off colored flesh, later to be a prosthesis from his knee to his foot. I was surprised as he reacted with the speed of a Gazel to prevent a death or injury to the woman.
When the two stood up, the driver of the screeching car, yelled in an apologetic voice: “I did not see you.”
We looked at the bicycle on the ground completely totaled when the young lady pointing at her rescuer and said, “he did.”
The young woman began laughing, that was infectious as we all began to laugh. The driver introduced himself as Mitchell Riggleman, and he offered to replace her bicycle and drive her wherever she wanted. She introduced herself as Lauren Williamson and her rescuer introduced himself as Father David Nicholas, a priest from the local Catholic Church. Father Nicolas recognized Mitchell as a parishioner at his church and former Alter Boy.
The driver took the mangled bike and placed it in his trunk, and seeing the damage to my tailgate he offered to repair it also, which he late did.
On this anniversary day, I find it almost an illusion as I was a witness of two people who met after a life-threatening accident to become friends, fall in love, marries to raise three adorable children for the past 25 years. I believe that is called serendipity.
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