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The persistence and the quick thinking of a Lyft driver in Philadelphia – along with divine intervention – helped an 86-year-old woman after she fell in her bathtub and struggled to get out.
Clara Simmons said she was in front of Ms. Millie’s house, at the request of her nephew, to transport her to her sister-in-law’s funeral. But when she didn’t come out of her house or respond to numerous knocks on the door, Simmons feared the elderly lady was in need of help.
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“I parked in front of her door. I’m knocking, knocking, knocking. We’re talking about 10 minutes now, I’m thinking something is wrong,” Simmons told CBS Philly.
Simmons said she got to Ms. Millie’s West Philadelphia home around 7:30 Saturday morning, but little did she know that the elderly woman had fallen in her bathtub hours earlier and could not get out.
Ms. Millie told CBS Philly that she injured her left shoulder on the fall around 4:30 a.m. while getting ready for her sister in law’s funeral.
Outside of some lingering pain and the memory of the scare, Ms. Millie is doing fine. “Every once in a while, I’ll get this little sharp pain through it,” she said in the interview. “It’s easing up a little bit, but not enough.”
But Simmons didn’t know what was going on when she kept knocking.
“I actually sat down on her steps and started talking to God like, ‘You sent me here for a reason. You did not send me here to be the messenger and calling her nephew back on the day of his mother’s funeral to tell him his aunt had passed.’ So I knew it was going to work out,” Simmons told CBS Philly.
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Simmons called to seek help from emergency responders. When they arrived at Ms. Millie’s house, they found the senior citizen stuck in her bathtub, where she had been for several hours.
“I was really praying for somebody,” Ms. Millie said to the news outlet.
And those prayers were answered by a woman who describes herself as stubborn.
“I’m stubborn so once I started, it was just like, I need to see her,” Simmons explained to CBS Philly.
Once Ms. Millie was freed from the tub, Simmons was there to take her to the funeral.
