Mom Takes Short-Cut & Finds 99-Year-Old Woman Alone Outside in Freezing Cold
When temperatures plummet, people naturally want to stay inside and hibernate. We often rush from one place to another in order to get warm.
Thankfully, one woman made a detour when heading home in frigid weather. Incredibly, taking a different route may have saved a life.
It all began when Brittney Edginton of Pocatello, Idaho, finished her shift as a nursing assistant.
Instead of heading straight home, however, she decided to stop for a drink at a local convenience store.
Upon leaving the store, Edginton realized she didn’t want to deal with the roundabout that was her regular route home. She decided to take a detour.
What she saw shocked her. With the temperature in the teens, an elderly woman was walking down the street, pushing a walker.
Even more shocking, the woman was simply not appropriately dressed for the bitter cold. She appeared to be struggling on the ice.
“I saw a little lady on the side of the street not wearing a coat, gloves, hat or any winter clothing. She was pushing her walker on the sidewalk but was getting ready to cross the street and was hitting the ice with her walker. She was pushing on it, but she couldn’t move anywhere,” Edginton told the Idaho State Journal.
Edginton was concerned and felt that something was just not right. She immediately pulled over and questioned the woman, who gave her name as Elsa Baker.
The elderly woman was confused and unable to remember either where she lived or where she was headed.
Edginton noticed how badly Baker’s teeth were chattering and knew she had to help.
When Edginton learned Baker was nearly 100 years old, she knew there was no way she could allow her to continue on alone. That’s when she called the police.
Edginton then had Baker sit inside her car and turned the heat all the way up. She placed some blankets over her for good measure.
When help arrived, Edginton learned just how dire the situation had been. As the Idaho State Journal reports, “Despite sitting in Edginton’s van for 20 minutes with three blankets wrapped around her and the heat cranked all the way up, Baker had a temperature of 94 degrees by the time emergency responders showed up.”
Thankfully, Baker’s family was located and she was quickly taken home. Without Edginton’s intervention, Baker likely would have died, as authorities estimate she was experiencing moderate to severe hypothermia when Edginton arrived.
For her part, Edginton is just happy she decided to take a different way home from work. “It’s weird because I normally don’t stop at the gas station. But when I saw her I thought of my grandma or my mom and I hope someone would stop if it were one of them.”
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