It’s a Tearin’ up my Heart Tuesday and I come to you today with someone elses sad story…
If you weren’t sure before, this story should certainly convince you that my life is simply unpredictable. And I honestly mean that. Not even I can guess what will come into my life, who I will meet, what situations I will find myself in, when I wake up in the morning.
This past Sunday was meant to be like any other. I woke up, Burny watched football, I did some work, packed the car and waited for the game to finish so that Burny and I could return to our home in Nevada. If you know me at all, you know that I still spend a great amount of time in the Central California Valley for work and weddings and everything else it seems. And since I had not been home to Nevada in nearly 3 weeks, you can bet that I was pretty eager to get on my way.
The funny thing is, Burny and I were in separate cars this past Sunday and any other day I probably wouldn’t have waited around for him to watch the football game. I would have just headed home, and I would have met up with him there later in the day. However, on this particular Sunday, Burny had promised one of our cars to a fellow firefighter. He was visiting his girlfriend in Sacramento and wanted to come back up on Monday and so he and Burny arranged that he would take my car so that Burny and I would be able to ride home together. It’s a much nicer drive when you have company. But this, of course, is not the funny part. The funny part is that had I not waited for Burny, I would have never encountered PregoHitcher. And I might never have been able to write this amazing blog…
Life is so ridiculous sometimes.
Just ask PregoHitcher.
So Burny and I left the Sacramento area around 2- 2:30 in the afternoon on Sunday. It was in between football games so we had to make a break for it. And we were just driving up highway 50, enjoying our conversation, when the gas light came on. No big deal… there was a gas station just up ahead a few miles where we were planning to stop anyway.
Fresh Pond.
It’s one of our favorite stops on the way. We usually stop in there once each direction for something, whether it be food, gas, doggie break…
So of course we pulled off the highway and pulled up to a gas tank.
Burny no sooner than stepped out of the car when he was approached by two women. To be honest, there was one woman who I was sure was a man until she got close enough so that I could see her little, tiny boobies. She had on a backwards hat and piercings and baggie clothes and quite frankly, she was very ambiguous. But that’s hardly the point. She was heading over to talk with Burny and I just had a feeling that whatever she wanted was not going to be good for us.
She asked if we were headed up to South Lake Tahoe.
Burny hesitated, but ultimately answered ‘yes’. There is not a lot on the 50 between Placerville and South Lake Tahoe. I think that it was pretty obvious as to where we were headed.
And then she asked something that I just knew Burny was going to have to say yes to. And I have to tell you that at that moment, I just knew, our day was definitely taking a very strange turn.
The manish woman asked:
“Can you give this girl a ride?…..”
But the sealer was this last part…
“… She’s pregnant.”
And then the manish woman pointed to this very noticeably pregnant woman who had just lit up a cigarette.
Are. You. Kidding. Me.
Burny sighed and opened up with:
“uhhhhh…”
But I knew that he was going to say yes. I mean, what else were we supposed to do? We are Christians! And as random as this situation was, it was pretty clear that she posed no threat to us and it was also very clear that there weren’t a lot of other options that he could suggest.
Burny looked at me, still sitting in the passenger seat of the Jeep and said:
“We’re taking this girl to South Lake.”
Lovely.
So I got out of the car and introduced myself to PregoHitcher, the manish woman and the other girl who was with them. I figured that they all knew each other but as it turned out, the two girls had just seen Prego walking along the road and told her that they could give her a ride to the highway. They figured she would be able to catch a ride with someone heading up the hill.
Lucky us.
Of course we had Harper, my beautiful baby Golden retriever in the backseat, so I introduced him to Prego and helped her squeeze in our backseat beside him. Being a Golden retriever, he was overjoyed to meet her and immediately plopped his front feet and his head down on her lap. Some guard dog!
Burny finished putting gas in the car and then we were on our way to South Lake Tahoe… plus one more.
I have to tell you at this point that neither Burny nor I have EVER picked up a hitch hiker. It was completely out of character for us. But according to Prego, she had never herself been a hitch hiker so I guess there is a first time for everything.
Of course, as we began to head up the hill, the obvious questions had to be asked:
Where are you coming from?
Where are you heading?
Why are you in my car right now??
At first Prego was very vague about where she had been. She said she was actually on her way to Reno but her final destination was somewhere even more North of there. And of course that begs the question:
How did you get all the way down here to begin with?
“I had transportation provided,” was the only real answer she was willing to give at that point. But of course, we had a long car ride ahead of us. There was no way she was going to make it all the way to South Lake without divulging some kind of information… but for the time being, we figured we would just leave it alone. She was clearly in trouble and needed our help. And truly, she was very sweet and obviously very scared. She just kept saying that she was just praying nothing bad was going to happen to her. She was praying that no one would stop unless they were going to help. And of course we were the answer to that prayer. There was really no way around it. Burny and I were the perfect people to have come upon her. We clearly weren’t going to do her any harm, and we weren’t going to just leave her stranded either… we were going to make sure that she got all the way home safe. I don’t know that anyone else coming up that road would have been so willing to help… or rather, unable not to help. God works in mysterious ways.
So, since Prego didn’t want to talk about where she was coming from, Burny switched the conversation to the other elephant in the room… the unborn hitcher. He asked how far along she was and she said seven months. She looked further along to me. As a matter of fact, when we agreed to take her in, I immediately considered the strong possibility that we would be delivering a baby in our Jeep.
He asked if it was a boy or a girl and she said she hadn’t found that out yet, which I thought was strange. Usually by 7 months the doctors are able to tell the sex. Well, as it turns out, Prego only just realized she was pregnant about a month and a half ago. Hmm. Okay. The plot thickens…
Burny asked if it was her first child.
No. Her 5th!
Wow, okay. I was really struggling with all the questions I was not allowed to ask. I mean, really!!! But I did get to ask her age a few questions later, which I was dying to know, and her answer was 24.
How much is this a Tearin’ up my Heart Tuesday story already??? She is 24, hitch hicking in her 7th month of pregnancy. It’s her 5th child. She has no way of getting home, and home has no way of getting to her due to lack of a car and lack of money for a bus ticket. She is not quite willing to say where she is coming from and she SMOKES!
Well, if that’s not enough…
She finally broke down and told us that she had just left REHAB!
Apparently- and I hope I get this story right- she is an alcoholic (although she was very unwilling to fully admit that she had a problem) who had had some sort of trouble with her 4th baby’s daddy. He got in trouble and in order for her to take her daughter, she had to be tested for alcohol, which of course came up positive. But that wasn’t the only thing that came up positive. So now, because she was drunk and with child, the police or the court or whoever basically told her that her only option was to go to rehab and have the baby there, while she cleaned up her act. If she completed the program, she would be able to take her daughter without a problem. However, she had only been at this rehab program for 2 days when she decided that the people there were really ‘weird’ and it ‘freaked her out’ and so she just had to leave. She felt that the people there at rehab were into much harder drugs than alcohol and it wasn’t the place for her. So that’s when she decided that the best decision would be to leave and to take her chances trying to make her way the hundreds of miles back home… on foot.
I know I’m being sarcastic, but it really was sad. Like I said, she just seemed like a very nice girl who had gotten herself in way over her head. And she had prayed for us, and now we were there, and so it was going to have to be us to get her out of the mess she had made for herself. It wasn’t for me to judge her for how she came to be in my car, it was my job to help her at that point. And all I could hope was that she would learn something from it all and that maybe Burny and I would somehow be a good example for her.
And Prego was not the only one who was learning a lesson on Sunday. I honestly have not had such a crazy reality check in quite sometime. Sometimes it feels like Burny and I just can’t catch up with our bills or that we are just never going to move forward in our lives… but to have Prego suddenly pop into my life like that… it was a real eye opener. We really are so lucky. We really want for nothing. We really are blessed and that’s not to be taken for granted. It could be so much worse. And it is for a lot of people. It is for Prego.
So we took Prego all the way to South Lake Tahoe. Along the way we learned more and more about her. She was one of 9 siblings. She had 5 kids to 3 fathers. She lived at home with her mom and boyfriend, none of whom had a car or a job or a dollar to their name. Her kids were 5, 4, 2 and 9 months. She had one girl and 3 boys. I have to say, the more she talked, the more I could see the cycle that had been repeated and would continue to be repeated. She wanted to be a 1st grade teacher but she knew, as well as we did, that that was always going to be a dream for her. It really did just break my heart. There was literally no way that she was going to be able to break that cycle… it was just going to continue. I can bet that this baby was not going to be her last…
Once we got to South Lake Tahoe, Burny called the Women’s Center. It’s located near his fire station and he had met someone who worked there way back when he had gotten hired and he figured that that would be the best place for her. We certainly were not ready to get ourselves involved to the point where we were going to have to drive her all the way home (3 hours further).
When we were almost to the women’s center, Prego called her boyfriend from our cell phone and told us that if she could find a way to wire some money to him, he would be able to get his friend to give him a ride down to South Lake to pick her up. That sounded great. We told her that we would be happy to give her some money to give to him when he got into town. She said that he only had $6 to his name and he wouldn’t be able to even put gas in the car to get down there unless she was able to actually wire him some money before he left.
Okay.
Even though we had somewhat of a plan of attack, Burny still wanted to stop by the Woman’s Center to see if they could help in any way. Residents of South Lake Tahoe: Your Woman’s Center is a joke! Unless you are beaten by your significant other, they can offer you NOTHING. AND… they will be rude to you. And they will judge you. And they will basically encourage you NOT to help anyone else who might need some help either.
We told the lady there about our plan to wire some money to Prego’s boyfriend so that he could come pick her up and she basically looked at us like we were crazy. And then she suggested we just drop her off at the casinos.
“It’s warm and it’s open 24 hours and she will be safe.”
Yes… that’s true, but she will also be stranded, hungry, and alone… and pregnant.
I just couldn’t believe how unhelpful and rude this lady was being. There was no way we were going to leave Prego there. Maybe we were being crazy but she was now our responsibility and we were going to see her through to the end of her troubles. Truthfully, it was very satisfying to her how much she was thanking God for us and how she was so glad that we had come along. I just kept going back to that… we were there for a reason. We had come across her for a reason. We were quite literally the answer to her prayers. We had to stick this one out.
So Burny, Prego and I went to Safeway and we wired her boyfriend $50 to the Safeway in the town where she lived (north of Reno). Burny spoke on the phone with her boyfriend and gave him the instructions of how to pick up the money and then he gave directions on how to get to where we were. Prego’s boyfriend had to find someone with an ID to go with him to pick up the money because he didn’t have an ID himself. So now he had to find someone to drive him, someone to pick up the money, and someone to give him directions to his pregnant girlfriend. I was just so sad for them. And so thankful for what I do have.
Then Burny went to an ATM, took out $20 and gave it to Prego so that she could eat and go to a movie while she waited the 3 1/2 hours for them to come and pick her up. We gave her a ride down to state line and showed her where the shops were that she could wander through, where the movie theater was, and where Burny had described to her boyfriend that she would be waiting when he got into South Lake. She was very grateful and gracious and although we felt terrible leaving her there to wait, we definitely felt like we had done all we could. We were certainly not prepared to wait another 3 1/2 hours until she was reunited with her boyfriend.
I gave her my business card with my cell phone number on it and told her to call me if something happened. I also asked her if she wouldn’t mind calling me to tell me that she had made it home okay. She agreed. She got out of the car and we drove away.
The first thing she did was light up a cigarette.
Oh well… we did what we could for her. You can lead a horse to water….
Much later that night a voice mail popped up on my cell phone. It was her boyfriend. He said that he had reached Prego and that they were nearly home. It was almost 10 at night by then. He, too, was very grateful and asked if there was anyway that he could pay us back that we should let him know. He had said the same thing to Burny earlier on the phone. Burny’s response was:
Pay it forward.
and he added… Take care of her.
So that’s my story for today. I definitely learned some valuable lessons and I can only hope that Prego did too. I know I will never see her again but I’m sure I will think about her from time to time. I really do wish her the best and I hope more than anything else that she finds a way to turn her life around. I am so glad that it was us who found her that day and that we were in a position to help. Like I said, God works in mysterious ways… this is certainly proof of that.
Adventures of a twenty-something! 