NARWEE great-grandmother and pensioner Alice Williams, 86, is searching for the good Samaritan taxi driver who rushed her critically-ill daughter to St George Hospital last week.
Mrs Williams wants to personally thank the taxi driver who helped her daughter, Shirley Pyne, after she suffered a severe attack of emphysema.
‘‘The doctors told me that if he hadn’t been there and taken her to hospital she would not have survived,’’ Mrs Williams said.
‘‘My daughter had come down from Brisbane to look after me because I was sick.
‘‘These days people are too frightened to help other people.’’
- Alice Williams
‘‘While I was in St George Hospital recently I got ill with a cold and she also came down with it.’’
Ms Pyne was leaving to go home to Brisbane for a few days when she became ill.
She had ordered a taxi from St George Cabs to take her to the airport about 6pm last Wednesday and was waiting outside Mrs Williams’s home in Nirimba Avenue, Narwee.
‘‘It was a very cold night and she had a coughing attack just as the taxi driver pulled up,’’ Mrs Williams said.
‘‘She got in the taxi and had another attack. She couldn’t even pull herself off the seat.
‘‘The driver got out and came and got me. I recognised him. He’d picked me up to take me to the doctor’s a couple of times before.
‘‘I went out and took one look at her and said I would call an ambulance.
‘‘But the taxi driver said not to call the ambulance. He said that because he knew me he would take her straight to the hospital.’’
Mrs William said her daughter was still recovering in hospital.
She wants the taxi driver to know his help was appreciated.
‘‘I will never forget his help,’’ she said. ‘‘To do what he did for my daughter will stay in my mind. He went out of his way to help.
‘‘I didn’t have time to thank him properly.’’
She said the driver was in ‘‘his 50s and was of foreign background’’.
‘‘For a cab driver to do that was really kind,’’ she said.
‘‘These days people are too frightened to help other people.’’
Are people too frightened to help others these days?
