Sisters man finds his good samaritans

A Sisters area resident has good reason to believe that --in this fast-moving and often impersonal age -- there are still people ready to help a person in need. When he needed help, complete strangers were there to aid him.

When they left without leaving their full names, he was successful in locating them and thanking them in person.

It all began on October 20 when Earl Richards was driving home in his pickup around midnight coming back from a one-day trip to Salem. It was a dark night with a light mist falling. As he started up the hill from Lost Lake on Highway 20, he suddenly drove into a dense fog bank. Certain that he quickly would drive out of the fog, he slowed down and tried to remember how the road turned.

He over corrected. Earl's pickup left the road and for a short distance was airborne. The pickup ended up about 10 feet off the road at the brink of a steep embankment.

"I learned that pickups don't fly," Earl said. "I had held too far to the right and the road curved a little bit to the left. Then, the pickup started to roll and I thought 'oh boy, here we go.' I actually was feeling embarrassed because I had gone off the road and now I was stuck."

Fortunately, the pickup's wheels dug into the soft dirt and it did not roll down the embankment. Wearing a seatbelt, Earl came through the accident without an injury. His small dog, Prince, that was traveling with him, was all right after being bounced around.

Still, Earl was in a tight situation with the pickup resting on the driver's side and the passenger's door directly overhead, too far to reach and probably too heavy to open by pushing straight up.

"It would have taken Superman to reach up and open that door," he said.

Within a minute, another eastbound car stopped and a couple worked their way down to Earl.

They had seen his headlights off the road and the tracks where he had left the highway. The couple talked to Earl through his slightly open window. Unable to help Earl out of the pickup, they made sure he was not injured. Then they offered to call for a tow truck and notify any family members. A towing service in Sisters was called and a tow truck was dispatched. With Earl's wife out of town, he had no one else he wanted to call.

As Earl waited for the tow truck, the couple told him that they would stay with him until it arrived.

"Here it was a drizzly, foggy cold night and there they were, bending down talking to me," Richards said. For an hour, they talked to Earl, offering him coffee and water while waiting.

"Almost everyone who came by stopped to help," Richards said. "Even a couple of eighteen-wheelers stopped to help."

When the truck arrived, it quickly pulled the pickup up onto the road. It could still be driven, although it rode like it had square wheels, Earl remembers. Still feeling the affects of the accident, he let his benefactors leave with his learning only the first name of the man, Brian. He did remember that the couple had lived and worked in Sisters before moving elsewhere in Central Oregon.

Several days later, Earl submitted a short letter to The Bulletin newspaper seeking Brian or anyone knowing him. He soon received a phone call from Brian Rios of Bend who told him that he and his wife were the Good Samaritans. Brian had not seen Earl's letter since he worked in Redmond and had not read the newspaper, but his fellow workers who had heard Brian's story had read it and passed along information on how to contact Earl.

"Since I thought I might hear from several 'Brians,' I had some specific questions ready to ask whoever called to make sure he was the right one," Earl said. "However, as soon as he started talking I knew he was the right one."

On Monday, November 8, Earl and his wife met Mr. and Mrs. Rios at a Sisters restaurant where Earl treated them to dinner and thanked him for their help in a bad situation.

"I feel that rather than dodging a bullet, I dodged a shotgun," Richards said.