Angels on Assignment

Death Valley Rescue

Lois Turner

Two days into our family trip to the West Coast, I was beginning to think I'd made a mistake in coming. My nephew and his wife, my two sisters and my husband had all flown two thousand miles from Batesville, Indiana, to Las Vegas to see some of the area's famous natural landmarks, particularly Death Valley in the Mojave Desert. Everything was exotic and beautiful — but dangerous too.

"It will be an adventure!" my nephew Jim had said when he originally called and asked me along for the trip. "You've never been to the West Coast, Aunt Lois. And this could be your last chance."

"You're right," I said then. Now I wondered if I should've let that chance go by. I was seventy-five, and the temperature here was in the eighties. On the floor of Death Valley it could be much hotter — I hoped the group wouldn't want to go. The landscape whooshing past the window of the van was dramatic — and unforgiving. Was this a safe place for someone my age?

"Welcome to Dante's View," Jim announced, pulling into a parking spot. "It overlooks Death Valley and the salt flats that have formed in its basin due to the extreme heat. We're fifty-five hundred feet up!"

Fifty-five hundred feet? I thought. God, keep me safe!

Jim parked the van and we all got out. People milled around. I didn't see anyone my age. It was a breathtaking sight: the pale valley below; mountains on all sides; a clear, blue sky overhead. But I didn't see any guardrails. My husband, John, spied a little lookout point away from the others. "Let's check out the view from there, Lois," he said.

I followed John to the lookout. We stood several feet apart, staring out at the sprawling valley below. In the grandeur of nature, I relaxed a little. I even took a few steps closer to the edge to get a better look.

My foot slipped. I heard pebbles going over the side of the mountain. There wasn't time to scream. My legs slid down the rocks. Frantically I clawed with hands and feet to get a foothold, but I kept sliding. Dear Lord, I'm going over!

I closed my eyes as my whole body slid several feet down the mountain until I hit something hard and solid. A guardrail! I thought. Using the solid metal to push off against, I scrambled back up the mountain. "John!" I cried out.

He came running. I was covered in dirt and blood from scrapes on my arms and legs.

"I'd be dead if it wasn't for that guardrail," I said.

"What guardrail?" he asked. John went over to the spot where I slipped. "There's no guardrail there, Lois. Something else stopped your fall."

I wasn't injured, just in shock. Back at the hotel John patched me up with some Band-Aids.

"I felt a guardrail," I told him.

"You felt something," he said. "But that was no guardrail. It was your guardian angel."

I was suddenly flooded with a sense of safety like I'd never known before. The rest of the trip was amazing. I didn't miss a thing. Not even the floor of Death Valley. I would go to Dante's View again, although I'd be much more careful. It will always be a special place for me, a place where I learned that life is one big adventure. And no matter what happens, no matter how old I get, there will always be angels to guard over me.

Stranger in the Cornfield

Nick & Kendra Leibold and Aaron Blatti

Nick Leibold:

Just after 11:00 am and already the sun was blistering hot in Northern Iowa. Sweat ran down my back as I finished mowing a wide strip of grass between endless rows of corn — an area with drainage too poor for crops. Not that we'd seen rain lately. The ground was dry and dusty, coating everything with a film of dirt.

Thankfully I was nearly done, just in time for lunch with my wife, Kendra. Normally I'd be inside an air-conditioned cab, but for small jobs I like driving my dad's 1963 John Deere tractor, pulling a mower behind me. I'm a fourth-generation farmer, born and raised here, like most of my neighbors. Around these parts no one is a stranger.

I backed the tractor to the edge of the field, close to a post I'd wrapped with old wire fencing taken down years ago. I heard a loud scraping noise, like the mower blades had caught on something. I pressed the control to lift the blades —

Out of nowhere, a sharp pain stabbed me in my chest. Hard to get a breath. I had to get off the tractor! But I could barely move. I half-fell, half-stumbled to the ground. Lying there on my right side, I was helpless. Didn't have the strength to grab my cell phone from my right pants pocket. How long before Kendra comes looking for me? She was my only hope. This time of day everyone was working. No one would be driving down our road. It was all I could do to keep my eyes open. The sun was beating down on me. "Please hurry," I whispered. What was the point? There was no one to hear my plea.

Aaron Blatti:

"Nick, can you hear me?" My neighbor barely nodded. A circle of blood pooled on his back. Not fifteen minutes before, I'd decided to take my antique tractor for a spin. Normally I go straight at the intersection. But today I'd felt a strange urge to turn left. That's when I saw Nick lying in the grass, the mower sitting over some rusty old wire fencing nearby. Could a piece of wire have plunged into his back? It looked like he'd been shot.

"We're going to get you help," I said. I hit speed-dial on my cell phone for the sheriff's department. "Nick Leibold's been hurt bad," I said. I called my wife to call Kendra. Dear God, please keep Nick alive, at least until his wife can get here.

Minutes later I heard a car coming up the road. A brown van pulled in behind my tractor. The van was spotless, not a speck of dirt on it.

A white-haired man walked toward me. No one I'd ever seen before. A farmer, dressed in jeans and a button-down short-sleeved shirt, his hair neatly trimmed under a ball cap. "Anything I can do?" he asked.

"We are waiting on the ambulance," I said. "We may need help lifting him." The man nodded. "I'll stand here and block the sun." I wouldn't forget the kindness from a complete stranger.

At last Tim Phillips, a volunteer first responder, arrived. He put an oxygen mask over Nick's face and cut the back of his shirt open, an entry wound barely visible. Kendra pulled up. "The most important thing is to keep him calm," Tim told her. But I could see the worry on his face. We were running out of time.

Kendra Leibold:

I wasn't scared. Not at first. Nick didn't seem to be in pain. There was only a little blood on his back. I crouched next to him and stroked his cheek. "I'm right here, honey," I said.

The ambulance arrived and the paramedics rushed a backboard to Nick's side. The men lifted him onto it and then each of us took a corner and carried it to the ambulance. The ambulance pulled away, roaring down the road. Wow, they're in a hurry, I thought, my chest suddenly tightening....