Bonnie Letrud had spent the past 10 minutes screaming for help.
Letrud, 68, began to wonder whether anyone would find her lying in the snow behind her Warman, Sask. home. The Monday storm that left large drifts blocking roads across much of the province had passed, but the sun was now setting and wind chill values had dropped below -35 C.
Her thoughts shifted to her cats, and how she needed to get back to feed them, then to her late husband and daughter, who both died in recent months.
Luckily, someone did hear those screams, and Letrud is hoping to find her rescuers to say thank-you.
“You just never know when you can make somebody’s day by doing something kind,” Letrud said in an interview Tuesday at her dining room table, sipping steaming tea as her cats brushed against her leg.
Late Monday afternoon, Letrud recalled, she decided to walk to the convenience store across the alley. She didn’t think she’d be outside long, so didn’t put on a hat or gloves.
She walked out the side door and began to step through the deep snow left by the storm, but before she reached the alley she fell and couldn’t get up.
“I kinda stayed there for a while, and then I thought, well, I have to do something,” she said, recalling that her fingers and face were becoming painful. “So I started crawling and rolling, screaming ‘somebody please help me!'”
That part of the alley not visible to anyone inside the convenience store, nor to the other homes on the block.
Even though she was within five metres of her side door, and less than 10 metres from the store entrance, she couldn’t make any more progress.
“A lot of it was fear,” she said, “You get really anxious. I was lying there. I was thinking, what if nobody comes?”
She said she began to panic. She thought about her husband, Dale, who died of cancer a couple of months ago, and her daughter, Jennifer, who also died of another illness in the past year.
“I just thought, no, like this can’t happen to my family. Not another person you know, Not another one of us.”
Bonnie Letrud was rescued by two people after she fell in the snow behind a 7-Eleven in Warman, Sask. and couldn’t get up. She was scared of being stuck there in the cold.
After what Letrud thinks was another 10 minutes, she spotted a man at the end of the block. She wasn’t sure he heard, so she yelled again as loud as she could.
He walked toward her, asking whether he could help. He flagged down another man in a truck, and the men helped her inside the convenience store where she was treated on site by paramedics who helped her home.
And that’s where she says she’ll stay until a relative comes to shovel. Letrud said she’s never had a problem walking in snow, but will be more careful now.
Letrud says the act of kindness by the two men Monday was greatly appreciated. She posted a general thank-you on social media, but would like to learn their names and thank them in person.
“They’re just awesome,” she said. “I appreciated it more than you even know.”
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