“I will never ever forget him,” Fannie Garner said of Johnson Thompson
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A quick-thinking Alabama teen helped save an elderly woman’s life.
Johnson Thompson couldn’t sleep the morning of June 30, so he decided to get an early start at his family’s workshop in Tuscumbia, according to WAFF 48.
However, just before 5 a.m., the 17-year-old noticed a car slowly pull into a parking lot across the street from the workshop.
“She got out of her car and she was stumbling around so I went out to the end of our parking lot to check to see if she was okay,” Thompson told the outlet.
“That’s when she explained to me she had a terrible headache and was wanting to know where the nearest emergency room was,” he continued.
Thompson brought the woman, later identified as Fannie Garner, a chair and called 911. He stayed with her until paramedics arrived.
Doctors later determined that Garner, 76, had suffered a brain bleed. She was flown to a hospital in Birmingham for treatment, per WAFF 48.
Garner had unknowingly driven about 20 miles from Cherokee to Tuscumbia before encountering Thompson. She later said she remembered very little about the hours leading up to the drive, though she recalled that she had had a severe headache.
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“Nothing but God,” Garner told WAFF 48. “It had to be because I don’t remember it. I got there and I got there safe.”
The following day, Garner’s family set out to find the teen who had aided her.
Her sister, Gwen Goodloe, traced the location where Garner had been picked up by emergency responders, found Thompson’s family’s warehouse and eventually connected with someone who knew him.
“Well, I felt relieved and so thankful for humanity that, you know, somebody would pay attention,” Goodloe told WAFF 48.
When the two were reunited, Garner’s family presented Thompson with a homemade lifesaving award to thank him for his actions.
Garner’s loved ones said the experience restored their faith in the kindness of strangers.
Goodloe described Thompson as an “angel,” while Garner’s daughter, Tobisha, called him a “hero,” according to WAFF 48.
For Garner, the teenager who happened to be awake before sunrise has become someone she’ll never forget.
“I will never ever forget him,” she said with a laugh while patting Thompson on the back.
“We already have plans for his graduation and that’s next year,” she added.
