A stalled police cruiser with an officer slumped over at the wheel caught Nancy Cunningham’s eye during the drive home from a friend’s Lake Highlands home.
“I thought he had had a heart attack,” Cunningham says. “He was passed at the steering wheel. The car was rolling along.”
Left alone at the Kingsley and Skillman intersection, the car would have carried its helpless occupant down a steep hill. But Cunningham and two other bystanders intervened, keeping Corporal Rick Reid and others from harm.
Police say Sandra Benson and Deborah Perry left their cars to direct traffic in the intersection away from Reid. They also stopped Reid’s car from rolling completely through the intersection, with Cunningham placing her car in front of the squad car to prevent any further movement. All three women then checked on Corporal Reid and called for help.
“It was quite a scene,” Cunningham says, adding that many passerby didn’t really understand what was happening.
“It looked like the police cruiser had hit my car,” she says, laughing.
After help arrived, the women had to remain at the site for hours, “telling the story 10,000 times,” Cunningham says, joking that “no good deed goes unpunished.”
Each woman received a Citizen’s Certificate of Merit Award from Police Chief Ben Click, and Cunningham also was named KRLD Citizen of the Week. The on-air announcement brought a surprising amount of attention to this neighborhood mother of three.
“You think that nobody in the world is listening to this,” Cunningham says. “Starting at 7:28, my phone was ringing for hours.”
Cunningham, a long-time Crime Watch worker, volunteer in the Vickery Place Neighborhood Association and supporter of community policing, says as much as police officers do, “it was nice to help him.” However, she thinks she has received more thanks than her contribution merits.
“I think most of us would do something to help someone like that,” she says. “The other women are the real heroes. They thought a lot farther ahead than I did.”
Meeting a fully recovered Corporal Reid at the Crime Watch ceremony where she received her Certificate of Merit proved the greatest reward for Cunningham.
“His children all came,” Cunningham says. “That was the big moment. That made it all worthwhile.”
