Mark Harward came to the aid of caregiver Shannon Carman.
Patients expect great care while visiting Intermountain facilities. But not many expect a pit crew to suddenly appear next to their car when they’re afflicted with a flat tire. It happened in a Utah Valley Hospital parking lot recently but the pit crew were caregivers from St. George Regional Hospital.
Nick Raiger, angio interventionalist, Dan Jones, imaging coordinator, and Josh Borgeson, RN, imaging shared leader, work at St. George Regional but were visiting Utah Valley to attend a meeting. As they were leaving they spotted a tire in distress.
“We were walking back to our car and saw this young woman who was driving on a really flat tire and we just waved her down and told her she had a flat tire,” Nick says. “She said, ‘Yeah, I’m aware of that. I’m trying to get to a gas station.’”
Nick says they looked at her car and the tire and told her she wouldn’t make it to her destination.
Nick Raiger, left, and Josh Borgeson go to work.
“It was steaming, it was so hot from being run flat for so long,” he says.
They offered to change her tire for her. The young woman thanked them but said she had family on the way to help her.
“We’re right here. We know how to change a tire. Let’s just do it for you,” Nick said.
He says the three of them worked together, with each taking on a part of the job, and the tire was changed in minutes. Nick says it went so fast it felt like they were part of a pit crew. She offered each of them $20 for their help.
“We obviously wouldn’t take that,” Nick says. “It just took us two minutes. And we were glad to help.”
Apparently, if you’re in the Orem-Provo areas you don’t even have to be in a parking lot to have a caregiver come to your rescue if you have a flat tire.
When Mike Harward, manager of imaging at Orem Community Hospital and the Orem Imaging Center, learned an elderly patient had gotten a flat tire on an exit ramp on his way to his appointment, Mike got in his car and went to see if he could help.
“I said, ‘I can just run down there and help him fix this flat really quick,’” Mike says.
When he arrived he realized that wasn’t going to be so easy. The man had no spare tire. He tried to pump up the flat but that wouldn’t work. So Mike made sure the man got a ride to his appointment and that AAA could go pick up the car and take it to where they could get a new tire.
“I just wanted him to be able to make the imaging appointment because he had a doctor’s appointment the next day where he expected to be able to go over the results of his MRI,” Mike says. “I didn’t have any meetings or anything, so I thought I’d help him get to his appointment.”
Mike has experience changing tires. When he found out a coworker had a flat tire recently, even though she said she could change it herself, he told her he had the tools and offered to quickly take care of it for her.
“So, I went out and changed it,” he says. “If someone can use some help, why not offer it?”