A New Hampshire woman says her mother is alive today because of a stranger’s quick thinking.
The two had never met until Thursday night, when NBC10 Boston was there for the touching moment.
“Can I hug you ?” Michele Cook asked as she wrapped her arms around Lori Brown.
Cook’s mother, Gisele Tibbetts, took a hard fall and hit her head just outside her building in Dover on Sunday. It was dark and the temperatures were dropping when Brown found her on the ground.
“Thank you. There are no words,” Cook told Brown.
The two had never met, but Brown turns out to be one of Tibbetts’ neighbors in the apartment building.
“I will be forever grateful to him. In the right place, at the right time, I did the right thing,” Cook said.
“When I saw her struggling, you couldn’t run fast enough. Anyone would do the same thing,” Brown said.
Brown called 911 and Tibbetts was rushed to Portsmouth Regional Hospital.
Her daughter only realized something was wrong was when she checked her phone and saw her mother’s unusual location on the “Find My iPhone” app.
“We called her phone, she didn’t answer. I called my brother, he didn’t know anything,” Cook explained. “So we called the hospital, and that’s when they told us she was there.”
The 72-year-old was unconscious and hypothermic when first responders arrived, and Cook says she likely wouldn’t have survived outside much longer.
“It’s just a reminder of the brevity of life,” Cook said.
“It was just a blessing, for me and for her, because I could have stayed longer with my daughter, but something told me to come home early,” Brown said.
They both consider it proof that in life, there are no coincidences.
“It was something much more than that, I’m sure,” Brown said.
“She’s my mother’s guardian angel watching over her,” Cook added.
Doctors say it will take time, but Tibbets is expected to make a full recovery. In fact, she was transferred to a rehabilitation center on Thursday afternoon.
