OPINION: People in the Mat-Su and the road to Jericho

I am a doctor working at Mat-Su Regional Hospital this summer. The area is extremely beautiful. Its residents are frequently maligned in nearby Anchorage. Primarily, people here have a lower economic base, drive old cars and new pickups, smoke too much weed. Grandmas have long gray hair bound with bandanas.

That being said: On a recent weekend, I took my rental car up in the mountains for a look at a gorgeous Hatcher Pass. With fireweed glowing and the nearby creek boiling from heavy rains, I headed back to Wasilla, hit a huge pothole and blew out a front tire. The car was limping, so I pulled over to check the damage. The right front tire was damaged and going down fast.

A nice young woman in a black pickup pulled over and asked if I needed help. Her young daughter was in the back seat. I thanked her for the offer and asked for directions to a gas station.

Following her directions for only about half a mile, I pulled into the Holiday convenience store. I took the spare tire and jack out of the trunk and laid them by the defunct front tire. As I recently had back surgery, I just couldn’t get down to change the tire.

Many young people going home from work stopped at the little store. I asked several young men to help change my tire, offering to pay them. Several of these young men politely declined to help, as they were in a hurry to get somewhere after a long day at work. Totally understandable.

To my surprise, the store clerk — a young woman in her very early 20s — said, “Sir, I can change that tire for you when I get off work in 20 minutes.”

I waited. She popped out of the store in a few minutes. She asked, “Where is the jack?” I got the jack, lug wrench and work pad out of the trunk and laid the spare tire on the ground.

She lay on her side, felt under the car, found a support for the jack. She placed the jack under the car and began to jack the car up, pausing only to loosen the lug bolts and placing rocks behind the rear tires to chock the car against rolling. She easily popped the tire off and positioned the spare on the front axle. She tightened the lug nuts back on in proper sequence. She got up from her work and announced, “I can do this work ‘cause I’m the mother of a two-year-old child.”

I offered her $80 for her help. She said, “No, I didn’t do this for money.”

I said, “I know you didn’t do it for money. I can see how you are. Take this money and buy some diapers for your baby.”

I asked her boss, who had watched the whole thing, to take a picture of me with my hero.

I thought to myself, “So this is what they call ‘Valley trash?’” I’ll take these people any day over many others who think they are better.

As they say, this isn’t Kansas, is it, Dorothy? Where else in the world can you find people like this? Independent, self-confident and physically capable. Willing to help a complete stranger.

The only place I know is Wasilla, Alaska.

Maybe the Land of Oz.

Or maybe from a Samaritan on the road to Jericho.

Dr. Gary Monroe is a doctor working at Mat-Su Regional Hospital.

The views expressed here are the writer’s and are not necessarily endorsed by the Anchorage Daily News, which welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, email commentary(at)adn.com. Send submissions shorter than 200 words to letters@adn.com or click here to submit via any web browser. Read our full guidelines for letters and commentaries here.