Good Samaritan helps man again years later

Associated Press

CLEVELAND

Gerald Gronowski thinks he may owe his life to the second intervention of a Good Samaritan — the same man who helped him once before, eight years ago.

Christopher Manacci recently stopped to help Gronowski, whose van was pulled off on the side of a road with a flat tire east of Cleveland. Moments after Manacci parked his 2006 Lexus behind Gronowski’s van, which was pulling a boat on a trailer, a pickup driven by an allegedly drunk driver rammed Manacci’s car and then skidded on two wheels past the two men and Gronowski’s son.

After the men stopped shaking over the close escape, Gronowski reminisced about another Good Samaritan who helped him years ago.

“I told the story about how I was fishing, and I got a triple hook embedded deep into my hand,” Gronowski told The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer.

“I was in a lot of pain, and my son asked if anyone was a doctor, and this guy paddles up in a kayak. He was a nurse practitioner, and he surgically removed the hook from my hand. Chris looked at me and said, ‘That was me.’”

“And then I recognized him,” Gronowski continued. “The odds of that happening are astronomical. Now I know it’s my job to repay this by helping someone else.”

Gronowski said he’ll never forget standing on the shoulder with his 15-year-old son, Kevin, and Manacci looking at the flat tire when the truck narrowly missed them.

“It was up on the two left wheels and the right wheels were off the ground when it missed us by a few feet,” he said.

“If the truck had not hit the other car first it would have hit us. We could have been killed. And if it missed us, it could have killed someone else.”