Angels represent God’s personal care for each one of us.
~Andrew Greeley

About 8:00 in the evening, the phone rang. “Is Paul there?” my mom asked me, referring to my eighty-two-year-old stepdad.

“No,” I replied, “I haven’t seen or talked to him all day.”

“Well, he had a doctor’s appointment at one and he’s not home yet.”

This was a serious concern for both of us. Paul’s doctor was less than a mile from their house, so he should have been home long ago. And Paul was starting to show some signs of dementia, although he was still functioning pretty well. He had left his cell phone at the house, so that was no help.

I lived less than ten miles from my parents’ house, so I told Mom I’d run over and we’d drive around their small Kansas town, to the coffee shops, relatives’ houses and grocery stores. Surely, we’d locate him.

After picking her up, it was going on 9:00 P.M. and we both knew it was far too late for Paul to be out alone. We checked every location we had thought about to no avail. Paul is the sweetest, good ol’ boy you’d ever want to meet and can visit to no end, but at this point, all the “visiting places” were closed. With a feeling of panic, we drove to the Augusta Police Department to report a missing senior citizen.

After all of Paul’s information was relayed to them, the police officer told us to go back home. They’d keep us updated and he’d surely show up. We went back to their house and two officers showed up, just to look over the house and talk to us some more. I felt like I was in the middle of a police crime drama that I had no desire to be a part of.

One of the officers suggested that we call the local hospitals to see if my stepdad was there. As soon as they left, we started that task. My mom talked to the ER nurse at a small hospital about fifteen miles from their house and gave the nurse a full description of Paul. Silver hair, blue eyes, eighty-two years old, and a diabetic. “No one of that description has been brought here,” the nurse informed her. My mom left her phone number.

The night wore on. I tried to rest on the couch but was too fired up to relax. I prayed: “God, please don’t let something happen to Paul and to our family again so soon.”

We had just lost my cousin’s thirty-two-year-old son Derrick in a car accident. He was a gorgeous, successful young man, who had the world in the palm of his hands, but lost it all that hot, summer night just two months earlier in that tragic accident. He adored his entire family, just as we adored him, and it had been a massive blow.

Paul had been my stepdad since I was eighteen, after losing my father when I was eight. I could not have asked for a better, kinder man to step into those shoes, and we had always been as close as if he were my biological dad. My nickname for him had always been “Brownie.” Losing Paul this soon after losing Derrick would be another blow that would be hard to overcome.

Around 7:00 in the morning, a highway patrol car pulled up and two officers got out. My heart sank. The first thing they said when entering was, “Do you have a picture of Paul?” I grabbed my phone and swiped to the latest picture I could find.

“Why?” I asked, fearing they needed it to identify his body.

“Well, it’s been long enough now that we are going to put him on the 8:00 A.M. news under a Silver Alert.”

That was good news but still, he was missing, so back to the waiting game we went.

Two hours later, we heard another car in the driveway. I looked out and saw one police officer get out. He took his time and was talking to someone on his cell phone, and then on his car radio. He walked up to the porch, I opened the door and looked him in the eye, and he said, “We found him and he’s okay.” I took three steps backwards and dropped down like a lead balloon on a chair sitting by the door.

“Where?” my mom asked.

The officer said, “Well, it’s a rather odd story.”

About an hour earlier, the police station had received a call from a lady who said she had just gotten home from work and there was an elderly man sitting in his truck, in her driveway, out in the country. Keep in mind this was another town about twenty miles from their home. She said she went out to him, and he appeared to be groggy and very confused. She asked him “Is your name Paul and are you lost?” He nodded yes and as a nurse, she recognized that he needed some orange juice for his grogginess and low blood sugar.

How did she know all this about him? Amazingly, she was the nurse who my mom had talked to the night before, in the hospital ER. She knew all about Paul and that he had been missing and what she needed to do.

After a few tears of relief, my mom and I rushed to the hospital where Paul was being observed. I walked into the ER, only to see him sitting up in bed and smiling and as happy as could be! He had a snack and the attention of all the nurses around him.

“Brownie!” I said, “Where have you been?”

“Well, I got kinda lost last night and was driving all over town, when suddenly, this good ol’ boy that kinda reminded me of Derrick was in the truck with me. He pointed different ways to drive around town and we had a good visit. But I started to get tired, so he pointed me out of town to a house in the middle of the country and told me to park there and I’d be alright. The next thing I knew, a lady was helping me and brought me some juice. It was quite a night!”

Derrick and Paul had always been great friends, and as we discussed the incident over the next few days, we decided that our family angel, Derrick, saw that Paul was in trouble. As friends do, he showed up to lend a helping hand.

— Kathy Thompson —