To the editor:
I was encouraged to share this experience with you.
Saturday, July 15, Angels appeared dressed as corrections officers. I was driving off a back road in Simerly Creek after visiting my darling friend, heading into Hampton, and realized my normally great Blazer was going “thump clink thump clink thump clank.” I pulled over at a church to see if it was a huge rock or something and found a nice rusty big old bolt sticking out of my tire.
Yeah! A corrections officer in a truck pulled over, checked it out, told me to follow him to his house and he would pull it out and plug it. I followed him, but on the advice of his very sweet father, they told me to leave it in and drive slowly. From the size of the head of the bolt and the washer on it, they felt it might be too huge for them to plug.
So I’m carefully cruising down 19-E and I hear the clink sound stop and get replaced with a random hiss. Oh no. I pull into the new Dollar General on 19-E and called my mother for help. I buy a plug kit, a flashlight, and a can of Fix-A-Flat, and am sitting in the parking lot with a flat tire trying to rasp the hole out for the plug. (I am a petite 36-year-old woman, so this was proving to be a challenge!)
At that moment a SUV cruises up and asks if I need help. I say, “Yes please, I have no idea what I am doing!” And ANOTHER corrections officer gets out and gets right to work pulling my tire, putting my spare on, and giving me advice the whole time about getting it properly patched. I don’t know what they are doing to train these boys working up there at the prison, but I approve because they are stand up guys. Absolutely incredible and willing to help a total stranger (who had been hiking and was dirty and tired and stressed) out of a crummy situation! My faith in humanity has been restored! And my dear Mother gave me a kit for the next time this happens to keep me from being stuck again, hopefully! I feel so absolutely LOVED! And I have a very soft spot in my heart now for corrections officers!

India Hobbs
Johnson City