HOMETOWN HEROESThe American Red Cross Hometown Heroes Luncheon honored five people Wednesday for community service:* Good Samaritan youth: Nolan Skiles* Hospital volunteer: Dottie Womack* Red Cross disaster volunteer: Eva Knab* First responder: John Robinson* Good Samaritan adult: Vernon Mcleod
Aron Ralston knelt at the foot of the wheelchair, tears in his eyes, holding Monique Carpenter’s hand as she whispered to him.
She had been trapped for 16 hours after her car slid off the road and into a ravine 26 years ago, she told him. The accident left her paralyzed from the waist down.
“He said we’ve both been to a place nobody else knows about,” Carpenter, of Dalton, Ga., said after the American Red Cross Hometown Heroes Luncheon in Chattanooga.
Ralston, an outdoor adventurer, climber and mountaineer, shared the story of how a boulder fell on his arm and held him trapped for six days in a Utah desert canyon in April 2003.