A 7-year-old child in South Carolina was on a mission to help save his father, when his former elementary school teacher discovered him biking along a busy highway and offered to help.
Cameron Simoncic shared with his local TV station WSPA that he had returned home from a day of second grade on Wednesday when he found his dad on the kitchen floor, unconscious from diabetic shock, and immediately knew that he needed to take immediate action.
“My dad has diabetes,” the second-grader said to the local Carolina outlet, “and whenever he has these episodes and whenever it happens, his brain can’t function.”
When Cameron went to call 911 on his father’s phone, but said he wasn’t able to get into his dad’s cell. And when the little boy went over to his neighbors’ houses, nobody appeared to be home.
“So I got on my bike and tried to ride to my grandma’s,” Cameron said.
As he was avoiding cars on the 5-mile ride, his first-grade teacher, Keller Sutherland, hadn’t recognized the familiar face before making the decision that she needed to pull over.
“I just told my husband, I said, ‘There’s a small child on his bicycle riding down the road. I’m not sure what’s going on, but I feel like I need to just turn around and see what’s going on,’” Sutherland told WSPA.
To her shock, the little boy was her former first-grade student. Cameron quickly told the teacher what was happening at home and Sutherland helped him to remain calm, while another two men who pulled over called 911.
“The ambulance came, the firemen came,” Cameron said. “The firemen were really nice to me.”
According to WSPA, the 7-year-old was able to provide instructive directions to get Sutherland and the first responders to his father’s house, where his dad was given the life-saving injections he needed. A pack of crackers that Sutherland had on hand then helped Cameron’s father come to and stabilized his blood-sugar levels.
Earlier that day, the teacher told the local network, she had been questioning her choice of career, but she reported that the incident has helped her rekindle her purpose.
“There’s no doubt that God placed me where he did when he needed me,” she said.
