It was just a normal Wednesday garbage run at the Head of the Licking River for Walter Fugate, a rear load driver for Rumpke, as one of the residents on his route came out on her porch to let him know she had one more bag.
“Take your time,” Fugate told her. “I’m not in a big rush.”
As she’s bringing out the last bag, the woman fell down her steps, hitting her face on a patio stone.
“I threw my gloves on the fence and went in there,” Fugate remembers, jumping in to help her up and make sure she was alright.
“I helped her put her shoe back on and fixed her glasses, popping the lens back in, and just kept asking if she was okay,” Fugate said. “She looked up at me and asked if she looked okay, and I told her, ‘No, ma’am.’ Her eye and one side of her face was swelled and she had some blood coming from her mouth.”
As he helped her to her vehicle, the woman told him she was on her way to a cancer treatment, noting her daughter worked there to reassure him, but he couldn’t help but worry, staying with her until the family could be contacted and neighbors arrived.
“I called Rumpke and told them to get a hold of her daughter and make sure she made it okay,” Fugate said. “One of her neighbors down the road got a hold of her daughter and she’s doing well, but she gave me quite a scare.”
Fugate had been a volunteer firefighter for the North Magoffin Volunteer Fire Department, with some first responder training, but he said he didn’t know company policy on what the right or wrong thing to do was, but he couldn’t leave her lying there.
“I have a 74-year-old grandma and would want someone to do the same for her,” Fugate said. “My mamaw has cancer, too, so I kind of know what she’s going through and I just hope she’s okay.”
Fugate has been with Rumpke for two years and driven that same route for five months, noting he normally never sees the woman, guessing he was just “in the right place at the right time.”
Rumpke’s Communications Coordinator Kevin Hall reached out to Mortimer Media Group with the story after Fugate had checked in with the local transfer station to have someone contact her family, with Hall telling the SI, “We are proud of the quick, caring action of our team while out on regular service in Magoffin County!”
