Saturday, March 14, 1998

On family's tragic day, no one was a stranger

By Ken Garfield / Knight Ridder Newspapers

Kay McClary, 85, collapsed outside Eckerd Drugs at Cotswold Mall in Charlotte, N.C.

It was 3:15 on a sunny Friday afternoon in early February. McClary was running errands with her husband, Mac, 84, and their daughter, Dottie McLeod of Charlotte. The next day, the McClarys were to fly to Redmond, Wash., and move into a new retirement home.

McLeod is telling me the story as we sit in Bruegger's Bagel Bakery, across the Cotswold parking lot from Eckerd. McLeod, 50, has placed a framed photo of her mom on the table, bragging on a woman who taught kindergarten, volunteered at church, raised two children and knit afghans for loved ones. "I mean, that's a nice person," McLeod said as she looked again at the photograph.

Sheri Heasley, 34, was running errands at Cotswold when she saw McClary lying on the pavement. She stopped, grabbed her cell phone and dialed 911.

Isaiah Wheeler, 39, also stopped. Certified in first aid, he started CPR and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation while waiting for the ambulance to arrive. McClary was unconscious at this point. McLeod remembers thinking that this stranger trying to save her mother was a pillar of strength.

Another man stopped, removed his coat and put it under McClary's head as she lay on the pavement. McLeod never got his name.

Rali Amin, 21, came running from her job inside Eckerd, took off the flannel shirt she wore over her uniform and covered McClary's legs. Then she took her hand and began offering encouragement: "I was like, 'Ma'am, come on, you can do this.' "

Another Eckerd employee -- no one got the name -- ran out with a chair for Mac McClary.

When the ambulance arrived to take McClary to Presbyterian Hospital, McLeod had a problem. What should she do with her elderly father? And who was going to pick up her 13-year-old daughter, K.T., who was waiting for a ride at Providence Day School?

With her 1- and 6-year-olds in the van, Heasley headed off to Providence Day School to get K.T., with an explanation why a stranger was picking her up.

Wheeler drove Mac McClary to Presbyterian Hospital. When they got to the emergency room, Wheeler stayed to hold his hand and whisper words of consolation.

Three days later, Wheeler listened to pastor Marilyn Ascarza give the eulogy at Christ Lutheran Church. She spoke of Kay McClary taking a flight to heaven instead of to Redmond, Wash.

Heasley, a stay-at-home mom, doesn't think she did anything special the day she dropped everything to help a stranger in need: "I would hope anybody would do that."

Amin said she was glad to have done whatever she could to make McClary comfortable. She said McClary reminded her of her own grandmother in India, who also died suddenly from a bad heart.

Wheeler, a Baptist preacher and part-time security guard, said it was instinct that kicked in outside Eckerd. It was something else that led him to attend the funeral: "I felt I was part of the family."

Family. That's the feeling that Dottie McLeod will hold onto years from now, when she looks back on all the people who stopped to help -- a black man, a white woman, an Indian woman, a few whose names she didn't even get.

McLeod lost her mother to sudden cardiac death. But in those 30 minutes outside Eckerd one afternoon in Charlotte, strangers became her brothers and sisters.

(Ken Garfield is the religion editor at The Charlotte Observer. Write to him at: The Charlotte Observer, 600 S. Tryon St., Charlotte, NC 28232.)

(c) 1998, The Charlotte Observer (Charlotte, N.C.). Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.