Woman Who Rescued Disabled Man During Buffalo Blizzard Tells Her Story, Urges Others to 'Just Be Kind'
Courtesy of Sha'Kyra Aughtry
In the early morning hours of Christmas Eve, Sha'kyra Aughtry was feeling depressed. Her three sons, ages 13, 6, and 5, had spent the night at a cousin's house, and a record-breaking, deadly blizzard in the Buffalo area meant she couldn't pick them up as planned. Around 2:00 a.m., she posted on Facebook that she was sad that her sons wouldn't be home for Christmas, then fell asleep on the couch.
The storm woke her around 6:00 a.m. and she initially took the sound she heard for the brutal winds whipping outside. But looking out the window, she saw someone there. She opened her door and tried to yell, but her voice was lost in the wind. "The winds were so powerful that I couldn't even keep my eyes open," she says.
Sha'kyra Aughtry is being hailed as a hero for bringing Joseph White, a 64-year-old developmentally disabled man she had never met, into her home and saving his life. But for her, it's not about heroism but about humanity.
"He taught me a big, valuable lesson: Just be kind to people," says Aughtry, a 35-year old environmental service manager. "You just got to be kind."
White, who has Asperger's Syndrome and is on the autism spectrum, had fallen and couldn't get up. Aughtry woke her boyfriend, 33-year-old Trent Alls, to help her get White inside.
"I said, 'Listen, we got to go out there and get this guy, because it looks like he really needs help,' " she recalled. " 'This could be your mom, this could be my dad, this could be anybody."
Once White was inside, Aughtry FaceTimed her cousin, a nurse practitioner, who talked her through warming the man up, using a hair dryer and a space heater from her son's bedroom to try to defrost his frozen hands. The man's shoes were frozen to his body. She cut off his socks. She defrosted his pants with a hair dryer.
Aughtry called 911. They didn't come.
Courtesy of Sha'Kyra Aughtry
"My cousin told me to chip as much ice off [his hands] as I can, but it was too hard — it was literally like glass," she says. She grabbed some instant hand warmers and placed them on top of his hands to thaw the ice.
As she worked to warm him up, White told her he was 64, he had a sister named Yvonne White, and he listed some numbers which turned out to be his sister Yvonne's cell. But because he functions at a 10-year-old's level (according to Yvonne), he had a difficult time communicating his level on the pain scale to Aughtry.
"He likes Bruce Lee, so I told him, 'If Bruce Lee was in pain, he would kick high to the sky. If Bruce Lee wasn't in pain, he would kick low to the floor.' And I asked him, 'If you were Bruce Lee, the way you're feeling your pain, how would you kick?' He said, 'I'll kick high to the sky.' So I knew he was in a lot of pain."
To help make him comfortable, Aughtry brushed his teeth, combed his hair, slathered his hands in Vaseline and wrapped them in gauze and plastic wrap. They reached Yvonne, who would FaceTime them to keep spirits up in between her own calls to 911 to get her brother help.
"I don't even know how many times I called 911 – I was accused of harassing them," says Yvonne White, a 60-year-old special education teacher's aide. "I told one operator, "My brother's going to die.' And I was told, 'Probably.'"
Emergency services were suspended. "We just waited," Sha'kyra says. "All those hours, we waited."
They watched Kung Fu Panda and the Buffalo Bills game.
At 10:00 p.m., Sha'kyra heard the National Guard had been mobilized, so she called them instead.
"They told me, 'Okay, we'll put you on the list,'" Sha'kyra remembers. But subsequent calls got the same answer: "Help is on the way." And it didn't come.
She fell asleep on the couch opposite Joey. Christmas morning, he asked her to make him pancakes. She did.
She served him pot roast and carrots for Christmas dinner.
Everything he needed, she did for him.
"I was his hands, I was everything," she says.
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GoFundMe
Once the storm had died down, her family was able to bring her children to a point where Trent could carry them home through the deep snow.
Because of the events of the past 24 hours, Sha'kyra hadn't had time to wrap her kids' Christmas presents – so she told the kids that "Uncle Joey" was their Christmas present.
"I sat them down and I told them, 'This year for Christmas, Santa didn't get a chance to bring us toys. Santa brought us Uncle Joey. Christmas is not always about toys. It's about love and giving and being kind,' " she recalls. "They went on about their day. They didn't cry. They started talking to Joey.'
He smiled at the kids, and watched cartoons with them, but as the evening progressed, it was clear that White's pain was worsening, and he started to go in and out of consciousness. She FaceTimed a medical hotline who said his hands were starting to become gangrenous, and that if he didn't get to a hospital, his organs could shut down.
"He got up and he said, 'Bruce Lee is kicking really high in the sky.' I saw tears in his eyes," she recalls. "Now I'm crying because I'm like, 'He's in so much pain.' Now the kids are crying. We're all in here crying. So I said, 'You know what? I'm just going to go live.'"
She went live on Facebook at 9:26 p.m., to share the details, writing in part, "He is scared, I am scared. His life is in my hands. There's nothing else I can do to help. I have called 911. We need help…. Please get him help."
Courtesy of Sha'Kyra Aughtry
Her post garnered 611 comments and 2,000 shares, and people showed up to help. A stranger came to take White to the hospital in a pickup truck, and Aughtry stayed with him until the nurses wheeled him away.
"He knew he was safe," she says. "He said, 'I love you.' I said, 'I love you too, Joey. I love you, too."
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He is still in the hospital's ICU, where unfortunately doctors had to amputate his fingers. But Yvonne is grateful for the "miracle" that Aughtry found him and saved his life — and that they became part of each other's families.
"I always wanted a sister," Yvonne tells PEOPLE. "Now I have a sister and three nephews. It's pretty awesome."
Joey has already requested a pot roast from Aughtry when he leaves the hospital, and the families plan to celebrate Joey's birthday together in June and spend next Christmas together. And they both hope that others can extend the same kindness to others in need.
One GoFundMe has been started in Aughtry's honor and another to help White's recovery, but for the two women, the most important thing is that others can see their story and be inspired to extend the same kindness to others in need.
"People say, "Oh my God, you're a hero,"" Sha'kyra says. "I definitely don't feel like a hero ... I could have ignored the cry for help. But I brought him in. And when I bought him in, I just cared for him like he was one of my kids, or like he was my granddad, because I would want somebody to do the same for me."
And most importantly? "Just be kind. Love one another. I love him forever," she says.
