Several good Samaritans crossed paths with those who needed help recently:

Good deeds abound

Lew Alton was enroute from Whitefish to Kalispell last month when his 20-year-old truck broke down. A part-time resident of Whitefish, he was driving down Meridian Road in Kalispell when smoke or steam started streaming from the engine. No sooner had Alton pulled off the road than two young men walked up and asked whether they could be of any assistance.

"I opened the hood, thinking there might be a fire, albeit I didn't know what I'd do if there was one," he joked in his letter to the Inter Lake. Alton tried restarting it, and the ninth-graders were able to determine that a hose had ruptured. They helped Alton remove the damaged hose, then gave him a ride to Checker Auto Parts and helped him get the right replacement.

The two young men also gave him some advice about the correct antifreeze to buy, gave him a ride back to his pickup, helped him install the new hose and even filled up the radiator.

"Are these thoughtful young men or what?" says the 66-year-old Alton.

Alton admits that "the situation would have posed a stimulating challenge without their help." He offered to compensate them for their efforts, but the boys wouldn't accept it. He finally stuffed a few bucks in the sweater pocket of one of them and expressed his heartfelt gratitude.

Although Alton never got their names, he did find out that they play basketball for the school team and that one of them drives a well-kept GM truck.

"They were my heroes," he says, "I'd be honored to donate to the basketball team's year-end dinner or party in honor of their unselfish acts. The community needs to know about boys like this."

(By deadline time, the names of the boys had not been determined, but if and when they are, they will be named and credited in this column.)

J. Adams of Kalispell also sent a note thanking the good Samaritan who "rescued" her purse and turned it in at Target one evening before Christmas. She had just reached her destination after shopping there one foggy, slippery evening when she realized her purse was missing. Knowing that she must have left it in her shopping cart, she called the store immediately.

While she was on the phone with an employee whom she asked to go check the carts outside for her, a gentleman was standing near the counter, patiently waiting to turn in a purse with several envelopes sticking out of the top.

The employee asked her if the purse might have a bunch of envelopes poking out of it, and Adams, to her great relief, exclaimed, "Yes!"

By the time she got back to the store the man was long gone and so she was unable to personally thank him for his good deed. But her purse was there with all its contents intact. She says had it been taken, it would have been a huge loss.

In her letter to the Inter Lake she was able to put her gratefulness to the kind stranger into words: "God bless you and I hope your Christmas was wonderful, as mine was due to your kindness."