Finally, some good news

If you want to know what kind of neighborhood you live in, you only need an emergency to discover the true colors of the strangers among you.

Last month during a family bicycle ride with a friend to the new mall on Thousand Oaks Boulevard, my 7-year-old daughter took a brutal fall off her bike. Her bloodied face and intense cries of pain made for a true parent’s nightmare. Panic could have set in had it not been for the immediate reaction by two passing pickup trucks.

Margie and Bob Moskowitz had just been to the nursery and pulled over. Seeing our difficult situation, they immediately started to move all their plants inside the truck to clear the truck bed for the bicycles.

John Kocinski stopped his four-door pickup, got out and said very calmly, “I can fit your whole family and your bikes in my truck and take you to the hospital. I’m free to help you all day. Tell me what you need.”

We decided John would take the family to the hospital and the Moskowitzs’ would take the bikes and my friend back to my house where my friend would then get in my car and come to the hospital.

On the trip to the hospital my daughter continued to wail uncontrollably in the truck. John got on the phone and called ahead to the Los Robles Hospital and explained the situation. We pulled up in the parking lot to a waiting gurney and nurse.

After they wheeled my daughter into the emergency room, John gave me his card and asked for a report on her condition later if I didn’t mind. I thanked him over and over and he said with a quiet reassurance, “I have kids, too. I know what this is.” Great comfort was taken from this stranger, this fellow father who took the time to reach out to a neighbor who needed his help.

The day was long but it could have been so much longer and harder. My daughter sustained no major injuries and is healing so fast you’d never know that just a couple weeks back we were pacing an emergency room floor in complete fear for the worst.

The Moskowitzs stopped by the house unannounced a few days later to check on our little girl. They were happy to hear of her good fortune.

The care taken for my family, a family of strangers, by these three people is evidence of the value placed on that very complicated yet very necessary thing called community. I have felt close up what lives in the heart of my community and nothing makes me feel more secure about the future emergencies than knowing that my community will come through for me and I for it. Markus Flanagan Westlake Village