Saskatoon man meets woman who helped his dying dad
Good Samaritan provides closure to son after incident two weeks ago
SASKATOON James Koroll spent the better part of two weeks searching for the unknown person who helped his father during the last moments of his life, because he wanted to say thanks. On Tuesday, he got that chance. “I just got to know her, she got to know me a little bit — it was really, really good,” Koroll said of his meeting with Kim Pratt, the no-longer-unidentified Good Samaritan who stopped to help a man in need.
“You just get to know the finality, the full story … You picture the worst, right? Struggling, flailing. But it was just really nice to know he was just basically sleeping. Yeah, it does give a lot of closure.”
Koroll’s father, 61-year-old Patrick Cashman, died while driving on Millar Avenue near Marquis Drive around 4 p.m. on Nov. 2. Cashman had just parted ways with a friend after loading some lumber; he was found unresponsive behind the wheel.
After learning that one or more people stopped to assist Cashman that afternoon, Koroll began searching for the Good Samaritans — first in a post on the website Reddit, and later in a Saskatoon Starphoenix article.
Koroll and Pratt connected over the weekend and met for the first time at the Tim Hortons in Martensville, where he lives.
“It was a really good visit. He got to tell me a lot about his dad, and we found some points in common because my dad died about a year ago,” Pratt said in a phone interview on Wednesday.
“It was nice to be able to help him through his resolution,” added Pratt, an English-as-a-secondlanguage teacher who lives just outside Saskatoon and was one of several people who stopped to help Cashman.
Pratt said she was heading out of town on Millar Avenue when she saw Cashman’s blue SUV sitting motionless in traffic with a signal light on. She and another couple stopped their vehicles and went to do what they could to help.
“I just hope it’s something people would do for me. It’s something that I think anybody should do. I just can’t ignore somebody when they’re not doing well … It’s just kind of what I do; it’s who I am,” she said of her decision to stop.
Koroll said while the loss of his father has been difficult, meeting Pratt after an almost-two-week search convinced him that “there’s good things and good people out there.”
“Too often you just get wrapped up in your day-to-day. Everyone’s busy, but busy ’s not something you can touch or feel. It’s just a word — slow down and take the time to love people and help people.”