a couple months ago i was heading home from fishing at one of the local forest preserve lakes near my house when i came upon a man in a manuel powered wheelchair coming down the road towards me, It was getting dark out and this particular stretch of road is about ten miles long with no street lights and nothing but woods so it was hard to see him.I passed him up and went on home but i kept thinking about his safety so When i got home a few minutes later i told my wife about him and i told her i have go back and offer him a ride because he was going to get killed on that dark stretch of road. I went back out and found him and i pulled over and offered him a ride ,he accepted so i picked him up and put him in the cab of my truck and put his wheel chair in the bed. He told me his name was mark and apologized to me for smelling bad (he did) he told me that for the last four or five days he had been sleeping in his wheelchair outside. He told me that he was from tennessee and was heading to Minnesota for a family reunion in his van when he stopped and parked at a suburban train station to go to downtown Chicago to sight see and while he was in the city his wallet was stolen, and to make matters worse he couldn't remember what suburban train station he left his van parked at four or five days ago. He told me he was 45 and that he became a paraplegic a few years ago when a bus hit him while he was riding his bicycle. We talked about a lot of subjects and things and i noticed at times he would stray off subject a bit ,he mentioned to me more than once his mind or memory was giving him problems. My main objective was to get him off the road and out of the woods so i dropped him off in town and wished him well. As i was driving home i kept replaying our conversations in my head and how his story seemed unbelievable,who can have such bad luck? I had intentions of giving the guy some money when i dropped him off but during all the unloading i forget about it until i got home. I was concerned for the guy, so the next day i called the police department in the town where i left him and i told the officer my story and described what he looked like and i asked if they had seen him,the officer asked me to come to the station and talk to them because this guys family had came in from Minnesota and filed a missing persons report on him when he never showed up at the family reunion a few days before. I went to the police station and i while i was waiting to talk to the officer he came out and said that mark was found a couple towns away and that he was ok. The officer told me his story was true and that he suffers from dementia and that his family described him as fiercely independent . He was a unique guy.
