My name is Dorothy Hayes and at eighty nine years old I found myself abandoned at a gas station in the Arizona heat. My daughter Linda grew frustrated with my slow walking pace at a restaurant and decided I was too much of a burden. She forced me out of her vehicle in the desert sixty miles from my home at the Desert Gardens retirement community in Phoenix. As she drove away without looking back I sat on the curb with my walker wondering how I would survive the hundred and seven degree weather.
My despair was interrupted by the loud engine of a Harley Davidson motorcycle pulling into the parking lot. The rider was a silver haired man named Frank Morrison who immediately noticed my distress and brought me cold water and ice. After I shamefully explained how my child had stranded me he firmly stated that I was not a burden. We quickly discovered a mutual understanding of family loss during our conversation. I shared memories of my late son Billy who rode a Honda in nineteen seventy six before passing in two thousand four at age fifty two while Frank spoke beautifully about caring for his mother until she died at eighty six.
Realizing he could not safely transport me on his motorcycle Frank contacted his friend Ray who arrived soon after in a blue pickup truck. The two men treated me gently as they loaded my walker and drove me the entire sixty miles home. My neighbor Margaret watched in disbelief as they safely delivered me to my door. When Linda finally called hours later to offer weak excuses I confronted her about her dangerous cruelty. I informed my daughter that I was legally changing my will to leave my entire estate to the local veterans motorcycle club instead of her.
Frank continued checking on me and eventually arrived with four other bikers to perform household repairs that had been neglected for months. They fixed my broken screen door and trimmed my hedges while replacing the batteries in my smoke detectors. Frank now visits me every Thursday bringing lunch from a diner on Route sixty so we can share stories on my porch. He affectionately calls me Mama D and I consider him my guardian angel. Being abandoned by my own blood was devastating but it unexpectedly opened the door to a wonderful new chapter of my life.
