A South Carolina first-grader named Cameron was placed in a dire situation when he found his diabetic father collapsed on the bathroom floor of his home.
The quick-thinking 7-year-old grabbed his dad’s cell phone to call 911, but he didn’t know the passcode to get into the locked screen. He then rushed to the neighbors, but both of them were gone. Knowing his father desperately needed help, Cameron’s last recourse was to make the 5-mile trek to his grandma’s by bicycle.
As the brave 7-year-old pedaled furiously down the highway, he was spotted by his old first-grade teacher, Keller Sutherland. With cars zipping by him on the dangerous highway, Sutherland felt compelled to turn around.
At the time, she did not recognize Cameron; she just saw a young boy who looked like he needed her help.
After telling her husband to turn the car around, she recognized her former student and rushed over to ask him what was going on.
“My dad has diabetes, and whenever he has these episodes and whenever it happens, his brain can’t function,” Cameron explained. He told Sutherland he was on his way to his grandma’s to get help.
The teacher helped calm the boy while two other Good Samaritans arrived on the scene and called 911.
Emergency responders found Cameron’s father barely conscious when they arrived at his house, after being aided by Cameron’s directions.
“The ambulance came, the firemen came,” said Cameron. “The firemen were really nice to me.”
His father was quickly given the injections he needed as well as some crackers that Sutherland had packed with her, which helped his blood-sugar normalize.
Sutherland proudly calls Cameron the “bravest little boy” she’s ever known, and she’s so grateful that God put her in the right place at the right time, on a day when she particularly felt she wasn’t making an impact in the lives of her students.
“When I see myself as a teacher, it just goes so far beyond the classroom. I truly care for these kids, and just to see on a day when I felt like I wasn’t making an impact, and then God just intervened and placed me where I needed to be in that moment for Cameron,” said Sutherland. “Cameron was so calm and brave in that moment, and I don’t wanna say it was because of me, but I was just thankful God placed me there and had a familiar face for Cameron because in that moment I felt like he needed it.”
