In 2005 Pauline King was a mother of her four very young kids. At the time her oldest son Jeff was nine years old, her middle child Nick was five, and her two youngest twin sons Philip and Andrew were only three. Pauline was thirty-eight and was in the midst of raising her four kids basically on her own. Her husband’s work consisted of him traveling around the state constantly, so he wasn’t around much to help her raise his kids. This lead to Pauline not pursuing a job for the time being so she could primarily take care of her kids. However she recalls moments where she may have needed some help.

“It was about 2 in the afternoon on a Sunday.” Pauline said, “I was driving down this country road with [my kids]. The sky was clear, the roads were dry and paved, and it hadn’t rained for over a week.” However, then Pauline drove past a car which was flipped upside down and despite the fact that she had her 4 young kids in the car with her at the time. Pauline took a risk for a better cause and pulled a U-Turn to asses the situation.

The first thing she did was check for a driver. “I wanted to understand the situation as much as possible before I wasted 911’s time” Pauline stated. She quickly observed that the wheels were still spinning. She looked to find the driver. “At first I was very hesitant to look in the driver side window cause I didn’t know what to expect however I was ready for the worst” Pauline said. “When I finally looked I was initially shocked and confused to not see the driver. I panicked because I thought he had flown through the windshield and had been crushed by the car!”.

Pauline finally had enough information to call 911. Once she placed the call she stayed in her car with her 4 kids waiting for emergency services to arrive. “At the time I was relieved that so far my kids hadn’t seen anything really gruesome and hoped it stayed that way because “I didn’t want to explain something to them by myself” Pauline said. Once emergency services arrived they started to search for the driver and one police officer asked for Pauline’s contact information. After she gave it to them he thanked her and told her that they had it under control so she was free to drive off and carry on.

“As I was driving, I felt a sigh of relief because I realized how bad the situation potentially could have been, but thankfully it wasn’t” she said. Pauline is the type of person to worry about other people before herself. She’s also a fighter for raising her four kids to the best of her ability. She isn’t the type of person to see an accident and drive by pretending nothing happened; she has a helping heart. Her primary worry was the driver first, and her kids second, until she thought about herself last because that’s who she is.

Later, Pauline was at home when at about 6:30 p.m. she got a call on the home phone. It was the police station; they informed her that after about 10 minutes of searching they found the driver. He was driving under the influence when he flipped his car and proceeded to run in hope he wouldn’t get caught. He was charged with two DUI’s beforehand, so under law the police had to suspend his license for a year.

After Pauline heard this she was, “Happy that nobody was hurt and everything went the right way for the most part”. Since everyone else was okay, Pauline was too. She would also like to remind students to drive safe and pay attention to the roads at all times.