Image Credit: Shutterstock
August 24, 2021 - 7:00 AM
A Salmon Arm resident is searching for the truck driver who gave her a lift last week when she and a friend became caught between two mudslides.
Ariana Sholinder and her friend were driving along Highway 1 from Salmon Arm to Vancouver, Aug. 16, but their journey was cut short between Lytton and Spences Bridge. The Coquihalla Highway was closed at that time due to wildfire.
“It started to rain pretty hard and we were starting to wonder about the conditions and we came across this huge line of tail lights and there’s a landslide in front of us,” Sholinder said.
They turned their car around but then saw the mud, water and rocks on the road now in front of them.
A mudslide near Lytton along Highway 1.
Image Credit: Twitter/BC Transportation
“We were stuck in between two pretty big landslides with another truck. It was pretty scary,” she said. “There were some people there that were walking down the barrier on the side of the road to see if we were OK and how many people were stuck.”
They parked as safely as they could, packed their backpacks with essentials and walked to the top of a hill in the mud, she said.
“This really, really kind young trucker named Alex gave us a ride in his truck. He orchestrated this crazy U-turn with his loaded truck and trailer… and he stopped and got us into his truck and got us cleaned up since we were covered in mud and fed us cookies,” Sholinder said. “It was so nice. It was a shitty situation but because of his kindness and the help of other people there, we came out of it totally fine.”
Alex drove them to Cache Creek, and Sholinder wants to thank him but has lost his phone number.
“We really wanted to send him just a recognition of what he did, especially because you hear a lot of bad news and bad stories of things happening on the highway,” Sholinder said.
They were able to get their car from a tow truck company a few days later in Cache Creek.
Sholinder has reached out on Facebook groups hoping to find him. One post in a Coquihalla Facebook post which was shared by her mother Cindy Sholinder has been shared more than 1,000 times.
She describes Alex as a 24-year-old from Montreal who keeps an immaculate rig that may have been hauling plywood that night. He loves his dad’s cookies and has a "beautiful repertoire of French swear words," Cindy wrote on the post.
“A true knight of the road!”
If you know Alex, please contact Ariana via email at arianaroses@gmail.com.
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