An Ottawa woman is being hailed as a Good Samaritan for bringing a lost, freezing senior out of the cold and into her home.
Paramedics say Ottawa resident Penny Tasco may have saved the life of the 85-year-old woman whom she spotted outside her house early Tuesday, wearing nothing more than pyjamas and socks.
Tasco says it was approximately 6:15 a.m. when she noticed the woman.
“There was a lady there with just her nightie on,” Tasco told CTV Ottawa.
Tasco went out and wrapped her coat around the elderly woman, then brought her inside to warm up by the fireplace.
Tasco says she was just trying to comfort the woman and get her warm again. “I’d want to be treated the same way, especially if that was anybody in my family.”
She says the woman seemed confused and didn’t speak much English. She later learned that she lived on the other side of a nearby park.
The Ottawa Paramedic Service praised Tasco in a tweet later in the day. “It is amazing to see citizens help strangers in distress,” they tweeted.
Paramedic Mar-Antoine Deschamps says the situation could have been a lot worse if Tasco hadn’t intervened to help the older woman.
“She could have died due to exposure to the cold,” Deschamps told CTV Ottawa. “She could have developed more severe frostbites.”
The woman suffered only minor frostbite and mild hypothermia from the incident, Ottawa paramedics said.
“We would like to recognize the amazing actions of this citizen who did not hesitate to help a stranger in distress,” the OPS said in a statement.
Tasco says she was just doing the “natural thing” in rescuing the woman from the cold.
“(God) puts us all in places to help others,” she said. “Hopefully anyone else would do the same.”
With files from CTV Ottawa
