‘I will forever be grateful.’ Deputy helps WA woman get to dad dying of COVID-19
Makiah Cox was on her way to a hospital in Tacoma to say goodbye for the last time to her father, who was dying of complications from COVID-19.
But on Friday, her car broke down along the way.
“So many people asked me if my car died then drove off,” Cox wrote in a message to the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department in Washington state. “I swear I was fine until I saw (a sheriff’s deputy’s) car drive by when I waved him down, and when he stopped to help me I lost it and couldn’t stop crying...(The deputy) even mentioned I probably shouldn’t drive if I was crying so hard.”
The deputy helped her jump-start the car and she got it to a safe spot until her boyfriend’s brother arrived to take her to the hospital to see her father, Cox told McClatchy News in a Facebook message.
“If it wasn’t for (the deputy) I don’t think I would’ve been there in time,” she said.
Donald Wright, 71, fought coronavirus for nearly two months in the hospital after testing positive in September, Cox said.
“I had high hopes that he would pull through,” she said.
Even though Wright tested negative for the virus a few weeks ago, “his lungs were (too) scarred to come off the ventilator,” Cox wrote in a note to the sheriff’s department expressing appreciation for the deputy’s help.
“Him stopping and helping me sent me over the edge. I felt like on a day so horrible for me he had the kindness and his heart to stop and help even though he didn’t have to.”
Wright was still sedated when Cox arrived at the hospital, she said. As she stood by comforting him while the doctors removed his breathing tubes, tears fell from Wright’s eyes, Cox told McClatchy News.
After the doctors finished, Wright passed away two to three minutes later, Cox said.
“Saying goodbye to my dad...so far in my life it’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do,” Cox told McClatchy News.
The sheriff’s department said it got Cox’s permission to share the note publicly “so that others who are experiencing loss and pain would know that they are not alone.”.
“I will forever be grateful for him and his service. ... He truly made a difference in someone else’s life today,” Cox wrote.
Cox made a Facebook post about her father’s passing, writing that he had no underlying health conditions. She pleaded with people to “wear the mask, stay home and STAY SAFE. No one else needs to go through this pain.”
Cox said Wright was not Cox’s biological father but she said “he took me in when my own father wouldn’t and showed me things that I don’t think anybody else could have ever showed me,” KING reported.
“He loved me even though I wasn’t his blood, and he ... gave me the best years of my life.”
This story was originally published November 23, 2020 at 12:33 PM with the headline "‘I will forever be grateful.’ Deputy helps WA woman get to dad dying of COVID-19."