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COLUMBUS, Neb. (KETV) — A wrong number turned out to be a godsend for a Columbus, Nebraska military veteran who needed to go to the hospital this weekend.
On Saturday evening, Lisa Nagengast was frantic.
Her brother underwent spinal fusion surgery at Nebraska Medicine last week.
She had flown to Omaha be with him.
“We’re the only family that we have left,” Nagengast said.
She said he was discharged on Friday and he was doing fine with home health care in Columbus. So she flew back home to Tampa, Florida.
But when Nagengast got off the plane, she had a voicemail from her brother.
“He was like in a lot of pain. He said it’s the same issues he was having this morning and I can’t find a ride to the hospital. And the home health care workers are telling me to go the hospital,” Nagengast said.
He told her, he had just taken medication so he couldn’t drive.
He didn’t have enough money for a cab and since he was a veteran, he couldn’t call 911 unless he received prior approval from the Veterans Administration or he might get stuck with the bill.
“So, it was like OK, give me the number to the social worker and I’ll call her,” Nagengast said.
When she called, a young woman answered who quickly passed her on to a manager.
She told the manager the whole situation.
What she didn’t realize was she had called the Jimmy John’s sandwich shop in Columbus.
“She just started going off about how she was in Florida and she needed help,” said Jason Voss, manager of the restaurant.
“She thought that I was a social worker,” Voss said.
But rather than tell her she had the wrong number and hang up, Voss did something amazing.
“Someone needed help and I guess it was convenient that I work at some place that had drivers”
But being a manager, Voss couldn’t just leave so he told her someone would call her back. That someone, was Zach Hillmer.
“You could tell she was worried about her brother. You could tell she was upset,” Hillmer said.
That’s when Hillmer figured out she thought she was talking to a social worker.
“Well this is Jimmy John’s,” Hillmer said.
“I was like, in the food restaurant? And he goes, ‘yes’,” Nagengast said.
She immediately apologized for calling the wrong number and said, “thank you and I’m gong to go now and he said ‘wait, wait.’”
Hillmer asked Nagengast for her brother’s address.
He hopped into his car and picked up him up.
“His leg was going numb. It just wasn’t a good situation,” Hillmer said.
He took him the hospital nine miles away.
“You could hear the relief in her voice that something was going to get done. That was kind of nice just to hear that, That made it all worth it,” Hillmer said.
Hillmer felt even better, when he found out he was helping a fellow vet.
“Till the day I die, if another service
member needs help, I’m going to do it “
Nagengast said she was taken back by the kindness.
She said thanks to the Jimmy John’s employees, her brother is doing fine.
“There is just not enough words to express my gratitude. In this day and age with everybody being pitted against each other, it was amazing what what they did and I can’t begin to thank them,” Nagengast said.
She said it was Nebraska “nice” at its best and she has a new slogan for the sandwich shop.
“Freaky fast, freaky good and freaky helpful,” Nagengast said.
Nagengast posted the story on her Facebook page.
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