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Restoring My Faith In Humanity

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Contributed by: Jan Jackson on 11/30/2007

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Today my faith in humanity was restored by a man named Steve Copp.
Life has not been exactly kind to me and mine lately, nor have some of the human race that we have been dealing with for a considerable period of time, i.e., various presidents and boards of directors of my homeowners association (HOA), as well as members of my HOA that I have come to call the "cabal."

My husband had a stroke in June of 2006 and almost died (we believe from the continual barrage of negative remarks about him by my HOA's CAI lawyer in briefs he wrote during my lawsuit against my HOA). Only through the grace of God, a very fine Penrose Hospital medical team (in Colorado Springs), and my husband's strong will to live, did he survive.

About a week ago, an ambulance took him from our home to the Penrose Emergency Center with what was later diagnosed as pneumonia (from what appears to be permanent throat/swallowing damage due to his stroke). Once again he was brought back from the brink of death. He is now back home and recovering as well as can be expected for a man his age. My husband is 77 years old.

For about eight years now, we have been fighting an ongoing battle (legal and otherwise) against my HOA which can only be described as a "rogue" homeowners association which appears to have had, over the last thirty years, various boards of directors and member "followers" who have "ruled" my HOA with very questionable administrative and operational practices. The end of that battle is nowhere in sight.

We had, unknowingly, bought a home in that homeowners association back in 1999 after we both decided it was time to retire from the Sturm und Drang of our daily work-a-day life. I am 76 years old, and the beauty and peacefulness of this particular area of Colorado's Rocky Mountains seemed to both my husband and I like the perfect place to enjoy the remaining years of our lives.

We could not have been more mistaken.

There's also a nasty "bug" going around many Colorado counties these days, the symptoms of which might be described as "intestinal flu." My husband had recently caught that bug and so had I. Probably many of the readers here have been afflicted with it, too. It is not a pleasant experience to go through. Today, we were getting low on aspirin tablets, so I decided to go down to a small mountain town about ten miles away from where we live to renew our supply. On the way there, I had a flat tire.

It was getting along about supper time and the temperature outside was between 15 and 20 degrees and dropping rapidly as the sun disappeared below the horizon. In the mountains where we live, cell phones don't work unless you know the few places along the road I had to take where they sometimes will work. I was some distance from one of those places (a high hill) when one of my rear tires went flat. At my age, both the distance and the hill I had to climb, as well as the numbing cold, was probably enough that I should not have tried to walk it, but the situation I found myself in didn't leave me much choice. About halfway there, I knew I probably wasn't going to make it to the top of that hill. Nor was I going to be able to make it back to my disabled car.

Then Steve Copp entered my life. I just remember a pickup truck with a sign on its door which read "Above Treeline Construction" and a man rolling down his window and asking me if I needed a lift. He was the only one who stopped to ask me that question out of the hundreds of cars that must have passed me by as I walked alone, in the freezing cold, on the side of the road, towards the top of that hill.

I think I must have run as fast as I could toward his truck and got in, very grateful for the immediate warmth I felt from the heater in his vehicle. I told him what had happened and he told me he had noticed my empty automobile as he was driving along on his way home from work. Once he became aware of my situation, he immediately turned his truck around and went back to where I had left my car.

While he was changing my tire, he left the engine of his truck running with the heater on and told me to stay there where I would be warm. I did exactly that. He wouldn't accept any money for his kindness to me. Just the kind of man he appears to be.

I believe everyone should know about this man, Steve Copp. He is truly a man among men who will be remembered by me until the day I die as the man who restored my faith in the human race. Not everyone in the human race, that's for sure -- especially not those rogue members of HOAs. But at least the humans among us who, tired at the end of a long, hard day at work, will nevertheless stop to help an old lady by the side of the road.

Steve Copp. I believe he lives in Woodland Park. May God bless and keep him and his family safe from harm for the rest of their days.

Jan

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