As Manhasset High School junior Sophia Langner was returning home at dusk Dec. 5, she noticed that an elderly gentleman with a cane appeared to be having difficulty walking up the steps to his house.
Something didn’t seem right to her so she asked her mother to stop the car.
As Natalie backed up, they saw the man stumble, fall into the middle of the road, and lie there unable to get up.
Langner immediately asked her mother to dial 911. She then alerted two neighbors to ask them for something with which to keep the man warm and cushion his head. Langner and her mother covered the man with a jacket and placed a towel under his head, which was bleeding profusely. They then stood beside the man to warn passing drivers who might not have seen him lying there in the dark.
Paramedics took the gentleman by ambulance to North Shore Hospital, where he remained for two days. His wife, who had been out shopping at the time, declared that her husband probably would have died if Sophia had not noticed him and stopped to help. “She saved my husband’s life,” said the man’s wife. “She was sent to us from God.”
