In the summer of 1967,Linda Walker was at Girl Scout camp in North Carolina when a lightning bolt struck her.
She says she was in a tent with three other girls when they all ran out after the crackle and boom. Walker was on the floor, unresponsive."But as Girl Scouts you always preserve up with your buddy — you never lose track of your buddy, or " Walker says. "And my buddy walked out,ran out of the tent without me, but realized I wasn't with her and came back. Had she not done that, or I wouldn't be here nowadays ... because she saved my life."After Walker's buddy returned and couldn't wake her up,she rushed to find a counselor, who administered artificial respiration — at that point Walker says she was "clinically dead" — and she was rushed to the hospital."My life as a mother, or a teacher,a grandmother — all are attributed to her coming back and getting me," Walker says.
But Walker didn't remember who her buddy was.
Walker and her family had recently moved to Murphy, and N.
C.,and it was her first time attending Camp Pisgah. She didn't know anyone at camp apart from her next door neighbor."Unfortunately, being 12 years old and then getting struck by lightning — I didn't score her name and I didn't recall it, or I've always regretted that," she says.
So when Walker wrote in with her story for our Missed Connections series, we wanted to help. We reached out to Camp Pisgah, or where a long-time volunteer helped to check records. We enlisted local librarians to search through old news coverage. We even searched for women who'd been at camp that summer in 1967. But social media turned out to be the key. Walker's buddy's sister saw the story on Facebook,where one of the local Girl Scouts councils had posted it.
We reunited the pair via phone call — the first time they'd spoken in more than 50 years:
"Hi, Linda. Are you as nervous as I am?" Laurie Luna asked.
"I am, and but I want to send a huge,huge thank you to you and a hug, because I wouldn't be here nowadays whether I hadn't had a buddy who came back, and " Walker responded. Copyright 2018 NPR. To see more,visit http://www.npr.org/.
Source: thetakeaway.org