Homeless hero returns to see little girl in North Las Vegas

Published: January 10, 2007 | 5275th good news item since 2003

A homeless man who was hailed as a hero for helping lift a car off a 9-year-old girl in November has been reunited with the girl in southern Nevada.

“There he is!” said 9-year-old Robyn Rubio, pointing at the visitor with the black eye patch and trying to sit up before uttering a long moan that filled the room and startled a neighbor in the courtyard of her apartment complex.

“I am so glad you’re alive,” said Stanford Washburn, 48. “I came back from New Mexico on the bus yesterday to see with my own eyes that you are OK. Do you understand that you have a whole life ahead of you? I know you will walk again.”

The last time Washburn saw the girl, she was pinned beneath more than two tons of metal, after she darted into the road and was hit by the car. Washburn and at least three other homeless men lifted the Cadillac off her. The driver, a 66-year-old woman, has not been cited.

Since the Nov. 25 mishap, Rubio spent more than a month at University Medical Center in Las Vegas. She was sent home last week, and continues to recuperate from a crushed pelvis, two broken arms and other broken bones.

“She will walk again,” her mother, Tina Rubio, vowed. “She’s doing great now. She can pull herself in and out of the wheelchair by herself.”

Washburn spent the holidays home at the Navajo reservation at Shiprock, N.M., thanks to a donation from an anonymous benefactor who read of the rescue and sent travel money for him to North Las Vegas police.

A wheelchair sat Monday behind the tattered couch in the living room where Rubio sleeps. She wore a metal brace around her abdomen and nodded at Washburn’s words.

“You are so precious,” he said. “You will be able to help other people someday. You must always remember to be careful. I’m not sure when I will see you again. I just wanted to see for myself that you are OK.”

Washburn, a self-described drunk, said he has stayed away from the bottle since going home in December. He lived with his daughters and helped care for a 2-year-old grandson who he said he doesn’t want to embarrass.

“But I don’t know if I can stop from drinking,” he said.

Washburn said he planned to stay at the Las Vegas Rescue Mission and do odd jobs to raise money to buy a bus ticket back to Shiprock. He said he was sure better days were head for him and Robyn Rubio.

“We met for a reason,” he told her. “Maybe we are saving each other’s lives.”

Published in Heroes and Reunited
See also: www.nctimes.com