Rescue earns driver praise
Published: May 16, 2007
Gainesville City Council thanked Hall Area Transit driver Thomas Rucker on Tuesday for helping save a passenger last month.
Rucker passed the thanks along to a higher authority: God.
“I thank him for putting me in that position to save one of his servants. Because that’s all I am,” Rucker told council.
Another person probably giving thanks is Lizzie Posten.
A regular on Rucker’s van, Posten was returning home from the Gainesville-Hall County Senior Center April 3 when fellow passenger Maudinie Woody noticed her acting “oddly,” according to a Hall Area Transit account.
Posten wasn’t responsive and her eyes, Rucker said, “were sort of going back in her head.”
Banking on training with the U.S. Navy and as a former Northeast Georgia Medical Center employee, Rucker put a piece of chewing gum in her mouth — trying to raise Posten’s blood sugar level — and hurried to the nearest help, Hall County Fire Station 11 on Bark Camp Road.
Staff there said Posten’s blood sugar level was dangerously low and without fast action, she likely would have died, according to Hall Area Transit.
Rucker has worked for the city-county public transit system since September 2002. Supervisor Carl Wagster described him Tuesday as an outstanding employee.
Rucker, 57, said he appreciated the recognition, but offered “the glory and honor to my Lord and Savior.”
Council also honored others Tuesday, including:
Ahn Tran and Terrence Holeman, Gainesville High School seniors and recipients, respectively, of $1,000 and $500 scholarships named after Mayor Pro-tem Myrtle Figueras. Tran, who has a 4.6 grade point average — possible because of weighted grades — is headed to Georgia Tech. The news caused Bulldog fan and Mayor Bob Hamrick to shake his head and scholarship trustee Sammy Smith to kid, “We’ll give her the scholarship anyway.”
Salvation Army Capt. Vic Tidman. He opened the meeting with prayer and was then prodded by Hamrick to talk about his and his wife’s reassignment to St. Petersburg, Russia, in July.
City retirees Tim Merritt, former assistant city manager, and James Mulls of the Solid Waste division.
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