Rescued great-grandmother meets high-heeled hero
Published: July 3, 2007
A woman known to Winnipeggers as the “High-Heeled Hero” has stepped forward to meet the woman whose life she saved.
Winifred Lindsay, an 89-year-old great-grandmother, could have died at a railway crossing if it weren’t for rescuer Deborah Chiborak.
“I went to cross the railroad tracks and I looked both ways and there was no light to be seen. So I started off. And then the front wheel of my scooter caught in the rail. The scooter tipped and then I fell over and the scooter fell on top of me,” Lindsay told Canada AM on Thursday.
No motorists saw her until an oncoming CN Rail train’s conductor pulled on the emergency brake and blasted a warning horn.
“I could not move, no matter how I tried — and I certainly tried. And then I looked up the track and suddenly in the distance, there was the light of a train,” she said.
With the train drawing closer and closer, Lindsay began to give up hope.
The train was coming and then I could hear the brakes go on. I could hear the horn of the train. And then the bars went down to stop the traffic over the tracks and I thought, there’s no escape for me.”
But then Lindsay felt herself suddenly rising above the tracks to safety.
“All of a sudden, arms reached around me and pulled me off — just as the train went over that spot,” she said.
Another driver immediately took Lindsay to a nearby medical clinic, but she had no idea who saved her life.
Witnesses could only recall it was a woman with high heels, and accordingly dubbed her the “High-Heeled Hero.”
On Wednesday, less than 24 hours after her brush with death, Lindsay met her hero in person.
“What you see before you is the life you saved,” Lindsay told Chiborak.
The 52-year-old had hurt her back during the rescue and wanted to avoid the media — along with wearing any more high heels, or at least for now.
But like a true good Samaritan, Chiborak said she doesn’t see herself as a hero. “Grab and pull, that’s what my thought was. Not much more than that,” she said.
Chiborak told Canada AM she didn’t have time to think, she simply acted.
“I just parked the car and jumped out. And as I was running, about halfway there, I saw the train signal coming down, and knew I had to run a little quicker, and yeah, it was pretty frightening.”
Other drivers also helped to pull Lindsay clear of the oncoming train, and some even saved her scooter.
But Lindsay, who is a grandmother to 21 children and a great-grandmother to five others, said she wanted to see Chiborak.
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