By Nick Carson

Fleetwood resident Yvonne Lis had been stranded at the Bieber Bus terminal without a working cell phone for around 15 hours when KU student Blake Claybrook asked her if she needed to use his phone. Claybrook, who was waiting for his bus to arrive to take him to his home in Philadelphia for a job interview, had overheard Lis discussing how long she had been sitting at the terminal, with no way of contacting her nephew.

“She said she had been there since midnight. I had to go because I knew my bus was coming, but I told her that I wasn’t going to leave her there,” Claybrook said.

It was then that Claybrook called his friends Montrez Lewis and Megan Wolfe to let them know about his situation. “I said I would come just to give her money for a cab or a bus. She had no cash on her and she couldn’t reach her nephew,” Lewis said.

After a few attempted calls to reach Lis’ nephew failed however, Wolfe stepped up and offered to drive her home.

Lewis and Wolfe helped Lis into Wolfe’s car, and began the 15-minute ride to Fleetwood that they described as “awkward at first.”

When asked how long the drive was, Lewis said, “it felt like an eternity at first, but as we began to talk it started to go by really fast.”

As the conversations continued, Lis made sure to let the KU students know how she felt about their act of kindness.

“She started to cry. She was talking about how much she appreciated it, and how we didn’t understand what it mean to her. She said this shows that there’s still good people in the world,” Wolfe said.

Lewis said that despite her thankfulness, he and Wolfe were simply doing what they had been raised to do. “If I have the ability to help someone, I will,” Lewis said. Wolfe agreed with Lewis, and was quick to brush off the kindness that she showed in offering to drive a perfect stranger home.
“She had leg problems and I feel like I would want someone to help me if it was me in that situation,” Wolfe said.

The three also were quick to dispel the fact that their actions may be considered heroic. They all agreed that in situations like the one they were presented, most people walk by thinking that someone else will help the person. They said that the only thing they did was step up and do it.