When Harry Russell was returning home from work earlier this week, he spotted an elderly lady walking around at the end of his road looking lost.
Deciding to pull over and ask if she was ok, he was informed that she needed to get back up the hill, so he offered her a lift.
The lady gladly accepted, and the pair drove up the hill.
When Harry asked where she lived, however, the lady suddenly looked confused.
“She started giving me addresses for streets in England,” said Harry.
“And that’s when I realised, she must be living with dementia.”
With Harry’s own nan also living with dementia, he could recognise the signs and so he gently offered to help her look for her home instead.
“I was driving her around for about an hour and a half!” said Harry.
“By the end I think we’d driven down every street in Airlie Beach and then we came round a corner, and it was like a fog cleared and she said – ‘that’s my house!’”
Fortunately, a neighbour was home at the time and was able to look after the elderly woman until her daughter came home.
“We ended up having a really good talk when we were driving around and had a few giggles together,” said Harry.
“Any decent person would have made sure she got home safe and if it was my nan then I hope someone would have done the same for her.”
Harry is the proud owner of WhitCool Air Conditioning – a local company that services and supplies air-conditioning, both domestic and commercial.
He is also a really good person.
