Food delivery drivers have been like heroes to many of us who have been stuck at home due to the COVID-19 pandemic or even the lousy winter we’ve been experiencing. In Texas, residents saw some of the worst winter weather of their lives in February, and when the roads turned icy, one stranded delivery driver wound up staying at an Austin customer’s house a little longer than usual.
On Feb. 14, Chelsea Timmons decided to make her weekly three-hour trip from Houston to Austin to do grocery deliveries. She told CNN the Austin area has better pay for food delivery drivers. As the snow began to start in the area, Timmons thought she would have enough time to avoid the worst of the snow, and that her Toyota Rav4 would handle the roads safely.
But, by the time she got to the home of customers Nina Richardson and Doug Condon, the roads were so bad that she lost control of her car as she tried to approach their house. The car ultimately crashed into a flower bed.
“I was just grateful that my car did not hit the house,” Timmons told KXAN.
The crash didn’t stop Timmons from delivering the groceries. She unloaded them and walked them up to the house. After explaining what happened, Timmons called AAA to help. Unfortunately, every tow truck was out for emergencies due to the storm.
After watching Timmons wait for a while for a tow truck, the couple tried to help her get the car unstuck, but they had no luck on their steep driveway.
“At some point, we realized that we’re probably gonna have a houseguest for a while,”Condon told KXAN.
So, the couple (who had already been vaccinated against COVID-19) invited Timmons to stay in their guest bedroom.
Here’s a selfie Timmons posted to Facebook last week of the three together.
“As soon as we found out that AAA couldn’t come and the conditions were getting worse, it seemed silly to even imagine that she would go to a hotel,” Richardson told CNN. “It didn’t even occur to us.”
After a few days, the trio was able to dig out the stuck car, but the road conditions continued to be terrible. Timmons offered to stay in a hotel, but her hosts encouraged her to stay.
“[They asked] ‘Could you make it there safely?’,” Timmons shared on her Facebook page. “‘What would you eat? What if they lose power? Isn’t the guest room better than the Hampton Inn?’ Every morning after they say ‘no worries, stay a bit longer,’ I go to ‘my’ room and shed tears of joy.”
Even the couple’s dogs loved having Timmons there. They would curl up in bed with her when she slept and showed her lots of love.
In this image posted to Facebook, Timmons is getting kisses from her new canine pals.
Timmons helped make meals and even baked a special cake for her hosts as a way to say thank you.
Finally, six days after getting stuck, Timmons was able to go home. But Richardson and Condon said they plan to stay in touch with the delivery driver who “became part of the family pretty quickly,”as Richardson told CNN.
“I am so grateful that they were not only able but willing to let a complete stranger into their home in the midst of a pandemic, in the midst of a storm … with no hesitation,” Timmons said. “They just opened their doors, opened their home, and said, ‘Come in and relax.'”
This story originally appeared on Simplemost. Checkout Simplemost for additional stories.
