Kathy Haggit was driving a dark road on the southern tip of North Pender Island Sunday evening when she saw a waving arm poking out of a ditch.
“So of course I stop, and I ran over and I hear someone yelling: ‘Help!’ ” Haggit said.
In the ditch she found an 82-year-old woman who was injured and clutching her small dog.
The woman told her she had fallen into the ditch while chasing after her dog, who had escaped from her home nearby.
“I had a flashlight and of course, I could see that her foot was pretty much broken,” Haggit said.
She called 911 and enlisted a neighbour to help pull the woman out of the ditch while they waited for first responders. When an ambulance arrived, Haggit went into the woman’s home to retrieve her purse and found the stove on.
The senior said she had been making soup when she ran out after her dog.
The woman was taken by water taxi to Saanich Peninsula Hospital, and Haggit found out later her foot was badly broken in two places.
She had surgery on Tuesday, her son said. He hasn’t been able to see his mother since her accident because of COVID-19 restrictions in the hospital, but has talked to her and said she’s feeling fine.
Haggit, who lives on a different part of Pender, is glad she was visiting someone in the area that night.
“It was just a wonderful thing that I happened to be there,” she said.
regan-elliott@timescolonist.com