Courtesy Leslie McCarthy
BRECKENRIDGE — Do you know this young man in the photo on the left or the now-older version of him?
The Summit Daily News received an email over the weekend in hopes of finding this good Samaritan who helped out a Missouri family 13 years ago. It left such a lasting impression on a daughter — who lost her father just four days later — that she’d like to find the man and let him know how much his kindness still resonates.
Thirteen years ago, St. Louis resident Colleen Hogan and her family were in Breckenridge, visiting one of their favorite vacation destinations. Hogan’s father, Richard Lake, who was 70 at the time, had Hogan drive him to the bottom of Boreas Pass so he could cycle the 6 miles up.
“He wanted the car ride down because biking downhill would have been too easy,” she said, as written in a column by Leslie McCarthy and published in the South County Times in St. Louis.
She drove up to the top of the pass to pick him up and ended up with a flat tire. The pair started reading a set of instructions on changing a tire when when the young man approached and offered to help.
The photo above was taken with the good Samaritan — who swapped out the flat — and ended up being the last photo ever taken of Lake. He died four days later in a car accident after the family returned to St. Louis. The picture has been hanging above Hogan’s desk at work, and in her home, for the past 13 years.
McCarthy sent us this story and photo taken in summer 2006.
“Who knows,” McCarthy writes. “This good Samaritan may have been a resident, or he may have just been passing through. But if you would be so kind as to share this story, it might help find him — and give my friend Colleen Hogan some closure.”
“I want him to understand how much his kindness touched us,” Hogan said in McCarthy’s column. “It’s been 13 years, but he lives on with my dad, in my hallway and at my office. He’s part of our lives.”
Read the full column from the South County Times here.
If you know the man in the photo, email Heather Jarvis at hjarvis@summitdaily.com, or call Summit Daily editor Nicole Miller at 970-668-4618.