Woman rescued by ‘Internet angel’

Trapped beneath a pile of bricks in her home, Lucille Kimball turned to her Internet “comfort zone” for rescue.

Kimball, 70, of Auburn, Neb., hadn’t been able to sleep so she was sitting up in a recliner about midnight Aug. 21 when the chimney in her living room crashed down, pinning her in the chair.

Her left leg was bleeding and she felt “terrible, terrible pain” as she tried to decide what to do.

Fortunately, family members had rigged a laptop computer next to the recliner so she can play games. With her left hand free, Kimball began to tap out a plea for help in a chat room for canasta players.

“I couldn’t get the chimney to roll off my leg,” Kimball said Thursday from a room at the Nebraska Medical Center. “That’s when I went to my comfort zone and began typing ‘Please, help me’ in one of the chat rooms.”

Kimball, a widow who lives alone, said there were probably six to eight people in the chat room when she began sending a request for someone to call her daughter, Leisha Yott of Auburn. She managed to include both of her daughter’s telephone numbers.

She kept typing, hoping and praying for about two hours.

“They probably thought that I was a crazy woman because people started leaving the (chat) room,” Kimball said. “I guess they were bored because we weren’t playing canasta and they didn’t believe me.”

Finally, Nita Renee of Tulsa, Okla., entered the chat room and responded to Kimball’s pleas.

“She (typed) that help was on the way,” Kimball said. “It was wonderful to see that, but I also thought ‘wait and see’ because you never know if someone (online) is actually going to do what they say.”

A few minutes after hearing from the woman in Tulsa, Kimball heard police officers pounding on her door. A rescue squad was right behind.

“Auburn is a small town and when my name went out (over the scanner), about 40 people showed up,” Kimball said. “A police officer picked up part of the chimney and he said it was too heavy and that he would have to set it back down, but I begged him not to do that.

“Somehow, he managed to roll it off of me and I could see that my (left) leg was bleeding pretty bad.”

Kimball, a retired food service manager and mother of three, was taken to the medical center in Omaha and underwent surgery. More surgeries are planned, she said, but she is leaving for an Auburn rehabilitation center today.

Her leg was split open and required numerous stitches, though it was not broken, said Yott, Kimball’s daughter. Authorities say they haven’t determined why the chimney collapsed.

When Kimball and her “Internet angel” spoke on the phone this week, both women were moved to tears.

“I told her that she was my angel and that I was very blessed someone like her was looking out for me,” Kimball said. “She sent me flowers the next day. Well, I’m going to be sending some flowers back to her real soon.”

Contact the writer:

444-1272, kevin.cole@owh.com