CHESAPEAKE, Va. (WAVY) — A woman who received help from 10 On Your Side after being hit by copper thieves a year ago is now helping others.
Veneeca Neal drives for Uber and Lyft and saw a woman struggling with her walker one day before driving her to her doctor. Even after dropping off Alva Poole for her doctor’s visit, she felt compelled to step up. It was a normal day of driving a rideshare that turned into an opportunity to do good. “When I looked out the rearview mirror, I saw her pulling the door shut and then I saw her reaching for her rollator,” Neal said, “but the rollator kept rolling so when she tried to reach for it, she went too far over and almost fell. So I jumped out and I ran, and I grabbed it, and I pushed it back to her to help her.”The brakes on her walker were broken. The ride went smoothly from there, but something kept tugging at Neal’s heart, prompting her to act — even if it meant missing a car payment.“You know what, let me be a blessing and sacrifice and go ahead and get her one,” Neal said. “I said, ‘A bill can be late, you always can pay a bill late, but a life you can’t replace once it’s lost.’”Neal said what she saw gave her flashbacks to something that happened to her elderly father, with a more devastating outcome.“My father, a military vet, he was walking, and he was weak with dialysis and different things and prostate cancer, so he used to walk, and he fell, he walked, he fell and then the third time he fell, it was a fatal blow for him, and we lost him to that fall.”So, Monday morning, she made the special delivery.“Her walker’s been like that now for a good, what, three months honey? At least three months,” said Alva Poole’s husband, James Poole.Poole’s husband was just about to take the old one to get fixed when Neal arrived with the new one.“It’s been very stressful worrying about her, whether or not she was going to fall or lose control because there were no brakes there,” James Poole said. “God still works miracles and touches people’s hearts; it’s a great place to be.”Neal is working to get her medical transportation license so she can continue helping others every day, transporting the elderly and disabled to their appointments.“Anything that’s on your heart to do, just do it,” Neal said…