Lisa Nagengast flew back home to Florida, thinking all was well with her brother Greg Holeman in Nebraska. Greg 48, was out of the hospital after a risky surgery, and home care had been set up.
But trouble was far from over, when she got a phone call from her brother, the incision from his spinal fusion was oozing blood and pus and his left leg had gone numb. He couldn’t find a way to get to the hospital, said Nagengast in a Facebook post of what had unfolded Saturday night back in Nebraska.
Lisa said that her brother, Holeman was an Army veteran living on disability in Columbus, Nebraska, and believed he did not have the money to get a ride to the hospital. He did not have money for a taxi and did not think that his VA insurance would cover ambulance costs.
So she called a young woman thinking it was her brother’s social worker and the young woman listened intently to her.
“I assumed it was the social worker, Pam,” she explained on Facebook. “I told her who I was, why I was calling, gave her the whole story, and asked what can we do to get him to the hospital.”
She didn’t realise she had called Jimmy John’s restaurant in Columbus, and the young woman who answered the phone was Lupe Rodriguez, who then passed the receiver to her manager, Jason Voss.
“She was a little panicky,” Voss said of Nagengast. “At that point, I figured I should take a minute to think about it — it was obviously not someone making something up. It was an actual situation going on.”
“There was so much we didn’t know, what could happen, how it could fall to us,” Voss said.
Hillmer, who was also a veteran, called Nagengast to find out where her brother lived. She became confused and asked him why the social worker hadn’t given him her brother’s details.
“And he said, ‘Umm, this is Jimmy Johns,’ ” Nagengast posted. “I said, ‘You mean Jimmy John’s like the food place?’ Yeah, I had called Jimmy John’s restaurant. Most places would have probably said something like, ‘Gee, I’m really sorry about your brother, but we can’t help you.’ But (Zach), the delivery driver at Jimmy John’s, picked up my brother and took him to the emergency room to get the medical attention he needed.”
She said that the misdial was “divine intervention,” and “It was meant to be.” Now her brother is at home recovering and much better, she said.
Voss, summed things up, “there is always time for people, especially people in need,” he said. “I had the resources, I had drivers, we weren’t super busy with deliveries, either. Zach was glad to help someone out.”
Nagengast added, “In today’s political climate, everybody’s arguing with everybody, and we’re not actively listening to what anybody has to say,” she said. “To have two complete strangers listen to me and then decide to do something to fix it — it was amazing.”
It was truly amazing how perfectly everything worked out, for the brother and sister, and how Voss and Zach were able to help out. This was not possible without the intervention of the Lord, because He was in control of the entire situation.