Last Wednesday, Raven Jeffers, 10, went to check on her neighbor Gloria Higman, 80, and her Yorkie puppy, Baby. When she entered the Cortez house, she found Higman unconscious on the floor.
Higman was lying beside her chair. Her lips were purple; she had been there for at least seven hours, away from her oxygen. When paramedics came, they found that Higman’s blood sugar level had dipped to a scant 20.
“She walked in the house and the front door was wide open,” said Dayna Straley, Raven’s mother. “Gloria was laying sideways in front of her chair, not in good shape, not in good shape at all.”
Jeffers hurried home and got her mother. In the past, Higman had trouble getting out of her chair, so at first she didn’t think much of it.
“As soon as I walked in, I was like, oh no, we need 9-1-1,” Straley said.
As they waited for first responders to arrive, Jeffers comforted Higman.
“Raven sat beside her pretty much the whole time, rubbing her back, telling her ‘It’s going to be OK, I’m right here with you, I’ll stay here with you no matter what,’” Straley said.
Higman said she doesn’t remember a thing.
“All I remember is after I got into the emergency room, just being on the bed in the emergency room. They told me I was really lucky she had come over to walk my dog and found me, because I could be dead now,” Higman said.
Higman is diabetic, but she had recently been to the doctor and passed the examination with flying colors. She didn’t eat or drink anything out of the ordinary, either.
“It’s just unreal to me because I didn’t feel sick, I didn’t feel faint, I didn’t feel nothing,” said Higman. “I could see it if I was sick, throwing up – any of that, but I wasn’t.”
“I’m just so thankful she came down to see me. Otherwise, I really don’t think I’d be here.”
It’s especially lucky because Jeffers had been grounded the past week after coming home past curfew.
“She asked to go down there, and it was actually a day early, but I was like go ahead,” said Straley. “She had real good behavior.”
And so she went down to see Higman, and that’s when she found her on the floor.
“If Raven wouldn’t have reacted, Miss Gloria probably wouldn’t be here with us no more,” said Straley. “She’s her little savior.”
Jeffers lives less than a block from Higman’s house, and she started going over there to walk Baby and help around the house with chores, Straley said.
“I needed help emptying trash, doing the kitty litter, and she did all that,” said Higman. “And then I went to pay her, and she wouldn’t take any money from me. She said no, because you’re my friend.”
“That makes me very proud of her,” Straley said with a smile.
Higman was expected to be out of the hospital on Friday. Jeffers has watched Baby for more than a week during her recovery. Since there are other dogs at the house, she set up a tent in the backyard and camped with the Yorkie pup.
“We’ve worked out a little routine where Raven is sleeping in the yard, on an air mattress in the tent with Baby,” said Straley. “With my Brindle, there’d be no Baby left.”
Higman is excited to be back in the comfort of her home with Baby and her cat, Kitty.
"We’re going to have a celebration at your house, everyone is going to be there,” Jeffers said enthusiastically.
And if Jeffers is ever grounded in the future, she’s still going to go down and see Gloria, Straley said.
“That’s not going to be taken from her no more,” she said.
