As one of the seven cooperative principles, Concern for Community, can take many forms. Sometimes, it’s in the big things everyone sees, but other times, it’s just helping one person.
Journeyman Lineman Andrew Korte of Harrison REMC, a Hoosier Energy member cooperative, found himself in the right place at the right time earlier this year to help one such person.
Investigating a complaint about radio noise from a ham operator in a neighborhood some 15-plus miles away from headquarters, Korte got a surprise that had nothing to do with poles or lines. A colleague in the accompanying bucket truck told Korte, “Hey, somebody’s in your truck.”
Once the immediate wave of panic subsided, Korte noticed a few things about the visitor. One, the rear passenger door was open, an odd choice. Two, Korte could only see a pair of feet with socks on.
“I said, ‘Sir, can I help you with anything?’” Korte recalls. “He said, ‘I’m looking for my shoes.’ That was the first sign to me that we had an issue.”
It would not be the last.
While the rest of the Harrison REMC crew found issues on two poles, requiring them to kill a section of line and climb the poles to make the necessary repairs, Korte began to investigate the problem with the Shoeless Joe he had encountered.
During their conversation, the unidentified man asked the same question multiple times: “Who do you work for?”
“He kept asking that over and over again, so I knew something was wrong,” Korte said. “Then he started talking about how his feet hurt, and of course they did since he was out in socks.”
Korte then invited the man to sit in the truck and let the sun streaming through the windshield warm him on a cool spring morning.
Meanwhile, Korte called Harrison REMC Dispatcher Dave Satori with a request.
“I said, ‘Hey, if you’re not too busy, could you try to find out who this guy is? He says he lives here, but I think he has dementia because he doesn’t remember his name.’”
Satori did just that, calling around to several houses in the subdivision and finally getting one of the neighbors to confirm that the man lived there, but they weren’t sure which house was his.
Eventually, the sheriff’s office was contacted, and an officer came out until they finally reached the man’s wife to resolve the situation.
“I enjoy helping people, preferably not when something terrible is going on, but it makes my day better to help somebody,” Korte said. “It makes me realize that it’s not just me I need to think about.”
