Automotive angels rescue Rosie’s wagon

Rosie Buck had her purse snatched and her car stolen – all on the same afternoon. Police caught the underage culprits the next day, but not before they trashed the 90-year-old’s beloved Ford Fairmont station wagon during their joyride rodeo.

I told Rosie’s tale last Sunday and called for a hero to help the Spokane woman fix the car she bought new in 1979.

A number of great people responded with varying offers of help. But thanks to a North Side couple, Rosie’s ride may soon be rolling to a happy ending. “We’d like to donate the repairs,” said a woman who left a voice mail message.

When I called her, she confirmed that she and her husband wanted to pick up Rosie’s entire $2,822.26 estimate. “I like to help someone, and I’m able to do it.”

True philanthropists, the two asked that their identities not be revealed.

As you might imagine, Rosie was overwhelmed. “I don’t know how to thank them. What can I do?”

Your gratitude is more than enough, Rosie.

This energetic woman lives alone in a North Side apartment. She became a crime statistic on a Saturday last May.

Rosie was changing her own oil filter when a pack of young punks arrived. One of them distracted Rosie while another reached through a car window and grabbed her purse. The thieves later used Rosie’s own keys to take the wagon.

“Can you believe it?” she said. “That’s pretty darned rude.”

Rosie has won fans at juvenile court where one of the teens was recently sentenced.

“Rosie has worked hard for everything she has, and her car is her pride and joy,” says Lory Miller, the victim/witness advocate for the Spokane County Prosecutor’s Office.

“How many people retire at the age of 89 without ever having asked anyone for help? I am so thankful to those who have come to Rosie’s aid. Getting her ‘baby’ back on the road is the only thing she has ever asked for.

“I just love that lady! In fact, Rosie has already volunteered to give me a lesson on oil changes.”

“Continuing our good news theme – it turns out I’m not the only uncoordinated oaf with a blind eye for warning labels.

I refer to my recent brush with death via a city-issued yard waste container.

While attempting to push it to the curb for garbage day, I wound up sprawled on my lawn with my head wedged painfully inside the weed-filled bin.

The caution sticker warns humans to not move the thing with the lid open. Go figure.

I, however, no longer feel marooned on the Isle of Dumb. The telephone calls and e-mails I’ve been getting lately have convinced me that there are enough Dumpster diving dopes around to start our own Yard Cart Survivors chapter.

Take, for example, one hapless South Hill soul. After taking a header into his cart he “had to have 45 stitches in his head. His arm was also hurt, and he is now being treated for blood clots in his arm,” a friend wrote.

Another man said his yard cart disaster left him with a broken shoulder.

David, another survivor, cut his forehead to the bone when he caught his “foot on the dangling lid” and the “top edge of the big green bin came at me as the wheels rolled out from under it.”

And they say Iraq is dangerous.

Sometimes the ridicule is worse than the spill, as seen in Phyllis’ gleeful e-mail about her husband, Vic.

“He went down with his hands still holding the handle. So his arms were under him held down by his own weight. From inside, his face stuck in the leaves, he instructed me to lift one side of the cart so he could loosen his arm and then the other side so he could free his other arm.

“I really did have a hard time not laughing. It didn’t help when I told friends, ‘Poor Vic, he fell into our garbage cart.’ “

Yard Cart Survivors unite!

And call Ralph Nader – these things are unsafe at any speed.