HENDRICKS COUNTY — A central Indiana family is finally getting the chance to meet and thank the teenager who took a risk to help them on the side of a dark road.

Eighteen-year-old Alex Shoemaker didn’t have to stop and some probably would have advised against it, but the Avon High School senior pulled his car over anyway when he saw a family in need of help.

That family’s been wanting to thank him ever since.

“You were truly a Godsend,” Delana Ward told Alex Sunday afternoon when the entire Ward family met Alex and his mom for lunch.

The meeting was a few weeks in the making, after the Wards experienced a life and death moment following a Halloween Party.

The family was driving home when dad Don’s heart stopped.

“I don’t remember a whole lot,” Don explained, including his wife Delana doing CPR on him on the side of a dark country road while the couple’s kids watched terrified.

That’s where Alex comes into the picture.

“Out of the darkness, just two kids come out and waved me down and I knew right then that something was up just by their facial expressions and I knew that I couldn’t just keep driving by,” said Alex who saw the Ward kids, Hunter and Presley, on the side of the road waving for help.

Alex stopped to help them.

“He didn’t have to stop, but he took a chance and he did,” said Delana.

Alex helped call 911 and put a blanket under Don’s head after Delana revived him, while they waited for the ambulance to come.

“It wasn’t so much what you did, but it was your presence,” Delana told Alex Sunday.

No sooner had he showed up, just like that, Alex was gone.

The Wards never had a chance to get his name or say thank you.

So Delana turned to Facebook, hoping to find the kind stranger.

Then the family spoke to Eyewitness News about it.

Alex’s mom, Tammi, saw the story on TV.

“I really didn’t think it was Alex because they said ‘man.’ He’s my high school son,” said Tammi Shoemaker.

When Tammi went to WTHR’s web page, though, she was convinced the story was about her son.

“I read about the location and more importantly the description of his blonde surfer hair, I knew that really had to be him,” Tammi said.

Weeks later, the Wards are finally getting to say thank you to the kind stranger whose name they never knew.

Source: WTHR