‘Guardian Angel’ helps teen with broken leg

BISMARCK, N.D. (KFYR) - Sometimes, we’re just in the right place at the right time.

Some say that’s a coincidence.

Duey Johnson says it’s more like divine intervention.

One Bismarck teenager and her mom, say whichever it is, Johnson’s presence is nothing short of good news, and they hope after hearing what he did, more people might be a little more like him.

Talk about the road less traveled; not many cars travel this stretch of gravel.

Those that do have a good reason to be here. Duey Johnson’s home for the past 37 years is just over the hill.

“I travel it every day,” he said.

It’s usually a quiet, uneventful drive. But last week, something unusual caught his eye.

“There was just something there that was just absolutely just out of the ordinary,” Johnson recalled.

He pulled over for a closer look. That’s when he realized what had caught his eye was a body lying in the ditch.

“The first thing that came to my mind that she was dead,” he said.

She was 16-year-old Rayn Jensen. She wasn’t dead, but she was badly injured after she fell off the horse she was riding.

“I fell off and then I fell on my knee and I broke my femur,” Jensen recalled.

“When I saw Rayn laying in the ditch, I knew immediately her leg was broken,” Johnson said.

Johnson sat with Jensen while they waited for the ambulance. Jensen says Johnson is her guardian angel.

“He gave me a blanket while I was laying there because I got really cold,” she remembered.

That blanket holds a lot of meaning for Johnson. It’s the blanket his late wife Donna used after every chemo treatment. She’s been gone for 13 years but Johnson never took the blanket out of his truck.

He says that was his guardian angel—his late wife—stepping in.

“Thank you,” Jensen said as she gave Johnson a hug.

This is the first time Johnson and Jensen have seen each other since the accident.

It’s the first time Johnson and Jensen’s mom, Nicole Faul, have ever met. It’s a meeting neither will soon forget. Jensen is inspired to be more like Johnson.

“You don’t hear about the kindness that happens. You hear more about the bad. But I think that the kindness is really important,” Jensen said.

But Johnson insists he didn’t do anything remarkable; he just did what’s right.

“I would crawl on broken glass and burning coals and barbed wire to go help somebody,” he said. “I have pretty strong faith and I know that God puts us in this world for a purpose.”

On this day, on this dusty country road, his purpose was to help a young girl. A stranger, who now is more like family.

Jensen says this is the beginning of a special friendship. She and her mom hope to take Johnson out for lunch soon.

Jensen starts physical therapy today and hopes to be healed in time for her cross country season in the fall.

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