Chris Storey was walking home from his 30th birthday celebration a few hours after midnight Monday when he heard a groan down an embankment. Lying in the dirt and grass several feet down was a man next to an overturned walker who had tumbled down and was unable to regain his feet.
Storey, who until recently had spent the past year homeless, said he had enough training from a previous job to provide immediate aid to the man, call 911 and get him to the roadside so he could be taken by ambulance to the hospital a short time later.
“Because I was an adult care provider for a little while that kind of helped me in this particular situation because this was an elderly gentleman,” he said in an interview several hours later. “He said he was 52, but his knees and his pants were all torn up. I could see where he fell, I could see the whole track down that little bank, his walker and he was holding onto this two-by-four. That was like crazy.”
Storey said he departed the Glory Hall shelter at about 2:30 a.m. after visiting a friend there to celebrate his birthday and was walking down Glacier Highway when he heard the man’s indistinct calls for help off the east side of the road near the turnoff to the Juneau Police Department station.
The man who fell struggled to communicate clearly and exhibited symptoms such as facial muscle irregularities Storey said are similar to somebody who’s had a stroke.
“The only reason why I felt comfortable enough to move him up from the ditch up to the sidewalk was due to how much he was moving his neck and his back,” he said. “The only problem that was very apparent was his knees.”
Storey said he has seen the man from time to time around Juneau and he may have been among people camped in a nearby meadow along the road.
An ambulance showed up about five minutes after a 911 call on a phone that was down to 3% of its battery power, Storey said.
The condition of the man, whose name and age couldn’t be verified, was not available from Bartlett Regional Hospital officials due to medical privacy laws, according to Erin Hardin, a hospital spokesperson.
Storey said he worked as an adult care provider several years ago and has held numerous other jobs since until his situation took a downturn in April 2024 when he lost his housing at St. Vincent de Paul Juneau. He spent the next year sleeping anyplace he could find around town and spending some nights at the city’s cold-weather emergency shelter when it was open — although fights among others there made that situation uncomfortable.
His situation improved in April of this year when he got a grant from Housing First, which operates the Glory Hall.
“I have been working with the Glory Hall and the navigators, they are assisting me,” Storey said. “I applied for and got approved for a housing stabilization grant. Basically they helped pay for housing and housing needs, food, transportation, moving costs for, I believe, about a year.”
Storey, who was on his way to a temporary yard work job on Monday, said he’s still looking for steady employment. He said he’s worked in recent years at a food truck, hardware store, general labor and even as a butler — plus his medical knowledge skills are still healthy.
“It was a very unique and rewarding experience,” he said. “But due to that experience I was able to know how to properly handle this.”
• Contact Mark Sabbatini at mark.sabbatini@juneauempire.com or (907) 957-2306.
