Matt Critchley didn’t think too much of it when the homeowner didn’t answer.
The Dominion Energy West Virginia town plant rep II was knocking on doors to let residents know that their gas would be shut off for a few hours the next day because a new pipeline was coming online.
He left a door tag, then stopped by the duplex again the next morning—still nothing. Contractors stopped by the house, too, while the gas was shut off and the pipeline was being hooked up. Critchley later went by one last time to turn on the gas outside and, hopefully, inside to any appliances.
No one appeared to be home. But with temperatures predicted to fall into the 30s on that March evening, Critchley felt uneasy leaving a homeowner without access to the home’s gas appliances.
The noise of the work had died down a bit, and suddenly Critchley heard it: “It sounded like something was pecking on the window.”
It was a broom handle, hitting the windowpane again and again. He crouched and put his ear to the door and could just make out the muffled sound of someone inside. “I could hear her saying she couldn’t get up to the door,” he said. “Then I heard her say something about how her leg was broken.”
Critchley assumed that the woman meant she was in a cast. But as they continued to talk, he realized that she’d fallen in the kitchen and had been laying inside her home, helpless, for at least 24 hours.
“Is there any way you can unlock the door?” he urged.
“Just break the door down,” she told Critchley.
Contractor Josh Stull of Little Mountain Pipeline had arrived by then and had a screwdriver. Together, the two men were able to work together to pop open the door. Despite the pain, the woman, who was in her 60s, had been able to drag herself to the couch, but she couldn’t reach a phone. And no one except Critchley had noticed her signals for help.
Justin Stiles, an inspector for BJI Inspections also working the job, called 911 as Critchley worked to turn on the woman’s appliances and attempted to contact her sister, trying not to think about what might have happened if he hadn’t heard her. “Honestly, unless her sister happened to come by, I don’t know when somebody would have found her,” Critchley said.
The woman ended up being treated for a bad sprain. Critchley saw the woman and her sister again a couple weeks later; both were happy and thankful. “You do feel good when you’re able to help somebody,” he said. “Now I feel like I might pay attention even more in case somebody might have a problem and if there’s a way I could help them out.”