My name is Naz Bajlanpour and I am a 22-year-old female. I am currently a student and I travel any time I have the chance. Recently I had taken a trip to Vancouver, British Columbia and my family and I had fallen into a situation that became a two-day story that will stay with us forever.
My mom, brother, and I planned a trip for 12 days to visit my cousin in Vancouver. After we landed and spent the first few days in Canada sight-seeing and visiting all the tourist attractions, we decided that we should head to Joffre Lake Provincial Park on the upcoming Wednesday and start exploring the natural beauty that is within British Columbia. Wednesday morning came along and as a family, we packed our snacks and sandwiches for the 3-hour long drive to get to this lake. I was wearing a white bikini top with pink bikini bottoms and shorts and a top threw on top. After a long car ride which consisted of driving around a mountain and heading towards an empty road with no cellular service, we reach a sign that says, “Joffre Lake Provincial Park”. We made a right turn and to all our surprise; this lake is centered right in the middle of a mountain and consisted of an additional 3-hour long hike to reach it. I get out of the car and I see a group of elderly women coming back into the parking lot from a trail. As I observe their clothing, I see they have hiking boots covered in mud and in both hands were hiking sticks.
Luckily, we all had sneakers in the car and although our clothing was not appropriate, we had backpacks that we were able to put our towels and food in. We decided to leave our purses and wallets including any other valuable items that we didn’t want to risk losing in the trunk of the car. After locking up the car, I specifically left the car keys in the front pocket of the backpack because it had a ziplock to assure that we wouldn’t lose the keys on our trail. After 3 hours of hiking in the mountain and passing by other tourists and locals that were going up and down the trail with us, we finally reached the glacier-fed lakes and the scenery was out of this world. It truly felt as if a piece of heaven was brought down to Earth, and I was mesmerized by how blue and clear the water was. It was 80 degrees Fahrenheit and we had been hiking for so long, so I immediately took off the clothes on top of my bikini and went straight for the water. As soon as I had dipped my toes in the lake I screamed, the water was freezing – like an ice bath. I took a deep breath and only put my legs in for photos and decided that I wasn’t going to be putting the rest of my body in the freezing water. My mom suggested we sit on the rocks and start eating our food. As we were enjoying our picnic with the glaciers in front of us, my mom was still unpacking the backpack. I asked if there was any other food she had packed, but I soon noticed that she had a worried look on her face and was beginning to panic. My cousin jumps up and asks what’s wrong – “I can’t find the car keys”, and did I mention it was a rental car?
At this point my brother is checking his pockets, my cousin is looking around us checking to see if it fell nearby, and my mother’s guilt of losing the key was starting to overwhelm her. We’re all trying not to make the situation worse than it is, and decided that because the sun was setting, we must get up and get back down the trail right now and just hope that along the way it had fallen somewhere. My mom is apologizing to us and saying how she removed the keys from the backpack and put it in her jacket pocket because she believed that it would be safer for her, but we couldn’t hear anything. The stress was beginning to get to us. An hour went by as we’re running down the trail and we still couldn’t find the key. We pass the rocky trails and reach the woods. Now Canada is known to be a bear country and it is always advised that you should never go hiking in the woods in dark because the risk of crossing paths with a bear is higher. As we were passing the woods, we began to hear growling and this startled us to the point that instead of running down the trail, we began sprinting. With the luck that we had at the moment, we believed that a bear could have been watching us too. Eventually, we had reached the parking lot which was now empty. Completely empty with only our rental car in the lot. My mom runs towards the car hoping that maybe somebody found the key and left it in our car, but there was nothing. It was 8:30 pm, with the sun almost completely set and nobody around to help us. We all looked at our phones, but this was an area that there is no cellular service for miles by car. My mom falls to her knees and starts crying and apologizing for putting us in this situation, and my brother and cousin both just put their hands on each of her shoulders and kept trying to tell her it’s okay. I started looking around my surroundings hoping that maybe somebody would be around. It was like this for the longest 5 minutes. We all looked at each other and asked if we had to stay out here overnight until the morning, But then a car pulled up. A local man named Sheldon gets out of the car and starts walking towards the hiking trail. He notices that I’m looking for help and my family by the car were distressed and asks what’s going on. After explaining the situation to him, he suggests giving us a ride to the nearest hotel. At this point we just wanted to have a better sleeping situation considering that everywhere was closed and there was no cellular service where we were located to call the rental company, so we said yes. Sheldon is driving us in his car to a hotel and we’re all in the car thanking him for this kind gesture. We all had smiles on our faces and were happy we could call the company from a hotel and didn’t have to be in the mountain to figure out what to do with the missing car key. Suddenly, my mom stops talking, “All of our wallets are in the car” she says quietly. We all looked at each other and thought well great, we had a solution that went down the toilet. Sheldon heard my mom, and immediately without saying anything picks up his phone and only states he needs to make a phone call. On the screen, it shows he’s making a phone call to Harriet which happens to be his wife. As they exchange hellos to one another, Sheldon states “I found a family of 4 and offered to take them to a hotel because they can’t get back into their rental car, but they don’t have any identification or money on them – I think I’m going to bring them home with me tonight”. Harriet then answers with a simple “okay” and we all lifted our eyebrows in shock. We thought this is truly not happening, you only get stranded and get helped by a local in movies, however, it was happening to us. He changed directions and took us to his home where they had a dog and an 18-year-old son named Isaac.
They told us we could sit on the couch and they would gladly order us pizza if we were hungry, but we felt we were already creating trouble for them and insisted that they don’t go out of their way to do anything else. Harriet ended up making eggs and toast for us to eat and she and her kind husband offered us the guest rooms to sleep in overnight until the morning. The next morning came along and we had to figure out our next move. Harriet suggested that the first thing we should do is get our wallets out of the car, so she made a phone call to her own personal car insurance company and had their towing company come by the park and unlock the car doors for us to grab our things. We all got up and went to the park at 8 am to meet with Harriet and the towing company since she left the house before us. We all get to the car and the door was unlocked! As we opened the door it made a loud siren noise due to the lock systems, but we were able to get any of the valuables we left in the car out. The next step we did was calling the rental company and telling them about our situation. The rental company told us that they had no extra spare keys to lend us and that our only option was that we take a bus ticket to get back to Vancouver city and have a tow truck bring the car back to the rental location. This was very stressful for us because that meant we would have had to pay over $2000 in this service just for the car to get back to Vancouver. However, it was the only option we had given that the company didn’t have a spare key for the car. We had even asked if they could give us a replacement car to get back to the city but was offered nothing through this company.
After we made phone calls for a tow truck to bring the car from the park to the city, Sheldon dropped us off at a bus station for us to get to Whistler village, and from there we would get on another bus to Vancouver. We said our goodbyes and offered money to Sheldon and his family, but they insisted that they only wanted to help and don’t want to take anything from us. We purchased tickets for a 12 pm bus ride and sat outside at 11:30 am and waited for the bus to come. Suddenly my mom gets a phone call and starts screaming and jumping up and down. As the three of us looked at her in embarrassment and confusion on what’s happening, she screams “A park ranger found the key on the trail, they left it at the park station!”. All of us jumped up from our seats and started jumping out of joy together, and immediately started looking for a taxi service. I ran inside the bus station where we bought the tickets and asked for a refund so proudly stating that I don’t need these tickets anymore. As the lady at the front desk refunded the amount back to our cards, I asked where the taxi services were, and she told us that there really aren’t any out there. I just turned around and looked at my cousin asking, “How do we get to the keys now?”. My mom picked up the phone and called Sheldon because he was the only help, we could think of at the moment. As he picked up the phone, my mom started off by apologizing for putting him through so much work, but we only ask for one last favor.
Sheldon was able to come to pick us back up from the station, took us to the park service station to pick up our car keys, and was able to take us back to the car as well. At this point, we were able to make our official goodbyes and insisted that Sheldon and his family must come to visit us in our home in Washington, D.C. Our doors are always open to this family and if it wasn’t for them, we wouldn’t have been able to stay safe or get to our car keys. Nowadays in society, it’s very hard to come across good people that are willing to help. After going through this, I also learned how important it is to help one another, even a stranger because you never know how much you’re helping them until you’ve fallen into the same situation.
