TD Man Helps Family Get to Safety: How Far Would You Go to Help a Stranger?
Eva Skyles and her two daughters were a family in need, but thanks to the kindness of a stranger their family is now in a better and safer place.
“Just look at somebody and love them. Always love first.” - Michael Swinehart
by Cole Goodwin
How far would you go to help a stranger?
That was the question posed by one woman’s call for help on The Dalles Happenings in August.
Eva Skyles was pregnant. She was a single mother of two daughters.
And she was fleeing a domestically violent situation.
Eva had a plan to get to safety. But she could not do it alone.
She needed someone to help drive a 35-foot motorhome over 300 miles to a safe location where it could undergo interior repairs. She would follow the motorhome in her car and pay for the gas for both rigs. She offered to drive the driver back home afterward.
“I needed help out of a situation in which I was stuck,'' said Eva. “With no way to cook or keep food cold for my two toddlers. No bathroom and no place to stay out of the heat. I didn’t know what else to do other than make a post online asking for help. I did not know anyone in the area. I lived in The Dalles a few years ago so I was a member of the Dalles Happenings. Sometimes you need to ask for help. In my situation, I didn’t see any other option.”
A formerly homeless veteran answered the call for help.
Michael Swinehart’s ex-girlfriend had seen Eva’s post and told him he needed to help her. Swinehart was an Army Veteran and Columbia River Gorge local and he knew what it was like to be in a tight squeeze from his days of being houseless.
And Eva Skyles, who was due to have her baby any day, knew she had to act fast to improve their situation. So when Michael Swinehart responded to her call for help, she took it.
“After personally meeting with her and her beautiful little girls - they just stole my heart - I agreed to drive her all the way,” said Swinehart, who also had two kids of his own.
Driving the RV to safety.
They struck a deal and a little road magic happened along the way.
Several people on The Dalles Happenings sent Swinehart money for food and drinks for the drive.
Michael later thanked those people on Facebook.
“I want to extend a most humble thank you to the few members of this group who went out of the way to send me a few dollars to help me with food and drinks for not only my RV drive but also the Greyhound trip back. This world is so dark and cold anymore, and I am proud to say I will help those in need when I can fill that need,” said Michael.
Eva and Michael left one Friday night, driving day and night in one long haul. The drive was long and uneventful, but when they arrived they received a warm welcome from Skyle’s family who was looking forward to repairing the RV and getting Eva set up with a safe place to live.
Michael Swinehart driving the RV to a safe location.
“They were very kind and so happy to meet me,” said Michael.
The Skyle family pooled resources to get Swinehart a Greyhound bus ticket back to The Dalles to save Eva and her daughters from yet another long car ride. A good thing too, as only days later Eva gave birth to her third healthy daughter.
“Knowing that she was ready to give birth at any time, I was 100% okay with the bus ride,” said Swinehart. “Not making a momma drive 16 more hours with her girls and that amazing package of hers.”
“I’ve traveled Greyhound over half of my life. It's one of the best traveling experiences anybody can have. I absolutely love it,” said Swinehart “I mean sometimes it’s cluttered. There’s smelly people. There’s laundry. There’s kids. There’s drunks and drug addicts. There’s what you see walking around any major city sitting on a 50 ft sardine can. So I mean it’s all in the person’s perspective. There’s people that hate traveling. I look at it as an experience to be around more people.”
So Swinehart hopped on the Greyhound bus, and when he checked his phone to see the community's response to his good deed, what he saw brought tears to his eyes.
Eva Skyle recieving a blood transfusion at the hospital following the delivery of her third daughter.
Baby Skyles was born healthy and happily. :)
“I was bawling like a little child on the Greyhound bus, reading all the different comments and different messages I was getting, and there were people sending me money because of what I did,” said Swinehart. “And I can’t tell you how many people on the Greyhound had to ask if I was okay if I needed help and I said, ‘No, honestly I’m happy as hell.’ I’m like ‘Here, read this, take my phone just read, you’ll start crying too, and sure as hell, people started crying. They couldn’t believe it either.”
“It’s hard for men to wear their hearts on their sleeves. When it comes to male associates, they don’t want to hear it. They just want to hear what you’re going to do to get past it. They don’t want you to cry about it. But in general, men are ridiculed and frowned upon for being emotional, especially men like me because I don’t come across as emotional...Until I help somebody, and then I’m an emotional wreck and a cry baby” said Michael getting a bit choked up. “I’m glad that I’m a face that people can look at and say, ‘he’ll help you’ because I don’t see many people doing that today.”
All’s well that ends well.
“I was lucky enough to get Mike’s help,” said Eva, who delivered a healthy baby girl only days following her and Mike’s long journey together. “He is a really cool guy and deserves lots of praise for helping me. And I am glad to say my children and I are doing a lot better now.”
So what motivates someone to drive 300 miles to deliver a stranger to their destination?
Michael Swinehart said that it’s just the way he was raised.
“I was raised to help- just because. My grandfather raised me that way. He was always the type to tell you that, if somebody needs your help, you help, and if they offer you something, it’s up to you to take it or not. You don’t always have to get in order to give,” said Michael.
“Helping is what we're supposed to do as people.If somebody’s in need of help, and there’s nobody to help them, they get help. I’m not always available to help everybody, but when I say I help, I help,” said Michael.
Michael Swinehart said he hoped his story would inspire more people to take a stand for kindness.
Michael said he hoped his story would inspire others in the gorge to help their fellow humans simply for the sake of giving.
“I know it’s hard to trust people and find a way to help somebody blindly or help somebody out of your own pocket. But that’s the whole problem with today. Nobody cares about their fellow man or their fellow woman for that matter. Nobody cares about the next person. They only care about the next conspiracy, the next sickness. They care about who they’re gonna blame for their problems next. So, every day I wake up, and I look for somebody that needs help. If I can’t do it off the internet, I will find somebody off the street,” said Michael.
Michael is no stranger to helping those in need.
“I’ve pulled off the side of the road, and there was an old man that lost two full loads of hay. I helped him reload his hay and then waited on the side of the road for an extra hour for him to come back with another trailer to finish loading the rest of it,” said Michael.
Originally from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Michael moved out to the gorge twenty years ago to see more of the rain.
“I heard that it rained approximately nine months out of the year, depending on where you were and I actually love rain and thunderstorms,” said Michael.
Michael said he’d had his fair share of hard breaks and has been down and out and judged for his appearance. But he said that wasn’t going to influence the way he treated other people.
“I spent the first ten years in The Dalles here trying to get people to understand that just because I’m a hundred and forty-five pounds and have piercings and a mohawk, doesn’t mean I’m a drug addict, a drug dealer, or a piece of sh*t homeless person... And it was hard for me for ten straight years,” said Michael.
Michael experienced houselessness in The Dalles for four years.
“I spent four years on the street here in The Dalles just trying to make ends meet. And I kept getting ridiculed and ridiculed and ridiculed,” said Michael. “We definitely have a housing crisis in this area. We don’t have jobs that pay living wages. It’s tough all around.”
“Nine out of ten times that you saw me, you didn’t know that I was homeless because I was clean, shaved, and I smelled good. I constantly made sure I was washed and clothed and fed. I made ends meet even though I didn’t have a place to live. But because of what I was going through and how hard that was for me to go through, I didn’t really have care for other people’s needs because nobody at the time was willing to help me,” said Michael. “And I never asked for a hand-out, I asked for a hand-up.”
Michael Swinehart poses for a photo after a long day at work.
Michael looked into college options and used part of a student loan he received to purchase a Chevy van.
“I converted the chevy van and put a couch in it, and I was living out of that. I figured if I could get through college, I’d be alright,” said Michael.
But hard times hit and the van ended up repeatedly breaking down and with no income, Michael soon realized he couldn’t afford to continue to try for a college education. He dropped out. But before he did, one of his classmates introduced him to his now-ex girlfriend Angelika Shipley.
“We instantly fell in love, and about three weeks later we were living together, and now she is the mother of my daughter,” said Michael. “Now obviously in the end after five years it didn’t work out, but that is how I ended up not being homeless anymore.”
Angelika helped Michael get off the street. His life became more stable as a result.
But still, his lived experience as a Veteran and as someone who experienced houselessness caused him to step away from public life for many years.
“I was in the Army for seven years. My veteran status caused me to withdraw a lot from the public for a really long time. People have a way of agitating soldiers for some reason. I don’t know what it is,” said Michael. “And I stepped away for eight or nine years. I stepped away. I stopped talking to people. I didn’t want friends no more. I went to work. I came home. I did nothing.”
Michael said the hardest part of being a veteran was losing the sense of camaraderie that came from being on the same team.
“It was losing the camaraderie, the brotherhood, the structure that was hard. When you come back to society you realize that you don’t have the brotherhood that you’ve had, and it’s not the community that our armed services provide for all of its soldiers,” said Michael. “It’s just a brotherhood that’s hard to find. Most of the time, I didn’t have friends because I got tired of being taken advantage of. I’ve got one friend, his name is Tom Hines, and I’m happy with that. We get together about once a month maybe twice a month, we smoke something on the barbeque and that’s it. It’s the simple life for me. If I could move out into the country and afford to get to and from work, I would.”
But encouragement from his supporters strengthened his resolve to get back out into the community and have a social life, even if it was a risk.
“My ex-girlfriend has been the one pushing me over the last several years to get my face back out there. But it was hard for me over the last five years to start coming back into this feeling of wanting to be around people again and wanting to try and help out in my community, wanting to be known in my community,” said Michael.
“I’m trying to show people that just because I’m a redneck that has piercings and tattoos, just because I come across harsh doesn’t mean I’m a bad person,” said Michael. “It’s taken a few good years, but I actually have people looking at me the right way now.”
Pictured: Michael Swinehart
At the end of the day, Michael said he doesn’t think of himself as a hero, just a simple man trying to live his life the best he can.
“I’m a simple man. I want everything. I want to do fun things with my kids. As long as I got clothes on my back, boots on my feet and maybe a beer in my hand I’m happy. I don’t need anything else,” said Michael.
Although maybe a little more romance wouldn’t be so bad.
“I would really like a relationship that’s loyal and funny and faithful and redneck,” said Michael.
Despite everything, Michael said he still believes in the transformative power of love.
“Just look at somebody and love them. Always love first. I’m raising my son that way. You show love before you show disrespect. You show your heart on your sleeve before you show any kind of evil towards anybody. Doesn’t matter who they are or what they’re about. Show them love, you might be the only thing that keeps them alive,” said Michael.
