Cephas Thomas didn't know whether he'd laugh, cry or give a speech when "Paddy" Culbert finally returned to town. He knew it would be a moment he'd never forget.
Two years ago, Thomas, security director at the Renaissance Harborplace, was at work in the lobby when Culbert, a New Hampshire businessman, happened to be driving by. The New Englander had been working crazy hours and was tired. He didn't realize he was about to have a stroke.
What Thomas did over the next 30 minutes might have saved Culbert's life. Culbert certainly thinks so. He has waited two years to say "thank you" in person.
The reunion couldn't have gone better. Culbert strode in about 3:30 p.m. yesterday, hugged his "guardian angel" and, amid tears, they fell into warm conversation.
"We're soulmates," Culbert said. "Not bad for a coupla guys who only spent a half-hour together two years back."
A numbness
It was Oct. 19, 2007, when Patrick "Paddy" Culbert maneuvered his beloved black Mustang along South Street downtown.
Then 59, he was in Baltimore only for a day. It was a work trip, one of dozens he took each year as regional manager for a firm that inspects exhaust hoods in restaurants.
The past three years had been hard. His daughter, Patricia, lost two children shortly after their births. Then his father died. And in early 2007, his wife, Judy, died of cancer.
"I've got to be honest," he says in a Boston brogue. "I got to where I just didn't believe in God anymore."
He'd taken time off and was working 100 hours a week to make it up, a dubious strategy for a man with high blood pressure. As he approached Pratt Street, his head went fuzzy, he says, and a numbness filled his right side.
So as not to plow into a crowd of pedestrians, he took the wheel in his only working hand and jerked the car to the side. It rammed the rear of a police car in front of the Harborplace hotel.
What he remembers from there is shaky. A "big black guy" running to him. Someone gripping his hand. And a deep, kind voice. "Stay with me," it said. "Stay with me."
Slowing the flow
Thomas doesn't believe in coincidences. Maybe it's the way he was raised by his mother, a devout Christian who gave him the same name Jesus bestowed on one of his Apostles, Simon Peter.
That name, Cephas, means "the rock."
He'd worked for Marriott for 24 years, the last seven at the Harborplace hotel, where as security director he was a jack of all trades, dealing with thefts, first aid, psychology. "My job is to help others," he says.
