Following the April 29 Sedona Red Rock News article entitled “Runner looking for trail hero,” about a semi-anonymous Good Samaritan who carried an injured runner to safety, the Good Samaritan has been identified.
The trail hero is Even Rogers, who was mountain biking down Adobe Jack Trail when he fortuitously ran into the injured Sydney Linden, who was in immense pain after just breaking her shinbone while jogging.
Rogers, who serves in the U.S. Air Force in space operations, had driven from Colorado Springs, Colo., to Sedona the week of April 17 to assist his mother while his stepdad battled an illness.
Rogers said he would normally fly, but on this trip he had to drive and so was able to bring his bike. That happenstance put Rogers in a position to help out when he rounded a corner on the trail and saw Linden sitting down and looking uncomfortable.
“I said ‘hi,’ … and I could tell that something was wrong, just like the tenor in her voice,” Rogers said. “So I just kind of said, ‘Hey, are you OK?’ And she said, ‘no, I hurt myself’ and she kind of told me what happened.”
After sitting with Linden for some time and trying to help her hop down the trail, Rogers asked if he could carry her, something he said he had learned to do earlier in life as a Boy Scout and then student at Virginia Military Institute.
A fireman’s carry, the technique Rogers used, “puts all the weight into your legs and directly through your spine, so you can actually go for a really long period of time,” he said. “In college we used to do these drills where we would do these fireman carries, and I’ve had to carry my 250-pound friend on my shoulders.”
While the two were making their way slowly down the trail, “we started just joking around and just trying to make the best of the situation,” Rogers said. “We had a pretty good interaction. I mean what do you do in that kind of moment? You just get to know who you’re going through something with.”
Rogers said he’d wanted to to get Linden’s contact info before she left for the hospital, just to she if she was OK. Linden wanted to exchange info, too. But her friend’s car was rolling out of the parking lot before an exchange happened.
“On the long drive back to Colorado, I was beating myself up” for not getting her info, Rogers said, “and then, periodically, I would just think about the situation and think about her.”
After her hospital stay, Linden also spent time thinking about the “true blessing” of her helper that day. She even spent time on online bulletin boards trying to track down the man she only knew as “Evan” from Colorado to thank him more formally before the story ran in the NEWS.
Not long after the story ran, Even’s mother, Linda Rogers, received a copy of it from a friend of hers who suspected it might be her son, Even, since she had picked him up from Adobe Jack after the rescue.
“I came out of my room to a text message from my mom, and it was this picture of an article,” Even Rogers said, “and I looked at it and I was just like, Oh my God, that’s her.”
Since re-connecting, Rogers and Linden have been talking frequently, and Linden’s thank you dinner is now officially a date.
”He was such a blessing to me that day. This is going right up to your head, isn’t it Even?” Linden said on a recent Zoom call with Rogers and the NEWS.
Linden is now in Rogers home state, recuperating from leg surgery at her sister’s house in Cortez, six-and-a-half hours southeast of Colorado Springs. Linden and Rogers plan on meeting up again, but they’re not sure when yet.
Linden’s injury was severe, requiring the insertion of a metal plate in her leg. She said there are good days and bad days with the pain, and she misses her work as a massage therapist.
But she said it’s been fun getting to know Rogers better over the past week, something he agrees with.
“If this is the universe playing match maker, it’s kind of a sick way. Why did I have to break my leg? Why couldn’t he break his leg?” Linden joked.
