'Very grateful': Good Samaritans help stranded commuters during B.C. snowstorm
Good Samaritans came to the aid of commuters during the harrowing snowstorm that rocked B.C.’s Lower Mainland Tuesday night.
For Alisha and Carl DeLeon, it was a night filled with distress as they both attempted to make it back to their North Delta home.
For Alisha, who is 36 weeks pregnant, her drive from New Westminster took 10-and-a-half hours.
"Really uncomfortable and the unknown is frustrating,” Alisha, who was stuck near the Queensborough Bridge told CTV News.
“I tried to look up some information on how long I might be there,” she said.
“We have two other kids here too so we weren’t sure when we’d be able to come home to them,” she added.
Meanwhile, her husband Carl was stuck in his own vehicle up near the Alex Fraser Bridge.
DeLeon says she had run out of food, causing her blood sugar to drop, creating an even direr situation.
However, she says at around 1:30 a.m. some Good Samaritans came to the rescue.
"They hopped over the meridian and were handing out tea and desserts to cars who had been sitting there a long time,” Alisha said, adding the gesture was "very helpful."
For Carl, who waited anxiously for his wife's arrival after he finally got home after 1 a.m., the kind act certainly isn’t going unnoticed.
"We just really want to say thank you to them whoever they are and for whatever reason they did that,” he said. “It was really a blessing for us because that could have been a much worse night,”
Meanwhile, a Sikh temple in Richmond also stepped up, letting hundreds of stranded commuters stay the night.
Among them was Rajveer Bhatti, who was stuck on a busy bus for hours.
“Phones were dying, people started panicking,” she told CTV News.
Bhatti said she thought about trying to get an Uber, but decided to join others on the bus who made the 15- minute walk to the nearby Nanaksar Gurdwara Gursikh Temple.
"They provide us a hot drink, they provided us a phone charger so we can connect our phones to call our parents and inform our families,” Bhatti said.
She says they were also provided with a hot meal and a place to sleep.
“That was kind, we were very grateful they did all of that hospitality for us,”
CTVNews.ca Top Stories
WHO: COVID-19 still an emergency but nearing 'inflection' point
The coronavirus remains a global health emergency, the World Health Organization chief said Monday, after a key advisory panel found the pandemic may be nearing an 'inflection point' where higher levels of immunity can lower virus-related deaths.

Federal departments failed to spend $38B on promised programs, services last year
The federal government failed to spend tens of billions of dollars in the last fiscal year on promised programs and services, including new military equipment, affordable housing and support for veterans.
NDP to call for emergency debate in House of Commons over private health care
Federal New Democrat Leader Jagmeet Singh says he will call on the House of Commons to hold an emergency debate on the privatization of health care.
Parliamentarians return to House of Commons facing rocky economic year
Economic matters will be top of mind for parliamentarians as they return to Ottawa to kick off a new year in federal politics.
Suicide bomber kills 28, wounds 150 at mosque in NW Pakistan
A suicide bomber struck Monday inside a mosque within a police compound in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar, killing at least 28 people and wounding as many as 150 worshippers, most of them policemen, officials said.
23 vehicles towed, dozens of tickets issued as rally marks one-year anniversary of 'Freedom Convoy' in Ottawa
OPS and Ottawa Bylaw officers issued 192 parking tickets and 67 Provincial Offences Notices in downtown Ottawa this weekend, as people gathered marked the one-year anniversary of the 'Freedom Convoy'.
Once-in-a-lifetime discovery: Indigenous jacket more than a century old turns up in small U.K. town
When 1990s suede fringe jackets started making a comeback last year, a U.K.-based vintage clothing company decided to order four tonnes of suede from a supplier in the United States. Along with that shipment came a once-in-a lifetime discovery.
Quebec basic income program begins, but advocates say many low-income people excluded
Anti-poverty activists are praising the Quebec basic income program as a good step toward helping people meet their basic needs — but say strict eligibility criteria exclude many of the province’s lowest-income residents.
Ukrainian kids find cellphone signal on hill, set up makeshift school
On a bleak, windswept hillside in northeast Ukraine, three young boys recently discovered a cell phone signal, something difficult to find in their region since Russia invaded their country. and they've set up a makeshift school around the signal.