Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 26, 1992 TAG: 9202260068
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Ed Shamy
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
OLD FRIEND ANSWERS THE CALL
Consuela Jimenez used to be a pediatrician at the Roanoke Health Department. "Dr. Connie," she was called then.One of Dr. Connie's jobs was, twice a week, to drive to Clifton Forge and Covington for clinics. She never did like driving over the mountains.
Sue Childress helped her. Childress' mom worked with Dr. Connie, and twice a week, faithfully, Sue would drive the doctor to the Alleghany Highlands.
That was 16 years ago.
Dr. Connie retired. Now widowed and in her 80s, she lives with her daughter in Roanoke, but she's always maintained a friendship with Sue Childress.
"She doesn't have a whole lot of friends," says Childress. "I've always visited her, done little errands for her. When I was growing up, my grandmother lived with us. I have great respect for elders."
Dr. Connie suffers from cancer. She's hard of hearing, too, says Childress.
In September, Dr. Connie left Roanoke to live out her days in her native Philippines. She left on Labor Day. Sue Childress helped her to the airport.
But in California, Dr. Connie fell and broke her arm. She was hospitalized.
She had second thoughts about going home to the Philippines, and recently she came back to Roanoke.
Dr. Connie settled back into her daughter's home, where she's accompanied during the day by an attendant and at night by her daughter's family.
Dr. Connie wanted to resume her friendship with Sue Childress, too.
From her bed, she dialed Sue's phone number. All she got was a recording. She left a mournfully sad message, advising her friend she was back in town, that she was very sick and couldn't even get out of bed.
Dr. Connie tried again and again, each time leaving her accented messages on the answering machine.
The answering machine was not in Sue Childress' home. It belonged instead to Suzanne Meredith, a woman who never has heard of Sue Childress, never heard of Dr. Connie and has no link to the story save for a phone number one digit removed from Childress'.
Meredith was pained that she could not help the old woman, could not even trace her calls. She talked with her once, but the two made little headway in their conversation and both hung up frustrated and upset.
The calls kept coming - sometimes the old woman grew belligerent, believing that the bewildered Suzanne Meredith was for some reason hiding Sue Childress.
Last week, Meredith's nerve-wracking phone problem was chronicled here. She was worried that the old woman might need help - she sounded in her calls so urgent - and hoped that the newspaper exposure might help.
It did.
Sue Childress got back in touch with Dr. Connie.
She has visited her twice since then, and she has corrected the one digit in the phone number.
"She's really a very interesting woman," Childress said of Dr. Connie. "But she doesn't hear very well on the phone."