Motorcyclist, good Samaritan meet — again

We talked last week about Jeff Blessing, the man who crashed while riding his motorcycle up the Gulf Freeway last month and was likely saved from being run over by a mystery trucker who used his vehicle to block traffic from the lane where Blessing lay, unconscious. Last week, Blessing was looking for that trucker, who left the scene before anyone got his name — and yesterday, the two men finally met. The good Samaritan's name is Roberto Gauna, an East End native who drives a cement truck; he said he e-mailed Blessing last week after hearing that Blessing wanted to know who he was.

During their meeting at a Clear Lake park on Wednesday, Gauna recounted the details of the accident for Blessing, who doesn't remember any of it. Gauna said Blessing crashed into a vehicle on the freeway, then flew into the barrier in the middle of the road before rolling back into traffic. Gauna came to a stop, straddling two lanes with his truck and preventing drivers from running over Blessing. "Your eyes were rolled back in your head and you were making deep moans and grunts of death," Gauna told Blessing. Though some drivers passed by, some stopped and started tending to Blessing while Gauna and another man got traffic moving again so an ambulance could get to the accident site. When Gauna looked back at Blessing, he said Blessing was sitting up and taking off his motorcycle helmet. "I said, 'Jeff, God is with you,'" Gauna told Blessing. "You said 'He's always with me.'"

Blessing has set up a fund for donations for Gauna, which can be sent to P.O. Box 1559, Dickinson, TX 77539 or sent via PayPal to jeffblessing (at) verizon (dot) net.