Stranger's act of kindness helps Laurel family get home after daughter's brain surgery

A Laurel family is hailing a Wilmington man as their hero after he helped them fix their car and get home from Nemours/A.I. duPont Hospital for Children. 

Amanda Fessler's daughter had right frontal lobe resection, a type of brain surgery commonly used to treat epilepsy or seizures, at Nemours on Nov. 15. 

"Thankfully everything went well," Fessler said. 

At the same time, there were several deaths in the family and Fessler lost her aunt. She had also been experiencing car trouble. 

"We were discharged from the hospital on the 19th after I had returned to the hospital from attending my aunt's funeral in Pennsylvania," she said. 

Fessler had a bad feeling about the two-hour drive home, so she had her oldest son follow her. She had made it off I-95 and onto Del. 1 when the car started smoking. 

"I was able to get the car off the road in between three lanes of traffic to my left and merging traffic to my right," Fessler said. "So, not the best spot. We were staring at the 1-mile exit for Bear when we called for a tow truck." 

The tow truck driver took them to the Hampton Inn & Suites by Hilton Wilmington Christiana on Old Churchmans Road for the night. The next morning, Fessler's fiance had to call an Uber twice to get to Auto Zone for a new serpentine belt. 

"The first trip there we got the wrong belt," Fessler said. "After getting the correct belt, we struggled to get the old shredded one off the car."

"I was almost a nervous wreck because my daughter desperately needed to get home to recover, and our check-out time was growing near." 

That's when an angel in disguise stepped in and saved the day.

After Fessler's fiance spent nearly an hour trying to fix the car, Donta Thompson, the chief engineer at the hotel, volunteered to help. He was headed to Home Depot to get a replacement faucet for one of the rooms when he saw the family struggling. 

He called up the front desk to see if the family could get a late checkout, rolled up his sleeves and dove in. 

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"Donta quickly offered his help to us and was able to guide us on how to get the old belt off," Fessler said. "He then put the new serpentine belt on for us and instructed us to add more antifreeze so we would not overheat on the way home. With his help, we were able to make it home safely and my daughter was finally able to get the rest she needed to recover."

Fessler was so grateful for Thompson's help she recently posted the story on Facebook in hopes it would somehow get back to him. 

"He not only offered his tools, he came in and saved the day," Fessler wrote online. "Not many people would have been so generous and rushed to the aid to help others. His assistance came at a real time of need. 

"Please help me show him some love by sharing this post in hopes that it finds him." 

Thompson said he was alerted to the Facebook post one or two days later, after it had been shared more than 4,100 times and received more than 5,400 positive reactions. 

The response blew him away. 

"This is crazy," said Thompson, who hadn't been expecting anything in return for fixing the family's car. 

Thompson said he helps people with their vehicles frequently because it's a nice thing to do and he's a good mechanic. 

In fact, only a couple of days after fixing Fessler's car, Thompson was headed to South Carolina to visit his daughter for Thanksgiving and stopped to help a woman diagnose a weird sound coming from her engine. 

"I do it all the time," he said. "I try to help." 

Contact Jessica Bies at (302) 324-2881 or jbies@delawareonline.com. Follow her on Twitter @jessicajbies.