Miracles aren’t always on the grand scale of parting the Red Sea or changing water into wine.
Sometimes they are as simple as a stranger’s kindness or a four-legged friend’s resilience.
“We believe in God. We believe in miracles and that’s what I believe saved our dog,” said Oxford resident Laura Lee Whitaker, owner of Laura Lee’s Salon in downtown Oxford.
Our story begins on the night of December 30, 2003, when Whitaker’s dog, an 8-year-old English Springer Spaniel named “Jake,” uncharacteristically escaped from the backyard of her Brabb Road home on Stony Lake.
For some reason Jake ran onto M-24 near Dunlap Road.
“I saw it get hit by two vehicles,” said Oakland County Sheriff’s Sgt. Glen Walker. “When I got there, it was laying on its side and barely breathing.”
Walker and Deputy Jason Louwaert blocked off part of M-24 for almost an hour waiting to see if the dog was going to get up.
“After seeing the dog get hit, I thought I was going to have to put it down,” Walker said. “I didn’t want to do that. . .I didn’t want to hurt anybody’s friend. It’s somebody’s pet.”
Walker said he and Louwaert decided to wait because they had seen deer get hit and walk away.
After a while, Jake started “coming around.”
“The longer we sat there and watched it, the head started coming up and the legs started moving. It’s like it was dazed,” Walker said. “He wasn’t giving up, so we weren’t giving up.”
Whitaker said she greatly appreciated all the attention the officers gave Jake.
“They didn’t have to wait. It was freezing cold. They could have just moved him off the road,” she said. “I want to give them a special thank you.”
While the officers were waiting, Skip McWilliams drove past the scene and was affected by what he saw. The 57-year-old Metamora resident travelled about three miles before deciding to turn around and see what he could do to help the animal in need.
When asked what made him go back, McWilliams replied, “I don’t know. I just thought somebody’s got to do it. No one else would, besides the officers.”
McWilliams said the dog was “struggling” to get up, but couldn’t.
“You could tell he didn’t want to die. He wanted to live,” he said.
It was Jake’s struggle to live that touched McWilliams, who’s not a pet owner, and made him decide to take the dog to an all-night animal hospital in Bloomfield Hills.
“You empathize with a struggling creature,” he said. “When a creature struggles, it speaks to you.”
When Whitaker was notified about the Jake the next morning, after spending hours searching for him, the prognosis was not good.
“The doctors thought he was paralyzed. There was no internal bleeding, no broken bones. He just couldn’t move,” Whitaker said. “All he could move was his head, a little, and his eyes. His whole left side was hurt bad.”
“I laid there with Jake in the hospital all day crying,” Whitaker said. “I didn’t know what I was going to do. I didn’t know what all this was going to cost, but I knew I didn’t have that kind of money.”
But once again, McWilliams came to the rescue. He called the hospital to check on the dog and, according to Whitaker, told the medical personnel, “Tell her don’t worry about anything. Whatever the dog needs, I’ll pay for it. All she has to do is tell me she wants her dog.”
McWilliams ended up paying more than $2,000 in medical bills to help Jake. Whitaker said McWilliams was willing to pay another $2,000 for a CAT scan, but it wasn’t needed because Jake finally attempted to move his legs, which was a “good sign.”
After spending a week in the hospital, the still-immobilized Jake returned home, where he was cared for like a “baby” and prayed for constantly, according to Whitaker.
“The people at the animal hospital told us a miracle was all we could hope for because it was not looking good at all for Jake,” she said.
Three weeks later, Jake tried to stand. A few days later “he was up and stumbling around,” Whitaker said.
“He’s running now. He still stumbles a little. But he’s going to be okay,” she said.
“I don’t even know this Skip McWilliams. I’ve never met him in person. We’ve only talked on the phone,” Whitaker said. “He just doesn’t realize what a hero he is to my son and I.”
“He wouldn’t let me pay him back any of the money,” she said. “I even offered to do his entire family’s hair free for a year. He wouldn’t take anything from me.”
When asked why he spent all this time and money to help a dog and family he didn’t know and has still never met, McWilliams explained he was simply repaying a 39-year-old debt.
At the age of 18, McWilliams decided to head out West. Along the way, his “$50 car died in the middle of nowhere” in Kansas.
Faced with a dead battery, McWilliams didn’t know what to do, when all of the sudden a woman driving along stopped and asked if he needed help.
The woman drove McWilliams 40 miles to the nearest town, where he recharged his battery, then drove him back to his car.
McWilliams offered to pay her for her kindness, but she wouldn’t accept money. She told him the best way to repay her was to help a stranger in need someday, just as she had helped him.