On a crisp autumn afternoon along Route 27 near Ashford, vehicles hummed along their usual paths until a five-year-old girl in a shimmering fairy-tale dress cried out for her mother to halt the car.
Her name was Sophie Maren, a small child with wild blonde curls, glowing sneakers, and a fierce determination that seemed to overflow her tiny body. From the backseat, she strained against her seatbelt, her voice breaking with urgency as she pleaded that “the motorcycle man” was dying below the ridge.
Her mother, Helen, initially assumed Sophie was weary from a long day at kindergarten. No signs of a crash—no flames, no debris—gave any hint of trouble. Yet Sophie wrestled with her buckle, sobbing about “the man in the leather jacket with a beard” who was bleeding. Hesitant but concerned, Helen eased the car onto the shoulder to soothe her daughter.
Before the vehicle came to a full stop, Sophie flung open the door, her dress fluttering as she raced toward the grassy embankment. Helen chased after her—and stopped dead in her tracks.
Forty feet below, sprawled next to a mangled black Harley, lay a man as large as a bear. His worn vest displayed a faded patch, his chest glistened with blood, and his breathing came in shallow, labored gasps.
Sophie didn’t falter. She slid down the slope on her knees, yanked off her cardigan, and pressed her small hands firmly against the man’s deepest wound.
“Stay with me,” she whispered to him, as if they’d been lifelong friends. “I’m staying right here. They said you need twenty minutes.”
Helen, trembling, fumbled for her phone to call emergency services. She kept stealing glances at her daughter, stunned by the calm authority in Sophie’s voice as she tilted the man’s head to clear his airway and maintained steady pressure on his chest with uncanny precision.
“How do you know this?” Helen asked, her voice shaky.
