Danielle Baker is hoping you can help her solve a mystery.
It’s been nine years since Baker suffered a traumatic crash just two days into a solo North Vancouver to Canmore cycling tour.
The Squamish, B.C. resident is convinced she would have died that day, were it not for the intervention of three people: two Good Samaritans and a plainclothes police officer.
The problem is she still doesn’t know who they are.
“The idea of actually finding them was always such a needle in a haystack that I didn’t even consider it,” Baker told Global News.
“I don’t remember accents and I don’t remember a language barrier, but I don’t have any other details, unfortunately. It’s quite fuzzy when I try and picture their faces.”
Baker was riding along the Coquihalla Highway on July 22, 2011, and had just completed the notorious Coquihalla Summit when she lost control of her bike on a downhill stretch.
The accident, near the first Merritt exit, sent her flying head-first into the pavement.
“I remember thinking in the moment, wow this is really going to suck, and that’s … the only memory I have,” she said. “But it’s so clear.”
When Baker came to, she was surrounded by three strangers.
She believes that a man and woman had arrived on scene first and saw her lying unconscious in the middle of the road.
Baker says if they hadn’t gotten her out of the lane, she thinks she would have been crushed by a truck.
Even so, the crash left her with a long recovery. Baker suffered a brain bleed, a broken collarbone and broken ribs.
In the years since she has found the paramedic who attended, but the other three people remain unknown.
She said she hopes if she could find the police officer, he could help connect her with the couple.
“I’m actually hopeful that the right person might see this, that I might actually get to tell these people that that hour of their life gave me nine more years of incredible existence,” she said.
“I really don’t believe I would be here today if it wasn’t for them.”