There's Lyft. There's Uber. There are taxis. Late on a Thursday night in January, Lisa Broer found a new kind of rideshare in western Illinois.
Broer was at Quad Cities International Airport in Moline, Illinois, amid a week of heavy fog across the Quad Cities of eastern Iowa and western Illinois. She was waiting on a standby list for a potential flight to Hawaii and had been there for almost eight hours when she threw in the towel, because flights out of the airport were grounded by fog in the area.
Tumbleson Transportation's "Pink Bus" was one of two vehicles used to get a group of senior citizens to Chicago in time for their flight to Hawaii.
She was retrieving her bags from the ticket counter when she saw a group of 22 senior citizens waiting around the checking area. One of them, a man with a cane, walked up to Broer and asked how to find an Uber.
After a short conversation, Broer learned a few things.
The group of seniors had been planning for more than a year for a trip to Hawaii, but their flight on United Airlines had been canceled, and if they didn't make it to Chicago by 9:30 the next morning, they'd be out over $6,000 each.
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"It broke my heart," she said. "Another lady came up to me with her husband and told me they'd be out $12,000. They'd saved a lifetime for this trip."
Broer began problem-solving, thinking of ways to get them to Chicago. She turned to Facebook, posting in the group "What's Going on Quad Cities" to crowd-source help.
"I'll put a couple bucks down on a party bus for them!" one commenter said.
"I know a shuttle!" another said.
By 8:30 p.m., word made its way to Michael Tumbleson, owner of the Kewanee-based Tumbleson Transportation company. The post piqued his interest.
Before he could finish reading the hundreds of comments, he got a call from the group asking for help.
"I called my driver immediately and said, 'Hey, I've got some people who've gotta go now,'" he said. "He immediately (threw) on his clothes and (was) ready to go."
With some help from friends, Tumbleson shoveled the company's neon pink bus out of the snow in their lot.
The driver, Charles Graves, made the trip to Quad Cities International Airport in the converted pink church bus to pick up all 22 passengers. When he got there, he realized they couldn't fit all 50 pieces of luggage.
So once again, they adapted, and Graves recruited his uncle to drive, too. An hour later, he arrived in a second passenger van, and the two made the overnight trek to Chicago together, making it back at 7 the next morning.
"(The drivers) did most of the heavy lifting," Tumbleson said. "But I got to pop on the bus and meet everybody, and it was kind of cool. They were smiling like they were 21-year-old kids."
A group with a planned trip to Hawaii was stranded at the Quad Cities International Airport. A Kewanee, Illinois-based transportation company picked them up to take them to Chicago at the last minute.
Tumbleson said his company often offers rides to those in a pinch — he started the business with some friends 25 years ago as a way to keep drunk drivers off the street — but he gave the crew of seniors a discounted price.
Neither Broer nor Tumbleson has heard about how the trip to the tropics has gone, but they did hear that the group made it onto their flight, at least.
The two good Samaritans have been overwhelmed by the positive feedback.
Tumbleson said he'd had to stop accepting message and tag requests on Facebook, because his page had been flooded with commenters.
Broer, who fittingly is involved with the Moline Optimist Club, said everyone deserved credit for making the trip happen. She was inspired by the number of messages she got that night with offers to help.
"I'm just happy that they got to go — that means the world to me more than anything," she said.
