Good samaritans save Pitt alumnus on campus sidewalk

Armed with a bag full of research and change, 86-year-old Charlie Bardin left Pitt’s Law… Armed with a bag full of research and change, 86-year-old Charlie Bardin left Pitt’s Law Library on July 1 to return to his high-rise apartment on Bellefield Avenue. It was a rainy day with puddles forming on the roads and sidewalks.

Bardin had parked his car on Bouquet Street that day. Just before reaching his car, he slipped and fell to the ground, hitting his head on one of the grates placed around the trees planted in the sidewalks. The puddle that Bardin fell in turned red, and at that point he knew his head was bleeding.

Bardin lay there, dazed from the blow to his head, when a young man appeared and pulled him out of the puddle.

“If I had laid there for five more minutes I would have been dead,” Bardin said. “That’s how much blood was there.”

The man who saved Bardin happened to have a pair of medical gloves in his pocket, which he wore before applying a compress to Bardin’s head. The man also stabilized his head in case he had a neck injury.

Bardin suspects this man, was a student in the emergency medicine program because he “acted like he was in training for EMS” while dealing with the situation.

At the same time the young man iced Bardin’s head, someone else appeared with an umbrella to shield him and his rescuers from the rain. Another person found a blanket nearby and wrapped Bardin to keep him warm while someone else called 911.

And while the umbrella protected Bardin from the rain, a female helper noticed the bag full of research he had carried with him out of the library. The girl offered to put the bag into his car. Since Bardin still had his car keys in his pocket, he gave them to the girl, who then put his bag into the trunk.

“It was very nice of her,” Bardin said. “There was a sizable amount of money in the bag.”

When the ambulance arrived on scene, the people who assisted Bardin on the sidewalk also helped him into the ambulance. He was rushed to UPMC Presbyterian where he received 16 stitches in his forehead. After three or four hours at the hospital, he left with a concussion, stitches and a new.

“I was so soaking wet when I got there that they had to take off all my clothes,” Bardin said. “When I went home [my clothes] weren’t even close to dry so they had to give me a hospital uniform. I walked out just like the doctors there.”

Bardin, who still bears scars from his stitches, has tried — without success — to find the people who saved him.

“The rain was so bad that nobody would have stopped to take care of me,” Bardin said. “But they stopped and took care of me. This was a very admirable group of young men and women.”

Bardin, born and raised in Pittsburgh, graduated from Pitt in 1941. He was once an army man, a pharmacist and an entrepreneur. He owned six local businesses, two of which were pharmacies, for 46 years on lower Fifth Avenue. Upon retirement, he sold all his real estate. He now lives with his wife, Regina, of 49 years.

Bardin would really like to thank those people who saved him on the first of July.

If you know anything about this day, please contact news@pittnews.com.