Richard Hayes got an unexpected call from Whakātane Hospital on Friday asking him to pick up his father-in-law. There was just one problem – the patient wasn’t his father-in-law.
The hospital called the wrong Richard Hayes. Rather than leave 86-year-old Norman Camburn stranded, Hayes offered to drive the stranger home himself.
The hospital explained they couldn’t get hold of Camburn’s wife so they had tried his son-in-law, who had the same name.
“I said, well, he lives in Whakatane,” Hayes told Stuff. “It’s hardly a bustling metropolis. I can come and pick him up.”
Hayes met Camburn outside the hospital.
“He was looking at me going ‘Oh, I think I recognise you’, and I said ‘Well no you don’t because I’ve never seen you before in my life’.”
Hayes dropped him off at his place, where he got a confused look from Camburn’s wife in the driveway.
Camburn insisted on a payment or a gift but Hayes refused. It was just a 15-minute trip, he said: “Everywhere’s 15 minutes in Whakatane. It actually took me longer to get him in the car than to drive there.”
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Hayes, who is retired, said it was nothing. “We’ll just call it my good deed for the day.”
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