RANDOM ACTS OF KINDNESS: LOCAL HERO SAVES THE DAY FOR ST. CHARLES CONCERGOERS

What is a hero?

For Patty Ernst and her daughter from St. Charles, Mo., a hero is Justin Newberry of Cape Girardeau.

In early April, Ernst and her daughter made the trip to Cape Girardeau to attend the Bush and Moby concert at the Show Me Center. It was part of the spring MTV Campus Invasion Tour.

"We had been fortunate enough to get front row seats and had been eagerly awaiting the concert for a month," she said. "Unfortunately, at 5:30 p.m. about 10 miles outside of town on Highway 55 my car decided not to attend with us!"

The mother and daughter sat on the shoulder of the road, "leaking buckets of who-knows-what," when a young man stopped on the service road and asked if they needed assistance, said Ernst.

Newberry stayed with the pair for more than an hour while they waited for a tow truck. "He then drove us to the concert even though he knew it would mean he would be late for church," she said.

After the concert, he came back to pick them up and drove them to the dealership to make sure their car had made it there. He then helped them find a hotel for the night.

"What started out as a fun adventure could have turned into a terrible nightmare, had it not been for Justin," said Ernst. "To be stranded in a strange town 135 miles from home is a scary prospect. Meeting Justin changed all that. He made sure that our once-in-a-lifetime front row concert became a reality instead of a dream."

Newberry, a sales rep for Rapco for the last two years, is rather embarrassed by Ernst's kind words. The 24-year-old said it was really fate that brought them together that day.

Originally, he was going to ride his motorcycle to work that day, but changed his mind at the last minute. Typically, he leaves work at 5, but stayed late on a phone call with one of his customers for a half hour.

When he was leaving at 5:30, he noted the car stalled at the side of the highway and the two women standing beside it.

"I stopped since they were alone," he said.

A musician himself, Newberry could appreciate the pairs' desire to get to the concert.

Ernst feels it is once in a great while that you come upon someone whose unselfish deeds truly save the day.

"I know this may not be on par with saving a child from a burning building, but this front row, once-in-a-lifetime concert meant everything to my daughter and me," said Ernst. "All of my co-workers and my daughter's friends think of him as a hero."

Newberry has been in touch with the mother and daughter since his kind act through e-mail.

"I think we're friends for life," he said. "They want me to come up to St. Charles and introduce me to everyone."

Newberry doesn't of his efforts as "any big deal."

"I would have felt much worse if I just left them," he said. "I couldn't let them miss front row seats with their favorite band."

Newberry, a native of Cape Girardeau, says you hear so many stories of people not being kind. "We should do what we can to help others," he said.

Ernst also had kind words to say about Angie Seyer at Coad Chevrolet for rushing the diagnostics on her car, and Gina Michelin at Drury Lodge, who drove them around town and helped arrange for the rental car to get back home.

"Cape Girardeau can be very proud of its citizens," she said.