Heart of Gold: Black Woman Saves Mentally Disabled Man Trapped In a Blizzard

A faint knock at the door was a cry for help, and a tragic memory ignited a spark to respond.

After remembering an incident where she found her brother crawling to her doorstep after being shot almost four years ago, a courageous woman helped save a man who was trapped in a blizzard outside her Buffalo home.

According to New York Post, after Sha’Kyra Aughtry, 35, responded to the unexpected knock at her front door, she opened her home up to a 64-year-old, mentally disabled theater worker Joey White, who was suffering from severe frostbite.

“She was like, ‘You know, that’s like the equivalent to our brother passing away’ — she can’t have that happen again,’’ Sha’Kyra’s sister Angela Aughtry, 32, said comparing the incident with White to the death of their brother Darryal Aughtry, 30.

“We both started crying,’’ Angela shared.

“[Sha’Kyra] said everything got replayed. … How she heard [White] crying outside the door and she couldn’t leave him out there because the same thing happened to our brother,” she added.

“She said if Joey was left out there any longer, he could have froze to death,’’ Angela said.

“Her heart is so big,” she said about her sister whose gesture has gone viral since the incident last week.

Sha’Kyra had to assure her three young children, who are around age 12 and under, that the man in their home was not going to die like their uncle.

“The kids were asking, ‘Is [White] gonna die like Uncle Darryal?’ They just started crying,’’ Angela said.

“No, he’s not going to die like Uncle Darryal,” Sha’Kyra told the kids.

Calling Sha’Kyra a “true angel in Buffalo,’’ Kimberly LaRussa, a blogger who writes stories about Buffalo, posted photos and tweets about the incident on Facebook, with a caption that read, “TRUE ANGEL IN BUFFALO. A local woman received a call on Christmas Eve, ‘Hi, you don’t know me but I have your brother.’”

According to LaRussa’s post, Sha’Kyra found White “so frozen they had to cut his socks off, use a hairdryer to dry his pants that were frozen to his legs, and cut the straps of a Wegmans bag from his hands.”

LaRussa said White suffered fourth-degree frostbite, the worst stage of frostbite, according to the Mayo Clinic, and was at a local hospital getting treatment.