Teen Went to Work Early Because He Couldn’t Sleep and Ended Up Saving a 76-Year-Old Woman’s Life

Johnson Thompson, 17, opens up to PEOPLE about helping Fannie Garner, who later learned she had suffered a brain bleed

NEED TO KNOW

• Johnson Thompson, 17, arrived to work at his parents’ workshop about 4:30 a.m. on June 30 because he had difficulty sleeping
• Arriving early put him in the right place to help Frannie Garner, who showed up across the street disoriented and in pain, later learning from doctors that she had suffered a brain bleed
• “He’s a guardian angel for sure,” Garner tells PEOPLE

About a week after a lawnmower accident, which landed him in the hospital with a concussion, an Alabama teen found himself unable to sleep through the night. So around 4:30 a.m. on June 30, he decided to just head into his parents’ workshop to start his day.

“I figured I might as well start working rather than laying in bed, not sleeping,” Johnson Thompson, 17, of Tuscumbia, tells PEOPLE.

As it turned out, arriving early put him in the right place to help Fannie Garner, a 76-year-old woman who showed up across the street disoriented and in pain.

After seeking medical attention, she learned she had suffered a brain bleed, which could have been fatal had it not been caught in time.

“He’s a guardian angel for sure,” says Garner, a resident of Cherokee.

To this day, Garner doesn’t remember getting in the car that morning, or even leaving the house.

The last thing she remembered? Having a bad headache.

Johnson says that he knew right away that something was wrong when he saw Garner pull up to a local business, which was of course still closed, then start tugging on the door.

“I asked her if I could help her with anything since it was so early,” he recalls. “She told me that she had a terrible headache and she was kind of disoriented. She didn’t really know where she was or anything.”

Then he says she asked him where the nearest emergency room was “because she was going to walk.”

“It was two or three miles down the road, so she wouldn’t have made it that far,” he says.

Even though Garner insisted she could in fact make it on her own, Johnson called 911, then brought her a chair so she could sit while they waited for the ambulance to arrive.

About five minutes later, EMS arrived to pick her up — and then it was back to work for Johnson.

At the hospital, Garner was told by doctors she had a small brain bleed that should clear up in a few days.

Wanting to thank the young man who helped her, Garner’s sister decided to track Johnson down, eventually getting his number and showing up to his place of work.

Although he initially had no idea what was going on when she showed up asking for him, it all became clear when she “told me how grateful she was,” he says.

Johnson says his parents didn’t initially believe him when he later told them what happened. “Normally I’m really shy and I don’t really call as much attention at all,” he says. “So I guess they were surprised that I went out there and talked to her.”

Days later, Johnson and his family met Garner at the local courthouse where her family presented the teen hero a lifesaving award.

“He was so sweet,” Garner says, noting that the teen started off by introducing himself, knowing that even though she knew who he was, she didn’t actually remember meeting him.

“He said, ‘I’m Johnson Thompson.’ And he gave me a hug and everything,” she says.

News of Johnson’s quickly deed spread in their small town. “Once it got out on the news, there were thousands of comments on Facebook and people messaging me,” he says. “It was a lot.”

Asked if he considers himself a hero, Johnson, who will be entering his senior year at high school this fall, shrugs it off and says he just hopes his story “might inspire other young teens to make the same decisions.”

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In the end, what came out of that fateful June 30 encounter is a special bond.

Garner’s family has been invited to join Johnson’s at their lake house and he hopes that they’ll also be able to attend his graduation in May.

“It’s crazy how it could have turned out if God wouldn’t have placed me there that morning. So I don’t think it was a coincidence at all. I think the Lord, he protected me during that lawnmower incident, so he used me to help Miss Garner,” Johnson says.

Adds Johnson, “I can’t thank him enough.”