I was racketing around in an old red Datsun, its front end sounding like a death rattle, when suddenly, the noise stopped. Along with the engine. Returning home from downtown Houston, from my grueling job as a sales assistant for a tyrannical female stockbroker, it was one of those oppressively hot afternoons I’d never gotten used to as a transplanted New Yorker.

Cars honked aggressively behind me as I tried to think in the unbearable heat. I had stalled out on a main thoroughfare, one that turned into a virtual parking lot during morning and evening rush hours - blocks of time that seemed to be expanding by the week as more and more young hopefuls moved to this former cow town.

The cows were gone but in their place was terrain the likes I’d never seen. Strip clubs and shopping centers, billboards and housing developments side by side in textbook urban sprawl. In 1980 Houston was intent on de-greening what little greenery was left. Backhoes spooned out what remained of nature’s leafy lungs as block by block the city was paved, framed and sheetrocked. It was on one of these indistinguishable stretches of road that my car had given up the ghost. Unrelenting sunshine bounced off impervious surfaces straight into the Datsun’s black interior cooking me like a lobster in a slowly heating pot of water.

Irate motorists gave me the finger as they snaked around my impotent car but there was nothing I could do. Back then, cell phones were still in development and my little rattletrap didn’t even have air conditioning, let alone a bulky car phone. I let the engine rest, then turned the ignition key to a sickening "click, click, click."

There had been a rash of murders in Houston during the prior months - women driving alone taken from their cars in remote areas, tied to trees, raped and strangled. I wasn’t so concerned about my safety, though, in the light of day with cars behind, in front and beside me snugging together like anxious office workers in a high-rise elevator. But I did feel trapped; by the wet heat, the anger, and my complete ignorance of what to do next.

I must have sat paralyzed for a half hour or so, one hopeless idea after another boggling my brain when I noticed that a pick-up had stopped right behind my car. As I looked in my rear view mirror, I saw a scruffy man with long matted hair, beard, and untucked plaid flannel shirt get out of his truck and walk towards me. He stopped and tapped on the window. I was reluctant to open it - given that he seemed to be the type to take single women out of their cars, rape them and tie them to trees. But something - the sunshine, my pitiful situation, and lots of potential witnesses - drove me to crank the window down a few inches.

"You stuck?’ he asked.

I resisted the obvious sarcastic retort, "No. I just decided to take this time to stop in 115 degree heat without air conditioning on a main transportation artery, incurring the wrath of hundreds of motorists, just so I could clear my head." Instead, I practically broke down in tears.

"My car died," I whimpered.

"Let’s see what I can do," he offered, asking me to pop the front hood so he could take a look.

He fiddled around with some valves and hoses, tightened up a few bolts then grunted out a sound that might have been frustration or satisfaction.

"Try her again," he said.

I turned the ignition, and it caught this time - the motor purring sweetly in my ears.

I thanked the Good Samaritan offering the few dollars I kept in my wallet, and he waved it away.

"No thanks," he said, looking deeply, and a bit disconcertingly, into my eyes. "G-d told me to stop and help you."

With that, he turned, got back into his truck and drove away.

Later, while recounting the story to friends, we had a good laugh about Bible Belt kooks whose every movement must be guided by a sign or vision sent by the Almighty. "Yeah - and then he said, ‘G-d sent me,’" I said, eliciting guffaws, "and I’m thinking ‘ G-d, Triple A, I don’t care who sent you, man, as long as you can get me out of here." It was a hoot - all this divine sign on earth stuff - at least to a know-it-all like me.

But the longer I though about it, the more I realized that this guy never asked if I were a believing Christian. He never proselytized to me. He didn’t implore me to go to the local Bible Thumping Church down the road to save my soul. He simply stopped to help another human in need without asking anything in return; a clear act of common decency. So, really, who was I to question divine intervention? Though The Good Lord could have pointed my savior in the direction of a shower and razor first.