An ordinary trip from Bedok back to his home in Yishun took an unexpected turn for Nora Rashidi’s father when the elderly man collapsed within moments of boarding a Grab driver’s car.
Nora, who was at work at the time, had made a booking on the Grab app on his behalf.
In a Facebook post published yesterday, Nora shared harrowing details of how her father had suffered a heart attack almost immediately after boarding the Grabcar on March 8.
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Acting quickly, the driver, identified as Moola Imran Yacoob in a screencap that Nora posted, picked up her father’s phone and called the last phone number that he had dialled – Nora’s.
Speaking to The Pride, Nora recalls: “I was panicking when the driver told me that my dad was not responding to him.”
She asked Moola to return to where he had picked her father up, and told her uncle, who was nearby, to rush there to meet them. As Nora and her uncle spoke on the phone about calling an ambulance, Moola suggested that it would be faster if he drove them to the nearest hospital right away.
“It would have been easy for him to move on to other passengers, but out of his own goodwill, he decided to help my dad and drive him to the hospital instead.”
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Enroute to Changi General Hospital, Nora’s father threw up in the car. Her uncle offered Moola $50 to clean up the mess, only to be turned down.
Describing his kind gesture, Nora says: “We offered him money, but he declined and said that it was for God’s faith. There are not many people who are like that anymore nowadays, so my dad was especially touched by what he did.”
Nora’s father eventually recovered from that episode. However, he fell ill again shortly after that and passed away two weeks later. Before his passing, the elderly man hoped fervently for a chance to thank the driver who had come to his rescue, and asked his daughter several times if she had managed to contact him.
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As the Grab app does not allow direct contact between drivers and passengers, Nora turned to Facebook to honour her late father’s wish and share about Moola’s compassionate deed.
In a happy turn, Moola’s daughter reached out to Nora after seeing her post, and the latter was able to express her gratitude.
Looking back on the incident, Nora says: “It made me think, that there are still kind people around. It’s not always easy to meet one, and I’d like to think that he was an angel sent by God to help my dad in his time of need.”