{"id":25806,"date":"2024-09-06T19:15:20","date_gmt":"2024-09-07T01:15:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cortez-girl-raven-jeffers-assists-rescue-of-elderly-neighbor\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T23:28:23","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T05:28:23","slug":"cortez-girl-raven-jeffers-assists-rescue-of-elderly-neighbor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cortez-girl-raven-jeffers-assists-rescue-of-elderly-neighbor\/","title":{"rendered":"Cortez girl Raven Jeffers assists rescue of elderly neighbor"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Raven
Raven Jeffers and Gloria Higman\u2019s dog, Baby. (Cameryn Cass\/The Journal)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

Last Wednesday, Raven Jeffers, 10, went to check on her neighbor Gloria Higman, 80, and her Yorkie puppy, Baby. When she entered the Cortez house, she found Higman unconscious on the floor.<\/p>\n

Higman was lying beside her chair. Her lips were purple; she had been there for at least seven hours, away from her oxygen. When paramedics came, they found that Higman\u2019s blood sugar level had dipped to a scant 20.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe walked in the house and the front door was wide open,\u201d said Dayna Straley, Raven\u2019s mother. \u201cGloria was laying sideways in front of her chair, not in good shape, not in good shape at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jeffers hurried home and got her mother. In the past, Higman had trouble getting out of her chair, so at first she didn\u2019t think much of it.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs soon as I walked in, I was like, oh no, we need 9-1-1,\u201d Straley said.<\/p>\n

As they waited for first responders to arrive, Jeffers comforted Higman.<\/p>\n

\u201cRaven sat beside her pretty much the whole time, rubbing her back, telling her \u2018It\u2019s going to be OK, I\u2019m right here with you, I\u2019ll stay here with you no matter what,\u2019\u201d Straley said.<\/p>\n

Higman said she doesn\u2019t remember a thing.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll I remember is after I got into the emergency room, just being on the bed in the emergency room. They told me I was really lucky she had come over to walk my dog and found me, because I could be dead now,\u201d Higman said.<\/p>\n

Higman is diabetic, but she had recently been to the doctor and passed the examination with flying colors. She didn\u2019t eat or drink anything out of the ordinary, either.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just unreal to me because I didn\u2019t feel sick, I didn\u2019t feel faint, I didn\u2019t feel nothing,\u201d said Higman. \u201cI could see it if I was sick, throwing up \u2013 any of that, but I wasn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m just so thankful she came down to see me. Otherwise, I really don\u2019t think I\u2019d be here.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s especially lucky because Jeffers had been grounded the past week after coming home past curfew.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe asked to go down there, and it was actually a day early, but I was like go ahead,\u201d said Straley. \u201cShe had real good behavior.\u201d<\/p>\n

And so she went down to see Higman, and that\u2019s when she found her on the floor.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf Raven wouldn\u2019t have reacted, Miss Gloria probably wouldn\u2019t be here with us no more,\u201d said Straley. \u201cShe\u2019s her little savior.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jeffers lives less than a block from Higman\u2019s house, and she started going over there to walk Baby and help around the house with chores, Straley said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI needed help emptying trash, doing the kitty litter, and she did all that,\u201d said Higman. \u201cAnd then I went to pay her, and she wouldn\u2019t take any money from me. She said no, because you\u2019re my friend.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat makes me very proud of her,\u201d Straley said with a smile.<\/p>\n

Higman was expected to be out of the hospital on Friday. Jeffers has watched Baby for more than a week during her recovery. Since there are other dogs at the house, she set up a tent in the backyard and camped with the Yorkie pup.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve worked out a little routine where Raven is sleeping in the yard, on an air mattress in the tent with Baby,\u201d said Straley. \u201cWith my Brindle, there\u2019d be no Baby left.\u201d<\/p>\n

Higman is excited to be back in the comfort of her home with Baby and her cat, Kitty.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to have a celebration at your house, everyone is going to be there,\u201d Jeffers said enthusiastically.<\/p>\n

And if Jeffers is ever grounded in the future, she\u2019s still going to go down and see Gloria, Straley said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s not going to be taken from her no more,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2018We\u2019re calling her the family hero\u2019 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25807,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-25806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25806"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25806\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79107,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25806\/revisions\/79107"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25806"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=25806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}