‘God Puts People in Our Path': Minnesota Homeless Man Gets Help From Strangers

A homeless man in Minnesota may have died in the cold were it not for the kindness of strangers.

Mary Altendorfer Dinger saw the man lying on the pavement along Highway 169, she told NBC Chicago. She immediately pulled over and helped the man.

“I thought ‘oh my god that’s a person’," Dinger said. “I don’t think I thought anything. It was instinct. It was shocking to see a person lying there.”

Other drivers pulled over and called 911. Dinger stayed with the man in the back of another person’s car while authorities arrived. The man, who said his name was Adam, may have died without their help, police said.

“He was obviously very cold and tired,” Dinger said.

Adam, who was around 40 years old, had been living in Grand Rapids with a friend, Dinger told Minneapolis Star Tribune‎. But he had a disagreement with his friend and had been walking to Minneapolis to find a place.

Trooper Glen Bihler and ambulance attendants determined Adam didn’t have frostbite or a medical condition, police said on Facebook. However, Bihler took the man to a fast-food restaurant and bought him dinner.

The local Salvation Army wasn’t able to provide evening shelter for Adam so Bihler arranged for him to spend the night in the heated lobby of the local sheriff’s department, police said.

Dinger, who founded a ministry called Sowing Seeds for God, said the event was divine intervention.

“I have a faith that God puts people in our path and vice versa,” Dinger said. “I wasn’t afraid of [Adam] because it was divine assignment. It took a team of people to help him I was just the first person to come upon him.”

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A homeless man who may have died Monday evening as temperatures and wind chills dipped to dangerous levels instead had a...

Posted by Minnesota State Patrol on Wednesday, 20 January 2016
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