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“I did it because it’s the human thing to do,” Nassar said of taking the time to help. “I don’t think it’s right if I take money for something any person should be doing. I didn’t do anything extraordinary.”

Chemello’s wife Sandy disagreed. “You are his guardian angel.”

Sandy said her husband had a massive stroke. She called an ambulance and her husband couldn’t see, talk or walk at the time. Doctors told her the clot-busting medication that helps patients recover better from a stroke can only be administered in the hours after a stroke so it’s good he was discovered. Nassar waited for the ambulance, refused to take any money and called the next day to see how her husband was doing.

“Had he just maybe left him over there, Dan wouldn’t be alive.”

Dan, who is almost back to his old self, had been at the Caboto Club playing bocce ball the night of Dec. 27. His wife was starting to get worried when he had still not returned home after 11 p.m.

Dan remembers getting lost by the Ambassador Bridge. He said he was stopping at every stop sign looking for a street he recognized.

Nassar, who has been a cab driver for more than 27 years, said he honked his horn around College Avenue and Brock Street at the car ahead of him that had been stopped at the intersection for a bit. He was on his way to pick up a passenger. The driver came to the cab and asked for directions. When the man returned to his car and just sat in the back seat, Nassar figured the man had dementia as his own father does. So he parked the stranger’s car and offered to give him a ride. Nassar said he didn’t know it was a medical emergency and proceeded to pick up a passenger with the customer’s okay in the west end before heading to LaSalle.