by Teresa Eubanks, Journal Editor
A craving for chocolate milk put Blountstown Fire Chief Ben Hall in the right place at the right time to help a missing woman find her way home Monday night.
Hall had just finished a run across the Trammell Bridge at 6:30 p.m. and was heading to an event at his church when he made what he thought was going to be a quick stop at the Southern Express at River Street and SR 20.
“I have been on a diet and I’m not supposed to have anything sweet,” he said. “But I had to stop and get a chocolate milk.”
He went in the store, grabbed the milk and started toward the counter.
“I rounded the corner and there was this lady standing there,” he said. She noticed the Blountstown Fire Dept. logo on his running shorts and asked, “Are you a firefighter?”
When he said yes, the distraught woman asked for his help.
“She broke down and said she’d been lost in the woods for days…I was very apprehensive about dealing with her at first,” he said.
“I just let her talk. She said she was from Tallahassee and needed help.”
He called the Blountstown Police Department who sent an officer to pick up the woman. After Hall gave the dispatcher the woman’s name, they learned that 36-year-old Melanie Diane Davison had been reported missing.
She told BPD Lt. Darryl Temple that she had fallen asleep in Destin and woke up in the woods across the street from the Southern Express. She said she had no idea how she had gotten to Blountstown.
After contact was made with the Tallahassee Police Department, Davison’s mother drove to Blountstown to take her home.
Hall said he had seen a report on WCTV about a missing woman who requires medication which had been left behind. According to WCTV, Davison had been seen in Blountstown on Sunday.