A cancer patient called Southwest Airlines in a panic. Here’s what happened next

A Southwest Airlines employee literally went the extra mile to get a distraught cancer patient her missing luggage which contained items and medicine for a chemotherapy session the next day.

Stacy Hurt of Pittsburgh, who has stage 4 colon cancer, called Southwest customer service agent Sarah Rowan in a panic when her luggage didn’t arrive with her on a flight to Pittsburgh from Nashville.

“I immediately panicked, because I had chemotherapy the next day,” she told KDKA-TV in Pittsburgh, “and I knew that I had a lot of items in the suitcase that I needed and wanted for chemotherapy. I just started getting very emotional and I started to cry.”

She said Rowan picked up on her desperation and told her: “I’ll find the luggage for you. I’ll get it to you, we’ll get it to you somehow, some way.”

Hurt had taken an earlier flight out of Nashville and the later, original flight she booked had a maintenance issue so her luggage had had to be rerouted, she said in a Facebook post.

It was well after midnight when Rowan tracked down the luggage, and the last courier for the night had left.

So she put the bag in her car and drove it to Hurt’s house at 3 a.m. She left it on her doorstep with a handwritten note on a piece of tissue apologizing for the delay, wishing her the best and encouraging her to “Kick that cancer’s BUTT!”

“When I read it I cried,” Hurt said in her post.

“I’ve had family members who have been ill, and I understand that in that situation things are already rough,” Rowan told KDKA.

She told Hurt in a phone call from the airport, “If I could have made your day a little bit better, I would have.”

Southwest Airlines picked up on Hurt’s post and it has since been shared 967 times.

This story was originally published August 10, 2017 at 2:57 PM with the headline "A cancer patient called Southwest Airlines in a panic. Here’s what happened next."