Rich Difronzo isn’t just a heavy-duty driver, he’s a true “Highway Angel.” Strange as it may seem, however, the man owes his title not to four wheels, but rather to four legs: those of the dog Roxy-Lynn.
A few months ago, Difronzo, Fonzi for friends, originally from Dallas in Pennsylvania (United States of America), was driving on the highways of New Jersey when he stopped at a truck stop. There, tied to a tree, was an abandoned and emaciated puppy dog. “I asked around and inside the service station if the dog belonged to someone, but no one answered,” said the driver. They told me that over the weekend they had seen a boy trying to sell the dog and that they didn’t know that the animal had been tied to a tree all that time: it was a Thursday and, if indeed the puppy had been there since the previous Saturday, it meant that he had spent five or six days in that state. So, I fed her some cheeseburgers.”
The four-legged was agitated, but did not resist and let himself be saved by Fonzi: «I stayed in the rest area for a while – continued the truck driver-. Then, when I saw that no one seemed to know anything about the dog, I cut the tether that tied it to the tree and took the puppy away. He sat with me in the truck all week before we got home to Pennsylvania and he couldn’t stop eating hamburgers: he was starving.”
The veterinary visit to which the dog, renamed Roxy-Lynn, underwent once at home with Difronzo confirmed her critical health conditions: she was malnourished and needed various antibiotic treatments. Her savior was not deterred and spent over $500 to heal her back on her feet. For three months he took care of her and, at the end of October, he found her a new family in Kentucky, with a friend of hers.
Now, Fonzi’s selfless gesture has been rewarded with symbolic recognition from the company he works for and from the Truckload Carriers Association (TCA), the association of workers in the trucking sector in North America. Thus, Rich Difronzo is a “Highway Angel”, and to testify there is a sticker affixed in plain sight on his truck. “I would repeat everything tomorrow- said the savior of the abandoned puppy-. I love animals and I don’t understand how anyone can do what Roxy-Lynn went through.”
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