When Rubin Smith flew to Phoenix, Arizona, with plans to bring his newborn daughter back to his home in Cleveland, Ohio, he didn’t know what he would do when the airline refused to let his daughter board the flight. It was a hospital volunteer who stepped in to rescue the stranded man and his baby girl.

Smith had left Ohio and headed for Arizona when he was granted custody of his four-day-old daughter Ru-Andria. Smith had all the paperwork that Frontier Airlines said he would need. He had papers documenting his custody of the baby, and proof that she had been released to him by the hospital. But the airline wouldn’t let him board.

The ticketing agent at Sky Harbor International Airport told Smith that the policy of the airport was that babies had to be a minimum of seven days old to be able to fly. With no friends or family nearby to help him, the newborn dad didn’t know what to do. Then he remembered a volunteer he’d met at the hospital.

A volunteer at Banner University Medical Center, Joy Ringhofer met Smith when he came to the hospital to meet his new baby girl. Ringhofer had been rocking Ru-Andria and her and Smith had a short, but immediate connection. Smith wasn’t sure who else to call, so he called Ringhofer and told her his predicament.

She told him she’d be right there and that she was taking him home. His first thought was that Ringhofer planned to drive him all the way back to Cleveland. Boy was he in for a surprise. Ringhofer picked up the son and daughter and took them back to her comfortable home.

At her home, Ringhofer welcomed the two as if they were her own. She cuddled, fed, and changed Ru-Andria, and prepared meals and a comfortable place to stay for Smith. He couldn’t have been more grateful for the woman’s actions.

Although Smith and his daughter were able to jump on a plane back to Cleveland a few days later, he says he will always have a place in his heart for Ringhofer. As for the elderly woman who welcomed them into her home, she says she’ll miss them both when they’re gone.