In September 2018, Daryn Sturch was driving down State Road 19 near Denver, Indiana, with her young daughter, Bryanne, in the car when she came upon a wreck. As she told Good Morning America, several motorcycles had gone down, and the injuries were serious. Sturch, a nurse, parked far enough away that Bryanne wouldn’t see the worst of it, then ran toward the riders.
“I parked a ways away so my daughter wouldn’t see and I ran up. They had some severe injuries,” she told GMA.
According to ABC affiliate WRTV, five bikers were hurt in the crash: three men and two women. Sturch stayed with them, triaging and keeping them calm and conscious until paramedics arrived. All five survived.
The bikers, members of the Milwaukee Iron motorcycle group out of Kokomo, Indiana, didn’t forget her. Once they recovered, they tracked her down on Facebook. “I just got a flood of messages from them, thanking me,” Sturch said. The messages turned into a real friendship, and the nurse and the motorcycle club stayed in touch over the following year.
Which is how they found out about the lemonade stand. In September 2019, Sturch posted a photo of eight-year-old Bryanne running a lemonade stand outside their home. A few of the bikers mentioned they might swing by. Sturch figured maybe one or two would actually show up.
Thirty motorcycles came down her block.
The riders lined up one at a time at the folding table to buy lemonade from an eight-year-old who was, by her mother’s account, having the best day of her young business career.
“I had no idea how many there would be and they were so generous,” Sturch said. “She was charging $1, and I bet every one of them gave a $5 or $10 or $20. [Bryanne] was as happy as she could be.”
The reunion meant as much to the riders as it did to the family. Mary Henry, one of the bikers who walked away from the 2018 crash uninjured, told GMA the day landed harder than expected. “Seeing Daryn and her family, it turned out to be a great day,” Henry said. “It was meant to be that she was there to help that day.”
Sturch traded hugs with the riders as they came up the drive, including a long one with an injured biker known as Lumpy, whose recovery she had been following since the crash.
For Sturch, the part worth remembering wasn’t the money or the turnout. It was what the whole thing said about a group of people most strangers cross the street to avoid.
“It is important to me that people understand that good people are all around us,” she told reporters. “Just because someone doesn’t look or dress the way you do doesn’t mean they don’t have the same core values.”
A line of leather-jacketed bikers waiting their turn to buy a dollar’s worth of lemonade from a third-grader makes the case better than any lecture could.
