Despite broken bones, she scaled an icy cliff to save two children from a car wreck
The old Ford LTD was alive with children's chatter on Jan. 2, cruising through the Rockies north of Durango, Colo. In the passenger seat 16-year-old Roxanna Vega cradled her new pit bull puppy as she rode with her aunt Alison Phillips, 27, and Phillips's children—Carlos, 8, Christopher, 5, and Kayla, 3—on the way to visit a friend in the town of Ignacio. At 6 p.m. the kids were listening to Britney Spears on the radio. Moments later, police say, Phillips—who had stopped taking medication for bipolar disorder—deliberately drove off a cliff.
The Ford plunged 160 feet, then bounced end over end and landed on its wheels. Thrown from the car, Vega found herself in a snow-bank beside a sobbing Christopher. "My back, my ankle and my arm were hurting way bad," she says. In fact she'd broken bones in all three places. Phillips and the puppy lay dead nearby. Vega climbed back inside the car with Christopher, who had only minor injuries. Carlos was pinned under the steering wheel, his jaw broken, and Kayla lay on the floor, unconscious. Vega huddled under a blanket with the kids for 12 hours, comforting them in the subfreezing dark.
At daybreak, Vega heard trucks passing on the highway above. Her one thought was "I need to go get help. There is no one else who can go." Fighting frostbite and agonizing pain, she began climbing the icy mountainside, clawing upward with her uninjured right hand. At times, rocks gave way, causing her to slip back. Finally she reached the top and tried to flag down cars.
Dan and Susan Bentley, 46-year-old Texans on a ski trip, pulled over. "Just help my cousins," Vega said, collapsing into their SUV. Dan, an Amarillo dentist, made his way down to the car and spoke to Carlos. But Kayla had been dead for hours. Rescuers used ropes to negotiate the cliff Roxanna had climbed alone. If she hadn't, says Mineral County sheriff Phil Leggitt, "they all would have died."
A high school junior, Vega has recovered from her injuries but grieves for Kayla and Phillips. "I know in time I can get on with my life," she says, "by holding on to my memories."
RYAN LANE
On a Kansas highway, he pulled trapped motorists out of a deadly flood
Heading home from Wichita to Lawrence, Kans., on Aug. 30, Ryan Lane was slogging through heavy rains on the Kansas Turnpike. As he neared Emporia just before 9 p.m., the downpour turned blinding and traffic halted. This was no ordinary jam: Jacobs Creek had flooded, overflowing into the northbound lane. Channeled by the highway's concrete medians, the deluge turned into raging rapids. Drivers who called the highway patrol on their cell phones were advised to stay put and wait. It was a dangerous strategy, as Lane learned when his Cougar started filling with water. "When it got up to my butt," he says, "I thought I'd better get out." Lane, 24, a hotel desk clerk, climbed out through the sunroof and landed waist-deep in the torrent. Other cars were already beginning to float away.
Lane could have escaped to the safety of the southbound side. Instead he stayed to help other people out of their cars and over the barrier, starting with seven-months-pregnant Kim Riddle, 32, husband Scott and 2-year-old son James. "My husband had our son, and there was no way I was going to make it over that median alone," says a grateful Riddle. Pitching in with Lane was Al Larsen, 31, a financial analyst between jobs, who was en route from his home in Fort Worth to visit his father in Iowa. The two went from car to car, banging on doors, screaming at each other, "Help here!" "Go over there!" Knocked flat by a wall of water, Lane bounced back and came to the aid of two teenage girls and William Gorman, 45, of Wichita.
When it was over, six people were dead: a 33-year-old mother, her four children—and Larsen. Lane had lost him in the chaos; three days later his body was found in a pond two miles away. Lane knows he was lucky to survive and to pass a crucial test. "Nobody's sure what they'd do in a life-and-death situation," he says. "Now I know."
SHAUN & EUNICE MEYERS
The train was coming. They saved Hilda Wittkamp with seconds to spare
"Imagine this," says Eunice Meyers. "You're sitting at a stoplight and all of a sudden you watch a car just fly over an embankment." Meyers and her husband, Shaun, don't have to pretend. The scene played out in front of them on Jan. 25 in Beltsville, Md., as they drove to pick up sodas and snacks for a Super Bowl party. Worse yet, the Lincoln Town Car landed on a railroad track. Eunice, 37, called 911 while Shaun, 42, rushed to the mangled car and pried open the passenger door. Beside the driver, Bernard Wittkamp, 82, sat his wife, Hilda, also 82. "She told me she thought she'd broken her arms and legs and asked me not to leave her," Shaun recalls. "I held her hand and tried to keep her mind off everything until the paramedics came."
A fine plan—until he heard someone shout, "The train is coming!" Bernard Wittkamp made it up the 6-ft. embankment with the help of two passersby. But Hilda, who had a habit of wrapping her seat belt around her left arm and hand, was badly tangled. "I could hear everyone screaming 'Get out,' but what could I do?" says Shaun, a construction firm owner whose wife is a consultant. "I wasn't going to leave her." Refusing to look at the approaching train (though he could feel the vibrations), he worked methodically to free Hilda—and pulled her from the Lincoln seconds before the locomotive demolished the car.
"It's a miracle that we're here," says Hilda, who is still recovering from a cracked heel and fractured shoulder. Adds her husband: "Shaun and the others were angels."
SAM MORALES
A young boxer battles a fire for five lives
At 8:30 p.m. on Feb. 18, Sam Morales was alone at the Rice Street Gym in St. Paul. Then 16, he was jumping rope, intent on becoming an Olympic boxer. An acrid smell drew him to the stairway, where smoke was cascading down from the second-floor apartment.
Morales dashed up the steps and broke down the door. Charging through the blaze (caused by faulty wiring), he found Toni Johnson, 46, and her four grandkids. He grabbed Iyanna, 3, and ran downstairs. Then he returned to snatch Otis, 1, and lead Anthony, 9, Gabriella, 7, and Toni—hobbled by fibromyalgia, a joint and muscle condition—to safety. "I guess it was dangerous," says Morales, 17, a high school senior, "but I was the only one there."
The young fighter lives with his trainer John Johnson (his parents are in his native Mexico). Ironically, Morales had no idea that the woman he saved, who had just moved in, was Johnson's sister. "He's the best kid I've ever had," the trainer says. "The first to show up and the last to leave."
JONATHAN GRISWOLD & CLAY GHEZA
Two high schoolers tackled a classmate with a gun
Jonathan Griswold was looking for an easy laugh. After handing his English essay to teacher Carolyn Swanson on Jan. 17, Griswold, then a sophomore at rural Arroyo Grande (Calif.) High and the class clown, feigned a stumble. Classmates erupted on cue. Then a raspy voice pierced the din: "Shut up, everyone!" Suddenly a student known for his moody silences (authorities have withheld his name because of his age) was standing before the class waving a 9-mm handgun. "I was so scared, I was going to throw up," says Griswold, 17. "I wanted to do something, but I didn't know what."
The gunman unleashed an agitated monologue: His mother hated him. His father had died. He was tired of life. His friend Shawn Field tried to calm him. "I said, 'This is not worth it,'" says Field, 16. "'Put the gun down and get on with your life.'" As Field spoke, special ed teacher Sue Englund slipped out the back door with some kids. To distract the gunman further, Clay Gheza dashed across the room. "I saw him point the gun at me," says Gheza, 16. "I was like, 'Oh, s—-.'"
Given an opening, Griswold grabbed the gunman's arm and pushed him down on a table. Gheza rushed to his pal's aid as screams filled the air. The boys wrestled until burly administrator Floyd Weber burst in and wrenched loose the weapon. Admitting to assault and firearms possession, the gunman was sent to boot camp. "Every day I relive it," Griswold says of those harrowing 12 minutes. "I watch the quiet kids now."
CEDERIC REDUS, LATORIS SHEPHERD & MICHAEL TRAVIS
Three buddies save an injured driver from a blazing gasoline tanker
The moment the gasoline tanker flipped over and caught fire, Cederic Redus and his two buddies had the same terrible thought: The driver had died instantly. That didn't stop Redus and pals Latoris Shepherd and Michael Travis—all 20 and driving home from a pickup basketball game on Sept. 16—from charging toward the spreading inferno toward Joel Puz, who had lost control after another truck cut him off on Interstate 75 in Detroit.
In fact, Puz, 34, was alive but unconscious; he'd collapsed after crawling a few feet from his rig, which was loaded with 13,400 gallons of fuel. "We knew it was going to blow, so we had to hurry up," Redus says. "One of us grabbed one arm, one grabbed another arm, and the other took his legs." The men hauled Puz up a 40-ft. embankment, reaching safety an instant before the truck exploded. At a nearby gas station they made him a pillow out of their rolled-up T-shirts and called an ambulance. An onlooker phoned Puz's wife, Wendy, 34. "I had just talked to my husband," she says. "I thought the call was a practical joke."
Puz's injuries—including third-degree burns to his right leg and a broken kneecap—were nothing to laugh at. But as he recuperates at home in Dearborn Heights, Mich., he's cheered by regular visits from his rescuers, who have been best friends since high school. "I found three long-lost brothers," Puz says. "Now I want to catch up on their lives."
BY RICHARD JEROME and BOB MEADOWS
Angela Isidro Bresnahan in Washington, D.C., Carolyn Campbell in Salt Lake City, Lauren Comander in Chicago, Pam Grout in Kansas and John Hannah in Arroyo Grande
- Contributors:
- Angela Isidro Bresnahan,
- Carolyn Campbell,
- Lauren Comander,
- Pam Grout,
- John Hannah.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
