SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
Time now for "My Unsung Hero," our series with the team at the Hidden Brain podcast, stories of people whose kindness left a lasting impression. Today's story comes from Reed Norwood. When Norwood was 16, he and his dad took a hunting trip to South Dakota. On their way back home to Denver, Norwood offered to drive. He wanted to give his dad a chance to rest. But it was already evening, and as they drove down the interstate, Norwood fell asleep at the wheel.
REED NORWOOD: I woke up to my dad grabbing the steering wheel, trying to prevent us from leaving the roadway. I grabbed the steering wheel myself and then just began to overcorrect and swerve back and forth across the lanes of the highway, not recognizing - due to my own inexperience - that the cruise control was set, and the truck was trying to accelerate to maintain 70 miles an hour. I finally lost control, and we left the right side of the roadway and started down a hillside. The F-150 rolled about four and a half times.
The truck came to rest on its top out in a farmer's field, and I was completely pinned - my neck broken, arm out the window and crushed underneath the top of the truck. My dad was able to climb out an opening that, still to this day, I can't believe he even fit through. I could still hear his voice, panicked, as a fire had now started in the engine compartment of the truck. I went through the stages of dying really quickly that night. I initially hollered to have him get me out, knowing that I couldn't move. And then as the smoke came into the truck, I kind of became calm, realizing that this is where my journey ends.
And just about that time, as the smoke was overtaking me, and I could feel the heat from the fire lapping into the cab of the truck, an over-the-road trucker came down with two 20-pound fire extinguishers and kept that fire from reaching me. Without him, I surely would have died. My dad would have watched his son perish in a fire on the side of a highway. A state trooper pulled up, and that trucker looked at my dad and he said, hey, there's still some left in this one. Hit it if it flares back up. I got to get going. And just calmly walked back up to his truck, and we never saw him again.
My life completely changed after that night. It took firefighters about an hour to cut me out of the wreckage. I spent months rehabbing my broken neck and crushed arm. But what it also did was changed the trajectory of my life.
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NORWOOD: I'm now a fire captain at West Metro Fire Rescue in Lakewood, Colorado. I'm in my 23rd year, and I'm serving the community just like those firefighters out of Brule and Ogallala, Nebraska did that night. I always think back, though, to that trucker, and I wish I could have shaken his hand, given him a hug and thanked him. Thank you for saving my life that night and for letting me continue to write the stories of my life.
DETROW: Reed Norwood lives in Colorado. You can find more stories of unsung heroes at hiddenbrain.org.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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