During 11 straight days of blizzard hunt-and-rescue, National Guard Master Sgt. John Schafer drove a woman on the verge of labor to paramedics; helped carry a 350-pound man in need of dialysis out of a home buried in snow; aided a starving pregnant cow by pulling out her stillborn calf, then feeding her; and plucked dozens of stranded passengers from their cars.
And that’s the story of just one of Colorado’s heroes.
There are hundreds of them. Jaded people who believe we live in a world of selfish sloths need to look no further than Schafer to restore their faith in people.
The two huge storms that walloped the state over the holidays brought out so many acts of extreme kindness, stories we may never hear. But I have a few to share.
Joe Bob Casper, a 60-year-old Colorado Department of Transportation road-maintenance worker from Springfield, was driving a snowplow on U.S. 287 south of his hometown last Saturday when he heard a dispatcher say they needed someone to bring a 2-year-old boy to a hospital. Along the way, he spotted a stranded car with two women and two young boys inside. When he finished transporting the 2-year-old, he came back to help those in the stranded car, which had just run out of gas.
The shivering women and boys squeezed into his snowplow, which has just two bucket seats. But about a mile from where he picked them up, his plow got stuck. They sat there for about 10 hours, sharing sips from a 2-liter bottle of water.
“You couldn’t step out of the car. It was that bad out,” Casper told me. “You couldn’t even see the hood ornament on the truck.”
But in his truck, with 80 gallons of diesel fuel, they stayed warm until another truck rescued them. Casper carried the boys – one about 4, the other about 9 – into the truck because the snow was up to his shoulders.
Another man who drove around looking for people to help was 32-year-old Shane Fowler, a member of the Colorado Hummer Club. Yes, he owns a Hummer, but he puts it to good use. He’s a registered volunteer of the American Red Cross, part of a charity called HOPE, short for Hummer Owners Prepared for Emergencies.
He keeps emergency supplies in his trunk and attends emergency medical training sessions twice a year.
During the blizzard he helped pull 25 cars out of ditches. Sure, he could have stayed indoors at home in Golden and watched TV or read a book. But he couldn’t imagine not using his vehicle to help stranded travelers.
And then there’s Schafer, who, at age 60, showed tremendous tenacity, working for 11 straight days on just a few hours sleep each night. He returned home on Monday exhausted.
Along the way, along the icy roads throughout southeastern Colorado, he had several near-catastrophes.
One night, his snow utility support vehicle spun 360 degrees somewhere on U.S. 50. Another time, the SUSV broke down. But Schafer, a diesel mechanic by trade, diagnosed the problem: a busted fuel line, which he repaired with a section of windshield-wiper hose.
Incidentally, the wipers weren’t working and the defroster couldn’t melt the ice forming on his windshield. He asked his co-driver to hold a Meal, Ready-to-Eat heater to the windshield so he could see.
“He started calling me MacGyver,” Schafer said, referring to the resourceful character from the ’80s TV drama who could stop a sulfuric acid leak with a chocolate bar.
Schafer wasn’t about to get stranded, not when so many people in southeastern Colorado needed him. He heard that the man who needed dialysis, and the pregnant woman going into labor were fine. Did she give birth? Schafer doesn’t know.
He lost count of how many people he helped those 11 days. He’s taking a few days off to recuperate at home in Woodland Park, but he’ll be back out there. The snow isn’t melting fast enough.
Cindy Rodríguez’s column appears Tuesdays and Sundays. Read Cindy’s blog at denverpostbloghouse.com/
