‘It was very, very intense.’ Modesto man recounts helping two elderly men escape SUV crash
At first, Mike Tavarez couldn’t tell why the utility lines were swaying as he drove Tuesday afternoon down Sylvan Avenue.
Was it wind, he wondered? An earthquake?
But just a little farther down the road, the Modesto resident realized the situation was much more urgent. In front of him was an SUV turned sideways into a ditch, its hood spewing white smoke after smashing into one of the poles.
Tavarez whipped his work van around into an empty clearing and jumped out. A woman who also had stopped caught his eye.
“Go get him from the car — hurry!” he remembers her saying.
Afraid the vehicle would catch fire with its occupants still inside, Tavarez ran.
Tavarez was one of about a half-dozen people who helped rescue two elderly men Tuesday after their SUV went off the road and into a utility pole east of Oakdale Road. It was a moment of humanity, Tavarez said, that showed the power of people looking out for one another.
Tavarez, owner of Custom Carpet Cleaning, was the first to reach the men that day. He switched off between helping pull them out and taking video of the scene that he provided to The Modesto Bee, showing how passersby stopped to rescue the men and tend to their injuries.
“It was very, very intense,” Tavarez said.
When Tavarez got to the SUV, it was on its side in a small ditch. The lines above were swaying, threatening to fall on Tavarez and the men still inside the SUV.
The driver’s side door was facing out, so Tavarez opened it and started working to extract the driver. The man was wearing a black hat, and Tavarez threw it to the side before grabbing hold of him and starting to pull.
By that time, people were bustling around to help.
Another man had reached the SUV. He held the door open for Tavarez so he wouldn’t have to worry about it falling back down.
“I knew the cavalry had come, and we’re gonna get this done,” Tavarez said.
The other helper, who Tavarez believes was a nurse, started working with Tavarez to get the passenger out of the car. They could tell the man was bleeding.
Tavarez ran back to his work van, grabbing latex gloves to keep anyone from touching the blood. He also grabbed bright orange safety pylons to place in the road.
In the video he took, Tavarez watches others help the second man out while he surveys the scene and then puts down the pylons.
“Are you OK?” someone asks the passenger.
“Yeah,” he responds.
Someone else brought out camping chairs for the SUV’s occupants to sit in while they waited for an ambulance to arrive. Tavarez said both men looked to be in their 80s. They were conscious and seemed alert despite their injuries, which appeared minor.
“I was scared for sure, but I was just really glad that nobody was dead,” Tavarez said.
In the video, the woman who first approached the scene with Tavarez was helping tend to one of the men’s wounds. She looked up at Tavarez again when she realized he was nearby.
“You’re amazing, sir,” she told him.
When things calmed down a little, the driver asked Tavarez where his hat was. Tavarez grabbed it from where he’d tossed it to move it out of the way and noticed it showed the man was a Navy veteran. Tavarez also was in the Navy, and he said he was able to bond with the older veteran about their years in the service.
Tavarez is hoping he can connect with the men he helped or the other people who were there that day. He said they all hugged and thanked one another for working together to save the men.
Though the incident was stressful, Tavarez said he knew he needed to stop to try to rescue the men so they could walk away from the crash and back to their lives.
“Everybody has someone at home that loves them,” Tavarez said.
