If you saw a car on fire, maybe about to explode, would you run over and see if anyone was inside? And if there were two lifeless men in there, would you risk getting blown into smithereens to pull them out? Have to think about it? Well, yeah, most people would.
Then Some Heroes Come Along
Nick Michalides and Joseph Turcotte, a loan officer and manager in Manchester, New Hampshire, were hard at work in their Auto Equity Loans office when they heard the loud roar of a car engine revving down in the parking lot. They went to the window and saw a Volvo flooded with flames.
“We noticed the car just continually revving, and then I noticed it was on fire,” Michalides said. “You could actually start to see flames coming from underneath. So we ran out to the car, and that’s when we saw there were two people inside, but they looked unconscious. We tried to get the driver’s door open, but it was locked.”
The locked door didn’t stop Michalides—he ran around to the passenger door, opened it and dragged the first guy out while Turcotte rescued the other.
Oh, the Joys of Heroin
The two unconscious dudes, both in their 20s, had overdosed on heroin. Lord knows how much they took and why the driver put the car in park and floored the engine. Obviously in that doped up state, he wasn’t lucid enough to release the brake to actually go somewhere, but maybe that’s certainly for the best.
According to Pastor Joe Cyr, whose Life Church lives above the Auto Equity Loans office, Michalides and Turcotte brought the two dead dudes back to life.
“The guys were completely purple, and they brought them back,” he said. They are heroes.”
That CPR Class Wasn’t A Total Waste
If you think those CPR classes you had to take to teach a Zumba class or be a nanny for that well-to-do family were a waste of your time, think again. After pulling the two men from the vehicle, Michalides performed mouth-to-mouth on one of the guys for seven to eight minutes, effectively restarting his heart. Thanks to the CPR class Michalides took to watch his nephews, the guy came back to life.
Turcotte says he really didn’t do much but pull the second man from the car—Michalides did the real life saving with his CPR skills. Either way, both of them were willing to put their own lives at risk to save another.
“I didn’t think about it,” said Michalides, 33. “I saw the car on fire, saw someone inside, and had to get them out.”
By the time the women and men with the badges showed up, both men were revived and the fire was put out so the fire department and cops had little to do, other than give the guys a whiff of Narcane and transport them to the nearby hospital. Maybe Michalides and Turcotte deserve a stipend for their efforts?
If It Looks Like a Duck…
People are calling the men heroes, but they don’t seem to believe they fall into that camp, thinking anyone would do what they did if the circumstance presented itself. And maybe they’re right—in real moments of crisis (not those we make up in our head) we often respond with a sane and pragmatic approach than we do in our day-to-day problems.
Whether they believe it or not, these guys risked being burned alive in a Volvo on fire to save two dudes who were drugged out of their minds, and that makes them heroes by our definition.
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