Iowans light young man’s way out of darkness

In one of my last memories before the truck hit me, I was sitting in the driver's seat of my mother's Honda Civic. It was stuck in an 8-foot snowdrift that blocked the northbound lane of Route 13 in rural northeast Iowa. The wind was screaming across the fields, sending tornadoes of snow spiraling over the blacktop.

I was heading north from a Christmas gathering in Iowa City, trying to get as far as I could to catch a flight out of the Twin Cities the next day. By early afternoon, conditions shifted from unpleasant to impassable. Blowing snow cut visibility to 10 feet at most, and then a drift swallowed up the Civic.

Someone knocked on my window, a well-bundled stranger.

“I'll try to push you out from behind,” he said.

I now know him as Steve Schmidt, a father of six who owns a construction company in Iowa City. He was on his way to celebrate Christmas with family at their farm about 40 miles away and was growing increasingly worried. The two-lane road had disappeared in the whiteout. He stopped anyway when he spotted my taillights, two red dots in the blowing snow.

Schmidt wasn't the only stranger to help me that day - Dec. 23, 2007 - but he was the first. If he hadn't stopped, I might have frozen in that snowbank, and my story, about the 27 hours that followed - losing consciousness after a jarring collision, getting stranded in a little Iowa town, meeting strangers who embraced me as family - never would have unfolded.

Earlier this month, I retraced my journey to reunite with some of the people who rescued me, sometimes at risk to their own lives and at great inconvenience.

Roadside assistance

When I caught up with Schmidt, he was just thankful I came out all right. He, like everyone who helped me, isn't much for words, preferring to let actions speak. He spoke gratefully of his parents as he tried to explain why he stopped.

“They were smart enough to teach us to help out anybody in a time of need,” he said.

He recalled how he pushed from behind as I gunned the engine. Wheels spun. Snow flew.

Then he heard skidding tires and instinctively jumped off the side of the road into a ditch just as the heavy-duty pickup slammed into my car.

“Basically, it was just a huge crunch,” he said. “The truck was going about 50 when it hit.”

The impact shoved my Honda deeper into the snowdrift, submerging it.

Schmidt frantically dug through the snow and, with some effort, got the car's mangled door open. My 6-foot-4 frame was sprawled across the front seat, he said, with my feet on the dashboard. He slung my right arm over his left shoulder and dragged me to his black pickup. We were joined by the driver of the truck that hit me, a young woman who wasn't injured.

He had the woman call for an ambulance to meet us at the gas station 15 miles away in Strawberry Point.

At the gas station, the volunteer paramedics - Chris Palmersheim and Roland Evans - had a quick huddle. Palmersheim, who was driving, decided against heading south to Manchester. Instead, he steered for Mercy Hospital in Oelwein, about 20 miles west.

Evans tried to put a C-collar on me, which I promptly ripped off. He tried putting me on a stretcher, which I shoved away. I was drifting in and out of consciousness.

“You were disoriented and an extremely uncooperative patient,” he said.

He appreciated my belligerence, though, as it provided an “excellent diagnostic tool” to alert them that I had a head injury.

The 19-mile trip took about 40 minutes, but we arrived unscathed at the 25-bed Mercy Hospital, decorated with Christmas lights and wreaths.

Small-town nurturing

There was a knot on the back of my head, but a CT scan showed I hadn't suffered any brain damage. Since I didn't have other symptoms, I was told I could be released. The doctor warned there could be lingering effects, and I did end up with near-constant headaches for the next seven months. At that moment, though, I was elated to know I was OK.

I asked nurse Deb Hamilton how to find a taxi, so I could get a hotel room.

“There are no taxis in Oelwein,” she told me. “We'll get you a room at the inn.”

Hamilton showed me to the hospital's Room 2, which is reserved for stranded patients and staff who have to stay the night because of storms.

Then she gave me a note with her home phone number and told me not to hesitate to call.

“If my kids were stranded away from home, I would wish someone would take care of them,” she explained when I reunited with her. “I just thought it was the right thing to do.”

It wasn't until I woke up on Christmas Eve that I learned the extraordinary lengths to which she carried this notion.

Shortly after 10 a.m., she called and matter-of-factly told me that she would be there soon with her husband, Bob, to take me to my car and help me on my way.

The beige Honda looked like a pop can that had been crushed. The trunk was in the back seat, the front door a tangled mess of glass and steel. The front seat was packed with snow.

After conferring with her husband, Hamilton said they would like to drive me to La Crosse, Wis., 100 miles north, so I could catch a bus to St. Paul and make a flight to San Diego, where I worked at the time.

The ride passed with the Hamiltons telling me their family story. Soon enough, we saw the snow-covered bluffs along the Mississippi River near La Crosse, where I got another surprise. Deb Hamilton said they would feel more comfortable driving me all the way to my parents' house in St. Paul, 2 1/2 hours up the road.

When we finally got to my parents' house, it was my turn to pull a surprise. I'd made a couple of surreptitious cell phone calls and arranged for a candlelit Christmas feast of ham, scalloped potatoes and asparagus served on my parents' finest china.

My dad tried to give them a check to cover gas and wear and tear. They refused it. My mom insisted they spend the night, but they said they were fine to make the five-hour trip back, that Deb Hamilton had to start work at noon on Christmas.

A week later, Deb Hamilton sent my mother an e-mail. The experience, she said, gave her a chance to remind herself that she was born to be a nurse and take care of people - and what Christmas means.

“Bob and I feel honored to have been chosen by the Lord that night to do His work and help Him by helping one of His children,” she wrote. “You were all my Christmas miracle!”