A community of lifesavers

Every single civilian who responded – they range in age from 50 to 71 – already had a bad back. Disabled combat veteran Ron Darnielle Sr., 62 – who somehow leapt over a five-foot fence to get to Heverly — was in such tough shape after the rescue that he was offered an ambulance ride. He declined.

Roger Coupe lives right next to where it happened. He heard a man yelling for help and correctly assumed it was the guy he’d seen working on a car earlier.

He ran over and found a car with its front passenger tire off and a man trapped underneath, just his lower torso and legs sticking out.

Darnielle, who lived a street away but had stepped outside to let the dogs out, thought he heard shouts for help, but it was so windy he wasn’t sure. But he heard it again, looked toward the sound and saw Heverly flailing underneath the car.

He got clear across a neighbor’s backyard and across a wide traffic island before he realized he’d jumped his own fence. When landing on the other side of the fence, he somehow missed a plant that had multiple thick branches sticking up.

As they were struggling to lift the car, Coupe told Darnielle he had a slipped disc. Darnielle answered, “I have three!”

The two men tried to fully lift the nearly 3,000-pound Saturn four-door themselves, but couldn’t quite.

Coupe, a contractor, ran home and grabbed the sturdiest board he could find, a 2 by 6, and wedged it under the car and over the nearby tire to create leverage, then stood on it with all his weight.

Darnielle was lifting up at the wheel well, hunching down as he got his legs underneath him and put the weight of the car on his legs.

Heverly had been working on the brakes of the car at the home of Joyce Thornton, his roommate’s stepmother. Thornton was home, and heard yelling. She went outside to see Darnielle and Coupe already attempting to lift the car.

A retired respiratory therapist who had worked in hospitals and knew how to keep her cool, Thornton ran out and could see from Heverly’s stomach that he was still breathing. “I’m amazed he could breathe enough to yell,” she said. At some point, Heverly went silent and stopped moving.

The two rescuers, who had already called 911, asked her to try to pull Heverly out from under the car.

Darnielle said Thornton tried to pull him out when it was just the two of them lifting, but just couldn’t.

As a side note, there is no single, agreed upon version of this story. A number of participants had different recollections of who did what, and when. Others remember only certain parts.

That is just the nature of recall, Coupe said, particularly in a crisis. He told a reporter, “Good luck with all these varying stories.”

The Dalles Police Officer Kris Wood said as he and Officer Travis Elton pulled up, he saw a woman waving them down. Officer Joe Lick arrived simultaneously.

Elton said when he got out of his car, the two men were yelling “Help us! Help us! Help us!”

The officers ran over and helped lift the car. Elton said they probably spent 20 seconds holding the car high enough, and they asked Thornton if she could try to pull him clear.

Thornton said she grabbed Heverly’s legs — he’s 6-foot-1 and 175 pounds — and pulled. “It was a God thing, totally, because I’ve got a really bad back. I’ve got arthritis and stuff; there’s no way I could’ve done it on my own strength, there’s no doubt about that. That was pretty amazing in itself.”

As the men encouraged her, she kept tugging, making progress.

Thornton said she had gotten Heverly almost clear of the car, except for about an inch of his head. Coupe, who was still standing fully on the 2-by-6, said he asked everybody else holding the car if he could release the board and finish pulling Heverly out.

He got the ok, he said, then grabbed him and tugged him clear.

Thornton said Heverly’s face was bluish-purplish and his eyes were fixed. But what amazed her the most was his chest; it was so collapsed it appeared almost flat to the ground. “There was no chest there.”

Elton believed he was dead. He couldn’t feel a pulse, so he began chest compressions. He did a round of compressions then asked Lick to tilt Heverly’s head back to check his airway.

As Lick did so, Heverly gasped for breath. Wood said, “He just took one giant, deep breath and we were all very surprised because he was as blue in the face as the sky.”

Elton continued compressions, and Heverly gave a few more gasps. Then Elton felt a pulse. He had Wood take over on compressions while he ran to his patrol car to get a protective mask for rescue breathing.

Elton said, “Wood told me afterwards, ‘It was crazy how the color started coming back into his face as you were working on him.’”

But by the time Elton got back with the mask, medics had arrived and the officers let them take over.

Every person involved said it wouldn’t have been possible without the others’ help.

Lick praised Thornton. “I was surprised because he’s not a small guy. She did an awesome job.”

He said lifting the car was obviously a stressful situation. “You don’t know the condition of the guy who’s under there and everybody’s giving all the strength they had to get the car off him.”

Wood, who said he was next called to a report of a theft, said he didn’t really come down from the “surreal” event until he got home that night. As for Lick, he said, “we do so many adrenaline dumps a day they all run together.”

Darnielle, who briefly had to hold the car up by himself while Coupe ran for a board, doesn’t know what happened after Heverly was pulled free “because I hurt so bad.” He called the rescue a community effort and lauded the emergency dispatcher who deciphered his yellinginto the phone about where they were located.

He fretted about Heverly’s fate for the next four days, until he finally heard he’d survived. “Since I got out of the service I haven’t done anything like this.”

Darnielle served in the tail end of Vietnam and also during Desert Storm, for a total of 22 years in the military, then drove trucks for 21 years. Not only does he have a bad back, but his legs are bad too.

Coupe said of Darnielle, “Both me and the other guy gave it everything. I mean, you don’t even realize what giving everything you have is until you have to do it. Both of us were limping away afterwards, but it’s what it took.”

Coupe was grateful for the police. “We definitely needed their strength, and it worked.”

Darnielle was too. “If it wouldn’t have been for them, I swear I would’ve passed out.”

As for Heverly, who moved to The Dalles last August and sports a strong Texas accent from growing up outside Dallas, he’s recuperating in his apartment near Pomona Meadows. He can’t remember anything of that day, nor the three days afterward.

He’s still in lots of pain, he said. “It’s like somebody punching you in the chest all day long. It hurts. It’s getting better, but it hurts.”

He has a bad back and bad legs from years in construction, but the pain from his latest injuries has crowded out those issues. “Right now, I don’t even have back pain.”

His whole right side was black and blue, and he still had a bandage over the area where a tube was inserted in his lung.

After coming home, he ended up re-hospitalized locally about six days later, after a visiting nurse saw his difficulty breathing.

He said the Lifeflight ride alone was something like $47,000. As for the bills, he said, “Medicaid’s paying for it, I’m not. Y’all have good health care up here, compared to Texas.”

Heverly worked in contracting, doing everything from plumbing to electrical to painting to remodels. He can’t work in construction anymore though because he’s “trashed,” from it, he said.

After his survival, he said, “Everybody says, ‘Oh, you’re a miracle, you should’ve been dead.’ If I had been dead, that’d be good.”

He said, “I guess the Lord loves me, he keeps me around. I wish he’d hurry up and call me — he knows my phone number.”

He added, “I’m running out of lives. I should’ve been dead several times before this.”

It’s not even the first time his face has gone blue. When he was around two, he was found floating face down in a pool.

He’s also overdosed twice on heroin, the last time six months ago in Phoenix. He said he woke up in ER and a friend said, “’You died!’ And I said, ‘Well, if I died, why are you talking to me?’”

As for his ill-fateful decision to use a simple scissor jack to hold up the car, without placing blocks underneath it to support it, he said, “A jack stand would’ve been a good idea, in hindsight.” He added, “I’ll tell you, I’ll be a lot more careful and look at things better, because I hurt.”

He said he’s worked on cars for years without incident.

Doctors put a sling on his right arm, and then finally a cast. “It doesn’t hurt as much. Before, holy cow, man. I’m good at pain, but man.”

He may still need surgery to put a plate in the wrist. Doctors told him if they had operated on him right away for the wrist, they would’ve killed him because of his compromised breathing. “And I said, ‘Well, let’s just go with the cast then.’”

He hasn’t met any of the people who saved his life, but if he did, he’d say, “I appreciate it.”