People that are Good. Tom McNamee :: The power of 8 strangers

It's refreshing to see something good in the paper. And of course the last quote just made me laugh.

CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Tom McNamee :: The power of 8 strangers

When Heloise Bouille was pinned under a car, her rescuers did the only thing that could save her -- they lifted it off her

March 5, 2007
BY TOM McNAMEE Sun-Times Columnist

How strange to see the blind woman kneeling to pet her guide dog. How strange to see her even walking again, breathing normally, let alone kneeling down and standing straight.

Here she is, at Winchester and Foster on the North Side, listening for sounds of traffic before crossing at a stop sign.

Heloise Bouille pets her guide dog with rescuer Tom Keevers at the scene of last year’s horrific accident.

It was at this very corner one year ago Tuesday that, by any reckoning of physics and fate, she should have died.

"She was mangled like a pretzel," says Tom Keevers, the man who saved her life.
"She was under the car, and it was crushing her. There was a lot of blood. I could not imagine she was even alive."

But she was. And she is.

And now we know just how many Chicagoans it takes to pick up and move a 3,100-pound Acura.

Tom Keevers plus seven.

In a pinch.

Can't remember being hit
It was midafternoon on March 6, 2006, and Heloise Bouille, then 47, was taking a walk with her guide dog, Annette. Bouille worked from home as a translator, turning French into English, and she always looked forward to these walking breaks -- the exercise, the city sounds and smells, the wind on her face.

At Winchester and Foster, Bouille took particular care because, as she well knew, a blind person crossing a street in a big city faces as much danger at a small intersection with stop signs as at a busy intersection with traffic lights. When there are lights, you can listen for the full cycle of signal changes -- from red to green to red again -- and know exactly when it's safest to step from the curb.

After listening carefully and checking with Annette, Bouille began to cross Winchester.
And that, mercifully, is all she remembers.

It was an older Acura, driven by an 18-year-old kid who worked in a restaurant. He must have blown the stop sign.

She doesn't remember being hit. Or being mowed under. Or being dragged 30 yards down Foster.

And, of course, she never heard the woman on the sidewalk in the Muslim veil scream.

"There is a woman under the car," the woman cried, waving her arms. "There is a woman under the car."
'A lot of crazy people'
Keevers, 43, was having a beer with a couple of friends in K's Dugout, a tavern on the corner. After a day of selling ads for the Yellow Pages, he was celebrating one friend's birthday.

Looking out the window, he saw the screaming woman.

"Chicago," he thought to himself, "has a lot of crazy people."

But the woman kept screaming, and something told Keevers this was different.

"I'm gonna step outside and see what the problem is," he said.

Keevers' dad was a Chicago cop. Maybe that's where he gets it. Three years ago, Tom got an award from the FBI for tackling a bank robber on Lawrence Ave.

"What's wrong?" he asked, approaching in that wary way of a Chicago lifer.

"There's a woman under that car!" the woman in the veil cried again. "I saw a lady walking across the street and, all the sudden, she disappeared."

Turning to look at the car, Keevers saw the dog first. It was crying and trying to crawl under the car.
And then he saw the broken woman.

"There is no way," he thought. "She's completely crushed."
But he had to try.

'Call 911'
Keevers jumped in front of a CTA bus and shouted, "Stop!"
He barked to the driver: "Call 911."
Two men on the bus ran out to help.
Keevers called his friends out of the bar. He waved down two or three more cars.
Now there were eight men, mostly strangers to each other. But acting as one, they surrounded the car, reached down to the chassis and got firm grips.

"On the count of three," Keevers said. "One . . . two . . . three."

They lifted the car, staggered to the middle of the street and dropped it.

Heloise Bouille was free, though twisted and horribly still. Annette rushed to her side.

An ambulance roared up. Keevers felt sure they were too late.

But then he saw a bloody bubble burst from the woman's mouth.

She was breathing.

'Am I OK?'
Bouille suffered severe brain injury, a ruptured diaphragm, a collapsed lung, multiple broken ribs, a demolished femur, a broken pelvis and two broken bones in her back. She is held together today with metal plates and screws.

But to the amazement of every cop, lawyer and doctor who has followed her story, she has made a remarkable recovery.

First she walked down a hospital hall. Then around the block. Then, encouraged by her husband, Robert Hall, who also is blind, she went back to taking her long city walks. With Annette, of course.

"It took me so long to recover," Bouille told me last week. "The physical part is one thing, but the emotional part is another. There is always this thought: 'Am I OK?'"

As for the teenager who was driving that day, he was nowhere to be seen at the moment Keevers and the others came to Bouille's aid. But he did not run away. The police questioned him on the scene.

The young man was recently convicted in Traffic Court on two violations stemming from this accident -- failure to exercise due care with a pedestrian and failure to exercise due care with a pedestrian with a disability. He was fined $500.

What's the kid's name? Hope you don't mind, but I don't think I'll say. From what I hear, he's not so bad -- just a teenager.

'Absolutely flabbergasted'
And then there are all the heroes. I hate that word -- hero. So overused.

But what's a hero if not that Muslim woman who cried for help, if not Keevers, if not every man who lifted that car?

"If those guys hadn't lifted that car, Heloise would have been dead or brain-damaged for life," said her lawyer, Jim Zouras. "She was moments -- seconds -- from being dead."

Ble said she wonders if there might be some big award the city could give Keevers.

"I am absolutely flabbergasted by what he did," she said.

I asked Keevers if he could remember what everybody did once the ambulance had rushed Bouille away.

The guys from the bus, he said, got back on the bus. And the bus driver drove off. And the guys in the cars got back on the road.

And, I asked, what about you?

"I went back in the bar," Keevers said, "and had a beer."

Tom McNamee's "The Chicago Way" column runs on Mondays.