‘We didn’t have fear; we just went and did’: Woman in Pink Describes How She Saved an Elderly Man Who Drove Into the Humboldt Bay

 

Hiedi Johnston from Willow Creek was just going to pick up a prescription Saturday in Eureka, but she ended up saving a man’s life. She became the Woman in Pink to bystanders who watched in awe as she swam out to a pickup, pulled out the driver, and, with the help of two other Good Samaritans, brought the apparent victim of a stroke to medical assistance.

Hiedi told us that the pharmacy was closed for lunch when she and her family got there this weekend. “My daughter wanted to look at the Bay [while waiting],” she explained so they drove down near the Wharfinger Building. “We weren’t there for five minutes…I heard this engine wind up….It was like the Dukes of Hazard. A truck just launched up in the air…It really launched! It was a ways out. It just kind of drifted and floated [in the Bay].”

Almost immediately, Hiedi said she knew she had to do something.

“We all just jumped out of the pickup and I just decided I was going to go help him,” she told me. “My daughter and her husband [Patrick] were calling 911. My other daughter stayed with the truck where we left all of our stuff. We all did something.”

Hiedi could see the driver just sitting in his truck. “He was dazed,” she said. “He wasn’t doing anything. Growing up in Willow Creek, we drive along the Trinity River all the time.” She had often thought that having a vehicle go into the river would be terrifying. “That would be not one of the ways I want to die,” she explained.

She said, “This man can’t die this way. It would be a horrible way to die…I went up there and got in the water…I am a pretty big girl and as I’m going in the water, I heard some guy say, “Well, she’s going to have heart attack.”

Hiedi said she put the comment behind her and focused on the driver of the pickup. “I walked as far as I could at a fast pace,” she told us. “Then I just started to swim….When I first got out there, the truck was still floating but the water was coming up.”

She said she asked herself, “How am I going to get in the pickup? [The driver] was just looking straight out the front window. He wasn’t reacting… I thought maybe I could get the door open…I tried but it didn’t work.”

The man continued not to respond and the door wouldn’t open. Then, Hiedi said she doesn’t understand how it happened, but the driver’s side window where she was just rolled down. She said the driver had turned his head a little as if to look at her. “He smiled a well-aren’t-we-in-a-pickle smile,” she explained. “And at that moment, it was like he rolled down the window, but I don’t know how he could, because his arms weren’t working.”

With the window now down, Hiedi said she worried how she would get the man out through the window while swimming. “I didn’t know if I was a good enough swimmer to get him through the window and back to shore,” she explained. She said she thought, “Maybe it is safer to wait. Someone will come…”

She described the driver as sitting there quietly through everything–“totally calm…so relaxed.” She asked herself how she was going to be able “to pull someone out of a sitting position through a window while treading water. What are the chances of that?”

Then she said, “All of the sudden, the water made a gurgling sound. The water just rushed [into the pickup].”

Hiedi said she told herself, “I can’t wait anymore. I’ve got to get him out now…He wasn’t trying to unbuckle…So I just pushed myself up on the door and reached across him and was able to unhook the belt.”

At that point, Hiedi said, “The water just made this whoomp sound. I pulled with everything I had. He twisted…I don’t know if the water helped. But he came out of the window…I don’t think he was meant to die that day. God must have plans for him.”

She now was holding the man up in the water. “It was kind of little bit eerie,” she explained. “The water sucked down. It felt like it was pulling me down. It didn’t do anything but I could feel the currents sucking down on the truck.”

She grabbed onto the small antenna on the top of the truck. “I put my foot on the cab but they slid….My shoes were slick.” But she was able to wedge her foot where the windshield met the cab and was able to hold the driver. Then, another man swam up to assist.

At this point, Patty Mayo (AKA Patrick Thomas) a YouTube Celebrity arrived in a decommissioned Coast Guard craft. (Read his story here.) “He was really good and maneuvered it over the top of the cab of the pickup,” Hiedi explained.

She and the unknown gentleman helped get the driver into the boat. “The older gentleman was very kind and helpful,” she explained. “He was strong and really pushing.” she said. “[Both of the men] really lifted to get the guy out of the water.”

Mayo took the boat to shore and medical personnel took charge of the driver. “The older gentleman in the pickup looked bruised and really sore and bloody,” Hiedi said. “I saw the elderly gentleman later [before the ambulance carried him to the hospital]. I think I said, ‘Take care of yourself, mister.’ He kinda smiled like he was saying thank you.”

Hiedi said she doesn’t feel heroic, but, she explained, “Sometimes you have to go and do…I’m a mom and we want to save everybody. You don’t even think. You just go and just do.”

She added, speaking of the two men and herself who helped to bring the driver safely to shore, “We are all capable of doing great things. I was grateful to be there to help…I think it was a God thing. We were where we were supposed to be…We didn’t have fear; we just went and did.”

UPDATE Monday 7:23 a.m.: A good story gets even better…We spoke to the driver’s daughter, Terra Kruse, this morning and she told us that he was released from the hospital late yesterday. Best wishes to him and his family.

Earlier:

• Vehicle Submerged in Humboldt Bay; Several People in the Water
• YouTube Celebrity Bounty Hunter, a Woman Wearing Pink, and an Older Gentleman Helped Rescue Man Who Drove Into Humboldt Bay

Please note: We incorrectly spelled Mrs. Hiedi Johnston’s first name in an earlier version of this story. We apologize for our mistake.