Real heroes: Boy’s calm under pressure helped save his stepfather

Published 11:44 pm Wednesday, December 5, 2007

Tony Pruitt gave the throttle on his four-wheeler a nudge, speeding downhill on a dirt road near Monroe fast enough for the wind to blow the hat off his head.

Suddenly, his handlebars twisted unexpectedly to one side. Worried that his bike might flip over, Pruitt quickly yanked the handlebars the other way.

The next thing he remembers is flying over the front of the bike, landing with a thud on his right wrist. His bike overturned, slamming into his back.

“I think that’s what broke my left arm,” Pruitt said.

Knowing he had both a hand and an arm on each side of his body that were severely injured, he looked up at his stepson, Dakota Liljeblad, then 11 years old, who had joined him for a day of four-wheeling.

“You’ve got to get us out of here,” Pruitt said. They were on a forest road near the Snohomish-King county line, 6.5 miles from where they had left their pickup truck.

Pruitt told Dakota to use the pocket of his coat as a makeshift sling to stabilize his left arm.

As Dakota tried to move his arm, Pruitt screamed out in pain.

“Do it again,” Pruitt told his stepson, who this time was able to get Pruitt’s shattered arm into the coat pocket.

Their odyssey to get to medical help would stretch on for several hours. It would require Dakota to calmly follow Pruitt’s step-by-step instructions.

Although Dakota now seems to shrug off his role, saying simply, “I did what he told me to do,” the Snohomish County Chapter of the American Red Cross deemed his actions on Feb. 11 worthy of a Real Hero award.

Dakota, a seventh-grader at Tolt Middle School in Carnation, is one of 14 people to receive the annual awards this year, established to acknowledge selfless actions taken to help others, often when lives are potentially endangered.

The awards will be presented this morning at the Hansen Conference Center at the Everett Events Center.

For Pruitt and Dakota to make their way out of the woods, they first had to find a way to upright Pruitt’s heavy bike. Eventually they succeeded by wrapping a winch around a tree.

Then, Dakota took over the controls of the bike, now hobbled with one flat tire.

They made their way back down the forest road between Duvall and Monroe, moving about 5 mph to make sure Pruitt didn’t fall off the back of the bike. It took more than an hour to make it back down the dirt road to their pickup.

When they spotted two men loading their minibikes into a van, they thought help was soon at hand.

“Where are we exactly?” Pruitt asked.

The two men said they didn’t know.

“I’ve got two broken arms,” Pruitt said “Can you get me out to a main street?”

The men declined, saying they didn’t have their driver’s licenses and had been drinking.

Pruitt asked if he could have a drink of water. They said all they had was beer.

After calling 911 to report Pruitt’s injuries, the men left.

There was no choice. Dakota would have to drive the pickup truck for Pruitt to get help.

Dakota tried to dodge the road’s potholes to prevent Pruitt’s arms from being jostled, exacerbating his pain. He worried that his stepdad was going into shock.

Finally, they spotted Monroe’s Search and Rescue team coming around the corner.

Pruitt was taken to Valley General Hospital in Monroe. He had a broken bone above his left elbow. Surgeons used eight screws and 36 staples to repair the damage. They used six screws to fix his right hand.

Pruitt, 42, was hospitalized for three days and spent another 28 days recovering in a nursing home.

When visitors or medical staff would ask who the young man was standing at his bedside, Pruitt would tell them, “My hero.”

Here are the stories of other winners of this year’s Real Hero awards, expected to be presented today by the Snohomish County chapter of the American Red Cross:

Trapper Brandenburger

The last thing Alvie Kronbeck Jr. remembers is setting a torch down in his workshop when it became too hot to handle.

Seconds later, an explosion ripped through the workshop, leaving Kronbeck covered in blood.

Kronbeck and a construction crew had been repairing his house, damaged when a tree fell through the roof.

By chance, one member of the crew, a roofer, was also a former Marine, Trapper Brandenburger of Marysville.

Seeing blood gushing from Kronbeck’s right knee, Branderburger took off his leather belt and wrapped it around his Kronbeck’s leg, creating a makeshift tourniquet.

Branderburger used a jean jacket to put pressure on a deep cut on Kronbeck’s neck.

After the July 23 accident, Kronbeck, 62, spent nearly three months at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle.

Part of his left leg was amputated below the knee. His right leg has a steel rod in it. Surgeons were able to reattach his thumb, blown off in the explosion.

“Trapper was the only one close by,” Kronbeck said. “He saved my life.”

Lee Albert

Lee Albert was sitting in his Everett apartment one evening in April when the smoke alarm went off in his room. He followed the smell of smoke to a neighbor’s door. Finding the door unlocked, he entered a room filled with thick black smoke and saw a man lying on the floor and flames leaping toward the ceiling. The fire apparently started when the man left a stack of papers on a hot stove.

Albert, 75, and another neighbor grabbed the man by the arms and got him out of the apartment. Albert then used a fire extinguisher to put out the flames.

“I just did it at the spur of the moment without thinking about it,” said Albert, a retired letter carrier. “I like to help people.”

Amy Drewel and Steve Medalia

It was simply by chance that a woman assigned as vacation fill-in was working in the same Lynnwood insurance office as Amy Drewel and Steve Medalia.

“I heard a thud,” said Drewel, who is 32.

By the time someone called 911 and Medalia ran to assist the woman, she was turning purple. She was having a seizure.

Drewel had drilled on CPR procedures for years. Medalia, 44, was required to know both CPR and first aid in his former job as a restaurant manager.

Both worked to assist the woman by rhythmically pressing on her chest and administering rescue breathing.

“Steve and I feel very blessed we happened to be there that day,” Drewel said. “Anybody could have done it. They just need to get trained.”

Jason Stotler

On Jan. 16, Jason Stotler was on his way to a movie, driving through a neighborhood off 164th Street SW north of Lynnwood. Stotler, who is a firefighter for Eastside Fire and Rescue in Issaquah, spotted smoke coming from a house. He pulled over and began banging on the door to see if anyone was home. When no one answered, Stotler broke through the front door. He found a man who was sleeping, even though a smoke alarm was sounding. Stotler helped him out of the house. Once they were safely outside, Stotler spotted a hydrant and helped arriving crews from Fire District 1 hook hoses to the hydrant. The fire caused more than $200,000 damage to the home.

Ben Larkin

If there is a good time for an emergency, what better time than during a safety drill?

On Sept. 21, 2006, Ben Larkin was a 14-year-old freshman participating in a drill as part of a life-guard-training class at Kamiak High School.

“I was the one playing as though I was injured,” Larkin explained. His swim partner, a fellow student, was pulling him across the pool.

Halfway across the pool, his swim partner suddenly stopped. “Are you all right?” Larkin asked. There was no answer. His partner started shaking and turning white as a seizure set in.

Larkin knew his first responsibility was to keep the student’s head out of the water. Then he began yelling for help and pulling the student to the side of the pool.

“He wasn’t breathing. He was taking shallow breaths. He wasn’t in control of his lungs,” Larkin said.

Larkin’s quick actions helped ensure the student was able to get help and regain normal breathing.

Gregg Famelos, Kathy Famelos, Don Whitfield and Debbie Whitfield

The two Marysville couples were driving home after seeing a movie on Dec. 2, 2006, when they noticed flashing police lights just down the street. “We sort of slowed down to look,” said Don Whitfield.

They were startled to see someone struggling with a Snohomish County sheriff’s deputy.

“There wasn’t any discussion among us other than we need to help,” Whitfield said.

Whitfield and his wife got out of the car, ran over and pushed the suspect onto his back. The Fameloses assisted the Whitfields in holding down the suspect until police arrived.

The deputy, Rebecca Lewis, was treated for a fractured nose. She now works as a detective for the sheriff’s office.

“I feel completely blessed that the community that I work to serve is willing to risk themselves for me,” Lewis said.

Andy Bass

Mill Creek Police Officer Andy Bass was assisting two other officers on what seemed like a routine call in Dec. 3, 2006.

“It wasn’t a domestic or a fight,” said Bob Crannell, Mill Creek’s police chief. The report was “my brother is drunk and I want him to leave.”

It turned out, though, that the unwanted family guest had recently been released from jail. The family said he could stay with them as long as he did not drink alcohol. They returned one day to find that their relative had not lived up to expectations.

The officers told the man that he needed to go outside. On the way, Bass told the man he would need to pat him down. Without warning, the suspect pulled a knife on Bass, nicking his lip and cutting the skin of his elbow all the way to the bone.

The man then went after the other two officers. Bass helped subdue the man until he was taken into custody.

Bass, who is 29, has been with the department since February 2005. “I don’t think this has soured Andy; his zeal for the profession hasn’t lessened,” Crannell said. “He’s realizes his job is dangerous. He’s thankful for how it came out.”

Stephen Hagberg

Between November and December of last year, Stephen Hagberg fielded more than 300 phone calls from people whose lives or businesses had been disrupted by last fall’s floods.

Hagberg, 41, who lives in the Mill Creek area, works as a disaster assistance employee for the county’s Department of Emergency Management.

Knowing the losses they were facing, Hagberg said he worked hard to follow up with each caller, making sure they had all the information that might help them through their plight.

“I’m a person that soaks up knowledge,” he said. That attention to detail helped him recall a little-known, low-income loan program of the Department of Agriculture. It made all the difference for a woman recovering from cancer surgery who had lost the trailer she was living in and all her belongings in the floods.

After she talked to the federal agency, “they assured her they would finance her for a house by the new year,” Hagberg said.

Special Award: Michael G. Reagan

Michael Reagan, an Edmonds artist, received a special surprise award for his service to military families. Reagan draws pictures, free of charge, of members of the armed forces who have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He has completed 900 of the portraits. One of them went to Myra Rintamaki of Lynnwood. She is the mother of 21-year-old son Steven Rintamaki, a Marine killed in Iraq in 2004. The drawings “provide comfort and peace that replaces some of the sadness” for families who have lost a son or daughter while serving in the military, she said. “It’s part of our healing process.”

Reporter Sharon Salyer at 425-339-3486 or salyer@heraldnet.com.