Carnegie Hero Fought Off Urge to Run in Fiery Rescue

Philip Contreras recalls the urge to flee that rushed over him when he stared into the mangled and smoldering automobile just before its gas tank exploded.

But the man pinned inside the demolished vehicle clutched him around the neck and pleaded not to be left behind.

“He just kept yelling ‘Help me, Help me’ and wouldn’t let go,” Contreras said. “I kind of thought I can’t let this guy die because it would be my fault.”

1 of 26 Honored

Contreras didn’t flee. Of such stuff are heroes made.

Contreras, a 27-year-old truck driver from Huntington Beach, is among 26 people nationwide honored by the Carnegie Hero Fund for acts of heroism last year. Each receives an award and a $2,500 grant.

“I’m no superman,” Contreras insisted Sunday. “I’m just the same old guy. I can’t say ‘no’ . . . I view myself as a regular human being. No better.”

Regular guy or not, on Aug. 27, 1987, Contreras was thrust into extraordinary circumstances.

“It was on my fourth wedding anniversary, kind of a day I can’t forget,” he said.

Contreras recalled the events this way:

About 6 a.m., he was driving behind another truck north on the Long Beach Freeway when an auto pulled onto the freeway at Alonda Boulevard. The car and the other truck collided.

The car was knocked sideways and lodged itself in front of the truck, which pushed it about 150 feet until the auto came to rest on an embankment, with the truck on top of it.

“It pulled the top off the car and made it into a convertable,” Contreras said. “When it went over the car, the truck’s fuel tank ripped and blew up. It was just a big fireball.”

The truck flipped over and continued to burn.

“I jumped out . . . while (the truck’s) last trailer was flipping,” Contreras said. “I ran toward the car. The car was just demolished. The back end of it was starting to burn.”

Thought He Was Dead

Contreras recalled thinking that the driver was probably dead, but that he “might as well get him out and give him a half-way decent burial instead of frying.”

Meanwhile the truck driver, his pants smoking and burns on his face and body, staggered from the truck wreckage. Contreras directed him to a crowd of onlookers gathered about 50 feet away, then continued on toward the mangled auto.

“I went toward the car and pulled on the guy’s pants to see if he was alive,” Contreras said. “The guy jumped up. He . . . kind of set up. But he was wedged in by the steering wheel.”

“At that point, the back seat of the car started burning.”

“I tried to pry him out by pulling on him,” Contreras said. “The metal was pretty torn up. I saw a piece of 2 by 4. The truck was carrying some pallets and one of them broke.”

Wedging the board between the seat and steering wheel, Contreras pried the steering wheel away from the driver.

“I lifted him out and I told him I have got to run. When I put him down he fell. I took two or three steps and turned around to see where he was.”

Contreras turned back and picked up the fallen man, whose arm was burned and whose side was cut.

“I carried him 10 to 15 feet and then the car blew,” Contreras said. “A big fireball came out. I figured it was the gas tank. . . . I felt the explosion. I felt the heat.”

“I think he was scared.”

Contreras was uninjured and, after filling in authorities at the scene, continued on his truck route and worked the rest of his 8-hour shift.

Later in the day, when he mentioned that he had pulled a man from a car, a co-worker seemed uninterested. Maybe it was disbelief.

The following day when the story was reported in newspapers, “they believed me,” Contreras said.

“When I got home I told my wife and she kind of didn’t believe,” he said. But his wife, Isabel, 26, also became a believer when reporters began telephoning.

On Friday, Contreras received recognition from the Carnegie Hero Fund and word that a $2,500 check will follow.

“I really haven’t paid much attention to it,” he said. The money will go to “dress my kids,” Marina, 4, and Carlos, 1 year, 9 months.

Weeks after the dramatic rescue, two sons of Teruo Kato, 59, of Cypress, the man he saved, visited Contreras at his home. They brought a thank-you card and a gift of a color television.

Contreras recalled that one of the sons seemed choked up when he said, “You saved my father’s life and we thank you for it.”

“The other guy,” Contreras recalled, “had tears in his eyes.”