This weekend, Caroline and I were riding around and I kept seeing wrecked cars (single or multi car accidents), broken down vehicles, or police cruisers with a car pulled over. It dawned on me after the 4th one, that they were all hispanic. So I started counting.
I saw ONE non-hispanic accident and ONE non-hispanic traffic stop all weekend... however, I saw 17 accidents that had either only hispanics involved or were the obvious offender (otherwise they didn't make the count), 6 cars that had broken down full of hispanics (and at least 5 people sitting outside the vehicle waiting on something to happen, I guess), and 8 traffic stops that had only hispanic occupants (any cars with mixed races didn't make the count). I couldn't help but ask "are they legal" as I spotted each scene.
I had a mini van with a mexican family in it run off the road and flip three times right in front of me. Bodies everywhere. Van crushed and in flames. Truck drivers running to help, me included. Calling 9-1-1 and telling the dispatcher to send medics, fire and eventually the coroner.
We pulled the father (Ramon), son (Juan)and grandmother (Antonia) away from the advancing flames more than once. We pilfered fire extinguishers from anyone who had them and for hopefully the only time in my life, I knew what my father felt everyday doing his job when he was a firefighter. The mother (Hilda) and nephew (Brian) were helped by motorists to the other side of the freeway away from the flames. The aunt (Veronica) burned to death before I could get to her. In all the chaos and Ramon yelling "Somebody please help my son!", she had been forgotten. Grandma died from her injuries despite our CPR efforts. None of them were wearing their seatbelts either, except the 3 1/2 yr old nephew who was strapped into a car seat!
Of all of the rescuers, truck drivers, motorists that stopped to help...NOT ONE WAS MEXICAN/HISPANIC......ALL were white. Only one of the passengers of the van, the father who was driving, spoke any english. Then there was the phone handed to me by a woman and the voice on the other end of the line was Greg, Veronicas husband and father of little Brian. I kept him busy with questins so he didn't have time to ask me how his wife was. I figured it better he find out at the hospital with his family around than from a total stranger over a cell phone.
I spent an hour sitting in the tub when I got home with water running on me looking at my arms where the flames had come so close to touching them while reaching for Veronica, and thinking of the events of the day. I still can't get the thought of watching her burn alive with the elderly man in the green shirt (never found out his name) next to me crying as he was telling the cop "We just couldn't get to her, the flames....the flames....".
So much for looking forward to getting home....the drive was really dragging alone before the accident happened. For the next 5 hours all I could do was hold the wheel, stare at the advancing road and review the tape in my mind of what had just happened. I couldn't cry, afterall I had seen this type of thing before as a sheriff's deputy. Death was nothing new to me, but somehow being a witness to it all in a civilian or personal capacity just seemed to hit home harder how fragile life is.
Did it ever occur to us while all of this was going down that we were all white people helping a van load of possible illegal aliens? No. I know this because I saw the sweet woman who held little shocked Brian for the entire time on her lap and tried to make him drink water and hide him from the view of his mother being BBQ'd right in front of him. I know this because it never entered my mind or the minds of the others to not help even for a second. I know this because the one Knight truck driver who refused to give up his fire extinguisher infuriated me to no end! There was no prejudice that day, no color.
I witnessed not only the emmense compassion of total strangers, teamwork of people who had nothing in common except for the dust cloud they had just witnessed and recognized as pure emergency, but also my own personal strength that day which I believe was my father working through me and telling me what to do. But there were still things missed, mistakes made and a little boys mother forgotten in all the chaos.
But yes, after the dust settled, the helicopters had carried Juan, Hilda, Brain and Ramon off to the hospital and I was back in my air conditioned Freightliner wiping my dirty face and red arms with baby wipes, I did wonder, for a moment, how many accidents and how much money is spent every day or every year on accidents involving ilegals. The sum must be staggering.
Make of that what you will....
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