When every minute counts, everyday heroes are there to help

May 10—Terry Dion was unconscious inside his car.

"I was dead, I am told," Dion said of rescuers reviving him on a shoulder of Interstate 89 in April 2023.

Dion, now 70, had had a heart attack while driving and veered off the highway.

Today, his heroes are the good Samaritan who stopped, the cardiac physician who pulled over to administer CPR, the police officer who brought a defibrillator, the EMTs who kept Dion alive, and the nurses and cardiac team at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center.

Dr. Thara Ali, who helped Dion at the roadside, later assisted in placing a stent to open his blocked heart artery.

Dion crowns Ali, and each of the rare and timely individuals who saved him, as "a miracle, an angel."

"I am forever as long as I live this second life, going to be extremely grateful and thankful to all of you every day that I have a life left to live," Dion said by email last week from his home in Enfield.

The Union Leader's New Hampshire Heroes of 2023-2024 are not publicity-seekers or flashy overachievers. They are law enforcement officers and off-duty firefighters who climbed into burning cars to save unconscious drivers. Vacationers who pulled Marine Patrol officers out of Lake Winnipesaukee at night. A father who died after braving a riptide to rescue his child.

Heroism taps the honor and duty in human nature and makes public servants and ordinary people rise to spontaneous, out-of-the-ordinary challenges.

Unconscious in a burning car

"I think it's a natural instinct for me, when you're in public service," said Sgt. Bruce Vieira of the Pelham Police Department. "Preservation of life is the goal, even if it means putting your life in danger."

In July, Vieira was the first to arrive at a crash in Pelham involving two heavily damaged vehicles. One was on fire, the driver still inside.

With help from good Samaritans, Vieira was able to break the windshield, unlock the car door and climb inside the burning car to pull out the driver, who had a severe head injury. The driver survived, and Vieira received the Life Saving Award with Valor from Pelham Police in November.

"Good Samaritans, they're as important as we are," he said. "Having an extra body to help. I get paid to do my job. They aren't. To me, they're more of a hero than I am."

Winter river rescue

"Kids are always worth it," said Franklin Police Sgt. Forrest Walker, who dropped into a turbulent spillway of the Winnipesaukee River in March 2023 to save two young children from drowning after their father's canoe capsized.

The water was icy on March 1 behind the Franklin Public Library, where a tributary current races and rotates before rejoining the river. Walker heard a report of "juveniles in the river" over his police radio. When he arrived, a little girl was calling for help.

"The little girl was able to pull herself partway up on the side. The little boy was floating on his back. I thought he was dead. I thought he wouldn't make it," Walker said.

Walker went into the water and clung to a metal suspension bar to avoid being swept away. He used a hook supplied by Franklin firefighters to draw the boy to where he could be hoisted to first responders on shore. A state trooper performed CPR on the boy, whose heart had stopped.

Walker was treated for hypothermia at Franklin hospital, and the boy was airlifted to Dartmouth Hitchcock in Lebanon.

"It was even better when they got the little boy breathing up at the hospital," Walker said. "There were a lot of people who made sure that little boy lived. The situation was bad, but the timing couldn't have been better."

Officer Christopher Hart, who assisted in the effort, said, "Everyone made a full recovery. It was truly amazing."

High-impact crash

Manchester firefighter Peter Lawrence was off work, in a T-shirt and flip-flops, driving northbound on Interstate 93 in Manchester when a car about a hundred feet ahead suddenly left the highway and vaulted into a ditch.

"I just felt, if I can make a difference here, I'm first on scene. This is a time I've got to stop," said Lawrence, who has been a firefighter for 26 years.

"It was the most terrifying accident I've been to," Lawrence said. "I thought I was going to verify that there was a deceased person."

A woman's car was wrapped around a tree. The high-impact crash had ejected the engine, which catapulted across the highway.

Smoke was filling the car. The driver was pinned behind a locked door.

"I could see her hand pawing the glass," Lawrence said. The engine area "was roiling with a good fire."

He and the drivers who had pulled over couldn't break through the windshield. Another civilian arrived with a sledgehammer. The car door opened just in time.

"I yelled, 'Pull, just pull! Or she's going to die in there!'" Lawrence said.

The 38-year-old woman was helped to safety "before the car burst into a ball of fire." She survived with a badly broken leg. No one else was injured, Lawrence said.

Speed boat, no driver

Suzanne Folsom of Warner and Christine Lavoie Merrimack were vacationing at a family camp last July when they saw a big boat drive between rocks close to shore about 10:30 p.m. Then it kept circling in the dark.

"This is not normal," Folsom said. "This is not going to end well."

Somewhere in the water, a voice yelled, 'Help! Help!'"

Two men had been thrown out of the speedboat. They couldn't swim.

Folsom and Lavoie called 911. Marine Patrol rescued the men. Then a second misadventure began.

The now-driverless watercraft continued to cruise at top speed between islands in the lake.

The Marine Patrol officers threw ropes to ensnare its propellers and slow it down, but the "ghost" boat flipped the patrol boat over, dumping the officers into the lake.

The officers were in the black water, beneath their overturned vessel.

Folsom and Lavoie went out with a spotlight in a family motorboat.

Just as they helped the younger officer out of the water and the older one emerged on his own, the rogue boat veered back toward them.

"I just started the engine and we flew out of there," Folsom said.

Marine Patrol eventually stopped the driverless vessel after radioing local marinas for backup.

"We opened a bottle of wine and poured two glasses," Folsom said.

Tragic rescue

Gary Simard is not alive to tell his tale. If he were, he undoubtedly would say it was his duty as a father motivated instantly by love.

According to the Essex County, Mass., District Attorney's Office, Simard, 44, of Massachusetts, had been enjoying a day at Seabrook Beach with his family when one of his four children was pulled by a riptide from the shoreline deeper into the ocean. Simard ran in after his son, then started to struggle. Two bystanders were able to rescue the boy, according to eyewitness accounts, but they could not save Simard.

He "was a loving father, son, brother, uncle and friend," his obituary stated. "His family was the center of his life."

Fiery crash

Trooper Phil Sheehy just happened to be in the area of Route 101 in Epping on Feb. 5.

A Chevy Trax had left the roadway and crashed into a tree. It was engulfed in flames.

Sheehy used a police tool to break the windshield and extract the trapped driver, who was treated for minor injuries at Exeter Hospital.

Apart from serendipity, police training and basic human instinct, "It's wanting to do as much as you can," Sheehy said. "To put in as much effort into succeeding as you can, even if it doesn't work out."

rbaker@unionleader.com