Mark Aberle of North Bend can’t understand most of the press he has received since Feb. 14.
That was the day Aberle’s usual commute to work was cut short when he became the first driver to come across a King County Metro VanPool van that had rolled over on an icy patch on Southeast North Bend Way near the Snoqualmie Valley Hospital.
When Aberle arrived, he saw a couple of the van’s five passengers milling around dazed. But his attention was soon caught by the sight of a woman hanging upside down in the van, which was resting on its roof.
The woman, Julie Witt, had her foot caught in the van and was bracing herself on the ground using her hand and her neck. Realizing that the she couldn’t support herself for too long, Aberle laid down in the broken glass and helped hold Witt up for nearly an hour while rescue workers tried to devise a way to free her from the wreckage.
Aberle said Witt maintained a pretty good sense of humor until the rescue crews started cutting away the van.
“Freeing someone from a car is an imperfect science and she was injured in the process,” Aberle said. “She let out a few blood-curdling screams.”
Witt sustained the greatest injuries from the accident and was eventually freed from the van. The other four passengers had only minor injuries after being treated at various hospitals.
After the accident, Aberle continued on his way to work at Eddie Bauer in Redmond. He was just in time for a conference call.
Ever since helping out, Aberle said he has been handed all kinds of “pieces of paper” congratulating him for his heroics by civic groups such as Eastside Fire and Rescue and the city of North Bend, which honored him Tuesday, April 2, at a City Council meeting.
To Aberle, he didn’t really do anything that heroic.
“It’s trivial in the scheme of things,” Aberle said. “It was more of an impulse than anything else.”
Instead, he believes that when praise is doled out, it should go to those who do a service for the community every day and go unnoticed.
“Some people do things just to get recognized,” Aberle said. “But there are those who do stuff that needs doing just to get it done.”
Aberle named Snoqualmie Valley School District volunteer Scott Hodgins and Eric Riley of the Snoqualmie Valley Little League as just a couple of local residents who help make the Valley a great place to live.
“There are some fantastic people in the Valley,” Aberle said.
He gets some perspective on his experience by trying to explain the feeling his wife had while watching terrorists attack New York on Sept. 11, to which she had traveled to do business.
“You can’t quite describe the feeling; you have to help,” Aberle said. “You just have to volunteer and do things.”
You can reach Ben Cape at (425) 888-2311, or e-mail him at ben.cape@
valleyrecord.com.
