Motorists’ quick response may give motorcyclist a 2nd chance

WASILLA — Jesse McCarty may not be a superhero, but the Target store manager does have several of the requisite qualities.

Driving home from his shift at the store Sunday, McCarty saw a motorcyclist speeding recklessly up the Palmer-Wasilla Highway and then driving in the wrong lane.

The car in front of McCarty, a Pontiac Grand Am, tried to avoid a crash with the motorcycle, but couldn’t.

When he saw the motorcycle, McCarty said, “I slowed down, otherwise I would have been involved in (the crash).”

“His body slid down my car,” he said of motorcyclist Nicholas Bishop, 24, who is a patient at Providence Alaska Medical Center in serious condition.

McCarty said he’s witnessed crashes before — his dad said he was actually in a pretty bad crash himself during his teenage years, but more on that later. That experience probably helped him remain calm when he got out of his car to help.

He said he could tell from the extent of Bishop’s injuries — both of his legs were in bad shape and at least one was fully severed from his body — that if he didn’t help, the man would “bleed out and probably pass away.”

So, McCarty and another man used their belts as tourniquets around Bishop’s thighs.

“Thank goodness I was thinking clearly enough to do that,” he said.

His father, Dean McCarty, who was clearly very proud of his son — proud enough, even, to call media and tell his story — said that he raised all of his kids to be leaders.

Dean McCarty recounted a time driving then 16-year-old Jesse and a group of teenagers to a lake. It was a spring day in Washington state and the roads were still pretty slick. Dean said he tried to stop for a light but started sliding at the exact instant a potato truck was heading his way in the other lane.

“I prayed, ‘Lord help me hit the ditch, not the truck.’ And as soon as I said that we hit the truck,” Dean said.

Three kids were launched from his station wagon in the wreck. Two weren’t hurt, but he said his son’s throat was punctured.

“I took him to the hospital, which was about two minutes from there, and the doctor said ‘I don’t know whether he’s going to live or die, but I’ll do my best,’ ” Dean said.

So, there we have McCarty’s original story, almost dying in a car wreck. What about the second part of a super hero story? What about his training montage?

Well, Dean supplied that, too — his son fought mixed martial arts as a lightweight but trained with heavyweights, some pretty well known in the MMA world.

“He was an Ultimate fighter and he gave that up to manage a Target store,” Dean says.

OK — original story and training montage, but what about the acts of heroism? Is there just the one with the motorcyclist or is this a pattern for Jesse McCarty? Turns out it’s a pattern.

McCarty’s only been in Alaska a year and moved to Palmer relatively recently. Before then, though, he was living in Butte. And one day he and his wife happened upon a home that had just caught fire.

“We helped the people get out,” he said. And then they stayed, helping pull things out of the burning home. “We saved about half of the furniture before it got too hot.”

McCarty said that, despite the drama, he has loved his time in Alaska, so far.

“It’s been a good year, but definitely some crazy stuff has happened, that’s for sure.”

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.