Samaritans respond to KGB rollover

WASILLA — It’s hard to imagine a more typical start to an Alaska vacation — a leisurely morning of fishing followed by a lazy afternoon.

Then, all of the sudden, it wasn’t such a typical Friday.

“We were driving down the road and looked over to the right and saw this car, looked like it was smoking a little bit,” said Greg Jaquith. “I recognized it as a recent wreck.”

Jaquith is visiting Alaska this summer with his wife. They arrived Wednesday and were staying with his cousin, Wasilla Mayor Verne Rupright. Jaquith is a retired lieutenant commander and former Navy SEAL.

Not knowing his way around town so well, Jaquith wasn’t quite sure what road he was on. Bernadette Rupright, the mayor’s wife, said it was at about Mile 10 Knik-Goose Bay Road. They’d been at Fish Creek that morning.

After realizing what he was seeing was a wreck, Jaquith said he snapped into action.

“I told them to dial 911 and I jumped out of the truck and ran down into the gully and started talking to the guy and started checking his vitals,” he said.

Like anyone who’s had combat training, Jaquith said he was well versed in first aid. He checked the driver, 56-year-old Wasilla resident Steven Benlie, up and down.

“I noticed that he had a handicapped sticker,” he said. “He told me that he had had a stroke a few years ago.”

Benlie’s injuries didn’t look terrible and Jaquith had no idea about the state of the wrecked BMW SUV or how safe it was to be there. Still, it’s best not to move a patient, he said.

“I didn’t want to move him, but he started to move so I reached in through the sky roof and undid his seatbelt,” Jacquith said. “He could move his arms and legs and feet.”

The SUV was lying on its side with the passenger’s side door facing up.

“I tried to open the door, but that was more difficult than going out through the skylight,” Jaquith said. “I started picking him up and getting him out little by little.”

All the while, Jaquith said he checked Benlie for bleeding and assessed his injuries.

“We brought another fellow’s truck down and put the gate down so he’d have a place to sit,” Jaquith said. “By then there were a half dozen people that wanted to do tourniquets and cut up rags and cut up $50 sweatshirts.”

Benlie didn’t need any of that, Jaquith said. With everyone showing up offering help, Jaquith was at first a little wary when one of them seemed to want to take over.

“I asked him, ‘Who are you?’ He said, ‘I’m an off-duty firefighter,’” Jaquith recalled.

And with that, Jaquith handed the scene over to the firefighter and went back to his cousin’s house, where he spoke by phone about the incident hours later.

He said his training came in handy, perhaps in more ways than one, considering the scenarios he envisioned when he ran down that gully.

“That’s probably part of our training,” he said. “We always expect the worst.”

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