He helped a family, and likely himself

It was Christmas Eve and traffic was expectedly heavy on the interstate just north of Minneapolis. David Rice was headed home to Cloquet from a temporary construction job. He wasn't exactly in the holiday spirit. He was going through a divorce and in limbo about his work.

The heaviness was there when a pickup suddenly passed him and then shot into his lane in front of him. The driver overcorrected and the truck left the road and did a barrel roll into the ditch off Interstate 494 in Plymouth.

"I've been in a rollover," Rice said. "I thought, that guy is messed up."

So Rice pulled over to see if there was anything he could do. The pickup was on its passenger side, so maybe the driver was accessible, Rice thought.

Then he heard the wailing of a child. He smelled gas. Instincts kicked in.

Rice saw that there were two adults in the front of the truck and a toddler in a car seat in the back. The doors were jammed. He started punching at the back window. It wasn't yielding. He then put an elbow to it, three or four times. Finally the window caved and he could reach the child, but he couldn't get the seatbelt off of her.

Rice does not like the sight of blood. Now, the woman in the front seat was trying to free her child, using her bloody arm to unbuckle the seatbelt. She succeeded and Rice was able to pull the child out.

Now he had another problem. No one else had stopped. Here he was standing alongside a busy interstate with a child in his arms and two more people to get out of the truck. If he put her down, there was the chance she'd end up scurrying into the traffic. He was waving, begging for someone to stop.

Then a woman pulled over. He had her tuck the toddler into his car and stay with her. Call 911, he said. Then he went back.

He immediately surmised that simply breaking the driver-side window wouldn't allow enough room to extricate the two adults. He needed to get the jammed door open. So then he did something he still can't quite explain. He grabbed the top of the window frame and peeled it down, freeing the door.

"It looked like I did the jaws of life with my hands," Rice said. "Like a pop can."

It's adrenaline, said Plymouth Fire Department Chief Rodger Coppa. "He found himself in the position and reacted," he said. As someone who has served on a rescue crew for many years, Coppa said "parent mode" sets in. "You switch into that," he said. "He's a father. You do what you have to do. You're the one. You have to do it. And, after, you think - wow, holy crap, I did that."

The door now free, Rice got the mom out of the car. Her passenger would prove to be much more difficult. He was twisted in his seatbelt and going into shock, Rice surmised. "He was fighting me." And he was speaking in Spanish. Rice took a moment and tried to calm the man. "Let's just go," he repeated to him.

He finally got him out and now the threesome were keeping warm in his car until the rescue teams arrived. Rice went into a fire truck to keep warm. All three accident victims were OK, treated and released within hours after the rollover.

This month, the Plymouth Fire Department honored Rice with a "Distinguished Citizen Award" for his actions that afternoon. It was in "recognition of activities, at personal risk, without hesitation or regard for your personal safety, which contributed to the saving of the life of another human being."

People leaping into action like Rice did "doesn't happen as much as it should," Chief Coppa said. "That's why we want to recognize those who do."

Rice said he was surprised that more people hadn't stopped at the scene. It was just instinct to him.

When he was contacted about the award, he told the fire department it could just mail it to him in Cloquet. "They said no, no," Rice said. "We are going to celebrate."

So on March 5, Rice and his two sons were greeted outside a banquet with a firetruck and then Rice received his award.

He recalls leaving the accident scene, after accolades from rescue workers telling him that the family was lucky he was there. "I thanked God," Rice said. "I almost needed it more." It was a reset of sorts, he said, a change in perspective he needed at the time.

People heard about his actions and reinforced to him that it wasn't exactly unexpected, telling him it was in his character.

"Yep, he's made me proud a few times in his life," said Cathy Diver, Rice's mother. She told a story of a 10-year-old David discovering his 90-year-old neighbor who had badly slashed his leg with an axe while pruning a tree. David ran home and reported it and an ambulance was called. The neighbor survived and, once he could walk again, came over to thank David with some games and a hug.

Rice said he's glad he made the trip to Plymouth to receive the award. "It made me feel really cool."

Thank-yous are nice, he said, all part of coming back from some dark personal times. He's now back in Cloquet fulltime and restarting his American Custom Builders construction business.

"Every day is better," he said.