Miracle On I-25: Cheyenne Man Doesn't Know Who Saved His Life After Crash

Tom Hutchings doesn’t remember anything about the day of July 18, the day of the accident. All he knows is that he is alive today because of the actions of a Good Samaritan.  

Who this person was who saved his life remains a mystery, and Tom and his wife Lynn want to find him or her just to say thanks.  

Just Wiped Out 

On July 18, Tom and Lynn drove down to Fort Collins. Tom doesn’t have any memories of anything until about three days later.  

“That whole thing was just wiped out. I know we were down there because I took pictures of her [Lynn] and our little dog,” Tom told Cowboy State Daily.  

They stopped once on the way back home to Cheyenne. Lynn was riding her three-wheeled Spyder motorcycle, and Tom followed in their black Toyota Highlander. He had the dog with him.  

As Lynn got off I-25 at the Vandehei Street exit, Exit 13, she noticed her husband wasn’t behind her anymore.  

“I looked back several times, and I thought he must have gone to Albertsons,” Lynn, who is a senator in the Wyoming Legislature, told Cowboy State Daily. 

So Grim 

She got home about a half hour later, and the phone rang. Matt Obrecht, director of the Wyoming Legislative Service Office (LSO), was on the line.  

“Your husband’s been in an accident,” Obrecht told Lynn. 

“It was so grim, so black,” Lynn recalled, when she heard the news.  

Lynn isn’t sure exactly why emergency services contacted the LSO. The couple thinks it may be because Lynn’s business card was in Tom’s wallet. The Highlander also had legislative stickers on it.  

“Obrecht — God bless him — went to animal control and got our dog and kept him for the evening, which was so sweet. He’s our champion now. We love him,” Lynn said.  

On the way to the hospital to see her husband, Lynn saw the Highlander being loaded onto a tow truck. She took a few photos.  

Do Not Resuscitate  

At the hospital, Tom had been intubated, meaning they put a tube down his throat to get air to his lungs.  

“He had tape over his eyes and tubes down his throat,” Lynn said.  

Lynn felt her husband’s skin, and it had the cold, hard feel of a corpse. She thought he was dead and the hospital staff just didn’t want to tell her. 

Tom was alive, but for eight minutes, he hadn’t been breathing. There was a possibility Tom would never wake up, or he would be in a vegetative state the rest of his life.  

“The doctor kept rubbing my back and saying how sorry he was,” Lynn said. “I heard the word DNR [Do Not Resuscitate] like a hundred times that night. I went home just knowing I’d be a widow.”  

She asked people to just pray as hard as they could, but she was also reluctant to ask God to bring him back. She didn’t want him to have to live in a vegetative state.  

Signs Of Life 

The next morning, the doctors stopped sedating Tom.  

“He was fighting. They had to tie him down,” Lynn said. “And his eyes were rolling. I thought he was gone. He was looking pretty bad.”  

A friend of Tom’s, Sharon, came by to see him. And she was talking about Tom and her husband eating pie together. Then, Tom smiled.  

“Doctors were coming in and flashing lights in his eyes,” Lynn said.  

Then, the doctors would leave without really saying anything. Lynn wanted to know if these were promising signs. And she would ask the doctors about his condition.  

They gave very reserved responses, just agreeing there was some movement. But they didn’t give Lynn much assurance.  

So High  

“Then, I was tickling his feet, and he was moving his legs,” Lynn said.  

A doctor came back into the room and asked Tom to squeeze her hand, which he did. At that point, it did seem he was responsive.  

In another hour, they removed the tube from his mouth. As that was happening, Lynn and other visitors went to the waiting room, feeling hopeful.  

“Then, the nurse came out 10 minutes later, just grinning from ear to ear,’” Lynn said. “You couldn’t have pulled me down from the ceiling, I was so high.”  

The doctors have told the Hutchings that 90% of people who go through a cardiac arrest like Tom did, die.  

Within 24 hours after the accident, Tom was ordering salmon for dinner.  

What Happened 

Tom and Lynn have been able to piece together some information on what happened on I-25 from talking to paramedics and law enforcement who responded to the scene. But they don’t have much information.  

Tom had a heart attack and his Highlander veered into the I-25 median, where it grinded against the cable dividers. Tom’s foot was still pressing on the gas while he was unconscious. 

Someone pulled over to help Tom. The Hutchings believe this person was likely male, because it would have taken some strength to pull Tom from the vehicle. However, they can’t be sure.  

This person knew how to properly perform CPR. Tom had the normal bruising that occurs from the procedure, but he had no broken ribs.  

Unknown Identity  

The Hutchings are concerned that someone seeking attention will falsely claim to be the hero, so they’re keeping a few details secret — some things only this Good Samaritan will know.  

There was a small crowd who had gathered at the scene, according to one trooper. The trooper said he was agitated because people often stand around accident scenes filming the action. So, the trooper told the people in the crowd that if they didn’t need to be there, they needed to move along.  

One person, perhaps the Good Samaritan, told the trooper they wanted to find out what would happen to the man in the accident.  

Lynn asked the paramedics if they had a run report, because when you perform CPR, you don’t just stop. A properly trained person would have kept doing it until the paramedics took over.

The paramedics, rushing to take care of the patient, didn’t get a name, unfortunately. 

No one the Hutchings have spoken to can recall what he, or possibly she, looked like — nothing.  

“If we can find them, they can get some lovin’ from this guy,” Lynn said, pointing at Tom. “We’ll take him out for dinner and hopefully be friends for life.”  

Outpouring  

Besides the person who saved Tom’s life, the Hutchings are grateful for the outpouring of support they’ve had.

Many friends stopped by to see Tom in the hospital, though he doesn’t remember any of them.  

“I made a list,” Lynn said.  

Though he can’t remember much immediately before or after the accident, Tom doesn’t show any memory loss since. He can’t drive right now, so his wife has been driving him around.  

“He still remembers how to be a backseat driver,” Lynn said.  

They’ve received a lot of support from their church community at Calvary Chapel, including the pastor and his wife.  

Gov. Mark Gordon called them three times to see how Tom was doing. Sen. Ogden Driskill, Lynn said, has also called.  

Many others — too many to list — have been calling to see how he’s doing.  

“They’ve just been lovin’ on him,” Lynn said.  

Get Well Cards 

Tom is a ministry liaison for a kids group called Trail Life. It’s a sort of Christian scouting organization, training up the boys to be Godly men.  

The kids in the group handed Tom a manila envelope full of cards that the kids had made. In the course of telling this story, talking about those cards was the only time Tom got choked up about the whole experience.  

“It just meant so much to me,” Tom said, his eyes tearing up. “I thought I was going to hold out, but when I start talking about those kids.” 

“Oh stop. You’re going to get me crying,” Lynn said, laughing.  

Lynn recently told the story to a friend, who later sent her a card.  

“She was thanking me, because, she said, we need to start spending more time with our families, appreciating them, and loving on them. Because in a heartbeat, they could be gone.” 

Kevin Killough can be reached at Kevin@cowboystatedaily.com.