Six Iowans were honored at the Iowa State Fair today (Friday) for actions they took that likely saved the lives of other citizens. Seth Thompson of Treynor was presented with a Governor’s Lifesaving Award for his bravery on the morning of December 14, 2009. The wind chill was five-below-zero and roads were icy at the time Thompson and a co-worker were driving near Storm Lake on their way to Okoboji for a construction job. The truck in front of them spun around, rolled twice off the road, and landed upside down in a frozen creek. Thompson and his co-worker, Nolan Strobehn, stopped, ran through the snow, and jumped a fence to reach the truck.

Seth Thompson and family (father Marv, wife Michelle, son Taytum, mother Melinda) with Governor Terry Branstad and Lt. Gov. Kim Reynolds

“We both jumped down on our stomachs and started feeling around in the water. We just barely felt a hand or an arm or something, grabbed a hold of that and pulled the guy out,” Thompson said. “As we were all standing there, in disbelief of what just happened, the guy slowly muttered out as he was freezing, ‘there’s another guy.'” Thompson reached back in the submerged pickup and pulled the driver out as well. Thompson said both men in the pickup, Jesus Alvarado and Joshua Allsup, would have likely drowned had they not been followed on the highway.

“If we were not behind them, there was nobody else on the highway…the truck was not visible from the highway, so there would have been cars passing all day,” Thompson said. The two men in the pickup suffered only minor injuries and were treated at a hospital for symptoms of hypothermia. Thompson credits his six years of service in the Coast Guard for his quick response to the accident.

“I was used to crazy, gruesome stuff happening, so it was just respond, do what you need to do to help out, and that was it,” Thompson said. While Thompson has not kept in close contact with the men he helped rescue over five years ago, he did hear that one of the men, inspired by the incident, became a volunteer firefighter.

(Radio Iowa)