Good Samaritans

It was a tragedy in the making, but out of it, a Polson woman who was widowed after a serious car accident discovered that Lake County residents are always willing to help, after an Arlee man helped pull her and her husband from a burning vehicle, a Ronan volunteer firefighter provided her with aid and comfort on the side of the road, and the community raised $5,000 to help her with medical expenses.

It all started shortly before 2 p.m. on Saturday, Dec. 3. It was a normal Saturday trip to Missoula — one Arlee Realtor Joel Norgaard and his wife Mandy had done a 100 times — but seconds after they crossed into Missoula County on Highway 93, the trip turned out to be anything but normal.

It was there that the Norgaards saw a two-vehicle accident that, at first appearances, didn't look too bad, Joel Norgaard said.

"We were just driving up to the wreck [site], and I thought, 'Oh, it's just a wreck. There were two cars and no emergency personnel there yet," Norgaard recalled.

That quickly changed as they got closer to the scene, he said.

"We got a little closer, and we realized both vehicles were on fire. Then we saw that there were people still in the car, and I thought, 'That's no good,'" Norgaard recalled.

Inside one vehicle was Leland Ellwein of St. Ignatius, and in the other vehicle were Peggy and Bill Kayser. The Kaysers were traveling to Missoula that day after finding out that their son Scott had been hospitalized after an altercation at a University of Montana fraternity house.

Bill died on Friday, Dec. 9, as a result of injuries sustained in the crash, while Peggy is recovering from two broken wrists and other injuries. However, all three people probably owe their lives to Norgaard and two other Good Samaritans who stopped and pulled them from the burning vehicles.

Ellwein, 68, crossed the center line and hit the Kaysers head-on, according to the Montana Highway Patrolman who investigated the accident, and eyewitness reports. Ellwein has a history of diabetic-related accidents, and has been the subject of multiple phone calls to Lake County dispatch about his erratic driving [see related story above].

Norgaard is quick to credit two other men who were already on the scene when he and Mandy arrived. The two men are reported to be Michael Blake Nelson of Missoula and Dwayne Bergeron of Arlee.

Attempts to reach Nelson and Bergeron were unsuccessful.

When the Norgaards arrived on the scene, Peggy had already been pulled from the vehicle, but Bill was still trapped inside, Joel Norgaard said.

"All I remember is seeing the guy [Bill Kayser] in the driver's seat, stuck and unconscious. We just ran up there and started pulling him out. We didn't have long, really, because the car was on fire," Norgaard said.

Norgaard entered the vehicle through the passenger side, and working with either Nelson or Bergeron, began to try to extract Bill Kayser from the vehicle. But the force of the crash had pinned Bill inside, making it difficult to pull him out, Norgaard said.

"I wouldn't have been able to do it without the other guy's help. There was just no way," he said.

Meanwhile, Peggy had already been pulled from the vehicle, and was lying near the side of the car, Norgaard said. One of the other men had pulled Ellwein out of his truck. But Norgaard and his wife realized that they'd have to get everyone away from the vehicles, which were still on fire.

"It was really confusing. I just remember running like hell to get the driver out. We pulled them 15 to 20 yards, enough so that if something blew up they wouldn't get sprayed with anything," Norgaard said.

He said neither vehicle exploded, but "just burned to the ground." He said Peggy was dazed, but kept expressing concern for her husband.

"The only thing I really recall was her concern for her husband. I remember she was really worried about him," Norgaard said.

During the ordeal, Mandy stayed at a safer distance and provided aid to the victims as they were pulled from the vehicles, Norgaard said.

"There were a lot of flames, and I didn't want her to get blown up. She was trying to comfort the people as we pulled them out," Norgaard said.

He said emergency personnel arrived on the scene in about five to 10 minutes, but that it "seemed like an eternity."

During that time, Ronan fire department lieutenant and training officer Dave Marmon was also driving to do some shopping in Missoula when he heard about the accident on his scanner.

"I head it [about the accident] on the radio, and kind of kicked it up a bit. I was a mile or two from the accident when it happened," Marmon said. "It was chaos. Both cars were fully engulfed in flames, and I saw that they had everyone out, lying on the ground."

And it was there that he met Peggy Kayser. He knew emergency help was on the way, but he wanted to make sure the woman lying bruised, hurt and in shock needed comfort.

"We prayed. We talked. I tried to keep her warm because it was snowing pretty good at that point," Marmon said.

"He called someone over to stand over me to keep the snow from getting on my face. He was awesome. He held my hand, and made me look at him. My husband was close by and that was causing me a lot of stress. Dave really helped me during a hard time," Kayser said.

In an interview last month, Kayser said she really wanted to meet Marmon, except she only knew he was a volunteer fireman, and didn't get his last name at the accident scene.

Kayser and Marmon met for the second time Monday — the first time after the accident, and one month to the day of her husband's death — in an emotional scene at the Ronan fire house. Marmon was quick to point out that other people pulled them from the vehicle, not him, and he downplayed his role in the whole scene.

"I was just trying to comfort them. We talked about what was going to happen when the ambulance gets on scene. We talked about the new tires on Peggy's vehicle," he said.

"I did?" Kayser asked, recalling that they'd just bought new tires.

"I was just trying to take your mind off things. A guy with the Missoula rural fire department was working with your husband, and you heard him say 'critical' on the radio, and I was trying to take your mind off that," Marmon said.

Kayser, whose husband was a police officer with the Bozeman force until he retired a couple of years ago, said she wanted to use his death to improve safety on Highway 93, one of the state's deadliest roads.

"I'd like to work on something to make it safer. Evaro Hill bothers me. That whole area is unsafe," Kayser said in an interview last month. "You still see those bumper stickers that say 'I drive Highway 93 — pray for me.'"

Norgaard said the same thing.

"I drive that section of Highway 93 everyday, and that could have been you or me. If I had been there 30 seconds earlier that would have been me," he said. "That's just a dangerous section of road right there. They were locked in with nowhere to go. If that had been a four-lane divided highway this wouldn't have happened."

Norgaard gave credit to the two other men who arrived on the scene first.

"I'd like to give credit to the guy that was there with his girlfriend, who called it in. He bailed right in there with me. He really deserves a lot of credit. He was there before me, and watched it happen," Norgaard said.

Last weekend, the Polson school district hosted a chili feed to raise money for some of Kayser's expenses. All told, more than $2,300 was raised by the chili feed, and another $2,700 was raised by the silent auction held in conjunction with the event.

The incident was marred only by the theft of $200 out of Polson middle school nurse Amy Knutson's purse as she was cleaning up afterwards — money that would have gone to Kayser. But all in all, it was an uplifting event for Kayser to see how the community responded.

"We really didn't know a lot of people here. We left our home where we raised our children [in Bozeman] and we found the heart of the community here. It's been a Godsend for me," Kayser said.

She was grateful for the men like Norgaard and Marmon who just stopped to help — something she said her husband would have done. Just a couple of weeks before the accident, Bill Kayser had stopped to assist a man involved in a vehicle rollover on I-90.

"You saved my spirit," Kayser told Marmon.

"I don't want this to seem like I was a hero, because I wasn't," Marmon told a reporter.

"You are to me," Kayser said.