"Tom Foust saw the train lights in the distance and knew it was time to stop arguing with the elderly driver, whose white 2006 Lexus was stuck on railroad tracks in Glenview. His two friends were pounding on the car windows, yelling for her to get out, when Foust, 17, unclipped the 83-year-old woman's seat belt, grabbed her under each arm, dragged her 10 feet away and then shielded her body with his own as he waited for the impact."
Chicago Tribune Web Edition, September 10, 2007
Tyler Brown, 16, and Zach Demertzis, 15, both Glenbrook South sophomores, were in one car following Foust, a senior at Glenbrook South High School in Glenview, in his Chevrolet Tahoe about 8:30 on the Saturday night, when both vehicles stopped for a red light.
Foust watched the stoplight turn green and saw the Lexus in front of him proceed as if to turn right onto Lehigh. Instead, the driver crossed one set of train tracks and turned right onto an adjacent set of tracks, where she kept driving while observers honked their horns.
The teens weren't sure at first what she was doing, but later concluded she thought she was driving along Lehigh. Foust, a lifeguard who also participates in an annual "junior boot camp" at Naval Station Great Lakes in North Chicago, jumped out of his car to help move the Lexus off the tracks. That was when he saw the southbound train coming.
"I saw the train light and thought, 'maybe not,'" Foust said. "I ran as fast as I could. The gates went down, and we started knocking on the window. We're like, 'You have to get out!' She's like, 'Can you help me move my car?'"
When she refused to budge, Foust said, he grabbed the woman and pulled her from the opened car door seconds before the Amtrak train hit the car at an estimated 79 mph. Thrust onto the second set of tracks, it was immediately struck again by a northbound train.
Foust had looked back and watched the impacts. "Like a scene in a movie," he said. Debris and glass littered the street, but no one was hurt, thanks t his quick action.
"The image that keeps replaying in my mind is the train hitting the car with such force," said Foust, a senior at Glenbrook South High School in Glenview. "It went through my mind this could be it. I could be about to die."
"I was shaking," said Brown, who had received his driver's license a week earlier. "I'm just glad that she's alive. . . . This is probably the biggest thing that's happened in my life — and the coolest thing I've ever seen."
"It seemed like slow-motion to me," Demertzis said. "The only time you would see this is like in a driver's-ed video." Foust said he stayed calm throughout the ordeal, though he didn't get to sleep until 2 a.m. Sunday.
All three teens were to be honored a few days later at a meeting of their school board. "We're very proud of you guys," their principal told them.
Foust later returned to the site to salvage a piece of muffler as a souvenir.
Glenview police declined to release the name of the woman, saying she refused requests for interviews.
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Over and over, I hear that we have no more heroes. Where have all the heroes gone? Well, they're all around us. We just need to open our eyes and see them. I hope to point out as many of them as I can right here.
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