Richard Wolf of Ermineskin Cree First Nation was recognized by RCMP for his “heroic act” on Thursday, Jan 23 with a certificate praising his intervention which may have saved a life on a wet night in April 2013.
Curtis Zablocki, RCMP Chief Superintendent and District Officer for Central Alberta presented the certificate to Wolf after giving a detailed account of the incident.
According to the account given at the ceremony, Wolf was driving on the highway close to midnight on April 15, 2013 when he noticed an object in the ditch, which was full of water.
He stopped and got off his vehicle only to see that a vehicle rolled over into the ditch sitting on its roof, two young passengers inside and the driver about to be drowned in the water filling the car as his seatbelt got stuck and could not be released.
Wolf instructed the young passengers in the car how to help the driver keep his head above the water and later got the two passengers out and then released the seatbelt and got the driver out as well.
Once they were out, Wolf seated the totally soaked individuals in his own vehicle to keep them warm and contacted emergency services to ask for assistance.
Zablocki said without Wolf’s intervention, the driver could well have died.
Richard Wolf, for his part, said at the ceremony that he was the representative of “a beautiful nation” whose members would always act in the same way.
“I thank the Creator for helping me save those individuals,” he said.
Later in an interview, Wolf said he had witnessed more than 50 similar incidents involving crashes, rollovers or collisions and he had developed a kind of experience in how to assist people in such difficult circumstances.
“I think the Creator has a plan for me” he said in reference to so many crashes he had to come across.
“It has become something of a gift, you get in there, you assess what it is that is going on, you comfort the individual and take out of harm’s way.”