By Tommy Simmons
Greeley Tribune
GREELEY, Colo. — Moments before first responders lifted the bicyclist into the ambulance Sunday afternoon in the middle of U.S. 34, Faith Appelgren saw the young man’s chest rise and fall once.
From where she stood at the highway’s intersection with 11th Avenue, covered in the man’s blood, teeth gritty with dirt from performing CPR on him, that sight told her she’d done her part.
Police believe the man about 2 p.m. was crossing U.S. 34 northbound on 11th Avenue when he was struck by a truck driving west. Officers believe the truck had a green light at the time of the crash. José Natividad Garcia, 25, of Greeley died Monday morning at North Colorado Medical Center, despite the efforts of Appelgren and medical personnel.
Appelgren said she was on her way home from church, she said, headed north on 11th Avenue when she stopped at the U.S. 34 intersection. As she put driving directions into her phone, something caught her eye in the middle of the intersection. Then she saw a woman sprinting through the graveyard to her left, headed toward the road.
“I’m talking about she was running, like I’d never seen,” she said. “That’s what caught my attention.”
Appelgren opened her door, and that’s when she heard someone screaming a car had hit the man. As a former department of corrections employee who knew first aid and CPR, Appelgren wanted to help. She made it to the bicyclist about the same time as the woman who had run through the graveyard to get there.
Luckily, Appelgren said, the woman was a trauma nurse who took control of the scene and helped provide first aid to the man.
Helping Garcia was dangerous though, she said.
“People were driving by,” she said. “We did CPR in the middle of (U.S.) 34. You don’t know if you’re next because you’re in the middle of chaos.”
While the nurse kept working, Appelgren said she stepped into the middle of the highway and tried to direct traffic. She could hear the scream of sirens, she said. She could even see the flashing lights of an approaching ambulance, but there was so much traffic first responders had a hard time getting to the scene.
All the while, in the crowd around the bicyclist, people prayed for his life, she said.
“We all had the same goal which was ‘don’t let this guy die,’” she said.
Officers from the Greeley and Evans police departments arrived, as well as paramedics. They took over CPR on Garcia while officers directed traffic. The last thing Appelgren saw at the scene, she said, was the his rise and fall.
She hasn’t slept in the almost 24 hours since the crash. She wasn’t able to talk to the Garcia’s family, despite waiting for hours at the hospital. She took solace in the fact that she did what she could.
“This young man brought together a group of people and he forever changed their lives,” she said. “I was proud we were able to do what we did.”
Copyright 2018 Greeley Tribune