Traffic on the highway near Bagdad, Arizona, kept moving on the morning of January 13, 2025. Drivers in both directions could see the tractor-trailer burning on the shoulder, flames at least six feet high rising from the engine area and the rear of the cab.
Nobody stopped. Edward Moorehead, 62, a truck driver, was pinned inside. The collision that had put his rig on the shoulder had jammed the steering wheel against his legs.
He could not free himself. He could see fire at his feet. More flames were issuing from beneath the dashboard on the passenger side, and the rear wall of the cab was burning behind him.
William Rubio, 37, a maintenance worker from Franklin, Kentucky, was driving the opposite direction on his way to work. He saw the burning truck, pulled over, and crossed a dirt median and ran to the tractor-trailer.
Rubio tried the driver's door. It would not open. He used a front tire as a step, held to a fender for support, and climbed onto the exposed engine of the burning tractor-trailer. The windshield above him was cracked.
He punched his way through it. Rubio steadied himself on the engine and leaned into the cab to his waist. Through the smoke filling the cab he could see flames burning against the rear wall, closing on Moorehead from behind.
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Rubio placed his arms under Moorehead's underarms and pulled. Moorehead outweighed him.
He maneuvered Moorehead free from under the steering wheel and lifted him up onto the dashboard. Moorehead, with Rubio's help, crawled through the windshield opening and onto the engine.
They climbed down to the ground together. Moorehead was disoriented. He stepped into the path of an oncoming tractor-trailer.
Rubio grabbed him and pulled him clear. They crossed the lanes to the dirt median and waited inside Rubio's car for emergency crews. About fifteen seconds after they cleared the burning cab, an explosion tore through the truck and the fire intensified.
Moorehead survived. He suffered abrasions to both knees, a laceration on his thigh, and a head injury. Rubio had inhaled smoke. He did not require medical treatment.
The Carnegie Hero Fund Commission awarded Rubio the Carnegie Medal, one of 17 given in that announcement. It is the highest civilian honor for an act of rescue in the United States and Canada.
Fifteen seconds separated the rescue from the explosion. Every car that drove past the burning rig on that shoulder left Moorehead with fewer of them.
Rubio did not know the timeline. He did not know the truck was about to blow apart. He was a maintenance worker driving to his shift who saw a man trapped in a burning cab that no one else had stopped for.
He got out of his car.
If you were the next car on that highway, would you have pulled over?
