“I’m going to hug your neck guy. I appreciate you doing this,” said Tommy Hooper when Josh Shoemaker met him at FOX23 studios on Friday. “My wife does too.”
Hooper was in his truck when it flipped in an accident in Catoosa and caught fire. He was inside the truck when two men helped pull him to safely.
“I was inside that truck. It was flames. I was kicking at the windshield, and once I seen two hands just come through the fire, and I reached out and they drug me out of there,” he said.
On Wednesday FOX23 talked to one of those men, Josh Shoemaker. “I heard him and I heard him kicking out the window so I started running. And another guy ran with me,” he said then.
The men pulled Hooper from the burning truck. Hooper had minor injuries.
“We appreciate what you done. You’re my guardian angel,” said Hooper.
But Shoemaker said he’s no angel, “I think anybody would have done it.”
Hooper disagrees. He says he’s indebted to Shoemaker and, the other man, Jeff Heaps, because of them he’s alive.
“I get to live another year to see my kids and grandkids because of you,” he said.
Hooper didn’t get to meet Heaps Friday, but he called him. He said both men will forever be family to him.
Hooper and his wife will be celebrating their 37th wedding anniversary Sunday.
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