Shayne Becker has been in the right place at the right time more than once.
The Yorkton-area carpenter has come across several highway accidents and always lent a hand - even though the situation has sometimes been grisly.
So Becker was dreading what he might find when he spotted a woman at the side of the road frantically dialing her cell phone just after dark on November 30.
Becker was approaching Highway 8 from a grid road in his truck a few miles north of Wroxton. He pulled up next to the woman, who pointed to a car upside-down and nearly invisible in the bottom of the ditch.
"If it wasn't for her actually seeing what had happened, I would have probably drove right past them," Becker says.
It turned out the accident had occurred only a minute or two earlier. Becker ran down the ditch and heard pounding from inside the car. About a foot of water stood in the ditch.
The door was jammed, but Becker managed to pull it open. Inside he found two 17-year-old girls shivering from the water filling the car, but unharmed.
"I was so relieved to see that they weren't hurt. That was my biggest fear, that I was going to open that door and see what nobody wants to see."
The girls, who had landed in the ditch after swerving to miss a deer, had gotten out of their seat belts and so were not likely to drown in the shallow water. But they were trapped in the vehicle, and at risk of hypothermia without a quick rescue.
Becker loaded them into his truck and personally drove them back to their homes in Kamsack where they lived. He dropped them off with one of their fathers, who shook Becker's hand. The other family thanked him later.
"It turned out I knew both dads from way back," he says.
The carpenter returned home with a watchful eye on the roads.
