Alternate route put Chubbuck snowplow drivers in place to save a life

January 18 was just a normal morning for City of Chubbuck employees Ryan Sullivan and Terry Udy.

Both snowplow drivers, Sullivan and Udy were out clearing the roads when they decided to take another pass up the Chubbuck hill.

“We decided to spin around on a block to go back up the hill again,” Udy said.

By luck, the two happened to turn down Whitaker Rd, where both men, in sperate trucks, noticed a man lying on the sidewalk.

Udy said the man looked to be in bad shape and had seemingly been there for a while since all the snow around him had melted.

Both men had never seen anything it before and Sullivan said he felt they did what anybody would do.

“We called 911 and tried to take care of him till they showed up,” Sullivan explained.

Sullivan and Udy removed their sweatshirts and placed one below the man’s head and another one on top of him to keep him warm.

They stayed there until medical crews arrived, waiting to see if there was anything else they could do.

“They said no and right back to plowing,” Sullivan said.

Both men were thinking about the incident the rest of the day, wondering how the man was doing.

Sullivan was able to catch up with him several days later.

“He says he remembers backing his car in and then he woke up the next day at noon in the hospital,” Sullivan said.

Now, almost two months later, both men think about what would have happened if they didn’t take that route.

“It crosses your mind,” Udy said. “How long would he actually have laid there?”

Now both men feel lucky they were sent that way.

“We were, for some reason, sent that direction to turn left and not right,” Udy said.

“When it comes right down to it, we were there, right time, right place,” Sullivan said. “Divine intervention, whatever you want to call it, we were happy to be there.”

The identity of the man Udy and Sullivan saved has not been released but Sullivan said the man’s family stopped by and said he was doing alright.