10th CAB Soldier provides aid to accident victims

Bryan McPherson was expecting his 18-year-old daughter, Reinna, to arrive around 10:30 on Easter morning. She and two of her friends, all high school seniors, had spent their spring break in Jacksonville, Fla. They were on their way back home to Grove City, Ohio, a suburb of Columbus, when McPherson's phone rang just before 7 a.m. The news was not good.

Rain clouds covered the rising sun as Spc. Joel A. DiStefano, on leave from Fort Drum, traveled on Interstate 77 just north of Beckley, W.Va. As he rounded a bend on the mountainous highway, he spotted a heavily damaged vehicle off the road and a terrified young lady running to the other side of the car.

"Being one of the first people on scene -- the look on her face -- I just felt I had to stop and help," said DiStefano, an intelligence analyst with Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 3-10 General Support Aviation Battalion, 10th Combat Aviation Brigade.

A few moments earlier, the young lady, Makaila Norman, had attempted to change lanes when she noticed a car in her blind spot and over-corrected. The right side of the car hit terrain off the road and rolled several times across the interstate. The vehicle landed right side up in the median after having ejected McPherson.

Norman had run frantically to check on her friend, who was lying motionless on the road. She thought she had killed her best friend. DiStefano quickly went over to assess the situation. He checked McPherson's breathing and looked for any bleeding other than what was visible on her head. After less than a minute, she regained consciousness.

"Without him, I don't know what I would have done," Norman said. "I thought she was dead. He was the calming person we needed."

DiStefano, who is preparing for his first deployment to Afghanistan later this spring, attributes his response to the intense and realistic combat lifesaver training he has received during his Army career.

"I was surprised how calm I was," he added.

Emergency medical technicians were on the scene within minutes. But DiStefano felt there was more he could provide. He called one of the girls' parents and let her know what had happened. He told them to what hospital the girls would be taken.

"He told me exactly where they were going, where they were; he told me every mile marker and gave me directions," said Stacey Royster, who was awakened at about 6:45 a.m., put on clothes and left her home for a four-hour drive to be with her daughter, Mallory. "He sat there the whole four hours with our children. He would text me to remind me to drive carefully."

Bryan McPherson was unable to meet DiStefano, but the care the Soldier gave his daughter did not go unnoticed.

"I know that he got her to wake up; he stayed with her and never left her side," McPherson said. "For a total stranger to do that, I have an unbelievable respect and appreciation for him."

All three girls have been released from the hospital. They consider the young Soldier, who came to their aid and kept them calm during a terrifying time, to be a hero.

"We were three 18-year-old girls alone," Norman said. "He stayed with us. You don't find people like that anymore."

Perhaps others may have done the same, but it was DiStefano who made the decision to stop on that cold rainy Easter morning when others continued on their way.

DiStefano said seeing the three girls able to walk away and their parents hug them was best outcome he could imagine, especially when he recalls the terrified look on Norman's face as the sun tried to overcome the rainclouds that morning.