Motivate Bike Share Worker Chris Reyes was on the job, sitting at the intersection of North Ridge Boulevard and Touhy Avenue when “all of a sudden a van comes speeding along next to me…goes through the intersection and plows into another car.” The car flipped upside down, landing on the roof and trapping three passengers inside.
“I jumped out of my truck and ran over to the intersection,” Reyes recalled. “I saw a lady handing halfway out the back window. I began to pull her out and she was screaming for her baby, in a car seat still inside the car.”
Reyes crawled inside the vehicle, grabbed the baby from the seat and handed it to the woman through the window.
“Now there’s a guy in the passenger seat yelling that he’s upside down and can’t get out,” Reyes said. “I pressed the seat belt buckle, which released him, so he fell. I shoved him though the window and they pulled him out. 
“Then, I crawled out the car, got back in my truck and left,” he continued. “I tell you: it was like out of a movie.”
Reyes has been working for Motivate for the past five years and has been a TWU member ever since we started organizing. Dedication is second nature to him.
“Already 30 to 40 minutes had passed, so I got back in my truck so I could keep working,” he said. “I just got in the truck and went back to work.”
He also shrugged off being a hero. “I’m sure anybody else would have done the same in those circumstances,” Reyes said. “It’s always good to do a good thing.”