The Man Who Rescued Over 10,000 Stranded Motorists

And we continue with our American Stories. Up next, we have the voice of Thomas Weller, a.k.a. the San Diego Highwayman. Thomas is nationally recognized for doing something he simply calls playing on the freeway, but what he does is truly much more. Here’s Thomas with a story of why he decided he would dedicate much of his life to helping people, specifically stranded motorists on the side of the road.

Well, here’s 1964, and hours out against my mother’s roisterers. Tomcatting around in a snowstorm one night, and I’m coming home about one, two o’clock in the morning. It was a blizzard, and it was a two-lane highway, and I was blown off the road into a snowbank in my ’58 Chevy ex-police car. And the top was white, and the back end, bottom, was black. That’s all he could see the car was the black trunk sticking out of the snowbank. And I’d been there for a number of hours, and I was freezing cold, and a fellow in a pickup came along—only person that came by that night—and he stopped, and he pulled me out with a chain. And I said, “Thank you,” and I tried to pay him. He wouldn’t take any money. What he said was, “Pass it on when you have a chance.” And I never even got his name. I didn’t really understand that he’d probably saved my life until about two years later, 1966. That’s when I started doing what I do and have done ever since. Charles Kuralt called me the Highwayman on national TV in 1996. He said, “Highwaymen of old were figures to fear, but here’s a Highwayman to admire.” And I thought that was pretty cool. My son was sitting there watching it with me on TV, and he turned to me, “Dad, isn’t a Highwayman a bad thing?” Anyway, ever since then, I’ve been the San Diego Highwayman. In 1964, I read a book by Rick Raphael called Code Three, and it predicted the future of gigantic cross-country highways, transcontinental highways, and vehicles that were jet-powered. And the story was about this one officer’s Beula, which was their vehicle that was set up as a wrecker and patrol car. It had crane on it for lifting vehicles. It had a jail cell in the nose, and there was a picture of it on the front page of the book, and it just enthralled me as a teenager. And I named my rescue rig Beula from that. And my Beula was a ’55, ’56, ’57, ’58, ’59. It was parts of a dozen different cars. I found it initially in a vacant lot wrecked, gave $35 for it, and I paid $50 for the front end off of a ’56. Beula was a ’55, receieve, but the ’56 front end fit on just perfect. So for under $100, I had me a running car.

This would be the car that Thomas would go on to rescue thousands of people with.

I had a full toolkit; it grew over the years. I had basic emergency services stuff. I had my first response kit because my wife and I took EMT courses. I had gasoline, I had oil. I had air, compressed air for tires. I had several different kinds of jacks, pry bars, cutting tools. She weighed 5,600 pounds, with the dog Sheila were sitting in the seat, when it got weighed.

Sheila was Thomas’s lab, also known as his shotgun rider, who went on every one of his adventures with him.

I looked all over San Diego County. When I found her, I knew it was to be. She was in the last cage—the last place I looked—and she was in the back of the cage, and the person took me to see her. She’d only been just brought in. I looked at her, and I already had the name picked out from the Crocodile Dundee movie. Well, I said, “Sheila, would you like to come home with me?” And she got up, came out to the wire and put her nose through. And anyway, two weeks later, after she’d been through all the processes and gotten fixed and everything, I came to get her, and she jumped into the rig on the passenger side, crossed over the driver’s side and sat down in the driver’s seat, put her front paws on the steering wheel, and looked over at me like, “Okay, I’m ready, get in. Let’s go.” And I said, “Sheila, you can’t drive the vehicle.” She put her head down, and her tail went down. She crossed over the passenger’s seat and sat down, waited for me. And then I came around and put the harness on her, as the safety harness, to protect her if there was ever a crash. She lifted her paws one by one in the front, and she did that every time.

One Fourth of July weekend, Thomas was out playing on the freeway and spotted a family in need.

They were stranded at the stop right there, and I stopped to help them. And they were driving a mid-engine minivan with the alternator gone bad on, and the battery was dead, and that’s why they died right there. So I put my jumper battery in—I carry with me for these things—and I followed them to their motel up in Kearny Mesa, where I left the jumper battery in, disconnected, and showed them how to reconnect it. And the next morning they came out with their van to my place in El Cajon, and I reinstalled their battery, which I’d charged overnight. And I gave them a battery so they could make it home to San Jose running just on the battery, and I warned them not to use their lights or signals or air conditioning. And they made it. And the thing was, this particular vehicle, it’s hard to work on, and it was the Fourth of July weekend, and it would just totally ruin their weekend if they’d had to take it somewhere and try to get it fixed down here. So the little girl drew for me. They sent me that, and it’s up on my garage wall. And she even put my dog in the driver’s seat of my Beula. And it’s my most favorite thank-you of all the years that I’ve done this.

Thomas had a card of his own that he would give to people after helping them.

It says, “Assisting you, it had been my pleasure. I ask for no payment other than for you to pass on a favor by helping someone in distress that you encounter.” And on the back side of the card, it’s the words from a country-western song. It says, “You don’t owe me a thing. I’ve been there too; someone once helped me out. Just to why I’m helping you. If you really want to pay me back, here’s what you do: Don’t let the chain of love end with you.”

And you’ve been listening to Thomas Weller, the San Diego Highwayman, telling his story, which really started fundamentally in a snowbank where his car was trapped, and, well, there was no one in sight until one person came by. As he put it, Thomas: “A fellow in a pickup came by and pulled me out with it. He wouldn’t take money. I never got his name. ‘Pass it on if you get a chance,’ is all he said.” And my goodness, Thomas has been passing it on, and he has had many chances. A Highwayman to admire Charles Kuralt called him in 1996. Generally, highwaymen are feared, not this one. And we learned about Beula, his precious car, which he cobbled together from many different cars for under one hundred bucks. But as he put it, “For under one hundred dollars, I had a running car,” weighing in at five thousand six hundred pounds, with his tools and his dog Sheila. When we come back, more of Thomas Weller’s story, a classic American story. Here on Our American Stories, and we returned to Our American Stories and to Thomas Weller, the San Diego Highwayman, who spent much of his life helping motorists who were stranded on the side of the road. Let’s pick up where we last left off.

I was southbound 163, and there was a ’90 T-Bird on the right shoulder with a blown tire, and the fellow driving it was a felon, a jailbird. He was wearing a wife-beater her shirt, and he had the teardrop tattoos. And just as I pulled up, his friend pulled up with two spare donuts that they were going to try on the car, and neither one on them fit. So I gave the guy my card, and I drove my rig back with one that fit. And I drove home here to the ranch, and I picked out one that I knew would fit, took it back to him. And when I arrived, his friend had left. He was sitting in the car reading my card, holding his hand. He didn’t believe I was coming back. He thought he was totally screwed. He was down from L.A. to pick up a friend who was getting out of jail. I put the spare on, and it worked, and shook hands with him. And this was a really scary-looking guy, and I was kind of concerned for my safety with him. I turned to leave, and all of a sudden, he had his hand on my shoulder and spun me around, and I was thinking, “Oh, well,” the guy was crying, and he said nobody had ever done anything for him before in his life. And he said I just changed his life, and it tears me up. Now I’ll tell you about it. He broke down and cried, this big, scary-looking dude. I’ve had a number of fellows and gals cry as I’m helping them.

There’s the little gal who I helped on 163. She was talking to Triple-A on the phone when I pulled up, and she told the Triple-A people, “Well, the Ghostbusters’ car just pulled up behind me.” She was initially scared of me and told me no, she didn’t want my help and wanted me to leave, but I won her over, and I changed the tire for her and sent her on her way. And she sent me a real nice little email saying that she was the redhead that I’d helped that day, and the reason she was so scared of me was that she knew I wasn’t Triple-A because she was on the phone to Triple-A as I pulled up. And one of her best friends had been Kara Knut. It’s a long and really sad story about Kara. But this CHP Officer Craig Peyer killed Kara Knut and attempted to get away with it. So she was not convinced at all initially that I was there to help her, and it goes uphill from there. We still correspond via email every so often. I had one fellow, I help his wife. She had a blown and shredded tire and a damaged fender. But, and he arrived as I was finishing up, and he tried to pay me. This was an expensive vehicle that had the blown tire, and he was driving an expensive vehicle. Well, I wouldn’t take his money. But I lost my sunglasses that day, and I either said something about her, or he noticed I didn’t have any. He took off his expensive sunglasses and gave them to me, and I did accept those because the sun was pretty bright. There were a number of CHP officers through the years who assisted me at scenes, as I assisted them as well, but one particular Officer, Officer Cami, a little blonde. The first time I met her, I was on the right shoulder with a young girl in a Mustang that was broken down, and Officer Cami pulled up and walked up to me and said, “Let me see your business license.” And I didn’t know her name then. I said, “Officer, I don’t have a business license, but I do have this,” and I gave him my card. And she read the card, and her demeanor changed, and she gave me a hug. And from that day till the last time I saw her, we were good friends. She, I would go out to play, as I called it, when I was despondent or depressed, because every time I helped somebody, it would raise my spirits. Well, this one night, I’d gone out to play in a couple hours, and I hadn’t found a single person to help. So I’m headed home, and all of a sudden, I get lit up and pulled over by a CHP. And I’m thinking, “That’s just great, perfect ending for a perfect day, and now I’m going to get a ticket,” and I don’t know for what. Well, the officer walks up to my window and stuck his hand in the window and shakes my hand. And he said, for the seventeen years he’d been on the East County beat, he’s seen me at accidents and breakdowns and other things doing what I do and never had a chance to say thank you because I always took off so fast. I said, “You pulled me over to say thank you?” “Yep,” he sure did, and that lifted my spirits considerably. I haven’t ever had a problem asking for help who help others with, like when my car broke down or the engine blew up, or I needed a part or spare tires for folks. I didn’t have any trouble asking for others when I needed stuff for them. But it’s difficult asking for me.

So some of the people who Thomas had helped, and others who’d heard of the work he was doing, took it upon themselves to help him back. They came together to raise money for Thomas to get a set of teeth.

And I’m gonna cry because I do have teeth now, thanks to like 1,100 people, some of whom I had helped, and some I never knew and never will know. And I have my teeth, and I can eat, and I’ve gained a little bit of weight back.

Thomas played on the freeway for 51 years and helped over 10,000 people on the side of the road. In 2017, Thomas had a stroke that partially disabled him, preventing him from playing on the freeway any longer.

I’m recovered from cancer two months ago. Luckily, they got it all. I’m real happy to still be here. Folks are sent me emails and letters, and a couple of folks who posted stories on the Internet about their experiences with me and what it meant to them and the things that they’d done in return. There’s just so many of them. I got stories to fill several books, but a lot of them are just in my memory and my one-foot-stack-high of letters and emails and pictures in tubs, but they’re all in my memory. I’ve had numerous experiences that convinced me that there are angels out there, and I’ve been called an angel many times myself. I just realized that I might not have been here if it hadn’t been for that one fellow helping me. And there’s been a number of people since who have expressed similar feelings for what I did for them.

And a terrific job on the production by Madison Derricott, and a special thanks to Thomas Weller. The San Diego Highwayman: 51 years, 10,000 people helped, 10,000 stories in the end, and he shared some of them with us. That ’90s T-Bird that was blown out—a blown-out tire, that is—and an ex-felon who was driving it, and he was driving to pick up another ex-con coming out of jail. And the guy looked tough, and he had to leave that ex-con stranded, go back at a tire, and then come back to him. And when he was leaving after having fixed the problem, he felt a hand on the shoulder. When he turned around, he was a little afraid, and then he saw he had nothing to fear at all, because that ex-con was crying. “No one had ever done something for me,” that man said. He even got pulled over by a cop who wanted to just thank him. And how often does that happen in any of our lives, that we get pulled over by law enforcement just to say thank you? “Numerous experiences in my life tell me that there are angels out there.” Well, Thomas Weller is one of them. The story of Thomas Weller here on Our American Stories.