YUBA CITY, Calif. - We’ve all seen it before in the movies: A car flies over an embankment, soars through the air and splashes down, leaving the driver only moments to find a way out before sinking to a watery grave. But Sgt. 1st Class Michael G. Long wasn’t about to sit back and watch that scene play out when it unfolded before him in real life.
“The freeway took a turn, and she kept going straight,” the California Army National Guard recruiter said. “Her car launched 75 feet straight out into the water, bounced once and nosedived.”
Long parked his car on the side of the freeway, climbed a large fence and ran down an embankment to the edge of the water, where he was joined by a retired Airman who had followed similar instincts to help. The Airman was ready to jump in the frigid December water, but Long held him back.
“If we’d gotten in too early and struggled to get her out, then we’d be in trouble too, and she would be in worse trouble,” Long said. “I said, ‘Let’s wait until the fire department gets here, if we can.’
“But the car started to go down.”
‘We could see her moving inside the car’
The first uniformed responder on the scene was California Highway Patrol (CHP) Officer Kevin Jeffcoach, who by this time had joined Long and the retired Airman on the bank of Markham Ravine near Lincoln.
“From the shoulder of the road, the car looked like it was kind of stable, so I thought maybe that was as deep as [the ravine] went,” Jeffcoach recalled of the Dec. 30 incident. “Then all of a sudden the car started filling with water, the front end started dipping down, and it started sinking. … We could see her moving inside the car.”
They could see her moving because she was making a “last gasp” effort to save her life by moving into the back seat, where a larger air pocket remained.
“Michael and [the retired Airman] said, ‘We gotta go in the water,’ and I took off my radio and gun belt,” Jeffcoach said. “They were both in the water before me.”
A sinking feeling
Long, a former competitive swimmer, was the first to reach the vehicle and pound on a window with a rock he’d brought from the shore, to no avail. Jeffcoach, still on his way to the car, yelled out that his baton could break it, so Long wedged his knees under the rear of the car and tried to keep the vehicle above water until Jeffcoach arrived.
“I kept telling her, ‘Ma’am, I’m not going to let this car go down. There’s CHP here. The fire department’s here. We’re going to get you out of there,’” said Long, who credited his military rollover training with teaching him how to handle a person trapped in this situation. “She was having trouble keeping above the water. She was so scared, she was panicked.”
With the car sinking toward its front left end, the rear passenger-side window was the only one above water when Jeffcoach smashed it open with his baton.
“I reached in to pull her out through the window, and the water was just gushing in,” Jeffcoach said. “She grabbed my forearms and swam out through that window and once we got her out of there, it completely filled in. The car was completely filled with water.”
Long swam the driver ashore and checked her for injuries, then wrapped her in blankets and jackets thrown down by watching motorists. The driver was hypothermic but otherwise unharmed, and an ambulance was quickly on scene to help her make a speedy recovery.
A TV news truck wasn’t far behind, but Long and the retired Airman were long gone by the time it got there, leaving Jeffcoach to handle the press.
The military mindset
“I really just wanted to get in my car and turn the heater on and change into some warm, dry clothes … instead of doing an interview,” Jeffcoach said, sounding as if he could still feel the biting cold of that windy, 40-degree day in his sopping police uniform. “I told [the reporter], ‘I think the real heroes are the two guys who went in with me, because I had an obligation to go in the water. It’s my job, but they were just bystanders and not obligated in any way to go in and try to get her out of the car.”
After the rescue, Long and the other man who jumped in the water both told Jeffcoach they had military experience, which was not a surprise to the officer. For one, it seemed like their military training kicked in when the crisis unfolded. But even more so, he said, it’s about the military member’s mindset.
“The type of person who joins the military is the kind of person who is going to take action and do what they need to do to help someone in a crisis,” Jeffcoach said. “Neither of them hesitated.
“I didn’t even think about trying to stop them,” he added. “I knew they were going in.”
Love for the Guard
Long’s Army career began in 1982 as a cook in an active duty infantry unit. He served four years then became an area manager for Jack-in-the-Box restaurants. He served briefly in the California National Guard in the 1990s, then came back to stay in 2003.
“After 9/11, like most people [in the Guard], it didn’t take long before I said, ‘I’ve got to serve again.’ My right shoulder was missing the flag,” he said, referencing the flag patch worn on Army uniforms.
Long landed a full-time position in the Guard’s Joint Operations Center in Sacramento in 2003, then filled a variety of jobs in the Guard for the next decade, adding five military occupational specialties to his resume. He was a master sergeant in 2012, when he worked briefly for the Guard’s 40th Combat Aviation Brigade in Fresno, but Long wanted to return to Sacramento instead of uprooting his family.
He agreed to take off a stripe and become a sergeant first class again for the opportunity to move back north and become a recruiter – a job he never thought he would do – and it turned out to be a perfect fit. Long’s work ethic, gregarious nature and most of all his passion for the Guard made him ideal for the position.
The prototype recruiter
“When I came back in 2003, the Guard was a gift to me, and I want to share it with everyone,” Long said. “I don’t care about rank. I love the Guard and I love my job. I can’t wait to get to work in the morning.”
Long’s dedication made him the state’s top recruiter in 2015, only his third year on the job. It was also the second straight year he recruited more high-schoolers than anyone else in the state.
“He’s one of our 5-percenters that go over and beyond what they need to do to exceed the mission. Actually, 5 percent might be too much,” said Master Sgt. Adam Tsudama, who oversees 10 teams of recruiters as the noncommissioned officer in charge of Regional Command Post North. “His work ethic is the prototype we’d like to have in all our recruiters. If we were able to clone Sergeant Long, California would be exceeding mission every year.”
Long cares for each recruit as an individual, not just a soldier, Tsudama said. Even after recruits sign up, Long keeps in close contact to see them all the way through until they reach their first unit. That caring attitude is one reason Tsudama wasn’t surprised to hear about Long’s water-borne heroics.
“He was in a bad situation, and I doubt he even hesitated,” Tsudama said matter-of-factly. “I bet he was the first one to jump in the water.”
Having the ability to help people in his own community is one of two main reason Long cherishes the National Guard. The other is that it provides opportunities for everyone in this country.
“There’s no race, creed, color – nothing inside this uniform but green,” he said. “Anyone that wants to do well in life, as long as they qualify, can join the Guard. We don’t care what you look like or what you do outside of work, as long as you work hard.”
Long, now 53, has limited time left in the military, and he is taking full advantage of every moment he can.
“When I turn 60, they will kick me out of this uniform, and I am not leaving until then,” he said. “I will be right here at this desk.”