Local Man Is A Blood-Soaked Hero

By Martin Henderson

It was an unforgettable moment, one that will stay with Jimmy Cook forever. One that may have saved a life. One that left him a blood-soaked hero for his quick actions Thursday morning.

After a bizarre string of events on Lake Forest Drive, the Capistrano Beach man cleaned up as best he could, then went to work for a few hours because he had an appointment to keep.

But that came after his appointment with destiny. 

According to Sgt. Jason Keller of the Orange County Sheriff's Department, the accident that tied up Lake Forest Drive near the Cañada intersection at 8 am., in Lake Forest went down like this: A black SUV headed southbound on Cañada made a left-hand turn onto eastbound Lake Forest, but the driver lost control of the vehicle on the damp street and ran into a tree—with a 19-inch diameter—on the sidewalk.

A westbound vehicle on Lake Forest observed the crash and the good Samaritans stopped in the fast lane rather than pulling to the shoulder. A female passenger emerged from the vehicle and, without regard for her own safety, ran to assist the person who had crashed into the tree. 

But as the woman bolted across the median she darted in front of a third vehicle that, according to Cook, had no chance to avoid contact. She was flung 25 feet into the air "like a rag doll" and landed partially in the sidewalk, partially in the gutter just feet from the crashed SUV. Her leg was partially severed below the knee.

And, in an ironic twist, said Keller, the woman's husband was eventually arrested for driving under the influence. 

“It was a hot mess,” Keller said, a description that Cook seconded.

After turning over the care of the woman to the professionals, Cook said a paramedic told him he saved a life. The woman had been bleeding profusely but Cook responded with quick actions gleaned from watching survival shows on the Discovery Channel and making do on the open sea as an offshore fisherman.

“We get some gnarly things that happen in the middle of the ocean with hooks and cuts,” Cook said. “When you’re 120 miles into the ocean, you can’t panic if someone cuts themselves very bad. Maybe that’s what taught me.

"But I usually try to stay away from those situations. I get a little queasy.”

Not this time.

According to Cook, who was driving his work truck to a job in the neighborhood—he performs craftsman and maintenance work for homeowners associations—he was behind the SUV at the stoplight on Cañada. 

He said he made eye contact via the mirror with the driver of the SUV, who had a wild-eyed look such as “Watch this!” The young driver then gunned it into the turn, fishtailed and overcorrected, Cook said, and slammed hard into the tree.

Cook, who had crept into the intersection and watched the SUV’s 75-yard journey up Lake Forest, pulled through the intersection and ran to assist because of the impact with the tree and block wall behind it.

While making his way to assist the driver of the crashed vehicle, the situation got worse as the unidentified woman dashed in front of another vehicle doing close to the 50 mph speed limit up the grade.

“Now, instead of helping this guy, I’m helping her,” Cook recalled Thursday afternoon. “The leg was dangling, severed bad, spurting out blood. I’m like, ‘Oh no.’ Another guy runs up and everyone else is flipping out.”

The second man asked what he could do to help, and Cook instructed him to get a motorcycle strap and a painter’s tarp from his truck’s lockbox.

He used the tarp to put under the woman's head, and the strap to create a tourniquet, and Cook was certain the woman would bleed out if he didn’t stop the flow of blood. He told the other man, who was on his way to the gym, to cover the leg with a beach towel that he had so the woman wouldn’t see the leg.

Still, Cook thinks the woman got a glimpse of it as he cradled her head—which was also bleeding—and whispered to her in an attempt to comfort her.

“Try to relax, slow your heart rate,” he said. “You’re not going to be playing soccer for awhile.”

She drifted in and out of consciousness, he said, while her husband yelled that the driver of the vehicle that hit his wife was getting away. He wasn’t. He had a car full of kids and had pulled to the side of the road beyond the accident and away from the scene.

Cook hopes to be able to visit the woman in the hospital, but he hasn’t had much success identifying her, and the hospital doesn't release that information.

“I hope she’s OK,” he said. “They can do some pretty radical things medically. Hopefully, they can save the leg.”