MUSKEGON, MI – As a plume of black smoke leaked from the engine of a smashed sedan, a Muskegon teen pried the window frame to reveal a panicked woman.
She grabbed for his arm as he reached in to remove her seatbelt, flick up the steering wheel and help hoist her out of the car before it burst into flames.
Mychael VanAllsburg, an Eagle Scout, saved a woman’s life that day.
Nearly three years later, VanAllsburg, now 19, will be honored with one of Boy Scouts of America’s three lifesaving awards, the Heroism Award. He will be recognized on June 5.
Reinstated in 2018, the Heroism Award is given to those who demonstrate actions related to saving a life with “minimal personal risk.”
The recognition stems from VanAllsburg’s actions that July 2018 day. He still vividly remembers the details.
After helping pulling the woman out, VanAllsburg said he looked on as the crashed car quickly became overcome with flames through the interior. VanAllsburg remembers the heat from the car.
VanAllsburg, who was inspired by his uncle to reach the rank of Eagle Scout, credits much of his ability to act that day to what he’s learned in the Boy Scouts. His uncle also was an Eagle Scout.
“You have to be able to think clearly or clear enough to get the job done,” he said. “As one of my Scoutmasters said, ‘You have to be able to think clearly, understand your thoughts and be able to decipher the thoughts that are rationally made in your head and the thoughts that are just frantic.’”
VanAllsburg was thrust into the chaotic situation in July 2018, when he heard the crumbling of two cars not far from where he was working near the intersection of East Apple Avenue and South Maple Island Road.
He said he hustled over to see two cars: an in-tact lifted pickup truck that had just stopped in front of the building and a much smaller sedan that had taken the brunt of the crash.
“I see it and the front of it is just mutilated, it’s just destroyed,” VanAllsburg said.
Seeing the driver of the truck immediately get out of their vehicle, VanAllsburg sprinted to the driver’s side window of the sedan.
Adorning his Eagle Scout medal, VanAllsburg poses with his family. The 19-year-old Muskegon resident will earn a national Heroism Award for saving a woman trapped in a burning vehicle. (Photo provided by VanAllsburg family)
He remembers seeing a blonde woman in her mid-30s panicking, which he realized came in part when he tried the car doors and none of them would open. Then, a plume of smoke started spewing from under the hood.
“The top of the doorframe was out just a little bit, like I could barely get my fingers behind it,” VanAllsburg said. “I managed to jam my hand in the top of the doorframe, in between the door and the car. And I was pulling on it, I was pulling on it really, really hard trying to like bend it down or something.”
At the time, VanAllsburg’s coworker arrived to the scene and helped him slowly bend the metal doorframe enough to form an exit point.
He climbed on top of the vehicle to push it further, and that’s when he noticed flames coming from the engine bay.
VanAllsburg said he reached into the car and was able to get to the woman.
“She just grabbed ahold of my arm,” he said. “And I will never forget this part: she grabbed me the whole time and she was like, ‘You’ve got to get me out of here.’”
He took a moment to assess the situation, just like he had been taught in Boy Scouts. He hit the lever to raise the steering wheel, unclicked her seatbelt and worked with other bystanders to lift her out of the vehicle and onto the curb.
“We’re pulling her out of the car, and we get her out of the car and not even two seconds later, the interior of the car caught on fire,” VanAllsburg said.
Despite being selected for the Heroism Award, VanAllsburg said he doesn’t consider himself a hero. He was just doing the right thing, he said.
If that was his girlfriend, sister or mother in the wreckage, he said he hopes someone else would have stepped up and saved them, too. That’s just what you do, he said.
“I would want somebody to, to jump in and act without worrying about the consequences to themselves,” VanAllsburg said. “You know, and I think that played a really big part in to me just not even thinking whether I should run up to this car, not just if it was somebody I loved and cared about. And I know somebody out there loved and cared about that woman.”
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