Sandra Gardere is being honored by the American Red Cross on April 6 for her heroic actions in the fiery truck crash on Highway 99 in late December when she ran through heavy black smoke to reach a driver trapped in the cab of his demolished truck.

Gardere said Tuesday afternoon that she is still recuperating from the effects of the acrid smoke from the burning tires that she inhaled as she sprinted over the Louise Avenue bridge to reach the scene of the crash into the vertical concrete supports.

The mother of three children and a medical assistant sidelined because of a rear-end crash she was in drove up on the scene from Louise Avenue and was determined she had to do whatever she could to help any victims still alive in the flaming crash.

She remembers locking her car at the foot of the bridge with her purse inside before running through the smoke that funneled hundreds of feet in the air and could be seen from downtown Manteca.

Gardere made her way to the Modesto trauma center to see the driver who was listed in critical condition that afternoon and again before he was released from the hospital. She said the victim told her he was going to die.  He admittedly he was ready to give up in the cab that had separated from the trailer and shot across the northbound lanes when she crawled into the cab.

He told her that she made a difference as she stroked his chest, held a towel to a gash on his head and tried to keep him from going to sleep before medics arrived.  She has learned that he is still complaining of numbness in his one shoulder from the crash and is undergoing therapy.

As she sat in the cab next to him, her thoughts went to her three children who were at home.  She said while the tires on the rig were exploding she worried about an additional fuel tank explosion.  Firefighters told her after they extinguished the blaze and removed the driver by helicopter to a Modesto hospital that neither of them would have survived such an explosion.

Despite nearly a month of breathing difficulties, she said she would do it all over again in a similar situation to help save someone’s life.