Hero for the day

Angelo Fichera has an article in The Philadelphia Inquirer about a brave young man:

Joe Chambers (photo, right) was the right person with the right training at the right time. And a Philadelphia police officer could owe his life to that. About 5:20 pm on Saturday, the seventeen-year-old high school senior from Ridley Park was watching an episode of Cops while visiting his sister on Tasker Street in Grays Ferry when he heard a loud bang. "I know the sound of an accident," said Chambers, who doubles as a volunteer firefighter. "I jumped right up." When he peered out the window at the corner of 28th and Tasker Streets, he saw a police cruiser throwing sparks and leaking fluids, the result of a collision with a black pickup truck.
As Chambers tells it, "instinct" kicked in. He ran down the block in a black sweater and white cargo shorts and saw fire was starting to creep over the hood of the cruiser.
He tried to open the driver's-side door, but it was jammed. Through the open window, Officer Mark Kimsey (photo, left) told the teenager he couldn't feel his legs; he was also not fully coherent.
Chambers said he yelled for help, and another man, identified by various local media as Dante Johnson, 24, helped him pull Kimsey through the open window. By the time the two carried Kimsey to the sidewalk, the patrol car was in flames. "The whole car just blew up," Chambers said, noting that fire crews arrived shortly after. An online video shows the car consumed by fire. "If we hadn't gotten him out in time, he would have been hurt bad," Johnson told 6ABC News.
The accident happened as Kimsey, 30, was driving west on Tasker Street in response to an emergency call, according to a police summary. The cruiser had its siren blaring and lights flashing when it collided with a 2004 Toyota Tacoma.
Chambers, who for three years has volunteered with the Leedom Fire Company in Delaware County, said he, Johnson, and another bystander also pulled a man from the pickup truck. The 52-year-old, whom police have not identified, suffered head trauma.
"The officer would have been severely injured or we may have been planning a funeral if it wasn't for the quick thinking and action by these citizens," police spokesman Lieutenant John Stanford said in a statement: "We sometimes just think of those in uniforms as heroes, but it's not the uniform that makes them heroes, it's the courage and bravery within them; and last night, those young men displayed being heroes."
Though initial reports indicated someone, believed to be the driver of the pickup truck, left the accident scene, a police spokeswoman said further investigation had cast doubt that anyone fled.
Kimsey suffered head trauma from the airbag in his car and burns to his legs and hands. He was treated at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. Chambers was taken to Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) for what he called "microscopic" cuts.
Chambers later met with Kimsey at HUP, posing for a photo. "It was just a cheerful mood," Chambers said. He said Kimsey was "very thankful, very happy".
For those who know Chambers, his actions came as no surprise. "I didn't put it past him that he would help out in that kind of situation," said Thomas Silpath Jr., deputy chief of the Leedom Fire Company.
"He joined all on his own," said Chambers' mother, Judi Chambers-Coyne, 51. "He loves it." Chambers-Coyne said her son had struggled with the tragic death of his father, John Chambers, in September of 2014. The elder Chambers, a roofer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was electrocuted while working in Havertown. Chambers-Coyne, a dental technician, told her son after his heroics that: "I think Dad was with you every step of the way."
Chambers said he was thinking of joining the Army or the Marine Corps after graduating this year. After that, he said, he has his eyes on another uniform: a police officer's.

Rico says the world is lucky it has men like this in it and, hopefully, he'll survive his time in the military and become a good cop...