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Thanking Robert Stewart For Her Life
September 19, 2008
Valerie (Baker) Brock knows that she owes her life to Chief Robert Stewart, the Walnut Hill Volunteer Fire Department and the rest of the emergency workers that worked to remove her from a wrecked car that was literally cut in half.
It’s the call that Stewart said was the most memorable of his 30 year career as a volunteer fireman, because of its severity and because the victim returned to say “thank you”.
Valerie was just 16 on March 9, 2001. She was at the wheel of a friends car, the friend in the passenger seat, as she drove on Highway 99 in Bratt near Oakshade Road. She lost control of the car and hit a tree. The force of the impact was so severe that the car was sliced into two pieces and Valerie’s seatbelt broke, sending her in the dash. The friend was not seriously injured.
“She ran off the road when she went to pass a truck,” Judy Baker, her mother, said. “She hit some potholes. The car flipped three or four times before hitting the tree, splitting in half and landing upside down.”
When Stewart arrived on the scene, which was just a short distance from his home, he found Valerie severely injured. Her leg was partial severed, a major artery cut. A lung was collapsed, and she had a tear in her spleen. She was at death’s door.
“She was talking to the firemen,” her older sister, Somer (Baker) Bridges, said. “She could even tell them her phone number.”
“When I got the call, we went there,” Judy Baker said. “Sam Stewart (Robert’s son) and the other volunteer firemen were already there. Randy (Valerie’s dad) and I were both in shock.”
“Robert came over to us,” she said. “He kept us calm. If he had not been there, I don’t know what we would have done. He worked so hard.”
Valerie “coded” — went into cardiac arrest — twice on LifeFlight on the way to Pensacola.
The road to recovery was a long one for Valerie. Doctors tried to save her leg, but in the end it was amputated.
During her long ordeal in the hospital, Robert Stewart and his wife Diann visited Valerie in the hospital.
“He’s not just a good person, but he’s a hero,” Judy Baker said, “because he put himself out there to help others like Valerie. He came to the hospital to check on her. It meant a lot to me; he and the others saved her life.”
“If it were not for the firemen making the decisions that they did to put her on LifeFlight, she would not have survived,” Bridges said. “They saved her life, and they cared enough to come back.”
“I don’t remember anything right after the wreck,” Valerie said. “I remember being in the hospital, and I remember him (Robert) coming to check on me. It is rare to find people like that who care enough to check on you.
“Because of them, I was able to live. They saved my life. I think of them as heroes.
“I don’t have words to say how much it means to me. I just want to thank them for saving my life,” Valerie said. Valerie was recently married to Nathan Brock (pictured left), a marriage she owes to her survival, Robert Stewart and the Walnut Hill VFD.
“Robert is a special person,” Judy Baker said. “He was a good fireman. But more important, he is a good man.”
Chief Robert Stewart has retired after 30 years as a volunteer fireman.
Pictured top: The front half of the car Valerie Baker was driving when she nearly lost her life in March, 2001. Pictured below: The back half of the car. Pictured bottom: More photos of the car in a junkyard. Courtesy photos.
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