Lt. Tom Willis, detective Michael Rubow and officer Austin Kost received the Eudora Police Department’s lifesaving award last month.
An Alma man continues to recover and teach his middle school STEM class after three Eudora police officers helped save his life.
“Thank God I’m doing very well,” Jeff Eckelberry said. “I’m still not where I need to be energy wise because teaching is a high energy thing.”
Lt. Tom Willis, detective Michael Rubow and officer Austin Kost were recently recognized with the Eudora Police Department’s lifesaving award after helping Eckelberry when he became trapped underneath his hitched camper earlier this summer.
Eckelberry planned to take a trip to the Grand Canyon with his wife, Joyce, and his brothers. They had planned to meet near Pittsburg, Kansas, first because one of his brothers lives there.
While passing through Eudora on May 28, Eckelberry had a blowout on the passenger side of his hitched camper. He used a jack to remove the tire, and as he went to raise the jack again to put the spare on, the jack fell and pinned him underneath the camper.
“I was underneath farther than I wanted to be,” he said. “Because of the jack, I didn’t have very good leverage and that’s when it fell off the jack and fell on me. I was facedown under the trailer.”
He suffered extensive facial injuries from the accident.
“My face was basically pulverized from my eyebrows to below my nose,” he said.
Willis said he could tell from the pale appearance of Eckelberry’s skin that it was serious.
“I just got in position to where I could try to alleviate a little bit of the weight and waited for the cavalry, and Michael and Austin showed up,” Willis said.
Rubow and Kost arrived shortly after. Kost was in field training and riding in the car with Rubow at the time.
“We got lucky that there were two people in that car,” Rubow said.
Lt. Dennis Shoemaker of the Kansas Highway Patrol arrived on scene moments after the Eudora officers and helped lift the camper to free Eckelberry.
“When we got him out of there, every officer on the scene believed he was dead,” Willis said. “When I first reached down, I didn’t feel a pulse.”
Eckelberry believes he may not have pulled through if Willis didn’t show up when he did to alleviate some of the pressure on him.
“When the officers loaded me into the ambulance, they obviously didn’t say anything to Joyce, but they were sure that I wasn’t going to make it,” he said. “They were so kind and nice to Joyce.”
The officers stayed in contact with him as he recovered at Overland Park Regional Medical Center.
“His sheer will to survive along with the circumstances, I mean, it was just a perfect storm of how everything came together,” Willis said.
Surgeon Jeff Colyer, the former Kansas governor, handled the reconstructive surgery.
“Officer Kost came by the hospital after one of his shifts to check on us and the other officers called and texted checking on us as I was progressing,” Eckelberry said. “The ones that were honored were the Eudora ones and they were amazing, but all of those officers were such good people.”
Kost has been excited to see Eckelberry’s recovery and believes it couldn’t have been done without the medical staff who treated him.
“I couldn’t be happier just seeing the progress he’s made. Jeff said himself that it’s a miracle that he’s here today, and I don’t think we have anything to do with it,” Kost said. “It’s his recovery, the medical staff, it’s the medics.”
Joyce Eckelberry was upset at the scene of the accident because of the sight of seeing her husband hurt, but the thought of him dying never crossed her mind.
“At the hospital they were referring to him as ‘the miracle man’ because pretty much nobody thought he was going to make it,” she said. “The funny thing was that I didn’t really have that thought. I was upset because I didn’t want him to hurt and go through a painful recovery, but I never really thought about him dying.”
Eckelberry has been thankful for his wife being by his side taking care of him as he recovered.
“My wife was there the whole time and sat with me and it wasn’t always clear I would survive, and we’ve been married for 38 years,” he said. “She just has taken care of me and loved me and prayed for me. This is truly God’s work I feel like, and I’m so grateful.”
The couple attended the Eudora City Commission meeting last month when the Eudora officers were honored with the lifesaving award.
“To be honest, we don’t really expect those kinds of things,” Willis said. “As far as we’re concerned, we’re doing our job. It’s our responsibility to protect people, It’s our responsibility to help people, and we get paid to do that and we enjoy doing that.”
Rubow enjoyed being recognized, but he said helping people is part of his job.
“It does feel great to be recognized for it, but at the same time this is kind of what we do every day,” he said.
Kost shared similar thoughts.
“We’re in it to make sure people are safe, people are happy and we’re making sure people aren’t in danger,” he said. “I’m just glad we’re able to be seen and the community kind of gets an idea of what we do.”
Reach reporter Chris Fortune at [email protected].
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