TEXAS NEIGHBORS | SUMMER 2019 \FORD TOUGH TALES\ LIFE SAVING EXPERIENCE: Bobby and Rachel Helms By Jennifer Dorsett Field Editor What started off as a day like any other quickly turned into a night-mare for Bobby and Rachel Helms. The Helms were on their way to work on Oct. 28, 2015, when they were involved in a serious vehicle accident. But thanks to their 2004 Ford F-350 pickup, the Floresville cou-ple walked away. “We were on Highway 97 head-ed in to town,” Rachel said. “We stopped behind a school bus, and we were waiting for the bus. Bob-by told me to hold on because he saw the truck coming up behind us wasn’t slowing down.” The school bus was stopped to pick up children on State Highway 97 before making a left turn onto County Road 402. The bus driver had just deactivated the stop sign and warning lights a few seconds before the driver of a heavy-duty, one-ton pickup hit the back of the Helms’ F-350 at an estimated speed of 70 miles per hour. Loud noises. A crash. And an impact so forceful the Helms’ pick-up was sent into a dizzying spin across the road, barely missing the school bus as it turned. Another spin. Another spin. Then the truck jumped a curb, roll-ing over and taking out a stand of mailboxes. It finally landed right-side up mere inches from a tele-phone pole. The driver later said he never saw the Helms’ truck or the school bus. The impact was staggering, ac-cording to Bobby. The entire driv-er’s seat broke free of its bolts and eventually settled upside-down in-side the cab. “We went for a long ride. It seemed like it took minutes going around, and then we were right at the edge of the road when it took a hop and went over. But the cab never touched the ground. It was completely up in the air,” he said. “The seats broke. The hit was so hard, I was face-down in the truck when it came to a complete stop.” Bobby had a large gash on his head and later found out he sus-tained a shoulder injury. Rachel’s leg was pinned between the con-sole and her broken seat, but she managed to pull it loose moments later. They freed themselves from the wrecked vehicle. Walked to the side of the road and looked back. And they couldn’t believe what they saw. “All windows were intact. All tires were intact,” Bobby said. “Even the landing didn’t bend the front. The hood was buckled a little bit from the crash landing, but there was no real damage to the front end. But the back looked like an ac-cordion.” First responders told the Helms the truck’s long bed is like-ly what saved their lives. If they had not had the long-bed model, they may have been crushed in the cab by the force of impact. But Rachel attributes their survival to more than the long bed. She says it’s because they were in a Ford. “When people say things about [other vehicle manufacturers], I tell them, ‘I’m sticking with a Ford because I thank God I’m here, be-cause I was in one,’” she said. The 2004 model F-350 wasn’t the family’s first Ford, just the lat-est in a long line of successors. “My first Ford was my dad’s old truck,” Bobby said. “I got it in ’77. It was a ’73 model, and I drove it the whole time I was in school. Then I went to a ’79, then to an ’81…” The list just keeps going. “... And then to an ’84, the ’04, and now we have a ’15 and ’16. So they’ve been around for a while,” Bobby said. He fondly recalled how tough the 2004 pickup was. “There were a lot of miles on that old truck, but it was still run-ning like a champ when they hit it,” Bobby said. “It had a little over 250,000 miles, I believe, when they hit it, and it was still clean and still running good.” They use their two newer F-350 pickups for everyday farm work, traveling to and from their produce trucking company in San Antonio, pulling their travel trailer around the country and everything in between. And they’ll never drive any-thing else but a Ford. “That’s my theory,” Rachel said. “We’re here because we were in a Ford.” WWW.TEXASFARMBUREAU.ORG