CLEVELAND, Ohio — Nate Gage wants to help.
The 31-year-old Parma man is an emergency medical technician and certified mechanic, employed by the CVS Samaritan Program. He patrols the interstates on Cleveland’s West Side during rush hours in a white CVS Samaritan van stocked with tools, car fluids, spare parts and medical supplies, providing free roadside assistance to motorists.
“We stop for everything, no matter what it is,” he said.
The CVS Samaritan Program started in 1978 and came to Cleveland in 1999, he said. It also operates in Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Cincinnati, Detroit, Indianapolis, Providence and Washington, D.C.
Locally, the van is based at the Brook Park Police station. Gage is on the road from 6:30 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. and 3 to 6 p.m. A CD radio connects him to Metro Networks and Clear Channel, which monitors traffic. During an average rush hour, he drives about 60 miles and helps about 10 people, he said.
With a thick blanket of snow on the ground and more falling Friday morning, he searched in vain for the first 30 minutes of his shift driving along Interstate 71. Then a voice over the CB alerts him to a three-car accident in the left lane of I-71 north just before the West 65th Street exit.
“There’s a curve there,” Gage says. “You get wrecks there all the time.”
He parks behind an Ohio Highway Patrolman and jumps into the cold winter morning. Officers are chummy with Gage, appreciating his work.
The front vehicle is unscathed and needs no help. Fluids leaking from the second car stain the snow red. The bumper of the third vehicle, a Ford F150, is smashed into the pickup’s front tires, making it undriveable.
Gage tells the truck’s driver, 47-year-old Jeff McClanahan of Litchfield, he might be able to pull the bumper out, then tells the sedan’s driver that if she waits until he is done he’ll follow the woman off the interstate. She decides not to wait and drives off.
The temperature, in the teens, is so cold that Gage has to use a torch to thaw the locks on the toolbox on the back of the van. Then he connects a towline from the van hitch to the truck’s bumper. With a lever, he pulls the bumper forward and then finishes the job with a sledgehammer.
“You got me back on the road again,” McClanahan said, full of gratitude.
Leaving, Gage continues north on I-71 and sees that the woman who left without his help is stopped on the shoulder of the West 65th Street exit ramp.
“We are going to go back and help her if we can,” he said. “But if I see an accident on my way, I have to stop and make sure they’re OK.”
That’s the rule of the job.
Gage helps a man whose Toyota Camry ran out of gas on eastbound Interstate 90.
“Not only do I help that guy, I clear up that left lane and help everyone trying to get to work,” Gage said, feeling good. But that woman is still on his mind.
