Affeldt’s friends get save in car crash
Ayoung woman in Contra Costa County learned a bit about kismet Friday night when she had an accident on Highway 24 in Orinda and rolled her car up and down an embankment off the right shoulder.
Jeremy Affeldt was driving home from Yusmeiro Petit’s near-perfect game when he came through the Caldecott Tunnel seconds after the accident and saw the dust. Affeldt said he slowed his car, rolled down the window and could hear the woman banging on her window and screaming that she was trapped.
In a beneficial twist of fate, Affeldt was driving with firefighter friends who were visiting from Spokane, Wash., where he lives in the offseason.
Affeldt said one of the firefighters went to the driver’s side of the car and immediately tried to soothe her, as he was trained to do. Some in the group — not the rehabbing Affeldt — got the door open by yanking it hard.
“I know the panic a little bit of being trapped in a car,” said Affeldt, who was involved in a serious accident on an icy road several winters ago. “Thankfully, she was all right.”
Her injuries appeared limited to cuts on her hand and face. She was taken to a hospital.
The firefighters visit Affeldt every September. One of them was at Affeldt’s house in Contra Costa when he famously stabbed himself in the right hand trying to separate frozen hamburger patties in 2011.
Affeldt told him, “Every time you’re with me, we run into weird stuff. I don’t know if those are good coincidences or bad coincidences. We’re either saving somebody else or you’re saving me.”