A Brownwood team of Oncor Electric linemen who in February helped rescue an older man they found unconscious in his vehicle along U.S. Highway 87 were honored June 13 with the company’s Heroism Award.

Oncor executives presented the award to Crew Foreman Jon Carson, Journeyman Lineman Juan Luna and Apprentice Linemen Justin McKibben, Ivan Cruz and Edgar Villeda.

“You never know what you might have prevented,” said Drew Akins, Oncor Western Region Director. “And on a dark road that’s got hills on it, that was not going to be a good situation if that was left for too much longer.”

“What’s important is you did stop and you did help and sometimes, being the first to do anything is hard,” Akins said. “You all helped. That’s a leader and that takes courage and I commend you all for doing that.”

Oncor’s Jim Greer, Executive Vice President & Chief Operations Officer, and Keith Hull, Vice President, Distribution Operations, also attended the award ceremony at the Oncor service center on Sharp Street.

Carson said he and his crew on Feb. 3 had been working at night near Eden when they began driving back toward Brady at about 3 a.m.

“As we were coming down the road, I almost hit this vehicle,” Carson said. “He didn’t have any lights on. He was parked in the middle of the road and I had to swerve to miss him.”

Carson said he called Juan Luna, who was driving behind him. “I said, ‘Hey was that a car with somebody in it?’ ” Carson said. Luna told Carson he saw someone slumped over the steering wheel.

“I said, ‘Well, we can’t leave,’ ” Carson said. “I turned on my flashers and we all turned around and parked behind the vehicle.”

Luna said he called 911 while Cruz began banging on the man’s window to wake him up and to get him to unlock the vehicle’s doors. Once he did, two Oncor employees helped the man to the side of the road. The man’s vehicle was out of gas, so they pushed it off the highway, Carson said.

When a sheriff’s deputy arrived, Carson said that he asked him, “What else can we do? And he said, ‘You all saved his life.’ ”

Carson said that while he never saw a police report, he was told the next day that man had some memory problems and had been missing four to five days from his family in Midland.

Oncor’s Hull said the Brownwood team represent the helping attitude of the company’s employees. “When you come to work for this company, there’s sort of a DNA that we all have,” Hull said. “We want to provide help. It’s hard work … but you have to like helping people.

“And this is going above and beyond when you do what you all did,” Hull told the crew. “You could have walked away because you didn’t know what the situation was. But you didn’t. And I want to thank you so much. It means so much to that family.”