By Andrea Eger
Tulsa World
TULSA, Okla. — Just when you think all hope is lost, sometimes it arrives in the most unexpected of vehicles.
Like a 38,000-pound fire truck.
More than 50 people on the streets of Tulsa were delivered from the icy grip of Winter Storm Fern this weekend when a good Samaritan by the name of Ryan DuVal showed up in his very own 45-year-old ladder truck, appropriately emblazoned “Hope Fire Department.”
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When DuVal found her at 1 a.m. Monday, Ariana Williams had been waiting outside downtown’s Greyhound station for four hours — for a bus that never came.
The 29-year-old was alone, shivering violently in 2-degree weather, wearing a hooded sweatshirt and wrapped in a lightweight bed comforter.
The sign on the abandoned station door read: “Greyhound is closed till Monday! Call Customer Service.” But Williams had no cellphone, and thus no way of knowing her 11:30 p.m. bus out of town had been rescheduled for 2:30 p.m. Monday.
DuVal helped her into the fire truck’s crew compartment so she could take shelter from the elements. He paced the parking lot on a call to Greyhound’s 1-800 number before driving her a mile to the nearest emergency shelter.
“I’ve been out here visiting family,” she said, through chattering teeth. “I’m headed home to Oakland, California, and my sister bought me this ticket. We didn’t get any cancellation notice.”
Since he founded his own company 10 years ago, DuVal has offered emergency heating assistance to those in need during winter storms.
He had just delivered an electric heater to a woman and her children who were burning scraps of paper for heat in the garage where they were living on Friday evening when he encountered an unsheltered man in a park next door.
He had to take his kids home, but with predicted snowfall barreling toward Tulsa, he promised the man he would return and give him a ride to a shelter. When he made it back a short time later, the man was gone.
Discouraged, DuVal said he made a split-second decision to find someone else he could help. After all, he had gotten out in this beast of a vehicle, capable of transporting a whole crew of people and supplies and traversing hazardous road conditions.
He ended up driving around in the snowstorm until dawn, helping 26 people along the way.
Then he went out Saturday night and did the same thing, helping another 22 people on the streets.
“I’ve got this business and this ability. As long as the truck runs, why not help people?” DuVal said.
Protein bars and no plans
The third night of DuVal’s weekend trek to get people out of the deadly cold was the slowest, which he took as a good sign that the vast majority of the unhoused had accepted shelter.
“It has been such a warm winter, I figured a lot of people would be caught off-guard, and they were, especially Friday night,” he said. “I had nothing going on because of the storm, so I just kept going.”
After spending some time with his kids in the evening and grabbing dinner, DuVal began Sunday night with a stop at a downtown QuikTrip to scout for anyone needing help and to refuel the fire truck.
Friends and family have encouraged him to start a nonprofit to fund his emergency heating assistance work, but he said he can’t afford time away from customers for all of the accounting and reporting work involved.
“It was $100 tonight because I let the tank get lower — but what’s $30, or $40 or 100 bucks for someone’s life?” he remarked.
Ten minutes went by before he spotted a man walking in the middle of Utica Avenue late Sunday night.
DuVal slowed down and began cranking open the driver’s side window.
“Hey, bud. You need a ride?” he shouted at the man over the roar of the old truck engine. With sidewalks buried in snow, the man gladly loaded in for a ride to the nearby McDonald’s where he was headed.
A few minutes later, DuVal spotted a man in a red sleeping bag up near the girders of a Crosstown Expressway overpass.
“You good, brother?” he called out as he approached the man, who ultimately declined help.
Every other stop the local HVAC service company owner made between 10:30 p.m. and 1:30 a.m. was productive, though.
“I’ve got seats in the back. If you just hop in, I can take you wherever,” he offered to a man wrapped only in a blanket, wandering the parking lot of a closed Las Americas grocery store.
The man was too frightened to accept a ride from a stranger — even one behind the wheel of a fire truck. But he wasn’t left empty-handed, as DuVal had a hot meal in a takeout container to share with him.
Another man taking shelter in the front entrance at Circle Cinema, with all of his worldly goods in a shopping cart parked next to where he lay on the pavement, accepted protein bars and an extra blanket but also declined a ride to a shelter.
“I’ve made it out here for four days already,” he told DuVal.
Truck has history of heroism
DuVal keeps an eye out for commercial vehicles for his Bixby-based heating and air conditioning company in online auctions.
When the small, southwest Arkansas town of Hope listed its secondhand, 100-foot ladder truck two years ago, DuVal submitted the winning bid.
“I’m embarrassed to tell you how little I paid for this thing — because it’s ridiculous — but it was $1,500. It probably cost the taxpayers $300,000 when it was built for the New York City Fire Department in 1981,” he said, sheepishly.
Most days, the fire truck serves as bragging rights on the playground for DuVal’s 6- and 12-year-old sons. He’s even lent it out for parades a time or two.
Occasionally, it also comes in handy when DuVal needs to lift large HVAC units onto the roof of a commercial building.
“Every time I needed a crane, it cost $400 or $500, so it has practically paid for itself,” DuVal said.
Ethan Wright was trying to get to his overnight shift at a local TV station when his car spun out on black ice and got stuck in a snowbank at Fourth and Cheyenne.
He had been waiting for a tow for two hours when DuVal happened upon him at 1:20 a.m.
With few words exchanged, DuVal retrieved heavy-duty towing straps from one of the fire truck’s many side compartments, and in just five minutes, he had Wright back on his way.
“As somebody trying to get to work, it’s definitely a blessing to have people in the community that care and people that will get you out of messes like this,” Wright said. “It speaks a lot about the sense of community in Tulsa.”
The morning will inevitably bring customer calls. Schools have declared a snow day, and his two sons want him to take them sledding.
So why is DuVal out here driving around, looking for strangers to help — for the third night in a row? He sees it as an opportunity to bring hope to others.
“I think it’s just mistakes in life, and striving every day to do better has just been my motivation lately,” DuVal said. “I’ve usually always had to learn the hard way with things, but that’s made me who I am today, and once I set my mind to something, I just can’t be stopped. If there’s a will, there’s always a way.”
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