U.S. Marshal Gary Grimes of the Western District of Arkansas met with local emergency responders and air‑evac crews in Fort Smith on Thursday to personally thank them for saving his life after a tractor accident on August 9.
Grimes was working on a lake‑construction project when the tractor he was operating flipped over while he was pushing trees into the lake’s bottom. “If it would have rolled over one more time, it would have crushed me,” he recalled. The impact knocked him unconscious and left him with a concussion, but he says the situation could have been far worse.
Air‑evac flight paramedic Nicholas Goff, part of the team that responded, noted that it is rare for emergency personnel to meet the patients they treat. “We do not usually get to see and meet and greet the patients that we treat,” Goff said. “Most of the time we don’t ever know.”
Goff emphasized the importance of air‑evac flights in rural areas where resources are limited and time is critical. He explained that Sebastian County may have only four ambulances to cover a large, sparsely populated area. Transporting a patient from Fort Smith to Washington Regional Hospital in Fayetteville can take up to an hour and a half by ground, whereas the air‑evac flight completed the trip in about 25 minutes.
Grimes, whose duties often involve serving fugitive‑warrant warrants, said the experience gave him a deeper appreciation for the dedication of first responders. “My people work in fugitive warrants and may need their assistance,” he said. “We know they’re there. I personally know now how good a job they do.”
The rescue was one of roughly 500 air‑evac flights the River Valley crews conduct each year, underscoring the critical lifeline they provide to remote communities across western Arkansas.
Reflecting on the incident with a touch of humor, Grimes joked that his wife now holds the keys to the tractor, but he knows where to find a spare. The marshal’s gratitude serves as a reminder of the everyday heroes who keep Arkansas’s rural residents safe, especially when distance and limited resources could otherwise turn a near‑miss into a tragedy.
Original reporting: 40/29 / KHBS (NW Arkansas) — read the source article.
