Motorcyclist is seeking trucker who saved his life

A couple of Fridays ago, Jeff Blessing was riding his motorcycle up the Gulf Freeway when a car in traffic near him slowed down or swerved after being hit by a loose tire. Blessing hit the car and was thrown off his motorcycle and into the middle of the freeway's northbound lanes, unconscious. It's a situation from which you wouldn't expect a person to escape alive — but Blessing did, thanks to a big-rig driver who maneuvered his truck to block traffic on the freeway that morning. And now Blessing is trying to find that truck driver so he can give him the thanks he deserves.

"We feel duty-bound to find this man," Blessing's wife, Dorothy, said. "He needs to be recognized by everyone and we just want to give him a big 'Thank you' from the bottom or our hearts." Dorothy Blessing called the trucker "an instant hero," and Webster police officer Mark Rawls — who responded to the accident call on May 25 — agreed. "That trucker must have been an angel for him," Rawls told the Chronicle. "I believe the trucker did save the guy's life. [Blessing] ended up landing almost in the middle lane of traffic where there are really no shoulders." You may be asking yourself what Houstonist did: How come no one got the truck driver's name at the accident scene?

"He wasn't directly involved and he wasn't a witness to the accident so he was able to leave," Rawls said. "I got involved in investigating the accident and wasn't able to get his name before he left."

Rawls said he did talk to the trucker at one point and praised him for his quick action to protect Blessing.

"I told him he really did a good deed because we definitely would have been working a fatality accident if he hadn't done what he did," Rawls said. "People go through that area at 70 and 80 miles an hour."

Blessing has set up an e-mail address — jeffblessing (at) verizon (dot) net — in case anyone knows the trucker's identity.