Man credits surfing for jumping into action
INTERSTATE 10 — Sean Kehoe had perishables on his mind Tuesday morning when he found himself saving someone who apparently wanted to perish.
Kehoe — on his way home to deliver milk and eggs to his wife and daughter — was hit with a wake-up call at about 9:20 a.m. when a woman dropped onto the roof of his van while he was on the 10 Freeway.
Kehoe, 36, was heading westbound in the fast lane when he noticed traffic backing up between Centinela Avenue and Lincoln Boulevard. When he approached the Lincoln exit, cars in the surrounding lanes had come to a complete stop. That’s when he looked up and saw a woman, dressed in high heels and a dress, hanging from the exit sign.
“My natural reaction was to pull right underneath her,” Kehoe said, adding he crossed the lanes of traffic to reach the woman, who was hanging over the emergency lane of the freeway. “As soon as I put it in park, she fell on the roof of the van and rolled off the passenger’s side.”
The woman then ran into stand-still traffic on the freeway, where other motorists detained her.
“It was so insane and it happened so fast, another second... she probably wouldn’t have died, but she definitely would’ve broken her leg,” Kehoe said, estimating the height of the sign was at least 20 feet. “I figured my van was probably six feet and she was hanging five feet, so she would be falling about 10 feet onto something that was forgiving instead of 16 feet onto the pavement.”
Asked why he would immediately think to pull his vehicle over to break her fall, Kehoe responded: “I’m a surfer... you have to react quickly sometimes...”
Kehoe, a contractor who grew up on the Westside and attended Santa Monica High School, was just returning from the supply store when he saw the woman dangling above him.
After she dropped, Kehoe drove off so he could drop off groceries for his wife, Monique, and their daughter, Kirra, 11, at their Ocean Park home.
“I figured the others had her so, you know, I had my own pressures of life... I drove off,” he said. “When I got home, I noticed her purse was still on the roof of the van, so I went back. It was this huge scene by then.”
Motorists pointed Kehoe out as the good Samaritan to authorities, who took the woman to a local hospital to treat her for the moderate injuries she sustained in the fall. She was then taken to a mental hospital for a mandatory 72-hour psychiatric evaluation as a result of her suicide attempt, said Santa Monica Police Lt. Frank Fabrega. The woman was described to be in her 30s.
Kehoe said the roof of his 1991 Chevy van, which he uses for work and surfing, is caved in.
“You can only see it if you are eight feet tall,” he said. “I’ll probably just pound it out myself.”
Kehoe, also known as “Saul Good” amongst friends and fellow surfers, said he looked in the woman’s purse, which contained a journal, a card indicating she had undergone a psychiatric evaluation and a bunch of crumpled $1 bills.
“It definitely was not a normal purse,” he said, adding the entire morning was far from normal. “It was weird. I looked over at her and the damn heels had stayed on her feet.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on April 20, 2005. Read the original PDF.