Bus Driver Saves Unconscious Man From Train Tracks

A Riverside Transit Agency bus driver reportedly saved his best work for when he was not on the job.

According to a heroic story shared by RTA, 24-year veteran driver Ted Jenkins was walking home from another late October day on the job when he spotted a wheelchair on the side of a busy road just few feet away from railroad tracks that slice through the City of Riverside.

At first he didn’t notice anything strange, just an abandoned wheelchair without its owner. Then he looked down the tracks and saw the body. Then he heard the sound of the approaching train.

“It was getting really dark out,” Jenkins said. “So I just started moving fast toward this guy who was laying there on his back just a few feet away from the tracks. I started calling out to him and he moved around a little bit and that was a good sign.”

Turns out the guy on the tracks was Joseph Larry, a frequent RTA customer whom Jenkins actually knew as a passenger on Route 1. When the coach operator arrived to Larry’s side, he pulled the man away from the tracks, dialed 911 and waited with him in the dark for paramedics to arrive.

Later, when Larry woke up in an Inland hospital he had no memory of what happened, only that he may have had a bad reaction to new medication and blacked out. A few days later, after Larry was discharged from the hospital and home resting, he heard a knock at the door. When the door opened, Jenkins was on the other side.

Jenkins, who had ridden an RTA bus to Larry’s house, wanted to check on his friend. The driver told Larry about everything, including how when Larry was lying on the ground when the train was passing he asked over and over where his hat was and how Jenkins had told him he found it in the dirt and everything was going to be fine, and then how he waited with Larry in the dark for the paramedics to arrive, and how he made sure they took the wheelchair with them to the hospital.

Jenkins could have easily missed his opportunity to be a hero that day.

“I had the chance to work overtime but I didn’t take it for some reason,” Jenkins said. “If I had worked overtime, I wouldn’t have been there to help this guy. Things happen for a reason and this was divine intervention.”

Larry is doing much better these days. He credits Jenkins with saving his life. “I could have been hit by a train or just died out there in the dark,” he said. “RTA has a good man working for them. He’s a true hero.”

RTA Chairman Marion Ashley also applauded Jenkins’ heroism.

“We are privileged to have Mr. Jenkins work for us for more than 20 years,” Ashley said. “He has always been a first-class employee and this is just another example of him going above and beyond the call of duty.”

—Contributed content