Kellen Vetter, We Energies natural gas technician, had just missed his turn. His GPS recalculated, and that wrong turn suddenly put him in the right place at the right time.
As Vetter drove his We Energies emergency response truck down County Highway J in western Dane County, Wisconsin, suddenly he saw people frantically waving him down, shouting that a car had rolled over into a ditch. He pulled over immediately and ran about 50 feet into the woods, where he found a blue SUV on its side. Even before he saw it, he could hear the screaming. “[It] was so loud, it sounded horrifying,” he said.
A 65-year-old woman was trapped in the driver’s seat. As Vetter got down on the ground, asking if she was hurt, through her adrenaline and fear and pain, she gasped out, “I think my arm is severed.”
Vetter, who joined We Energies in 2021, is a former U.S. Army paratrooper. In that moment, even more than his military training, he said, his We Energies training kicked in. “We have a No. 1 rule that when we are responding to an emergency, we are protecting lives. That is drilled into your head day one,” he said. “My first instinct is to get to where the people are and try to help them.”
He called out to ask if any of the bystanders had a belt. Another man near the car gave Vetter his. “I crawled down on my stomach, and I was talking to her … asking her what her name was,” said Vetter. “I told her to try to slow her breathing down because she kept saying she was really scared.”
Laying on broken glass and twisted metal, Vetter tightened the homemade tourniquet on the woman’s left arm. “I said, ‘It’s going to hurt, what I’m about to do, but it’s going to help you,’” he said. “She said it hurt, and I told her that’s how we know it’s working.”
Vetter then held her right hand, doing his best to keep her calm until Med Flight arrived. “She was telling me stuff like, ‘I don’t want to die,’ … and I’m like, ‘You’re not going to die,’ and ‘I’m going to stay here as long as I have to.’”
According to trauma experts, in the case of severe bleeding, every minute counts. Vetter’s actions are credited for helping to save the woman’s life.
“I really believe anyone from my work group would have done the same thing,” he said. “We’re in the business of gas, but at the same time, we’re providing service to people. You’re helping better their lives. … You’re really there to help people have a life, so that was kind of what I did when I showed up.”