Jason knew that his mother and sister couldn’t lift the four-door sedan, but that didn’t stop them from trying. When it didn’t budge, the two started to panic. «Calm down. It’ll be okay,» Jason said softly.
The sixth grader had driven the forklift only once before, and he’d nearly smashed it into a parked car. At 90 pounds, he didn’t have the strength to depress the 10,000-pound vehicle’s brakes. Ever since, he’d been afraid to get back on. But now Jason couldn’t afford to be scared. He climbed on and started it up. «Every time he turned the ignition key, it pushed the car forward onto me,» his father says. «I kept saying, „Neutral! Neutral!“»
Jason figured out the machine’s complicated gearshift and moved it into neutral as he slid the forks under the car. He pulled a lever, and the Buick started to rise. Finally, the tires were off the ground and Noorthoek could breathe again – for a moment. Like his dad, Jason forgot to put blocks in front of the tires. As the back end of the car rose into the air, the car rolled forward again and crashed back onto Noorthoek.
Desperate now, Jason pulled the forklift’s lever once more. Again, the Buick started to come off the ground, but this time, for whatever reason, the front tires didn’t roll and the car remained suspended in the air.
Minutes later, Township’s fire chief, Mike Rexford, arrived. Noorthoek lay under the car, ashen but breathing. His internal injuries were minor, but, according to Rexford, his situation was perilous. «The outcome’s never been this good,» he now says. «How long could he have lasted like that?»
It wasn’t until his dad was loaded into an ambulance that the magnitude of the night’s events caught up with Jason. «I told him he probably saved his father,» says Rexford. Jason broke down and started to sob.
His father was released from the hospital early the next morning. «I didn’t stop shaking until I got home,» Noorthoek says. Jason says one happy change has come out of the accident: he gets to spend more time with his dad. Jason Sr., who hasn’t touched a car since the Buick fell on him, often spends evenings with Jason playing video games.
12. Jason Noorthoek Jr. had to go outside in the evening because…
1) his mother made him go.
2) his father asked him to help.