Quite a day! NFL star Vince Wilfork had a Sunday to remember on Jan. 18, when he won a crucial football game and later helped to save a woman’s life.
The New England Patriots’ defensive tackle, 33, first fought with his team to decimate the Indianapolis Colts by a score of 45 to 7. The Pats won the AFC Championship and nabbed a spot in Super Bowl XLIX against the Seattle Seahawks.
Driving away from his team’s Foxborough, Mass. Gillette Stadium after the game, Wilfork found himself facing a completely different challenge. The burly athlete, who stands at an impressive 6 feet 2 inches and weighs about 325 pounds, reportedly came across a car accident on the state’s leg of U.S. Route 1.
He found a flipped Jeep on the side of the road and went over to help the woman inside.
“Through football and the course of life, I’ve learned to try to stay poised in certain situations and I’m pretty sure she was kind of scared,” he told reporters on Monday, Jan. 19, about the incident. “The last thing I wanted to do is have her panic, and that was the first thing I told her, I said, ‘Don’t panic. I’ll get you out of here.’ We [were] fine. We got her out, the cops came and that was about it.”
A release from the Massachusetts State Police explains that troopers responded to the scene and “to their surprise,” found Wilfork “checking on the operator” of the vehicle, a 38-year-old woman named Mary Ellen Brooks.
Brooks was unable to get out of the crashed car so Wilfork lent one impressively strong helping hand. “Trooper Kenneth Proulx stated that he held the passenger door of the vehicle open, and Vince Wilfork reached in and helped lift the operator out of the vehicle with one hand,” the report states, adding that the Patriots player left the scene “after ensuring the troopers didn’t need any further assistance.”
“I think anybody would do the same thing,” Wilfork added on Monday. “I saw the lady in there and asked her if she was okay, could she move. She grabbed my hand, and [I] kind of talked her through [it]. It wasn’t a big deal — it was seeing someone that needed help and helping. I was just trying to get her to safety.”
