The one-man rescue squad

Thomas Weller is the Mother Teresa of the freeway, says Elizabeth Douglass in the Los Angeles Times. Since 1966, Weller, now 60, has spent his days cruising the freeways around San Diego, looking to assist motorists with flat tires, empty gas tanks, overheated radiators, and other mechanical problems. “It’s what I do for excitement,” he says. An emergency medical technician by training, Weller drives a battered rig made of pieces of other cars that resembles the Ectomobile in Ghostbusters. Along with such basic equipment as a jack, gas, and compressed air, he packs his Labrador/collie mutt Shela (“a person in a fur suit,” he calls her) and a couple of rifles (“a little bit of self-protection”). Weller was inspired to become a good Samaritan after a passerby once pulled his car out of a snow bank. Now, when he effects a rescue of his own, he hands the grateful recipient a business card that reads, “I ask you for no payment other than for you to pass on the favor by helping someone in distress that you may encounter.” People call him “the San Diego Highwayman,” and he estimates he’s bailed out some 6,000 motorists. These days, though, crippling gas prices have forced him to cut back his excursions to three days a week. “I sit home on my front porch a lot,” he complains. “It’s killing me.”

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