Tampabay: Who do you call? Road Rangers

One of Robert Palmer's most enduring memories was the day last September, as Tropical Storm Gabrielle lashed the bay area, that he and a colleague spent 15 minutes running after a pelican through traffic on the Howard Frankland Bridge.

"Between the wind and the cars, it couldn't take off," Palmer recalled. "I didn't want the bird to get hurt, and I sure didn't want it flying into somebody's windshield and causing an accident."

Palmer finally caught the bird, bundled it in his arms and dropped it over the side of the bridge into the water.

"It spread its wings and floated down," he said. "Once it was in the water it was fine. We were soaking wet, but the pelican was fine."

More frequently, the benefactors of Palmer's kindnesses are angry, frightened or frustrated motorists who run out of fuel, blow a tire, overheat, have an accident or otherwise come to an unexpected stop along one of the area's interstates.

Palmer and 20 others make up a tow-truck squad known as the Road Rangers.

Seven days a week, 24 hours a day, in 12-hour and 16-hour shifts, Road Rangers patrol I-275 through Pinellas and Hillsborough counties, the west end of I-4 and the east end of the Courtney Campbell Parkway in a program underwritten by the Florida Department of Transportation.

Rangers check on every vehicle pulled off the road. They carry jugs of gasoline and diesel fuel. They carry water to soothe overheated radiators, compressed air for flattened tires.

If the level of help needed exceeds their equipment, motorists who don't have their own phones can use Ranger cell phones to call for help. If Rangers spot debris in the road, they stop to pick it up, even when it means dodging rush-hour traffic.

All of it is free. Road Rangers, who earn $7 an hour, aren't even supposed to take tips.

People helped by the Rangers say it is a great assistance program that nobody knows about, though it has been around for more than a year.

"I don't know what I would have done if he hadn't come along," said Ariane Rojas of Tampa recently as Ranger Dave Shepard changed a shredded right front tire on her Corvette in the breakdown lane of I-4. "He is truly a lifesaver right now. This is a great service. How come they don't publicize it?"

As helpful as it is, it is also dangerous work.

While Shepard was on his knees wrestling with the Corvette tire, only a few inches separated his back from the fast lane of westbound I-4. A cold wind blowing nearly 30 miles an hour kept trying to knock him over. Into the mix streaked an 18-wheeler, its trailer rolling from side to side in the gusts.

Instead of moving over a lane, the big rig whipped right by Shepard, adding its wake turbulence to the wind. Shepard glared at its retreating profile.

"If Albert Einstein were alive today, the minute he got in a car and closed the door his brain would fall out on the floor," he said later. "People are in such a rush. They don't think. They leave common sense behind. Their brains fall out the minute they get behind the wheel."

Shepard and his colleagues learned the truth of those words three days after Christmas.

Justin Willis, 19, of St. Petersburg, who had been a Road Ranger for six months, was setting out cones to close down a lane of eastbound I-275 at Lois Avenue in Tampa after an accident. Willis was struck by a pickup that didn't stop.

He died on New Year's Eve, the second Road Ranger killed in the state and the first in this area. The first fatality was in Broward County two years ago.

"He was a great kid with a great head on his shoulders," said Palmer. "He did everything right that night, had all his lights on, followed the proper procedures. He had his whole life ahead of him."

Willis left a wife and a 2-year-old son. The driver who hit him has not been found.

Although the drivers don't talk about danger, they deal with it every time they leave their trucks. One morning, Palmer dashed across four lanes of Howard Frankland traffic to pick up two strips of tire tread in the roadway and then back again.

"Truck drivers call those treads 'gators' because they snap up and rip up their air hoses," Palmer said.

The same afternoon, he made four trips into bridge traffic to retrieve the pieces of an aluminum ladder that had been hit countless times.

"That stuff could give someone a flat," he said, and no sooner had he spoken than he pulled over at the Pinellas end of the bridge to change a tire for Sarah McCulloch of St. Petersburg, a school psychologist at Dickerson Elementary in Tampa. McCulloch had hit the ladder.

"My boyfriend was coming out to change the tire, but it would have taken an hour," she said. "I'd have hated waiting an hour. It's dangerous out here. You don't realize how dangerous an interstate is until you're out here standing beside it."

Antoinette Salters and Rosa Thomas of Lakeland literally jumped for joy when Shepard pulled up behind their disabled Ford Taurus, stopped five minutes earlier by a flat as they sped to Tampa International Airport.

"Nobody here knows how to change a tire," Thomas said. "We were fixing to experiment. This man is a blessing from God."

Shepard had them back on the road in less than 10 minutes.

"It's reactions like that that send me home happy at night," Shepard said. "A couple of days ago a lady hugged me. It felt kind of weird, standing beside the interstate hugging a stranger, but it felt good, too. I just made her day, and all I did was change a tire.

"I've screwed up in my life, and my grandmother, when she heard about this job, she said I finally was doing something to earn me points in heaven."

But there are frustrations, too.

"I saw a woman stopped on the eastbound Frankland, trying to change a tire on the left side, where there's no breakdown lane and no room to work," Palmer said. "I was eastbound and gunned it to get around to her. I arrived right after she caused a five-car accident."

And there are funny memories.

"We see everything out here," Palmer said. "Every once in a while when you can't see anybody in a car, you find them lying across the seat doing things you don't normally do on an interstate. People pull over to talk on the phone, breast-feed babies, sleep. I'd rather have them sleep beside the road than on it."

Palmer and Shepard say their offers of help are rarely turned away.

"There was this one time I approached an armored van broken down beside the road, and as I got close I could see them through those holes drawing their guns," Palmer said. "I put up my hands and just backed on out of there. They let me help them later, after they transferred the cash to another truck."

The Florida Department of Transportation has Road Rangers in the most populated areas of the state. The program started in Hillsborough County late in 2000 and spread to Pinellas early in 2001, just in time for the Super Bowl.

For now, the patrols do not cover I-75 in Hillsborough, although if the Highway Patrol needs Road Ranger assistance, the white Isuzu tow trucks are called out there.

"When we were building the new span of the Howard Frankland Bridge, we had a similar program for the old span to clear accidents and breakdowns faster," said DOT spokeswoman Marian Pscion. "Everybody loved it: the drivers because they got so much help, the Highway Patrol because it took so much of a load off them. So we brought it back on a bigger scale."

In case of a breakdown

Call AAA or another motor club if you belong. If you are not a motor club member, call the Highway Patrol at *FHP and request a Road Ranger. The service is free. But if you don't specifically ask for a Road Ranger, a commercial tow truck will be dispatched, and that will cost you. Also, keep in mind the rangers serve only I-275 through Pinellas and Hillsborough counties, the west end of I-4 and the east end of the Courtney Campbell Parkway. They do not operate on I-75 unless requested by the Florida Highway Patrol.

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