By KAREN BRADY

Staff Writer



“Very bad day for wife and family.”

These are the words Daniel Tamez of Amber entered into his daily journal on Thursday, May 22, the day he severed seven tendons, the artery, the nerves and three major blood veins in his left wrist with a pocket knife.

“I was spraying weed killer and I remember getting off the tractor to cut a branch in my way,” said Tamez. “I bent over to cut the branch, but obviously I missed and cut myself. I saw blood shoot out and then I was covered with blood. I called my wife and said ‘I’ve cut myself, you need to come to Amber.’”

“He was so calm when he called, I was not prepared for what I saw,” said Tamez’s wife Debbie. “I will not forget what I saw as long as I live.”

Debbie, who was buying garden plants in Tuttle, called her daughter whose husband, a Newcastle police officer, called 911 and Debbie headed for Amber.

After receiving a call from the county asking him to check on the 911 call, Amber Police Chief Michael Lemaster headed for the Tamez residence.

“I caught a glimpse of what I thought was a person falling,” he said.

Upon investigation, Lemaster discovered Tamez, covered in blood and bleeding badly from a deep gash in his left arm. He had walked a quarter mile before collapsing.

Lemaster, a veteran police officer who has experienced the horrors of aiding plane crash victims, gunshot victims and electrocution victims, went to his truck to find something to use as a tourniquet.

Lemaster looked in vain until he spotted a plastic bag from his dentist containing dental floss and a new toothbrush. Lemaster grabbed the plastic bag and hurried back to Tamez.

Seconds later, Debbie arrived and held her husband’s damaged arm over his heart as Lemaster tried to tie the plastic bag around Tamez’s arm. The bag was too small so Lemaster ripped it open to make it long enough and applied it as a tourniquet.

“It went from a river to a stream,” said Debbie. “He was saved by a plastic bag.”

When Tamez’s step daughter arrived with a length of clothesline rope in her car, Lemaster added another tourniquet to Tamez’s arm.

“We could immediately tell the difference in the blood flow,” said Lemaster.

As Debbie sat in the tall weeds holding her husband, tormented by mosquitos and the sweltering heat waiting for the ambulance, and as Lemaster held a coat over the couple to keep the mosquitos off, they heard the ambulance pass them by.

“Talk about a helpless feeling, we knew we were running out of time, so Mike got on the radio and explained our exact location to the dispatcher,” said Debbie. “Once the ambulance arrived, we drove to Chickasha at about 95 miles per hour, and that wasn’t fast enough. All four EMTs were working on him all the way to Chickasha.”

Tamez underwent two-and-a-half-hours of surgery and is now sporting a cast from his wrist to his elbow.

“If it wasn’t for Mike, I’d be a ghost right now,” said Tamez. “I knew I was bleeding, but I didn’t know how bad. I don’t remember leaving the tractor, but I looked down the road and saw a truck. Thank God you were here, Mike.”

“I think it’s thanks to God everything worked out,” said Lemaster.

While Tamez remembers little about the accident and less about the events that followed, those same events are preternaturally embedded in the minds of Debbie and Lemaster.

“I don’t know anybody who could have survived that,” said Lemaster. “In my opinion, God had this all orchestrated.”

“Dad, my daughter and I had nightmares; we didn’t sleep for three days,” said Debbie. “It was that horrific. Daniel takes such good care of me, I don’t know what I would do without him.”

Curiously, there were several events that Debbie clearly remembers happening before her husband’s accident.

“I usually clean my mother’s house on Thursdays, but I didn’t feel like doing it that day for some reason. Plus I had a crappy old cell phone with crappy reception. I couldn’t make or get calls and I had put off getting a new one. I got a new one just two weeks ago,” she said. “If I hadn’t gotten a new cell phone, I wouldn’t have gotten that call. And if Mike had not gone down that dirt road, if he hadn’t looked to his right...so many little things...if one step hadn’t happened, it would have been too late. Mike’s my hero, he absolutely is. I was so glad to see him there. That little white plastic bag - that’s what did it.”

Daniel no longer carries the knife that cut him. Debbie plans to have it mounted on a plaque which will read “This knife almost took my life. This man saved my life.” She and Daniel will present it to Chief Michael Lemaster as a token of their deep appreciation and friendship.