THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 17, 1994 TAG: 9407150217
SECTION: CHESAPEAKE CLIPPER PAGE: 02 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: Tony Stein
LENGTH: Medium: 87 lines
In the Old West, the cavalry rescued the wagon train from trouble on the trail. In here-and-now Tidewater, Good Guys called Motorist Assistance Aides are rolling to the rescue of drivers in the grip of Interstate Agony.
Did your radiator boil over? Are you just plain lost? Did you run out of gas? Hang in there, bud, help is on the way.
Motorist Assistance Aides work with the Virginia State Police, patrolling the interstates in search of people stranded by mechanical or human failings. I rode recently with Jim Turner and John Maroney, two of three aides who cover Chesapeake, Portsmouth and Suffolk, and I'm here to tell you the aide program is a class act.
Like when Turner pulls up beside an elderly couple on Interstate 64. The man and woman are wrestling in apparent bafflement with a highway map. Turner rolls down his window, gives them a smile and asks, ``Where would you rather be than where you are right now?''
They want to go to the Medical Tower in downtown Norfolk. Turner provides clear and careful directions, and they're happily on their way.
And here is John Maroney pulling up behind a young woman marooned in a car with a flat tire and no spares. Maroney records the license-plate number, the way the aides do whenever they stop. Then he walks up and asks how he can help.
The woman wants to contact AAA for a tow and her husband for a ``Don't worry, honey'' call. Done and done, on the phone in Maroney's car with the yellow flashers on the roof.
But Maroney and the other aides don't like to leave female motorists alone on the highway if they can help it. Allegedly, the tow truck will come in 15 minutes, so we wait. And wait. And wait. The 15 minutes stretches like panty hose on a hippo.
It's closer to 45 minutes before the tow truck shows up. Horrendous Tidewater traffic is to blame, but the woman is grateful, and she gives Maroney a cheerful thank-you wave as he drives off.
Jim Turner is retired from the Naval Shipyard. Ask him why he got into the aide program and he grins. ``An angry wife,'' he says. Just kidding, of course. He wanted to keep busy in retirement, so he signed on when the aide program began in 1990.
Maroney is a retired New York City homicide detective. What brought him down here originally was the vacation lure of good fishing and happy times in his boat. Yes, being a motorist assistance aide is a lot quieter than being a New York detective, but there are compensations.
``Not many people were happy to see me when I was a cop,'' he says. ``Now, they're delighted.''
Talk with the two men for a while and you come to a woeful realization: There are an awful lot of folks out there whose knowledge of cars is limited to knowing that you turn the key in the ignition to start the thing. Turner and Maroney can tick off a whole catalog of confusion about tires alone . . .
No spare tire. Spare tire also flat. Wrong size spare. No jack. Wrong jack for car. Don't even know if there is a spare or not. And, hey, guys, don't chuckle and say something about women drivers. Maroney once found four grown men in a station wagon who had no idea that the spare was in one of those humps in the back.
Every now and then, the rescue calls touch on weird, and Turner has experienced those as well. He picked up a young woman walking along I-64. Her daddy threw her out because she cussed at him, she said. She told her dog to bite daddy, and the dog did. Turner listened in silence until she said there were snakes in a room at the hospital she had just left.
That's when Turner realized she needed more than a ride. He diplomatically suggested she might like to report the snakes to a state trooper, and he called one on the radio. But there was no legal reason to hold here, so Turner took her home to a relative's house.
The aides, basically out there from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. (9 p.m. on Fridays) have some advice to make your travels smoother and their heavy workload a little lighter.
For example, have a good spare and a good jack. Remember that gas stations can be far apart on the interstates. Check under the hood of your car for proper fluid levels once a week. Turner says he has seen cars with engines that clunked to a dead stop because there was absolutely no oil in them. Nil. Nada. None.
And here's a good hot weather tip: If you are stuck in a line of non-moving traffic, you might want to cut your air conditioner off. Settle for a little sweat instead of a lot of engine overheating.
If, in spite of all your precautions, driving disaster strikes - don't despair. Motorist Assistance Aides may not be John Wayne and the cavalry, but they'll be there when the movie's over and the misery starts. by CNB