‘When you’re near death, you’re more alive than you’ve ever been.’ : Action Without a Camera

It was the unexpected nature of calamity that Jan Shultz remembers best: driving home on a peaceful freeway, his car radio playing, the patterns of a quiet night woven into a familiar tapestry.

If Shultz was thinking anything at all, he was thinking about dinner, which he’d missed in keeping an appointment with his tax man. He was thinking he was hungry and wondered if he’d make it all the way to Valencia without stopping.

Then he saw the flames.

They appeared suddenly a half mile ahead in the fast lanes of the Golden State Freeway, in tones of red and orange and brilliant yellow, like flashes of magic on a dark stage.

Their sound muted by distance, the flames danced silently against the night, a garish disruption in the visual serenity that had existed only moments before.

Shultz reacted instantly, gunning his ’76 Ford van forward, leaping from it at the scene.

Two cars were burning. A man, his clothes on fire, had been thrown free and passers-by were patting out the flames. There were screams.

Someone shouted, “Children!” Someone pointed. And Jan Shultz bolted toward the fire.

What happened next could have easily been a scene from any one of the movies or television shows he’s worked on during the past 10 years.

Shultz is a stunt man, and diving into flames is almost a cliche in the film industry. But he knew that this time it wasn’t a stunt. This time no cameras rolled. This time it was real.

“All I could think of,” he’d say later, “was that someone was hurting.”

Adrenalin pumping, Shultz pushed into a car full of heat and acrid smoke to find a small boy unconscious. He brought him out as bystanders shouted, “It’s going to blow!”

Shultz heard the warning, but he also heard someone else holler that there was a little girl in the same car.

“It could have been my little girl,” he said. “So I went back . . . “

We look for bottom lines.

The bottom line here is this: Shultz saved the lives of two children, then ripped a front door off the car to pull a woman out, but it was too late. She was already dead, torn up in a way that still haunts a corner of his mind.

The California Highway Patrol said later that the first car had come to a dead stop on the freeway because its driver was drunk on “angel dust.” The second car couldn’t stop in time.

If Shultz hadn’t rushed in, a patrolman said, the kids would have died too. He is, without doubt, a hero.

That, in itself, merits recognition. But there are other levels here.

To begin with, I heard of the incident from a friend of Jan Shultz’s. Fellow stunt man Tod Keller, when he heard of what his pal had done, spent the next several days on the phone, determined to get recognition for the act of bravery.

The reaction each time was suspicion. Why are you doing this? What’s in it for you?

That same thought occurred to me. Why was Keller so damned anxious to publicize the heroics of a situation he had nothing to do with?

“Because Jan’s my friend,” he said. “Because he’s a special guy and because he has a basic respect for every single human being he comes in contact with.”

What evolved was an unlikely scenario in an industry of bloated egos: an honest-to-God hero who was reluctant to claim credit, and a friend who was equally determined that credit would be given and that he, the friend, would remain anonymous.

Then there was the accident itself. I wondered: was it possible that after a decade of crashing cars and diving into flames, Shultz had confused reality with drama at the moment of heroism and was simply acting out a role?

Both men say no.

“It was too terrifying to be make-believe,” Shultz said. “My heart was pumping in my throat.”

“He knew it was real,” Keller said. “When he saw the accident and ran to help, Jan was just being himself.”

I asked Keller if it were possible that stunt men, who spend their days dancing on the brink of the abyss, were subconsciously suicidal.

He answered with an expletive, then added, “Man, we do what we do because we’re in love with life. This may sound dumb, but when you’re near death, you’re more alive than you’ve ever been.”

It was a good answer, but it doesn’t explain bravery. I thought about what Shultz did and remembered other acts of courage I’ve either witnessed or heard about.

In ways peculiar to the situation, each transcended logic, each was beyond explanation.

But it really doesn’t matter why Shultz did what he did. He saved two lives. That makes him special.

And he has one hell of a friend too.

“Is it possible,” Keller said at the end, “that you could just leave my name out of this?”

Not a chance.