OJAI : Pair Rescue Man by Lifting Trailer

Cecil Rodriguez and his son, Frankie, are not tall--about 5 feet, 5 inches--and not especially muscular.

But they performed a herculean feat when their co-worker most needed it Wednesday morning.

While setting up a 60-foot mobile trailer at Meiners Oaks Elementary School near Ojai about 9:50 a.m., the older Rodriguez saw the structure shift from its moorings and then heard panicked cries for help.

Antonio Ayala of Riverside had been seated on the opposite side, his legs under the edge of the trailer as he worked the tie-down anchor into the earth, when the trailer dropped more than a foot.

Rodriguez, 46, said he rushed to the source of the cries and found the 25-year-old Ayala pinched under the trailer, his body folded like a jackknife.

Putting their backs to the trailer to brace themselves, Rodriguez and his 21-year-old son, also of Riverside, lifted it enough to allow Ayala to be pulled out by a third worker, 18-year-old Javier Arceo, Rodriguez said.

“It must have been the old adrenaline rush,” Deputy Rhett Searcy of the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department said.

Ayala, who had been trapped about 30 seconds, was taken to Ojai Valley Hospital for treatment of back pains and then transferred to Ventura County Medical Center, where spokeswoman Denise Stewart said he was in serious condition.

After the accident, Rodriguez and his son attempted to demonstrate how they had lifted the trailer, but they could hardly budge it. Rodriguez simply shook his head.

The trailer, one of two to be used for the child-care program behind the school at 400 S. Lomita Ave., was estimated to weigh as much as nine tons.