Hero pulls man from burning car
Published: February 9, 2006
A self-professed “troublemaker” as a Northbrook youth, Chris Lovas became a hero on the Edens Expressway late last Thursday night.
Lovas, 26, now of Vernon Hills, is credited with pulling an Evanston driver from a burning car. The driver escaped serious injury due to Lovas’ swift, heroic action, Skokie Fire Chief Ralph Czerwinski said Monday.
“The car was rapidly engulfed in flames,” Czerwinski said. “He’s pretty lucky he had a guardian angel remove him from the vehicle.”
Lovas is actually an official Guardian Angel, a member of the nationally organized team that typically protects citizens from urban crime.
Joining the group last November was part of a religious awakening that has made him a better person, Lovas said.
“I’ve definitely been trying to change my life around. A few years ago, I wouldn’t have done anything like this, but I believe in the Bible now,” Lovas said Monday, adding, “I grew up in Northbrook, and definitely had a reputation of causing some trouble there.”
The same person who as a boy got caught setting a fire in the washroom at St. Norbert School, where he was a student, said he didn’t hesitate last week when he saw the Skokie crash, and the car burst into flames.
As his friend Matt Durso drove south with Lovas in the passenger seat, they saw a car careen across the highway near Church Street, and into a ditch. It went airborne coming out of the ditch, striking and uprooting a tree, which then came down on the sedan, Lovas said Monday.
The engine compartment immediately caught fire.
“I told my friend, ‘Pull over now,’ ” Lovas said Monday. “He pulled over, and as I got out he said, ‘Let me call 911,’ and I tossed him my phone.
“I opened the driver’s door, and noticed the man in the back seat. His face was covered with blood. I grabbed him and pulled him out. In case he had a spinal injury, I tried to brace him. I dragged him a safe distance from the vehicle.”
Lovas couldn’t get the driver to tell him if there was anyone else in the car, so he headed back to check. He stuck in his hand to feel around in the smoke-filled car, satisfying himself that it was empty moments before it exploded in flames.
The 30-year-old driver was taken by a Skokie Fire Department ambulance to Evanston’s St. Francis Hospital. He was released from the hospital Sunday.
“We’re pretty proud of him,” Lovas’ father, Al, said Monday. He added his son “has always been helpful. He joined the Knights of Columbus when he was 18, and that’s pretty unusual.”
Chris Lovas admits, however that he spent much of his youth “off and on” in trouble, and as an adult, he had “anger issues, relationship issues. People would say I was a good friend, a loyal friend. But I didn’t have any strongly grounded morals, moral values.”
He said he was “born again” as a Christian in the spring of 2004, and everything’s different now: Helping others is now at the core of his person.
Last fall, after hearing about a series of rapes in Chicago’s Lincoln Park, he joined the Chicago Guardian Angels. He patrols the subways and streets a couple of nights a week now, and attends Lake Forest’s non-denominational Christ Church once a week.
He hasn’t made any citizen’s arrests as a Guardian Angel, but says he has deterred several pickpockets, and helped move along men he and his partner have seen harass women on the street or on public transportation.
Lovas runs his own construction business, called Fresco Demolition. But next month, he plans to move to Australia, where a job in entertainment promotion awaits.
“He’s a good kid, and I’m pretty proud of him,” Al Lovas said. “It happened right in front of him. I can’t believe people don’t stop when they see something like that, don’t want to get involved.”
His son knows why he didn’t pass. “We live in a pretty godless time, and I know people don’t think this way much. But I really felt the change, and it was the biggest change in my life.”
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