TC0619

Brian Snell, who aided
woman in wrong-way
crash, named Highway
Angel of the Year
the woman behind the wheel was
unconscious.
Snell is no stranger to emergency
situations. He joined the Marines in
1989, but an injury sustained in boot
camp curtailed his military career. After
his discharge in 1992, he spent nearly
five years as a paramedic in Nashua,
New Hampshire, near his hometown of
Merrimack, before becoming a sheriff’s
department rescue worker.
“I used to do a lot of high-angle rescue
work,” Snell said. “It’s rope work.
We were up on ledges, mountain work
and all that.”
Even in his spare time, Snell has
done “a ton of volunteering,” he
said, including rescue work on New
Hampshire’s Mount Washington. At
6,288 feet, Mount Washington is the
highest peak in the Northeast and part
of the Appalachian Trail. It is popular
with hikers, cyclists and gliders, but
“I used to do a lot of highangle
rescue work,” Snell
said. “It’s rope work. We
were up on ledges, mountain
work and all that.”
weather conditions can turn treacherous
quickly.
“And when the World Trade Center
went down I wound up going to Ground
Zero working search and rescue down
there,” Snell added.
Snell spent five days as a volunteer
at Ground Zero “literally digging
in the dirt and going through the pile
itself.” He was among the many rescue
workers who became casualties of the
attack after the fact. Part of his diaphragm
became paralyzed and he lost
a lung due to the prolonged exposure
to the particulate matter in the air at
Ground Zero.
“Obviously, after 911, law enforcement
was out because of the disability
with my lung,” Snell said.
Snell was already on his way to
becoming a full-time professional truck
driver. “My grandfather for years told
me to get my truck license,” Snell said.
“I was like, ‘I don’t
want to be a truck
driver.’” But during an
economic downturn he
took his grandfather’s
advice and started a
gradual transition from
emergency work into
trucking.
In those early morn-
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