When David Harwood pulled up to the crash near Prairie Grove last year, he didn’t think anyone could still be alive.

Harwood, a battalion chief at the McHenry Township Fire Protection District, was first at the scene at Barreville and Wright roads and called out to locate survivors.

“I wasn’t expecting anybody to answer me and surprisingly, he did,” Harwood said. “I had it in my mind that it was going to be a fatal car accident.”

Inside the destroyed Dodge Ram pickup truck was Steve Cascio. The now 39-year-old married father of two was on his way to his job as a Lake Zurich police officer, a job he’d had for six years.

On Oct. 20, on the anniversary of that crash, Cascio, his wife Stephanie and their children visited the McHenry Township and Nunda Rural fire districts to say thank you for saving his life.

He does not remember what happened that morning, Cascio said. What he’s been told was he was awake and talking to the first responders on the scene, but his first actual memory was waking up in the hospital hours later.

The couple had returned a few days previously from their 10-year anniversary trip to Italy, and Cascio still was suffering from jet lag. He likely fell asleep at the wheel, he said, crossing the center line and hitting a tree dead on.

The first thing Harwood remembers Cascio asking was if they could let Lake Zurich know he would not make it to work that morning.

Crews from both McHenry and Nunda fire districts were at the scene. The crash was inside Nunda’s district, but McHenry had more of the equipment needed to extricate Cascio from the truck, Harwood said.

In total, 15 firefighters responded to the scene, working 35 minutes to get Cascio safely out of the truck, Harwood said.

“We knew it was going to be a prolonged extrication” based on the truck’s condition, Harwood said. He had a Plan A in place, to get Cascio out from the driver’s side, and a Plan B – pulling him out via the passenger side door.

“It is a methodical processing, trying to untangle a person from the vehicle,” Harwood said.

Once firefighters freed Cascio from the vehicle, he was taken to Northwestern Medicine McHenry Hospital, and from there flown to Advocate Condell Medical Center in Libertyville.

He said most of the damage was on the right side of his body: a broken right ankle, compound fracture of his lower right leg, a broken kneecap, broken right femur at his hip, broken ribs and sternum, broken right wrist, a broken nose and a concussion.

The truck did what it was supposed to do, crumpling in a way that prevented further damage to Cascio’s body, Harwood said.

“If it was an old vehicle ... I don’t think he’d have had the chance to survive that he got,” Harwood said. “The crush zones are made to absorb the g-forces so they are not exerted on the occupants of the cab in the sheer force of the collision. [The truck] gave him a bit of cushion his body didn’t have to absorb.”

Cascio added: “I recommend Ram trucks. It did its job.”

He spent two weeks at Condell, another month at a rehab center and another eight weeks in a hospital bed at home as he recovered. While he is ambulatory again, he has left his position with Lake Zurich police.

“I am not able to return to work. I was doing as much as I could ... but I don’t have the same physicality to make a police officer,” Cascio said.

Instead, he is going into ministry. He attended Chicago’s Moody Bible Institute and had planned to look at ministry as an option after retirement.

“Later in life came a little sooner than planned,” Cascio said.

He is two months into a two-year a residency training program with the Evangelical Free Church of America.

Cascio credits his faith, along with friends, family, and wife Stephanie, for getting him through the past year.

“It has been difficult at times, but with the help of friend, family, folks from our church in Crystal Lake helping with child care, even walking our dog, bringing meals to us, and a close friend at police department helped set up a [fundraiser] ... that helped bridge the gap” between insurance and actual costs, he said.

“It has not been easy, but there were a lot of people who came alongside to make sure we were OK,” he said.

The Cascios wanted to go back to the two fire districts to say thank you because he knows first responders don’t always learn what happens to those they rescue, Cascio said.

Police and firefighters may ride each other at times, but they are all part of a bigger brotherhood.

“I have an appreciation for the fire department because of that” and knows firefighters that he considers family too, Cascio said.

He also knows that faith has a lot to do with his survival and recovery.

“God brought us through this. He answered a lot of prayers, and he was with the firefighters as well,” Cascio said. “We are encouraged in our faith and we wanted them to see the faith aspect in their work.”