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The heroine next door
New resident honored for rescuing man from burning car

by Jon Wiener

Jun Munakata remembers feeling overwhelmed, but she doesn't know why she decided to go to lunch so early that day, or why she was craving greasy food. Maybe it was a busy day at work. Maybe it was the stress of moving to a new city.

But had she not been sitting in her car at the Carl's Jr. drive-thru window at 11 a.m. on Feb. 13, Robert Smith quite possibly would not be alive.

Munakata and a sales clerk watched as Smith slammed his car head-on into a tree across El Camino Real. He got out of the car at first and appeared to be unharmed, if not totally alert. But as the clerk dialed 911, Smith got back inside and tried to turn off the engine. His view obstructed by airbags, he never saw the flames.

Within moments, Munakata was running across the street, past a group of bystanders, desperately trying to get Smith's attention. By the time she got there, the fire had spread to the passenger seat. She yanked on his arm several times, but he did not react. She tugged again and again, finally getting the man's arm over her shoulder and pulling him out.

The blasts that came next, as she dragged Smith from the car, are the stuff of Jerry Bruckheimer films. First the engine block exploded, then the windows, then the gas tank.

"Things were flying all over," said Munakata. "Everything just went black."

By the time the police and the ambulance got there, Munakata said, Smith would not let go of her hand. The ambulance took him to Stanford Hospital, where he was treated for a broken wrist and given an emergency spleenectomy. They were about to release him when a CAT scan showed his stomach was full of blood, a condition that would have killed within 30 minutes.

"It really was a miracle," said Smith. "Somebody said, 'You got an angel sitting on each of your shoulders.'"

Smith said his memory of the crash is hazy, but vehemently denies a police version of events that led to charges of driving under the influence. He said he had not been drinking, and that he swerved to avoid a car that had cut him off.

He also remembers Munakata coming over and trying to talk to him, but believes he was able to get out of the car under his own power. Even so, he said, Munakata was a heroine who "was just trying to help a fellow human being." He said he would send her some flowers.

For her part, Munakata was so upset that no one else was making an effort to help Smith that she said she had trouble speaking to the responding officer. She eventually gave a statement to police, then quietly called her boss to tell him why she was late. She then went back to her job Satura Cakes in downtown Los Altos, as if nothing special had happened.

"It takes a certain kind of person to step forward and do something like that," said Sgt. Dale Messimer. "Some people just kind of react."

She later told her parents — "never do that again," they said — and a few friends. Beyond that, she kept the story, along with her fears and frustrations, mostly to herself.

Her coworkers at Satura Cakes, where she works as an operations specialist and helps with translations, said they don't think of Munakata as a superhero who goes around rescuing people from cars.

"She's definitely the kind of person that would do the right thing," said her boss, Chris Kamimura. "She's the kind of person that you could put your trust in."

At the April 11 city council meeting, Mayor Nick Galiotto presented Munakata with a proclamation honoring "her dedication and service to the community." As he read the details of the incident, the audience went silent in disbelief. When he was done, Munakata went back to her seat. She was the only person sitting down.

After the proclamation and the standing ovation, and later a visit from the police chief, Munakata is feeling better about what she did that day in February. She has also changed her impression of her newly adopted city.

"I didn't really expect them to do anything," she said. "It was really touching. The fact that they did acknowledge the action, maybe they would have done the same."

E-mail Jon Wiener at jwiener@mv-voice.com