Iowa football player changes flat tire for family stuck on Interstate

Iowa Hawkeyes linebacker Zach Twedt states he is changed flat tires on cars for various folks trapped on the highway. He will not do it for dollars or gifts, and he certainly isn’t going to do it for viral recognition. 

“It truly is just the suitable matter to do,” Twedt, 19, told the Des Moines Sign-up. 

So when he spotted Tina Gunn and her 3 little ones trapped on the aspect of Interstate 35, Twedt didn’t assume two times about halting to assist.

Gunn and her family members have been driving household to Nebraska from a single of her sons’ regional monitor meets in Minnesota in excess of the weekend when their car’s tire deflated. The family was just north of Story County, even now a lot more than two hours away from home, as initial documented by KCCI. 

Gunn says she doesn’t know how to transform a flat tire, so she experimented with to request roadside aid by way of Allstate’s phone application, she advised the Register.

No sign.

As she attempted to locate a cellphone quantity for the insurance firm, her oldest son alerted her to a gentleman approaching the car or truck. 

“Like this dude appeared out of nowhere, dressed in Iowa Hawkeye gear, and goes, ‘Can I enable you?’ Very long tale small, his identify is Zach Twedt, a football participant for Iowa Hawkeyes,” Gunn wrote in a Facebook post after the face. The post has since garnered far more than 25,000 likes and 7,000 shares.

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Twedt was heading from Okoboji to Iowa Town  when he observed the family’s motor vehicle stopped just north of his hometown, Tale Metropolis.

He pulled over to offer you a hand, shaking off nerves about receiving out of the car or truck with vehicles hurrying past on the interstate. 

Gunn mentioned Twedt changed the tire in 10 minutes.

“He finished and place things away and he arrived at out … to shake my hand but I had opened my arms because I was likely to hug him,” Gunn mentioned. “And he claimed, ‘Oh, I acquire hugs, much too.’ And I stated, ‘OK, simply because I am going to hug you.'”

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Twedt states changing vehicle tires was just one of the a lot of functional skills he uncovered increasing up on a farm in Tale Town.

“It builds character,” he explained. “It’s turned me into the individual I am nowadays.”

Twedt is a redshirt freshman for the Hawkeyes who graduated from Roland-Story High Faculty in 2021. 

Gunn explained she took to social media to write-up about Twedt due to the fact she preferred other individuals to listen to about his kindness. She didn’t know it would get so significantly focus. 

“The post was needed,” she reported. “It is chaos in our place ideal now and you will find so a great deal heading on and a good deal of it is destructive. It was wonderful to see that someone confirmed some kindness.” 

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It wasn’t just the point that he got off at the harmful intestate the place “nearly anything could have happened,” Gunn mentioned. 

“He observed that we ended up in require, and he needed to help,” she stated.

“I’m a full stranger and he was on his way to observe and below he felt the require to occur aid me and assist my little ones,” Gunn explained. “… His heart was superior and in a very good location.” 

Twedt appreciates all the kind suggestions on the thousands of tweets, Facebook and Instagram comments and posts. but discovered it about that several commented factors like, “I’m glad to see you can find still good men and women in this world.”

“It just makes me unfortunate that it’s appear to the issue in culture exactly where there is certainly so much going on and a whole lot of it is unfavorable,” he said. 

Twedt stated he hopes his actions inspire other people to move the kindness ahead. Because according to him, no one is “way too superior” to assist change out a tire. 

“If everyone could test and do their section outside the house of what you are in society, and simply just try to be a kind human being, I experience like modern society would start out to be a great deal greater place,” he claimed.

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Twedt and Gunn became quickly close friends now and hold in touch more than the cellular phone. 

“I feel she’ll have to arrive to just one (of the game titles),” he laughed. “I’ll have to get her a ticket.”

Gunn phone calls Twedt her “small brother.” 

In just one of their the latest discussions this 7 days, “I was joking with him … and I was declaring, ‘Guess what? You now have to train me how to improve a tire,'” Gunn stated. 

Virginia Barreda is a trending and standard assignment reporter for the Des Moines Sign up. She can be reached at vbarreda@gannett.com. Adhere to her on Twitter at @vbarreda2.