If Stephen Parker didn't believe in miracles before, he certainly does now.
Stephen was working on a car with his sons, 17-year-old Mason and 8-year-old J.T., when the jack he was using collapsed, trapping Stephen underneath it.
"We were pulling the engine out of the car, and after we got it jacked up, I climbed under there to take the axels off," Stephen recalled. "The one axle came off pretty easily, but the other side wasn't coming off."
He jiggled the axel again, but it moved the jack and made the car fall. Mason had gone indoors with a cut hand, so 8-year-old J.T. was the only one around to help.
"I yelled to J.T. on the other side of the car, "˜Jack it up quick! Jack it up quick!'" Stephen said. "I couldn't move at all. I was totally trapped, and then I passed out. It was all in his hands, and I thought, "˜This is it. There's no way he can jack up this car because it took my 17-year-old son and I both to jack it up the first time."
J.T. weighs about 50lbs, so on any other day he wouldn't have been able to move the jack at all. That doesn't mean he didn't try, though. The boy started jumping up and down on the handle to get it to move.
"It was scary, and I didn't think that I could jack the car up, but I just kept on trying," J.T. said.
It took 15 minutes, but J.T. managed to get the car to slowly raise off his father.
"All I remember is I felt peace," Stephen said. "I remember seeing white, like a nice happy day. The clouds were going by, and everything was happy and peaceful."
After the car was off his dad, J.T. went and got his brother and called 911. Stephen was taken to the hospital in critical condition. Miraculously, his only injuries were broken ribs. No internal damage whatsoever.
"It was just a miracle," said Stephen, who was home two days after the accident.
When the family asked J.T. how he managed to jack the car up and save his dad, the boy gave a definitive answer.
"Angels."
"We believe my grandpa, who passed on, and my sister who died were helping him," Stephen said.
J.T. Parker was presented with one of 11 "East Idaho Real Heroes" award by the American Red Cross.
"This whole thing is a miracle. There's no other way to describe it," his mother said. "There's no way that little boy could have done that. I just felt that it was a responsibility we now have to tell people that miracles still exist."
