Ride along with those helping drivers stranded in Las Vegas heat
It’s a blisteringly hot day, and Stephen SanFilippo’s forehead is covered with droplets of sweat, but he’s prepared for the extreme heat.
The cab of his Chevrolet truck is stocked with a cooler of bottled water and ice, peanuts, bottles of yellow and orange Gatorade and a bag of electrolyte powder.
SanFilippo is a Las Vegas-based supervisor for the Freeway Service Patrol, a Nevada Department of Transportation program sponsored in part by GEICO that assists stranded motorists and removes hazards from the road.
He spends most of his days patrolling highways, looking for drivers who need help. Many of the problems he encounters are caused by people not taking care of their cars, he said, but he also thinks more are breaking down because of the heat.
“Summertime’s brutal on vehicles,” he said.
On a ridealong Wednesday afternoon, a day when he said he was working from 5:30 a.m. until at least 8 p.m., he stopped to help four people.
Only one — ironically, another Freeway Service Patrol driver — had an issue that was clearly caused by the heat. That’s not counting SanFilippo, whose truck sometimes feels hotter than it is outside because the air conditioner, which blows air but doesn’t get very cool, is not fully working. It goes in for repairs Monday.
His first stop of the afternoon was for an Audi SUV with California plates sitting on the shoulder of the Craig Road exit off northbound Interstate 15.
“Let’s go check on this fool here,” he said.
He approached the driver’s door and found a woman looking at the GPS on her phone. She asked him for a cheap buffet recommendation. He suggested she go to the South Point or Sunset Station.
Then, he headed south on the interstate and found a disabled red Prius hybrid and a man named Pablo Salcido, who said the car was losing power.
SanFilippo jump-started the car and Salcido drove off.
Back on the highway, near the Strip, SanFilippo discovered the Prius had broken down again. He said he’d told Salcido to get off the highway and go to a gas station, but Salcido hadn’t listened.
“This is how people get killed,” he told Salcido. “You already know you have a problem, right? If you’re gonna keep driving it, I can’t help you.”
Salcido had a tow truck coming, and SanFilippo said he wouldn’t jump-start the car again.
“If he’s not gonna listen to me, he can sit and wait,” he said.
SanFilippo can talk a lot about people who don’t maintain their vehicles. They don’t care for their tires, or they buy used tires that have dry rot, he said. They don’t replace belts in their cars. They run out of oil or don’t have fluid in their cooling system. They drive electric cars when they have no battery left.
Some problems, like hoses popping, are attributable to the heat, he said. People should get their cars serviced when the weather changes, he said, and pay attention to the age of parts like tires.
By about 2:10 p.m., when SanFilippo was on the way to help another Freeway Service Patrol truck, his truck thermometer read 122. He thinks the asphalt on the freeway makes it hotter.
Near the Lake Mead Boulevard exit on I-15 south, he found patrolman Nat Seangsumat with a broken-down truck. Its serpentine belt had broken because of the heat.
SanFilippo and Seangsumat crawled under the front bumper to attach a belt so SanFilippo’s truck could tow Seangsumat’s.
SanFilippo pulled Seangsumat back to the yard at Quality Towing in North Las Vegas, which he said is the subcontractor that the state pays for the drivers’ hours. He did not go over about 20 miles per hour.
He still had hours to go before he was done with his shift.
Contact Noble Brigham at nbrigham@reviewjournal.com. Follow @BrighamNoble on X.