Photo : Mike McCarn ( AP

Christian McCaffrey and some friends went for a hike this past weekend outside of Denver, and their pleasant afternoon out nearly turned tragic after they witnessed 72-year-old Dan Smoker Sr. fall roughly 20 feet onto a rock. “I had never seen anything quite like that in my life as far as the trauma and the sound. We were in shock,” he told Panthers.com.


Smoker, who was on a hike with his grandson Eli, appeared to have serious injuries, so McCaffrey and friends sprang into action. A fellow onlooker stabilized Smoker’s head, McCaffrey called 9-1-1, and one of McCaffrey’s friends was even forced to perform chest compressions after Smoker stopped breathing. Rescuers arrived and took Smoker to a local hosital, where he was diagnosed with a broken femur, a broken pelvis, internal bleeding, bleeding on the brain, nine fractured ribs, and a broken neck.

As of this afternoon, he was still in critical condition but finally stable. Smoker’s son credited the group with saving his father’s life:

“My dad is laying there and there is nothing I can do for him. And my son is there freaking out, and there’s nothing I can do for him,” Dan Smoker recalled. “It was the worst experience, both as a father and as a son.”


McCaffrey and friends even stopped by the hospital yesterday, which the Smoker family seems to have greatly appreciated:

[Panthers]