CrossFit trainer Greg Pena shows how he scaled a retaining wall to help the victims of a highway crash. Screenshot: CBS San Francisco

LOS GATOS, Calif., April 15 (UPI) -- A California CrossFit coach scaled a 25-foot retaining wall to help a mother whose vehicle overturned with her young children inside.

Greg Pena said he was preparing for a class March 26 at the Los Gatos Swim and Racquet club when he heard a crash and saw smoke coming from Highway 17.


Pena, whose workout area is located next to the retaining wall, climbed the 25-foot wall and found a Ford Expedition had overturned with six people inside, including a mother and her three young children.

Pena assisted a teenager whose head was bleeding and freed the three young children from their upside-down car seats.

"Nobody was there, and when I turned, he was there!" mother Jessica Magdaleno told KPIX-TV. "I said, 'Oh! Can you please get my babies?' 'Yeah, yeah, yeah,' he said. 'I'm going to help you. It's OK, it's OK.'"

Pena said he doesn't consider his actions to be extraordinary.

"I don't like to be called a hero, I like to think that anybody would've done this. I hope anybody would've done this," Pena said.

However, a firefighter with the Santa Clara Fire Department -- which branded Pena "a Good Samaritan Ninja" on its Facebook page -- disagreed with Pena about the heroism of his actions and nominated the rescuer for a citizen's medal of valor award.

"I know he wouldn't call himself that, but yeah, I think what he did was heroic," firefighter Scott Graham said.