February 7 started as a typical day for Northshore School District permanent substitute bus driver Stewart O’Leary but quickly took a turn for the worse.

On an afternoon trip for a North Creek High School varsity girls' basketball game going over 60 mph on an interstate, a piece of metal about a foot long and inch thick flew through the bus’s windshield and hit O’Leary in the chest. It stunned him, but O’Leary remained as calm as he could, never losing control.

“It was quite impactful,” he recalled, pun quite possibly intended. “It was violent, instantaneous. It knocked the wind out of me. I could feel something heavy in my lap. I took my foot off the throttle and let it ease. The two coaches gave me a hand.”

The two coaches, Calvin McHenry and Chris Pinder, were on board the bus at the time with the players, and rushed to his aid when they heard him yelp in pain. 

O’Leary was able to ease on the brakes, turn on the flashers, and pull over on the shoulder with help from McHenry while Pinder called 911 for help. “Once we secured the bus, there was a bunch of chatter on the radio, so I used the cell phone to call dispatchers,” he said, arranging a tow truck and another bus to finish bringing the students to the game. (They made it to the game but unfortunately didn’t win.)

When emergency response arrived, O’Leary was brought to a nearby hospital, where he was treated for a serious bruise on his shoulder and cuts on his face from the glass breaking (he also noted that there was blood on his face as the shards also damaged his glasses).

“Due to Mr. O'Leary's training and dedication to our students, no other passengers onboard were injured except for the driver,” Sabrina Warren, the district’s transportation director, told SBF.

O’Leary’s calm response is being praised nationwide, even landing recognition on Good Morning America and Inside Edition.

Getting national media attention was odd, he said, but he wanted to use the opportunity to champion what bus drivers do every day.

“We’re out there transporting children every day, and doing it safely,” he told SBF. 

He’s been a bus driver since 2016 after retiring from a career in the computer industry. There, he had to deal with a lot of people upset about equipment not working, and did various role-playing exercises to understand all sides. He says this proactive thinking about assessing his response in various situations helped him stay calm. That, and he’s a “pretty chill” individual to start with. 

“I think I handled this OK, no one got hurt, and I’m happy about that,” he said. “I told the girls, ‘I’d take that thit all day long to keep you safe.’”

And it didn’t take him long to want to return to the job. 

“Put me in, coach,” O’Leary texted his dispatcher just two days later, according to a news story. In fact, he was back behind the wheel less than a week later. Voluntarily, he emphasizes; O’Leary did a self assessment and said he wouldn’t have gone back if he wasn’t confident he could do it successfully.

O’Leary gives kudos to the district staff for their support. “I can’t say enough nice things about them,” he said. “Everybody was reaching out, making sure I’m ok. It touched me how much they were concerned.”

Turns out this was not O’Leary’s first time saving the day; he recalls a few years ago when he spotted another bus driver who had slid across the road in unusually snowy weather. He pulled his bus up next to hers to provide a blockade from others hitting them while the other driver carried a bucket of sand over to gain some traction. Panic set in when his bus began to slide, too, but thankfully stopped before it hit nearby trees. Nobody was hurt then, either, as he recounts “pulling her out of a pickle.” 

The broken windshield from this incident is still on display at the district’s bus office, and O’Leary plans to keep the piece of metal as a reminder of what happened. Authorities are not yet sure what caused the projectile piece of metal. 

This is just another example of many of the heroism that school bus drivers show every day.