This Harvey volunteer used his large military truck to rescue hundreds of survivors

The stranger drove down Braesheather Drive in a military vehicle taller than Staci Beinart’s one-story house. He stopped at the curb, killed the engine, and climbed down from the cab, which sits five feet in the air. Beinart gasped for breath. She took two steps forward, smiled and wrapped the man in a hug. Then she introduced the stranger to her mother. “Mom! This is the man who rescued us!” said Beinart, 40, before turning back to the man. “I’m sorry. What is your name?” His name is Nick Sissa. And on Friday afternoon he was the returning hero of Meyerland, a neighborhood west of downtown Houston that experienced severe flooding due to Hurricane Harvey. For two days this week, through blinding rain that threatened his own livelihood, Sissa drove his two-and-a-half ton military vehicle through the flooded streets of Houston. He rescued about 300 people, he said. “Oh my gosh. You saved my family! My grandchildren!” said Lisa Davidoff, 62, Beinart’s mother. “I am in debt to you.” This truck is no joke When Sissa called his wife Martha Mae last year to say he’d purchased an enormous military vehicle, she didn’t believe him. She was pregnant with their first child. Surely now was not the time to purchase such a big toy. “I didn’t think he’d actually do it,” said Martha Mae Sissa, 34. “I thought he was kidding.” Nick Sissa is not a frivolous man. He has a serious job, managing hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of construction contracts at a chemical factory currently being built east of Houston. He bought the truck at a military auction for $6,000. In a state famous for its love of trucks, Sissa now owned the biggest truck in town. The truck even has local bragging rights — it was manufactured by the Stewart & Stevenson company in nearby Sealy, Texas. But Sissa didn’t buy the truck to show off. In fact, he barely drove it. Instead he parked it in front of his house in Houston’s Third Ward. He kept the tires inflated and the tank nearly full, ready. “My mother-in-law hated this thing. Hated it!” said Sissa, 34, a native of Birmingham, Ala. “I just knew we’d need it for something.”...more