PHOENIX — On your worst day of getting stuck in Arizona’s backcountry, you would have wanted Joe Osuch to be the one to pull you out.
“He always came with more than just a winch line to pull you out,” Carl Girard said. “He came with a hug and compassion and water if you were thirsty and sacks if you were hungry.”
Osuch owned Arizona 4x4 OffRoad and Recovery. He spent his time rescuing those who got themselves into tough situations.
Like in February of 2020, when he helped pull a family of five to safety from a raging Sycamore Creek.
“He was a real hero,” Nena Barlow said. “He would go out and save people out of the backcountry. It was a business for him, but there were so many times where he just went and got people.”
But his family said Osuch became sick in April and tested positive for COVID-19 when he was taken to the hospital.
His family said he had not received and wasn’t planning to get the COVID-19 vaccine.
Ultimately, his family said there was too much damage to the 66-year-old’s lungs.
His family said his medical staff started palliative care and he died Tuesday evening.
“It seems like it’s a light at the end of the tunnel,” Barlow said. “To lose people now, I think it seems to hurt more.”
Barlow said she met Osuch at least 20 years ago likely at a clean-up in Table Mesa.
Osuch would call on Barlow upon occasion for a hand getting someone pulled out.
“He could get that truck anywhere and get anybody anywhere and do it safely,” Barlow said.
On Osuch’s business social media page, he often posted the “adventures”, as he’d call them, documenting the outings he had to pull vehicles out.
Now, it’ll be Girard who takes over that job.
Girard said he met Osuch about five years ago when he went to shoot some drone footage for a job Osuch was doing.
Osuch said they’ve been working together ever since.
“He’s definitely a role model, in a lot of ways, more than one,” Girard said. “Not just in how to recover a vehicle, but how to behave as a human being and how to treat each other in the world we live in, where there’s so much negativity anyway, he was always a shining light.”
A final message Osuch left reads: “Let everyone know how much I love them, and that I’m okay with this. I’ve had a great adventure and this will be my greatest adventure looking over everyone here.”
“That’s Joe,” Girard said. “That’s Joe, he was always thinking of other people.”
Girard said that’s exactly what Osuch did in his final exchanges with him.
“He asked me if I was okay," Girard said. “He was on his deathbed and saying goodbye to the world and his question to me was if I was okay.”
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