After losing a leg, NJ motorcyclist meets stranger who saved his life

Just before Thanksgiving, a south Jersey man got a chance to meet the stranger who saved his life after a crash that cost the man his leg, NBC reports.

According to the report, Rufus Graham lost control of his motorcycle while on Route 130  in July. He was thrown from his bike and his leg severed instantly by a sign along the road.

But Walter Rives saw Graham, stopped and used his belt as a  tourniquet to stop the heavy bleeding, according to the report. Police later said that tourniquet kept Graham alive, the report says.

Graham spent months in a hospital, not knowing who his savior was. On a YouCaring fundraiser page created to help pay for medical expenses, Graham's mother Roxanne Brocksmith wrote that his pelvis was badly fractured, his collar bone was broken, and he had a large wound on his back.

"The doctors said he had better than a 50 percent chance of making it but there were no guarantees," she wrote.

According to Brocksmith, her son "received enough blood to fill his body five times over."

He finally met his savior Wednesday. According to the NBC report, Rives, a former NASA armed guard, was only in New Jersey in July because he had been on his way to his brother's engagement party in July. Graham's girlfriend arranged for the two to meet because Rives was back in town for the holiday, it says.