What makes a person a hero? It’s not a cape and tights or an emblem stitched on their shirt. Heroes wear an everyday suit threaded with integrity— Austin Phillips, a Lead Installer at Tate Granite, is one such man.

On June 2, Austin and his assistant, Salvador Soto, were installing granite countertops at a client’s home when they heard a concerning sound. “We had maybe ten minutes of work left when I heard a piece of glass fall and shatter, and then a second piece fell,” Austin recounts. 

Turns out, a lone cabinet installer was working with perforated glass panels in another room. He accidentally dropped a piece of glass that sliced open his arm from elbow to wrist. “He came around the corner into the kitchen. He was moaning and had blood pouring out like a fountain from his arm.” 

Austin, Salvador, and the homeowner, who was also there at the time, sprang into action, attempting to stop the blood, punching in 9-1-1, and pressurizing the wound. “I noticed the homeowner struggling to apply pressure to the wound, and so I stepped in to relieve her, wrapping my hands as tightly as I could and squeezing as hard as I could around his arm,” recalls Austin.  

The Fire Department and EMS arrived on the scene and placed two tourniquets on the man’s arm. Austin and Salvador began to clean up the space. The homeowner said they also picked up all the glass shards and wiped down all the cabinets, going “above and beyond” to erase any signs of the disaster.

Austin would later learn from the EMS crew that he had indeed saved this man’s life. They didn’t understand how Austin, a normal guy with no medical equipment, was able to stop the severe bleeding due to the main artery, tendons, and muscles being destroyed. 

“‘He would have bled out and died if it hadn’t been for you,’ they told me,” Phillips recounts. 

Indeed, it seems divine intervention was involved. “I was there for a reason. It was a completely finished job,” Phillips says.

There was a minor manufacturer’s defect in two of the granite slabs that brought them there that day to replace the countertops. Little did they know that this small defect would be a catalyst for their heroic moment.

“God put us all there to save that man’s life,” Austin believes. “I did what I was supposed to do,” he continues, “Everyone had a hand in it—the homeowner, her daughter who stepped in to stay on the phone with 9-1-1, Sal—they all helped save his life.”

Intentional choices steeped in everyday integrity. That’s a hero suit we all can slip into—one size fits all.