The car is still moving when Rockie Hoskinson jumps out to race toward the truck on the road ahead.

His wife shouts, "Come back," but he keeps running.

Ten-feet tall flames engulf the left side of the truck.

Hoskinson can see melted pieces of vinyl from the ceiling of the pickup fall on the driver, burning his skin.

The driver has cut his hand trying to force the door open. But it doesn't budge.

Hoskinson runs toward the passenger side. He jerks open the door, the driver rolls toward him.

Rockie knows it doesn't take cars long to burn once they start, so he reaches inside the smoke-filled cab.

He grabs the driver's collar and pulls. He keeps pulling.

He drags the driver a hundreds of yards up a grassy hill, he keeps pulling.

And then he hears it, a hiss and then a whoosh, the sound of the fire engulfing the truck.

A soda can pops out of the bed.

Hoskinson, 41, never gave much thought to what he would do if faced with a burning truck. He's been an employee of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation for eight years. He's a Glenrock native.

On Feb. 27, as he drove south Interstate-25 and saw flames coming from the truck driving 60 mph, he still didn't give it much thought.

He raced up to the pickup, pulled out the driver and saved a life. It was for that act, that the Natrona County Sheriff's Office honored him on Thursday.

The driver, James Jones, 50, had just merged onto the highway that February afternoon when he noticed a passing driver flick her cigarette out her window and drive on.

That lit cigarette landed in his truck bed on top of a blanket covering a full plastic gas tank.

When he covered the tank, he didn't think a cigarette might land on the blanket and catch his truck on fire.

"If they didn't pull up beside me and yelled and got my attention," he said. "I guess I would have gotten however much farther down the highway and would be a flaming burning mess and would have died."

Hoskinson and his wife, Janice, followed Jones for roughly a mile, yelling at him to pull over. Janice Hoskinson, 39, was on the phone with her son when she noticed the fire in the back of his truck and hung up to call 911.

When Jones pulled his 1985 Ford F-150 to the side of the road and Rockie Hoskinson jumped out, Janice Hoskinson didn't have time to think of the consequences.

She stayed on the phone with the dispatcher while she watched her husband of 21 years and father of her three children run toward a burning truck.

It wasn't until the adrenaline dissipated that she realized what her husband did, she said. He had risked his life. She still can't tell the story without choking with tears.

Rockie Hoskinson is the first civilian to receive the life-saving award from the sheriff's office.

Because of Hoskinson's action, Jones suffered minor scars to his hands but no permanent damage to his face or body.

Jones tried to thank them as he rode away in the ambulance. He's not sure if they heard it. Although he wasn't able to attend the ceremony, if he had the chance he would thank them in person.

"Thank you all, and thank God you all came by and went out of your way for me."

Contact city reporter Christine Robinson at (307) 266-0639 or christine.robinson@trib.com