The Freeway Service Patrol has helped more than 20,000 drivers in its first two years of operations, and today will add three new trucks and expand its free service another 3.8 miles to the university area.

Since June 17, 2009, some 20,690 drivers in disabled vehicles have received help from the Freeway Service Patrol, which ends up easing the commute for everyone else along most of the H-1 freeway and up a short leg of the H-2 freeway.

"This is a very, very simple idea," Lt. Gov. Brian Schatz said Sunday. "When traffic gets snarled, we want to get it unsnarled as quickly as we can because time is money, and time is valuable as people are on their way to work or on their way home. Either way, we cannot afford to have people waiting for a tow truck — not just the people who need the tow, but everyone in back of them."

This morning’s expansion of the Freeway Service Patrol means 23 miles of Oahu freeways are covered from 5 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Friday.

Freeway Service Patrol drivers will look for disabled vehicles from seven tow trucks and three new pickup trucks outfitted with gas and the right tools to jump, tow or otherwise get sidelined cars out of the way to keep traffic moving.

The federal government contributes $1.8 million to the $2 million annual cost to run the pilot program. The state Department of Transportation contributes the remaining $200,000.

"This program works," Schatz said.

Yvette Coleman, an emergency room nurse at Kaiser Moanalua Medical Center, took time away from her children’s baseball game on Sunday to thank two Freeway Service Patrol drivers who helped her on Aug. 18, when her Ford Expedition broke down as she tried to get home to Mililani.

After leaving Kaiser at 3 p.m., Coleman suddenly found herself helpless in her disabled SUV along the side of the westbound H-1 freeway with what would later turn out to be a bad fuel pump.

Coleman’s Ford roadside assistance service would not even be able to tow her from the freeway for another hour to two hours.

"I was scared, nervous," Coleman said. "I was ready to cry."

Just then, "a beautiful blue-and-white FSP truck appeared in my rearview mirror," Coleman said. "It was very, very calming."

After another FSP driver arrived, Coleman and her belongings were escorted into one of the drivers’ air-conditioned trucks. They had Coleman’s Expedition hooked to the back of an FSP tow truck within 10 minutes and on its way to meet the Ford tow truck safely off of the freeway.

As an emergency room nurse for 17 years, Coleman said, "I am usually the one doing the caring. But not on this day. They did everything. I call them my heroes because they really are. They calmed me, they supported me, they took me under their wings."

Coleman is hardly alone in her praise for the Freeway Service Patrol, according to Harvey Heaton, Hawaii project manager for Telvent USA Corp., which operates the service.

Out of more than 4,300 survey cards filled out over the past two years, Heaton said, 94 percent to 95 percent have rated the Freeway Service Patrol’s service as "excellent."