Last year's December blizzard led to 40 deaths in and around the city of Buffalo. 

One man has felt a fair share of praise for heroic actions for breaking into a school and saving more than 20 people in the harshest conditions.

Jay Withey's day may not have started at the BOCES Edge Academy campus in Cheektowaga.

"Yeah I mean, me and that window changed a lot of worlds, or at least the old one," Withey said.

It would be the intersection of so many paths of survival. The mechanic from Kenmore had to travel miles when he got a distress call from a stuck friend.

"He said [to] come get him. And he told me I'm the only person he knew that would come get them," Withey recounted.

Getting stuck himself along the way, Withey was already headstrong on the first of many missions — letting a stranded woman into his vehicle before the trio made it back to her van for warmth, realizing it would not be the endgame.

"When we realized we couldn't stay in Mary's van any further, I told her, 'Do you have anything to break a window with?' and she said 'No,'" Withey recalled.

That led to a trek back to the truck and a break pad followed only by a heading.

"I used my GPS ... I said, 'If I just walk as straight as possible and then [I'll] hit the building,'" he explained.

Breaking that fated window was not an easy task in the wind and snow, but Withey attacked it with purpose.

"Honestly, [we spent] like a half an hour on the window, and I think, just the realization [that] I'm responsible for two more people. It wasn't just bare minimum," Withey said. "I had to get everyone to safety."

After that, it was just a mission to keep going in and out and find as many people as again with every time Withey left the school, the odds mounting against him, his body giving out but not enough to stop him.

"It's funny when I think about now. It's like every time I came back in the school with somebody. [It] was like a celebration ... and then I would leave again [and] go back out," he added. "I'd drink water, maybe eat an apple or get some sugar in my system, and I was I was ready to back out."

One by one, person after person were brought in from the cold all because of a call to Kenmore and a broken window.

"I couldn't stay in the school knowing there was more people that could be out there," said Withey. "I can't tell you how many times [I went out there.] I was very blessed and lucky to get back. But, you know, I did the best I could in the situation I was in."

And that's why Jay Withey is a 2023 Adult Good Samaritan Red Cross Real Hero.