Part One: The Accident

Part 1: The Accident

One Break Down, One Bad Break,  One Mysterious Man bearing Booze, Two  Annoyed Paramedics,   One Eager CHP  Officer,  One  Good Break

July 4, 2007, County of Santa Cruz, CA

For years our neighborhood has had a reputation as the place to go berserk on the 4th of July. The fireworks (many of them, small sticks of dynamite) begin going off in earnest, a week in advance.  The holiday  itself, starts out fun, but eventually it starts to feel like a war zone. overlapping rockets, and explosions, coming from all directions, with no quiet time in between—and it literally goes on for hours and hours.  Every animal goes to ground, or runs terrified into the night, often to be mowed down by some inebriated (or not) party goer.  The house continues to shake and the windows continue to rattle for days after the big party has ended.  The neighborhood is tired of it. The police are tired of it.

The streets fill with people, and it is a complete madhouse. Every one should experience it at least once. It kind of reminds me of the spring break in Florida or boat parties that go on at the Delta (Sacramento River) where Jack Daniels (or a similar vendor) sets up a booth at one of the small islands. House boats and ski boats come from everywhere, lining the docks and dropping anchor. There is Loud Music, Wet T-Shirt Contests, Bawdy Games and Chugging Contests.

People have an absolute blast: bathing suits come off’; boat keys get lost; there’s always a few fights; inappropriate PDAs; people puke; someone always gets hurt; someone always leaves in handcuffs.

Everywhere you look there is something going on, and someone acting like an idiot. It’s crazy fun– but you wouldn’t want the party at your house. When you’ve had enough, you want to go home. It’s stops being fun, when 300 guests have over-stayed  their welcome. That is our neighborhood on the 4th of July.

The Santa Cruz Police Department has tried to contain it. They get a bit more restrictive each subsequent year, in their efforts to lock it down. That’s a tall order. This year they added big fines for anyone found in possession of fireworks (Safe and Sane, included). It seemed to be getting  better in recent years, until this year, when all hell broke loose right around the corner from us. A large tree and three cars went up in flames, neighboring houses  were evacuated.   And without missing a beat, the explosions continued, unabated, as throngs of people milled about, continuing to light fireworks in the street, in plain view of firefighters and police working the scene. Mayhem all around — again fairly normal for the 4th of July in our neighborhood.

In 2007 the police had the beach access blocked early in the day, with a rented chain link fence that ran from south of the San Lorenzo River to the Santa Cruz, Yacht harbor. Access to the beach was controlled  at several gates.  There, the police were diligently checking ice chests for alcohol, and bags, blankets, and portable BBQ’s for fireworks. (Smart and determined types bury the goodies in the sand ahead of time, for later retrieval.). Road access to the neighborhood is blocked off later in the day, but well before dark, via the feeder streets. Once the streets are blocked, you can only enter the neighborhood by car, if you are a resident. You have to show your driver’s license and answer a couple of questions from an officer at the check point to prove it. By 2007, we had lived here for years, and like other residents, were well aware of the road blocks.

If you go to a party somewhere else, and want to come home after, you better be sober or have a designated driver. If you knew you had to go through a checkpoint on the way home, would you risk a drunk driving arrest by drinking alcohol –in a state where one drink can put you over the limit, and a first offence costs an estimated $10,000?.—NO!.. well, neither would we.

My husband had to work the on the holiday in 2007. He had spent most of his spare time, in the week leading up to it, repairing his motorcycle. It had been down for a while, waiting for parts to arrive. He had just gotten everything back together fairly late on the evening of the 3rd.

When he got off work it was the first opportunity he had to take it out for a spin and see how it ran with the new parts. He changed his work clothes and left the house, promising me he would try to be back, before they blocked off the streets, to start the BBQ. I told him If he took too long, I was going to blend and drink the first batch of Margaritas without him.

He called an hour or so later to tell me the motorcycle had broken down on him. He was in a parking lot behind the Laundromat, in Aptos (a nearby town). He was waiting for his brother, to come with the truck. so he could haul the bike home. His brother, wasn’t happy about it, he was coming but  he said the soonest he could be there would be half an hour, if the traffic wasn’t too bad. (Summer beach traffic is bad enough but weekends and holidays can be a nightmare.)

My husband really doesn’t like asking for favors. He would not have called his brother (or anyone else) if he thought there was any chance of getting the bike started. But he’s a mechanic, he had a time to kill, while waiting, and this bike was his baby, so he continued to make adjustments and try to get it running, or at least figure out what the problem was.

The parking lot he was in is big and poorly maintained. It has broken asphalt and pot holes, truckloads of varying sizes of rock and gravel have been deposited on it over the years to make it passable. It is sparsely populated by a few businesses, that don’t use it for customer parking, because they back up to it. The parking lot has one place where there is a very short and slight incline.

My husband tinkered with the motorcycle, making several attempts to start it. After making an adjustment here or there, he would try to start it. He would run along side the bike, pushing it to try to get some speed going, until he reached the incline. At that point he would jump on the bike, pop the clutch, hoping it would kick in. He had already done this twice. without success.

This third time he tried it, approaching the incline, he tripped, slipping on the gravel, legs akimbo, he lost one the handlebars, the wheel turned in.  and the bike came down on him, gouging into his lower leg and snapping his tibia (shin bone.) near the ankle. It was a compound fracture, very jagged, leaving several bone fragments loose in the surrounding tissue

Though most of the near by businesses were closed for the holiday, the accident was witnessed by a couple of guys who were smoking outside the kitchen entrance to an old hotel.   Blood began spurting out of the wound immediately, but the smokers were too far away to see it. When my husband didn’t get up, one of the two guys, who been smoking came over to investigate. When the guy saw the hole in his leg and how much blood there was, he said  “oh my God, stay right there, I’ll get you an ambulance”.    My husband, not realizing how bad he was hurt, managed to sit up and , said “its alright, my brothers on his way”.  The guy said “Dude, you’re hurt bad.  I’m going to call an ambulance. — do you want me to bring you a towel and some ice?  How about something to drink?  You want me to bring you a shot of something?

And then my husband does something really stupid.. He says “yeah, sure.” That’s the turning point. This is where the CHP’s version of events and my husband’s part ways.

At this point I am sure you think it is pretty odd that a complete stranger would run to call 911 and then return with a glass of unknown liquor to give to an injured man, while he waits for an ambulance. Not only that, He did it twice.

My husband, injured or not was an idiot for accepting the booze. I do think he would have drank water, orange juice, coke or beer, if it had been handed to him. He  may even have been in shock.

If you are skeptical, that this is how it went down… you will be able to imagine how the CHP Officer, who arrived on the scene shortly after, felt about it. He didn’t believe it for a minute. He was an eager investigator and he just knew my husband was a lying, drunk motorcyclist. Perfectly understandable. It’s a fishy story… but I’ve gone into great detail laying the foundation out for you. If you don’t believe it now, you will by the end of an upcoming post, after I reiterate the testimony of the subpoenaed witnesses. It is almost like a “Perry Mason Moment”, only a lot funnier.

The officer had every right to doubt the story. Sounds pretty unlikely, right? It sounded strange even to me. Sure, some complete stranger appears out of nowhere and gives you shots right before the ambulance gets there?  You don’t know this guy? Are you sure? Why would he do that? He just happened to be carrying a bottle of hard liquor on him? 

It sounded unlikely to me, and I knew things the officer didn’t. I knew my husband worked all day, that he came home,  changed clothes and left, without having a drink. I knew he certainly sounded sober (and disappointed) an hour later when he called me about broken down bike.  I knew he was in the parking lot because he waiting to get his bike transported home.  He could not have been driving  (coasting maybe….) when  the  accident happened..  Still, the man with the booze was a pretty bizarre twist. (And you don’t know the half of it, yet and neither did we until a couple of months later).

Unaware of the accident, I was impatiantly waiting at home.

Meanwhile… back in the parking lot… it is chaotic. The paramedics arrive just before the CHP (5 minute ETA on the report). They are just beginning the initial assessment trying to get baseline readings and determine the extent of the injury. The (eager) CHP officer interrupts them several times, sticking his breathalyzer between them and their patient, cutting off their questions, with ones of his own,  trying to conduct a modified field sobriety test. The paramedics repeatedly ask the officer to step aside and let them do their job. The Officer thinks his business is more important than theirs and keeps getting in the way. My husband, probably reeking of booze, keeps insisting to the officer that he fell while pushing the bike. The officer keeps saying “come on, you can tell me the truth, we both know you were riding it”. My husband wants to show him that the bike won’t start, but he is incapable of doing so, and the officer isn’t interested anyway. He really isn’t interested in anything but an admission of guilt. After the second breathalyzer test, one of the Paramedics finally gets fed up and snaps at the officer to GET OUT OF THE Way!

It is, into this chaotic scene, that my husband’s brother pulls up in his truck. He is stunned to see his brother on a stretcher, about to be loaded into the ambulance.   And off to the side, mostly forgotten, the broken. troublesome, killer bike (with nothing but a scuff mark on it, ) is about to be rewarded for its treachery, with a vacation from the open road,  that will last for many months, while my husband heals from 2 surgeries and learns to live with one leg  shorter than the other.

It is here that we get our first break, (2nd, if you include the leg;)  Instead of being impounded, (as it surely would have been) the officer releases the ungrateful  bike to my brother-in-law. It rides home, in the back of his truck, just as it would have, had the accident never happened.

The timely arrival of my brother-in law, a few minutes after the ambulance and CHP officer arrived on scene, never would have happened if he had gotten the call to pick up the bike after the accident (when 911 was called). Holiday beach traffic was worse than expected and it took him longer than half and hour to get to Aptos.. (That’s why my husband rides a motorcycle) . The quick arrival of transport certainly supported my husband’s claim that he couldn’t have been riding the bike, because it was, in fact, not running and awaiting rescue, when the accident happened. I don’t really know if the Officer gave it any consideration at all,  He was happy to release it to my brother-in-law, (instead of waiting for the tow service) so he could follow the ambulance to the hospital and work on getting a confession out of my husband.

My husband pointed out the guy that gave him the drinks before the ambulance arrived saying ,  “Talk to him; he’ll tell you”  the Officer responded  “Oh believe me…, I plan to.”
At home, I was spitting mad.. My husband wasn’t answering his phone, neither was his brother. I had no idea there had been an accident.   I was DONE waiting. I hit the hot tub AND the margaritas at the same time.

I got the phone call around 8:15 pm. It was the CHP officer and he said there had been an accident.   He  wanted me to come to the hospital and pick my husband up. He said he also had a few questions for me. I told him the street was barricaded, I had drunk a couple margaritas in the hot tub and there was no way I could legally drive right then. He said “That’s all right, your husband’s brother is here. He’s going to give him a ride home”, leaving me to wonder why he called to tell me my husband needed a ride.

After he spoke to me, the Officer went back into the room where they were treating my husband, and said “Your wife says the two of you were drinking Margaritas in the hot tub.” I never told him that, but cops are allowed to lie to people they suspect of a crime, when they are trying to get a confession. Its lousy but it is legal. My husband knew it was a lie, because it never happened, and he told him so: “She did not say that. She sure wouldn’t make up some lie to try and get me IN trouble. If you really think that’s what she said, you better call her back, because you misunderstood her.”

Not too much later, my brother-in-law drives up, and together, we helped my husband into the house.

To be continued in Future Posts!