One split second. That is all it took to turn David Wes Carey's young life totally upside down. It is also the name of the Bay City, Texas, native's website. Now residing in Tempe, Arizona, David Carey is looking forward to a milestone achievement next week. He will celebrate his 40th birthday on November 17, 2009. His older sister, Anita Rutherford, tells me that her brother's birthday will not be taken lightly by him or his loving family. "The doctors didn't think he'd live 24 hours" after he was shot in the back in 1989 during a freakish accident that left him paralyzed for life. "They couldn't even guarantee he'd be alive when I got there," said his mother, Cora Carey, reflecting on the chaotic situation from 20 years ago when she received the terrifying phone call at her Bay City home that her son had been shot. He was a long way from home, playing college baseball in Scottsdale, Arizona, when David Carey found himself struggling just to stay alive. "You're not concerned with what's going on around you, you're concerned with staying alive," David told a Mesa Tribune reporter about his ordeal in the days and weeks following the incident.
Last month David travelled to Washington, D.C., to be honored with one of 10 prestigious Community Health Leaders Awards from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. David is pictured below at the awards banquet, held at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C., being applauded by those in attendance and posing for the camera with his surprise guests, his sister April Carey and her son Mike Carey who both live in Maryland. David, chairman of Inspire Human Services Co-op in Phoenix, Arizona, has been a tireless advocate for health care access for the disabled. He also was recognized for his efforts to ensure that individuals with disabilities have access to public transportation in Arizona. As a man who has overcome daunting physical and health challenges in his own life, David Carey successfully worked with the city of Tempe, Arizona, to put up traffic lights so people with disabilities living almost a mile away from the closest bus stop had safe access to that bus stop. Speaking of his recent honor in Washington, D.C., David said, "I have been fortunate to have a network of family members, caregivers and mentors that have made it possible for me to work to help others with disabilities. I hope that the nation's health reform efforts make it easier for those with disabilities to also access the health care coverage and support services to maintain independent lives in their communities."
The Community Health Leaders Award honors exceptional men and women from all over the nation who overcome significant obstacles to tackle some of the most challenging health and health care problems facing their communities and the nation. This year the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation received 532 nominations from across the United States and selected 10 outstanding individuals who have worked to improve health conditions in their communities with exceptional creativity, courage and commitment.
As the city editor for The Daily Tribune in Bay City, Texas, in 1989, I happened to be working the news desk the day the call came in about David Carey's tragic accident. I wrote a series of news articles and features on David, who I had witnessed first hand perform on the baseball diamond and gridiron when he was a student athlete at Bay City High School. The news of his shooting was devastating to me personally. But, as a professional, I took the necessary steps to gather what scant information was available at the time and write the first stories in The Daily Tribune on David's paralysis and battle for life. So when I was contacted recently by David's sister Anita and his mother Cora, it was wonderful news from my perspective that David was still alive today and doing very well for himself. The news of his national honor last month is very exciting for me, and I wanted to share this wonderful news with you, my loyal blog readers.
There is a videoclip available for viewing about David Carey and the prestigious honor that has been awarded him. Go to http://www.communityhealthleaders.org/news_features#carey on the internet (that is an underscore line between news and features) and click on the videoclip associated with David Carey's story. I highly recommend anyone who is touched by this story (and I suggest you check your pulse if you are not, because you must be dead) view the videoclip and check out David Carey's personal website at http://www.onesplitsecond.com/ to learn more about this inspiring former Bay City High School versatile athlete who has made the best of an extremely bad situation. His sister Anita told me that David does all of the work on his website himself, using a mouth pick to type on his computer's keyboard. "He's gotten pretty fast at it," Anita told me. I hope those reading this blog will view David's website (I have added it to my suggested alternate websites on my blog) and read about his recent national honor at the Community Health Leaders website that I listed above.
Talk about awe-inspiring! That is the David Carey story in a nutshell. Cut down by a stray bullet at the age of 19, when his young life was just getting started, his college sports career abruptly terminated, his life forever altered, David refused to allow his handicap and his date with misfortune to snuff out all of his dreams. He returned to the campus of Scottsdale Community College in a wheelchair the following fall, graduating from SCC in 1993. He earned a bachelors degree in physical education from Arizona State University in 1997. Since March of the year 2000, David Carey has served as an advocacy specialist for Arizona Bridge To Independent Living in Phoenix, Arizona. When I punched in the numbers on my cell phone his sister Anita supplied me in an email in order to get in contact with David, my mind was picturing a down-and-out quadriplegic wasting away in a bed somewhere, hoping someone, anyone, would call him or drop by to visit him. Man, was I ever wrong. When he answered my phone call, David Carey was busy with his daily routine but agreed to take a few minutes out of his busy schedule to talk with me. He said it was good to hear from me after all these many years. Likewise, my inspirational friend. And, although it had been about 20 years since I last talked with David on the telephone, my memory brought back a very weak voice on the other end of the line (me in Bay City, he in an Arizona hospital) from our lone phone conversation during the time of his initial recovery phase from the shooting. Last week David's voice was strong, his story of the things he had accomplished since we had last spoken very impressive. He talked with me about his recent trip to our nation's capitol, another airplane ride he took in recent years to Atlanta, Georgia, and chose to speak more at length on his daily routine and his efforts as an advocate for handicapped people in the State of Arizona. I told him on the phone that I still recalled watching him play football and baseball for Bay City High School in the late 1980s when I was working as a reporter for his hometown's daily newspaper. I mentioned that I was also born in Bay City, although my family never actually called Bay City home. I asked where the Black Cats were playing the time I saw him hit two home runs in the same game. He said he no longer remembered, adding that my memory appeared to be better than his. I saw him play in West Columbia (my home town) against the Roughnecks and also was in the stands for a couple of his home games in Bay City when he was an outstanding pitcher and outfielder for the Cats. David stood about 6 feet, 3 inches or perhaps 6'4" and was impressive on the baseball diamond in high school because of his stature and lanky build. When I first saw the photos of David provided to The Daily Tribune by his mother and sister back in 1989, it was difficult to look at them because my memory of him was stuck like a freeze-frame of the athletically-built, tall young black man with the bright hazel eyes. He lost a great deal of weight in that first year after his accident. I have included a picture of David in his wheelchair that was mailed to me by his sister Anita within the first couple years following the shooting. I still have a videotape she provided me that included footage of David from his apartment, scooting around the parking lot in his motorized wheelchair, and of him trying to feed himself. He has slight usage of his left hand and arm so he is not totally paralyzed. But my wife and I both watched the videotape with tears streaming down our cheeks when we saw the film footage Anita had included of David in his Bay City High School days. Before the shooting. Before the paralysis. Long before that "one split second" changed this young man's life forever. It was heartbreaking.
What happened to David Carey in the early morning hours of March 7, 1989, is unthinkable. How his collegiate baseball career was ended, his life altered and the manner in which he would be forced to rely on the assistance of others for the remainder of his days is as tragic and unbelievable as anyone could possibly fathom. David closed the door to his bedroom and went to sleep around 10:30 p.m. the night before the Scottsdale Community College baseball team was scheduled to leave early the next morning for a road game. He was sleeping comfortably with his back to his bedroom door, unaware that his roommate and a teammate of David's were handling what the two of them thought was an unloaded handgun in the living room of David's Scottsdale apartment. The clip had been removed from a 9mm pistol but one bullet remained in the chamber of the gun. At about 3 a.m. on March 7, 1989, one split second changed David Carey's life forever. I can still recall talking with a spokesman for the Maricopa County Sheriff's Department in the days following the shooting of David Carey from the pressroom of the Bay City newspaper I was the city editor of at the time. My heart sunk into the pit of my stomach as I frantically wrote down what the sheriff's deputy was describing to me on the phone. The trigger was pulled on the handgun by one of the two boys in the apartment, the bullet the two of them claimed to not know was still in the gun travelled down the hallway, through David's bedroom door and struck him high in the back, between the shoulder blades. The bullet shattered two of David Carey's vertebrae, then ricocheted up his spine, breaking his neck before lodging in his jaw. "I thought I'd had a stroke," David recalls about his initial waking moment when the bullet first struck him. "I couldn't move. When I woke up, I felt like I'd been electrocuted, but then it stopped. Then I felt a lump in my throat, and my mouth began to fill up with blood. I thought I was dreaming. After a minute, I realized I wasn't." The young man I had watched pitch for the Bay City Black Cats, who I had seen hit not one, but two home runs in the same game against my Columbia Roughnecks, told me that when the shooting took place he was sound asleep. He said he knew immediately something was terribly wrong, but he did not know what had happened to him. He tried to call out for help, but couldn't. He tried to move, but couldn't. His roommate and the teammate who had been playing with the handgun (which a Mesa Tribune article published in 1997 revealed had been stolen by the two young men earlier in the evening of Carey's shooting) eventually discovered what they had done and called an ambulance for their paralyzed friend. Doctors initially had little hope that David Carey would survive the shooting. His sister Anita Rutherford told me recently that David's family back in Bay City was told her brother probably would not survive the next 24 hours. So when she informed me this week that David would be celebrating his 40th birthday on November 17th, she made that statement with great pride and admiration for David's accomplishments over the past two decades. I share that joy in knowing David Carey is still alive and fighting the good fight.
David Carey is pictured above at Turner Field in Atlanta, Georgia, when he took in an Atlanta Braves baseball game. Pitching in the major leagues was David's ultimate goal when he was throwing fastballs for the Bay City Black Cats in high school and at Scottsdale Community College in Arizona. A three-sport letterman in high school, David is pictured below (on the right) with two of his Black Cats' teammates from the 1986 season.
Reconnecting with David after all these years has answered a few questions and tied up several loose ends for me. Since walking away from the newspaper business in 1990 to pursue another line of work, I have often wondered what happened to David Carey. With him living in Arizona and me dropping anchor in my hometown of West Columbia, Texas, there were no easy avenues for me to pursue to find out about his well-being. Then, in October of 2009, thanks to the modern manner of socializing known as "Facebook" and "My Space" on the worldwide web, the two of us were able to reconnect. David's older sister, Anita Rutherford, contacted me on Facebook, inquiring if I was the same Tracy Gupton who had written the series of stories about her brother's accident in Bay City's local newspaper, "The Daily Tribune," about 20 years ago. Indeed I was. So, through emails, phone calls and Facebook connections, I was able to get back in touch with David Carey, his sister Anita, and their mother, Cora Carey. Facebook has been very helpful to me in reconnecting with relatives and old friends from my past. I have been thrilled to hook up once again with people I went to school with in West Columbia, to find out what's going on in the lives of distant cousins and former coworkers I haven't seen in decades, and to see baby pictures of several relatives whose children have recently given birth, making their mothers and fathers who are in my age range grandparents. But none of those recent connections with people from my past has meant more to me than finding David Carey and his family members. His story is among the saddest I ever had to write about during my decade as a reporter. There is not an accurate word in the dictionary to describe how impressed I was with both David and his beautiful family observing them from afar as each of them struggled to deal with his situation in 1989. I am well aware that his struggles have never ended. His is a daily battle with his paralysis that David must continue until his dying day. He has definitely made the best of a situation that none of us would ever want to have happen to ourselves or anyone else we care about. I honestly had to wipe tears away while typing out those stories I penned for The Daily Tribune some 20 years ago. It was such an emotional drain to have to report for the readers of Matagorda County on David Carey's situation in Arizona. His mother Cora and sisters Anita and April deserve much credit for their persistence in getting David's story out to the people back home in Texas. Anita informed me in an email I received from her yesterday that she called The Daily Tribune recently to ask her former hometown newspaper in Bay City to write a story about her brother's recent award. She said the reporter she talked to on the phone seemed basically uninterested in her request. My intent is to get in touch with the local newspapers, former employers of mine, and see if I can't get some media coverage for a former Bay City High School athlete who, in my opinion, is very deserving of having readers of The Daily Tribune in Bay City and The Facts in Clute know about the national honor that was bestowed on him last month. Wish me luck! And please, keep David Wes Carey in your thoughts and prayers.
When David Carey posed for this photograph in the front lawn of his Bay City, Texas, home during his high school days in the late 1980s, his hopes and dreams were focused on playing college sports. The gifted athlete proudly sports his Black Cats letter jacket as he smiles for the camera. David Carey lettered in varsity baseball, basketball and football at Bay City High School.
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