Wounds Slow to Heal After DMV Crash : Freak Accident Brings Workers Closer Together

Augustine Medina’s right leg went dead and the engine roared. Instead of driving out of the parking lot, his car tore into the side of the building. Suddenly he was driving for 40 feet into a lobby full of people. He felt a series of thuds: people were bouncing off his car. A woman and her four children tried to get out of the way.

But Medina couldn’t do anything.

The people inside--customers waiting to get their driver’s licenses and employees of the Department of Motor Vehicles--thought a bomb had gone off, or maybe a deranged gunman had chosen them as a target.

“There was so much dust that you couldn’t see the car at first,” said Valerie Linder, who led her fellow workers in prayer moments after the crash. “All you could see was the lights blinking and, God, that noise.”

When it was over and his car had finally come to a stop, 23 people were injured. Medina stumbled out of the green Plymouth Volare and cried.

Two months after the Jan. 9 accident, Medina and those who were in that building are still recuperating from emotional and physical scars.

Medina, who had been at the DMV to renew his car registration, remembers it now as a series of flashbacks that he wishes weren’t so vivid.

“It was terrible. . . . I saw those people running in front of the car but I couldn’t do anything,” Medina said in a telephone interview from his Tijuana home. “People kept telling me to calm down (after the accident) but I couldn’t. . . . I couldn’t bear to look at what I’d done.”

Medina, 64, a Tijuana native, occasionally loses feeling in his arm and leg, the consequence of the mild stroke he suffered that day. His California driver’s license is suspended and he no longer drives. A friend recovered his car from the San Diego Police Department after it had been impounded for 14 days. The radiator was busted and there were a few dents.

Maria Morfin, 31, also of Tijuana, was dragged 30 feet by Medina’s car and suffered the most severe injuries.

Taken by Life Flight helicopter to UC San Diego Medical Center with severe internal injuries, she spent 20 days in the hospital. She has a long recovery ahead of her.

Hours after the accident, Morfin remembers telling UCSD doctors that she wasn’t going to die because she had seen the way her children looked at her.

“That’s when I knew how serious it was and I told the doctors, ‘I’ve got to live . . . I’ve got to live for my children,’ ” Morfin said.

Morfin’s son Eddie, 11, was with his mother at the time of the crash and has been seeing a psychiatrist four times a week ever since.

“He saw the car drag me across the office. . . . It really affected him,” Morfin said.

“He’s been really quiet since the accident, which is sad because he used to be a very happy child. . . . He’s getting better, though.” Another son, 8-year-old Richard, has not been affected by the crash, Morfin said.

Morfin still requires 24-hour care from a nurse, and still finds it difficult to put the moment of impact out of her mind.

“I’m still jarred out of my sleep by the dreams I have. . . . It’s a painful memory,” Morfin said.

Her medical bills are being paid by her family’s insurance company, a trust fund organized by her husband’s employer and donations from the DMV employees, who wanted to help.

Medina had no insurance and accident victims have been instructed to file injury claims with the State Board of Control, DMV office manager Brad Campbell said.

A police investigation of the crash determined that, since Medina suffered “a physical malady,” he was not at fault, Officer Randal Poss said.

The 65 employees at the Chula Vista DMV office have grown closer since the crash.

“The scariest part was that you’re totally helpless in a situation like that,” Linder said.

She said she will never forget the sight of Medina climbing out of his car and crying as he flailed at the car after seeing what he had done.

“I felt sorry for him,” Linder said.

Those employees who were there the day of the crash say that they have gotten to the point where they can joke about how they reacted immediately after the accident.

But certain things still aren’t funny.

“When I heard that loud noise, I immediately thought of the San Ysidro massacre,” said Eva Torres, a DMV worker.

“One of the workers had been threatened by a customer a few weeks earlier and I thought someone was following through on that threat,” said Torres, who helped evacuate people from the building.

On Monday, the workers were honored in a joint resolution by the California Senate and Assembly for assisting rescue teams in the moments after the crash.

Linder, an eight-year employee of the office, said she and her fellow workers were surprised at the assertive way they helped evacuate people after the crash.

“People who you wouldn’t think would react the way they did were pitching in and helping people get out of the office,” Linder said.

Brian Pearl, a license registration examiner, said that, before he knew what was happening, he was comforting a child who had been separated from his mother and aiding a man who couldn’t walk.

“You just do what you have to do. . . . You don’t really have time to think,” Pearl said.

The resolution from the Legislature rests against a wall near where Medina’s car tore through. The hole has been patched and a visitor can no longer discern where it happened.

As a precaution against further accidents, DMV officials are planning to install a row of planters in front of the south wall, which is next to the parking lot, Campbell said.

The office looks almost the same as it did before Jan. 9, although there has been a change in the workers’ attitude.

“People have been commenting to me that my employees are much more polite and I’ve noticed this also,” Campbell said.

The reason for this is simple, he said.

“After something like this, everyone here has had a heightened sense of their own mortality,” Campbell said. “You appreciate things more when you realize how something like this can happen in an instant.”