Runaway Truck Skinny-Dips at Midnight

Dena Paine was rudely awakened early Friday in her home near the Garden Grove Freeway by the sound of an explosion, “a loud screech and a big plunge of water.”

When she rushed into her back yard to investigate, she found a Pioneer French Bakery Co. truck submerged in her family’s swimming pool.

Brakes had failed to slow the 30-foot-long truck as it exited the Garden Grove Freeway at Brookhurst Street just after midnight, Garden Grove Police Lt. Bill Dalton said. The big red truck was moving about 50 or 60 m.p.h. when it sped though a red light at the bottom of the off-ramp, crashed through a steel guard rail, demolished a cinder block retaining wall and dived into the pool.

“He lined it up perfectly . . . straight off the diving board. I’d give him a 10,” said Paine, 21.

The truck, carrying about 4,000 loaves of sliced French and sourdough bread, missed hitting the house at 10001 Teal Drive by about 20 feet. No one was injured. The driver, Adolfo Presiado, only suffered a bruised knuckle and was pulled from the pool by Paine’s stepfather, Bob Downey.

“There was bread everywhere, French rolls and French bread,” Paine, a dental assistant, said. It was “very soggy,” Dalton said.

It took crews with two tow trucks and two cranes about five hours to get the vehicle out of the pool, Dalton said. An estimate of the damage was in excess of $50,000.

Paine said the 40-by-20-foot pool, which had been cleaned the day before, lost two feet of water and is now black with oil and gasoline. “It stinks too,” she said.

“He didn’t think he was going to live,” said Paine of the driver. “One of the police officers told me that even a stunt man couldn’t have lined it up any better.”

Presiado was making a regular midnight run, delivering bread to the firm’s depot in Garden Grove from the bakery in Venice, according to Pioneer official Fred Koenig.

“I think we were very fortunate that Adolfo wasn’t hurt and no one else. Thank goodness,” said John Garacochea Jr., the company’s sales manager.