A Couple’s Dreams End on a Bonita Road : Tragedy: While Tom Rossi mourns the loss of his wife, he is also angry at the CHP for a mistake that may allow the motorcyclist who struck her to go free.

Nearly two weeks after his wife was killed jogging, Tom Rossi is still struggling to understand the bittersweet ironies that led to her death, including the final one that left him and their three children with a measure of financial security after years of struggle.

Stephanie Reyes Rossi, 29, died Nov. 5 while jogging along Sweetwater Road in Bonita when she was struck head-on by a motorcycle. The motorcyclist, Jerald Covey, 29, was uninsured and not licensed to operate a motorcycle, according to a California Highway Patrol report and the state Department of Motor Vehicles.

When Stephanie, a nurse, left the house that Sunday afternoon, she planned to jog before dropping in on a patient and later going to work on a PTA project at her children’s elementary school. But, according to Rossi, she apparently decided to visit the patient first and then take her afternoon jog.

“It was just like her, thinking of the other person first. She decided to see the patient first. That choice cost her her life,” Rossi said.

It took Rossi more than 12 hours to learn that his wife was dead. Because she was carrying no identification, Stephanie was admitted to the morgue as a Jane Doe.

It was not until Monday morning, when a concerned Rossi found her car parked near Sweetwater Road, that he called police. Rossi, who is unemployed while going through computer school, did not know that his wife had purchased a $200,000 insurance policy that had gone into effect two weeks earlier, which will allow him and the children, ages 3, 6 and 8, to keep their Bonita house.

Stephanie Rossi managed to touch hundreds of lives through her job as a home health nurse and through running, her second passion. People who had known her for only a couple of hours were moved enough by her death to send sympathy cards.

“They were really taken by her, and that really got to me--I mean, getting cards from people who say they only knew her for a couple of hours but were impressed by her,” Rossi said.

Stephanie’s drive made her a success at whatever she tackled. She was making plans to go to medical school. And she probably would have succeeded, as she had years before as the only girl on the San Diego High School cross-country team.

“You want to know the kind of person she was?” Rossi said. “One week after our second son was born, she was back at school. She didn’t miss any classes during her pregnancy. She always pushed herself to the max.”

When she died, Stephanie was in training for next month’s San Diego Half Marathon. According to Rossi, his wife had never jogged on Sweetwater Road before the day of her death.

Running came naturally to Stephanie, who was part of an athletic family. After high school, she attended McPherson College in Kansas on a track scholarship. But, by that time, she and Rossi had become engaged, and she returned to San Diego to marry in 1979.

“I met her at a high school dance in 1978. I was just out of the Navy, and my brother dragged me along. Stephanie walked up to me and asked me to dance. That was typical of her. I fell in love with her that night,” Rossi said.

Shortly after their marriage, Rossi dropped out of school to go to work and put his wife through nursing school. Eventually, Stephanie became a registered nurse, and she was recently working to put her husband through computer programming school.

“We had a million plans. After years of struggling, things were finally turning around for us. We just added a room to the house. Stephanie was looking forward to my finishing school

next year so she could quit working and go to medical school. She wanted to be a doctor,” Rossi said.

But death shattered those plans, and the CHP’s investigation has added to Rossi’s bitterness. CHP officials have acknowledged that errors were made in the investigation, and Rossi said the those errors will probably let his wife’s killer go free.

The 12-year-old motorcycle involved in the accident was registered to Covey, and several witnesses told investigators that Covey admitted running over the 5-foot, 100-pound woman, officials said. One witness told investigators that Covey told him, “I hit that little girl over there,” pointing to Stephanie’s body lying on the side of the road.

The controversy began when CHP Officer Rosemary Manjarrez, a two-year veteran, arrested Covey after believing she detected alcohol on his breath. Because Covey said he was hurt, Manjarrez then allowed him to be taken to a hospital by paramedics, unescorted by police, the CHP said. Manjarrez, believing that Covey was injured, did not give him a field sobriety test. Once at the hospital, Covey walked out before he could be given a blood-alcohol test. He wasn’t recaptured until about three hours later.

CHP Capt. Gene E. Towle visited Rossi on Monday to explain that Manjarrez “inadvertently made a mistake,” Rossi said.

On Thursday, Towle told The Times that Manjarrez “was under a lot of pressure” at the accident scene and that the officer made “an inadvertent error.” Rossi said that Towle told him Manjarrez “was upset so badly by Covey’s lack of remorse.” Covey’s only reaction to the accident was “to stand there and smoke a cigarette,” Rossi said Towle told him.

According to DMV officials, Covey had a clean driving record before the accident, but he was not licensed to operate motorcycles. A CHP report report indicates that he was not insured.

Citing that report, Rossi noted that Covey and his wife were born six days apart.

“He’s going to be 30, and my wife never will. It stinks,” he said.