Madkins Picks Up Where He Was Knocked Off

As the sunset dimmed the Western sky above Westwood, Gerald Madkins, UCLA basketball player, went humming along campus on the little-bitty moped cycle he had borrowed from his extra-large teammate, Kevin Walker. A friend, visiting from his hometown of Merced, sat perched on the back of the bike, her arms squeezing his sides.

Practically from nowhere, a small automobile, a Pontiac Fiero, appeared right in front of them. The woman behind the wheel did not even have time to swerve.

She hit the bike head-on.

Next thing Madkins knew, he was looking around from the ground, trying to find his friend. A man hovered near his face, ordering him not to move. Onlookers huddled around. Ambulance sirens soon could be heard in the distance.

Gerald remembers it vividly, even remembers the weird first reaction he had.

“I guess I’d passed out for a little while, but when I came to, my first thought was kind of crazy. All I could think was--what have I done to Kevin Walker’s poor bike? You know: ‘Oh my God, I just wrecked this guy’s moped? What’s he going to think?’

“Funny the things that go through your head at times like those. It takes a few seconds before it dawns on you that you’ve just been in an accident. And then: ‘Wait a minute. Where’s my friend? Is she hurt?’ She’s a lot more important than any bike. Your mind’s just a little fuzzy at first.”

As with most people who have been in accidents, Madkins was glad merely to wake up. He counted his arms and there were still two, counted his fingers and found 10. Then he tried the bottom half of his body. It, too, was intact. Except he couldn’t get it to move.

Two operations and 16 months later, Gerald Madkins is back playing basketball for UCLA. He will be out there tonight at Pauley Pavilion, when the Bruins scrimmage with Australia’s national squad. He has a plate and four pins holding his pelvis together, but the sophomore guard will be making passes, taking shots and breaking up and down the court, just as he did before dusk fell on the night he won’t easily forget, July 25, 1988.

“I haven’t been shooting great of late, but my passing’s been just as good,” he said before practice Monday. “Also, I’m not as quick as I used to be, mainly because I picked up a little weight.”

Being flat on your back for weeks at a time will do that to you. In fact, that was the hardest part for Madkins, during the first week he spent hospitalized after the accident and the two subsequent weeks while he mended from surgery. His morale was OK, because friends and relatives came to call, but Gerald wasn’t getting much sleep, because he was stuck in one position.

“The nights got a little long,” he said. “Not just because they got a little lonely, but because I wasn’t used to sleeping on my back all night. I couldn’t move at all. Weeks went by where the only exercise I got was one move--from my bed to my chair.

“The main thing was when I knew that I was going to walk again. That was the big one. Basketball was secondary to that. Soon as I learned that I was going to be OK, and that my friend’s knee that got crushed was going to get better, then everything was all right. You know--life was good again.”

Madkins had multiple fractures of the pelvis and torn abdominal muscles. He eventually lifted weights at the hospital to improve his upper-body strength, and walked around on crutches for quite some time. One day he sauntered into Pauley, challenged assistant coach Tony Fuller to a free-throw shooting contest and won. The game of basketball was --pardon the comparison--like riding a bike. Once you know how, you never forget.

As for moped riding, Madkins isn’t so sure.

“I’m not afraid,” he said. “I’d do it again. But I wouldn’t advise anybody else to do it. If you think about it, it’s the least protective of vehicles. You’re out there wide open, vulnerable to absolutely everything. There’s nothing between you and whatever hits you, that’s for sure.”

Including, in his case, a helmet. That was a mistake. Gerald knows it. Everybody knows it. Too bad not everybody does anything about it. The last couple of years in California alone, more than one bike rider has gone down hard. James Caan. Gary Busey. These are talented people; we need to keep them around. We need to keep untalented people around, too.

We know one UCLA guard, at least, who intends to be more, well, on guard.

“Well, sometimes in life you have to just take whatever comes. I can’t be on my guard every minute. But I’ll tell you one thing, it brought me back to reality in a hurry. You know how some athletes go their whole lives never getting hurt? I was one of those guys. I was never hurt in high school, not ever. Maybe I was one of those people who thought nothing bad’s ever going to happen to me. Now, I know better. I’m just glad to be here.”

Glad, as they say, to be anywhere.