Injured Patrolman’s Wife Keeps Long Hospital Vigil

It’s the 70th day of Sally Gene Baumgardner’s vigil. She spends it, as usual, alone in the empty hallway outside the intensive care unit, close enough to hear the hissing of the respirator that is keeping her young husband alive.

Ten weeks ago, Costa Mesa police motorcycle Officer Robert Baumgardner, 39, was writing a traffic ticket when he was struck from behind by a car traveling 40 to 45 m.p.h.

Ninety-five percent of such accidents are fatal. But Baumgardner, a 6-foot, 223-pound former diver, has refused to die. Admitted to United Western Medical Center-Santa Ana with three broken ribs, a smashed leg and shoulder, head injuries and a punctured lung, he has since suffered brain swelling, adult respiratory distress syndrome, pneumonia, bronchitis and other infections of the lungs, and required a tracheotomy.

His heart has stopped several times. Though the doctors still won’t say he is out of the woods, it now looks as though he’ll live.

When Baumgardner was finally well enough to mouth words, the first thing he wanted to know was whether the accident had been his fault. Then he asked, “I almost died, didn’t I?” “You sure did--about eight times,” his wife replied.

Sally Baumgardner’s ordeal has been in some measure shared by the 19-year-old college student whose Honda Civic struck her husband.

Richard Fitch of Huntington Beach was sober and driving close to the 40 m.p.h. speed limit Sept. 27 when his car struck Baumgardner, fellow Costa Mesa police officers said. Baumgardner had pulled over a Volvo for a red light violation on Adams Avenue near Harbor Boulevard. His motorcycle was parked behind the Volvo with its flashers on, and Baumgardner was standing by the driver’s door when he was hit.

Officer Steve Rautus said Fitch was on his way to class at Orange Coast College. “He didn’t see Bob’s motorcycle. He didn’t see Bob standing next to the car and he didn’t even see the car until the last second before impact. So the only thing we can think of is that he wasn’t paying attention.”

Baumgardner’s head struck the rain gutter of the Volvo; his helmet, which had been snapped, flew off; he was thrown about 10 feet into the air, flew over the car, landed in front of the Volvo and rolled, finally stopping 26 feet away, Rathus said. The impact was enough to throw off one of his knee-high laced boots.

“You could hate the kid if he was a drunk driver or something, but he’s a good, clean-cut kid,” Lt. Cliff McBride said.

Fitch is captain of the college crew team with a high grade-point average, the officers said. The young man has called the station repeatedly to ask about Baumgardner’s condition and ask if there is anything he can do.

Ironically, nine days before the accident, a pedestrian had jumped out in front of Fitch’s car on the same street at the same spot where Fitch hit Baumgardner, police said. Baumgardner was the one who took the accident report.

Police concluded that Fitch was not at fault; the pedestrian had been drinking and taking drugs and had jumped in front of the car, and Fitch had managed to avoid hitting him straight on. The pedestrian was only slightly injured, Rautus said, but Fitch felt terrible about the accident, and Baumgardner had spent a great deal of time reassuring and consoling the young man.

“Mr. Public Relations,” fellow officer Kevin Lovelady said of Baumgardner. “He is just nice all the time. Even when somebody was really getting in his face, he could always say, ‘Yes, sir.’ ”

When Fitch got out of the car after hitting Baumgardner, he recognized the badly injured officer as the one who had been kind to him, Rautus said.

Fitch did not return a phone call requesting comment. His mother, Joyce Fitch, said her son has been devastated by the accident.

“It was very, very hard for him to drive again,” she said. “The officer’s family, I can’t imagine what they’re going through.”

Sally Baumgardner said she feels sorry for Fitch. “Poor guy, he’s only 19. Bob’s going to heal, but I sure feel bad for that kid.”

Every morning at about 8, Sally Baumgardner arrives at the intensive care unit of the hospital. She talks to her husband for as long as the nurses will let her, then sits in the hallway outside the ICU. At 6 p.m., she goes home to open the mail, answer the phone, feed her husband’s golden retriever, who has been sulking since the accident, and eat--if she can. Then she heads back to the hospital to kiss him good night. If he’s awake, she stays until the hospital makes her leave at 10 p.m.

“I’ve found the few times I wouldn’t come back to kiss him good night, I’ve been real uncomfortable,” she said. “I’ve gotten home, gotten into bed and gotten up and come back.”

Sally spoke once with another policeman’s widow, who gave her some tough advice: Say goodby while you can.

“Christmas is coming and people have wanted me to come over, but if I’m not at home or I’m not here, it’s real difficult,” she said. “Even though he’s doing so much better, you can’t imagine what it’s like to drive away from here.”

After the first month, the officer still wasn’t improving. “Then he’d get a little worse. Then he’d get a little better. Then he’d get a lot worse,” Sally said. “Lungs are very very slow to heal, and you know, you’ve just got to have them.”

One night, the hospital called and told her to come down right away and plan to spend the night. But he held on.

Baumgardner cannot speak because of the respirator, so he communicates by pointing out letters on a board she holds up.

“I spend as much time with him as I can,” she said. “I talk to him and he points to letters of the alphabet. He points out, ‘How are you,’ ‘I love you.’ I tell him I kind of feel like Vanna White. I tell him she gets paid millions of dollars for this.”

The two of them spent his birthday, their sixth anniversary and Thanksgiving in ICU. Sally feels sad when she sees Christmas decorations in the stores. She agreed to talk about her husband’s case because he has been lying in a hospital bed so long. “I just didn’t want anybody to forget.”

His colleagues at the Costa Mesa Police Department have not forgotten. They post the officer’s condition every day. And fellow officers have dropped by to check the oil in Sally’s car, bring her firewood and make sure her furnace is working.

“They call it a brotherhood and it really is,” she said. “I never knew what that meant. I never had cause.”

Police families from all over the country have written, and friends and family have started prayer groups in New York, Canada and Missouri. “You just can’t believe the kindness people have to offer. . . . All that cornball stuff, it’s true. People have been wonderful.

“You feel so indebted to everyone, but you can’t possibly go to everybody’s house with homemade cookies.” Instead, she has written letters to the editors of local newspapers to thank the people whose names she does not know: the woman who stopped at the scene of the accident and got out her first aid kit, the person who covered her husband with a blanket until the helicopter arrived, the student who slipped a notebook under his head.

She’s keeping track of the news events he’s missed so she can fill him in later: the Jim Bakker sentencing, the Zsa Zsa trial, the Berlin Wall.

Before the accident, Sally Baumgardner had been running her own house-cleaning business, which she called “Rubber Gloves.” Robert Baumgardner had been a motorcycle officer for nine years, and loved his job. They liked to ski and ride horses together. But they both knew that more police officers die in accidents than from gunshot wounds. Three days before the accident, driving home from a trip, they talked about how what he would want her to do if he were seriously injured.

“When I fell in love with him, he was a diver,” Sally said. “I never would have fallen in love with a policeman. I know my limits.”

Last week, the doctors began the slow process of weaning Officer Baumgardner from life support. “They’ve never said he will be OK. Those words have never been uttered.” But he is improving, and Sally hopes he’ll be out of intensive care in a week or two. So far, doctors have not been able to set his broken leg, which they will have to break again and reset. But his wife hopes to bring him home in three to six weeks.

“I can’t wait to have him home,” she said. “I’m just going to lock all the doors and unplug the phone and just sit there and look at him.”