Bicycle Ride Proves Fatal for Talented La Jolla Youth

On the day that he died, Cortland Daniel Goldberg scored four goals to lead his high school water polo team to victory.

Back home, the La Jolla high school sophomore talked to his stepfather about current events and the water-skiing he planned for the following day with friends. Then, as he so often did, the athletic 16-year-old went for a bike ride around his Crown Point neighborhood.

That’s just the way it was for the blond-haired, hazel-eyed teen-ager--a regimen of study mixed with the physical release of competitive sports. He was a dedicated student with an IQ of 147 who took college courses while still in junior high school and who one day wanted to become a medical biologist.

But Cortland Goldberg was also a teen-ager who insisted on being young while he was still young, competing in swimming, water polo and surfing.

Just before 7 p.m. Saturday, however, while straddling his brother’s Diamond Back racing bike at a street corner not far from his home, the hopes and dreams of the aspiring scientist and athlete ended.

Goldberg was killed after being struck by one of two cars that collided in the street nearby. San Diego police said Sunday that a car heading south on Crown Point Drive broadsided another vehicle at the intersection of La Cima Drive.

As the boy apparently looked on, one of the vehicles careened into him, causing traumatic head and internal injuries. He died an hour later in an operating room at UC San Diego Medical Center.

“He was simply a young man at the wrong place at the wrong time,” one San Diego police officer said of the boy, who was not wearing a helmet at the time of the crash.

Authorities said Sunday that neither driver was injured in the crash and that the investigation was continuing.

Four blocks from the accident scene, at Cortland Goldberg’s gray, two-story home, his mother has a few more questions to ask.

“Was anyone drinking at the time, that’s what I want to know,” she said.

The day after her son’s death, Goldberg talked about the stop sign at the intersection where her son died that few motorists bother to obey.

And she talked of the inspired teen-ager who who at age 16 had already accomplished more goals than some athletes do in a lifetime, a former nationally ranked swimmer who competed in the junior Olympics at the age of 8.

“He just loved being near the water,” said Gracellyn Goldberg. “It was a force that shaped his life.”

Before the family moved to San Diego a year ago, Cortland had spent two summers taking college courses near his home in Port Arthur, Tex., his mother recalled.

He had also won numerous science fairs in both California and Texas, including one in Houston where he explored the degenerative aspects of paints when subjected to the elements--a problem faced by numerous oil refineries in the state, his mother recalled.

He was the president of his junior high school student body in Port Arthur, while also being named most valuable athlete on the baseball and track teams for two years in a row. “He was an up-and-coming young man,” she said.

Last year, much to Cortland’s delight, his family moved back to California; they had spent several years in the Lake Elsinore area before moving to Texas.

In San Diego, the teen-ager was able to concentrate on his water sports. He swam and surfed. He joined the freshman water polo team at La Jolla High School.

Meanwhile, he took numerous advanced classes at school and recently decided that he wanted to become a marine biologist when he became older. “He saw that the environment was being misused,” Gracellyn Goldberg recalled. “He saw people having more than what they needed and not caring how they treated the area around them.”

Keith Warrick, a ninth-grade teacher at University of San Diego High School, where Cortland attended for a year, remembered the youth as someone who stood out in a crowd.

“He was a very articulate young man, someone who was vocal in class discussions,” he said. “Even as a ninth-grader, he expressed himself as an adult.”

Often in classroom role-playing sessions, the group would imitate the afternoon talk shows with interview formats, Warrick recalled. “Way more than anyone else, Cortland always volunteered. He would always say, ‘Can I be a guest on the show today?’ He liked the challenge of improvising what a character might say or do. It was the way his mind worked.”

On a trip to the Soviet Union last summer, Cortland also came in touch with poverty like he had never seen back home. “It distressed him to see people lead such lives,” she recalled. “I remember one day he said to me: ‘Mom, maybe I’ll just go out and live with the bushmen.’ It was something he had yet to come to terms with.”

On Saturday, Cortland’s water polo team competed in a weekend tournament, taking on a group from El Capitan High School. He scored four goals and La Jolla High won easily.

But like always, an entire day of athletic workout wasn’t enough. When Cortland got home shortly after 5:30 p.m., he took a bike ride. And he never came home.