A Friend’s Anguish : Drunk Driver Took Life of One Man, Spirit of Another

John Drogitis has this recurring dream and it involves his best friend, Phil Cramer.

In the dream, Drogitis is at home and Cramer appears through a doorway. Except they both know that Cramer is dead and openly marvel at how they could be communicating.

Then the alarm sounds and Drogitis awakens to another day, knowing that Cramer will not be part of it. In a sense, the dream probably involves some measure of guilt, although Drogitis insists he does not feel responsible for what happened that day.

They had been training on a warm summer evening last July for a bike tour in Oregon. Wheel to wheel, with Drogitis in the lead, they climbed Blossom Valley Road in Lakeside, choosing it because it was lightly traveled.

A Volkswagen Beetle, hurtling sideways, appeared out of nowhere. Drogitis was recounting to Cramer a conversation he had had with his new girlfriend. He had just given her a ring to commemorate their relationship.

The spinning, rolling car, estimated to be traveling 70 m.p.h., clipped Drogitis’ back wheel, folding it in half. He heard an explosion. Behind him, Cramer’s voice, still talking about the ring, stopped in mid-sentence.

His feet still locked into the pedals, Drogitis turned slowly, dreading the sight. Cramer and the car were gone. Half of Cramer’s bike remained on the road. The Volkswagen had blown through a six-foot chain-link fence fronting Interstate 8 and landed upside down on the freeway. An 18-year-old woman named Renee Reid was behind the wheel, screaming hysterically.

Reid was sentenced last November to one year in jail, in a court hearing notable for its high emotion: a sobbing apology by Reid and wrenching pleas by Drogitis and Cramer’s widow, Lori, that Reid be incarcerated much longer. The Cramers, who were planning to divorce at the time of his death, have a 7-year-old son.

Drogitis had written to the judge that Cramer “was better than a brother to me because you pick a friend. You don’t pick your brother.”

Last week, The Times revealed that Reid had been released after 31 days to an electronic surveillance program, provoking a firestorm of outrage that has dominated television and radio talk shows and news programs for days.

Representatives of Mothers Against Drunk Driving in San Diego County are using the case to press for stricter sentences against offenders.

Officials of the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department, citing overcrowded jail conditions and Reid’s lack of criminal history, have defended their decision but have refused to meet with the state attorney general’s office, which prosecuted the case.

(Reid’s father is a senior investigator for the district attorney’s office, making it necessary for a state prosecutor to handle the matter.)

The media barrage has brought Drogitis, a 37-year-old El Cajon warehouse manager for a water supply district, squarely back to that July day, when he forced himself to step into the middle of Interstate 8 to assist his friend.

“That has always been my fear, to be the first one at an accident scene,” he said. “This time, I had no choice.”

Cramer was lying on his stomach with his head to the side. Drogitis held out some hope. He knelt down and touched Cramer’s arm. His eye was open. Drogitis demanded that he blink to show he was alive. Cramer’s eye never blinked.

Drogitis sprinted to an emergency roadside phone but was so dazed that he could not get it to work. He ran back to Cramer. “Blink,” he said. “Blink, Phil.” He sprinted back to the emergency phone and passed the overturned car, screaming an expletive into the window.

Several days later, at Cramer’s funeral, Drogitis clasped a small container of ammonia he had pulled from a first-aid kit. Two hundred people waited for him to deliver the eulogy. The ammonia was on hand to keep Drogitis from crying. He never used it.

Cramer was “Mr. Potato Head” because of the toy he once owned and boy, could he tell a joke, said Drogitis, whom his best friend called “Johnny Hot Dog-itis.”

Cramer’s favorite line, “That reminds me of a story,” surfaced around the campfire, up in the mountains, wherever.

For years, Drogitis and Cramer did everything together. They camped, hiked, visited drag races. The week before his death, Cramer and his son, Sean, went camping. Cramer particularly loved to bicycle.

“When Phil died, he was doing something that he loved,” Drogitis said during the eulogy. “I think he could accept that. I hope everybody here can accept that. I think it will help ease the burden of grief if we do.”

In a crowded San Diego municipal courtroom last November, Drogitis wished desperately for two things. He wanted to see Renee Reid serve 10 years in prison. He also wanted to see remorse. Up to that point, Reid’s mother had apologized, but never the teen-ager, he said.

“I wanted to hear her say she was sorry,” said Drogitis, who had attended a number of Reid’s pretrial hearings. “I wanted to see her cry. I wanted to see her grovel.”

On that day, Reid, then 19, turned in the direction of Drogitis and Lori Cramer and wept.

“I know that ‘sorry’ will never be enough for what happened that day,” Reid said. “But if I could ever turn it back--if I could ever turn back time--I swear to God it would have been me.”

But even that was not enough. “Nothing she could tell me would appease me,” Drogitis said. “She killed my friend and I was mad.”

Judge Terry Knoepp imposed a one-year sentence in County Jail, not prison. Drogitis and Cramer walked out of the courtroom crestfallen.

Then last week, Cramer, speaking to an auditorium full of students on the evils of drunk driving at El Capitan High School, where Reid and Phil Cramer attended, got the news. A student said she had seen Reid at a mall three weeks earlier. The student has since concluded that she must have seen Reid before she entered jail Jan. 17 because she had been shopping for Valentine’s Day gifts. Reid was released Feb. 18.

To Drogitis, it does not matter whether Reid broke probation or not. Thirty-one days, he said, is unconscionable.

“She’s ruined other lives and it has no bearing,” Drogitis said. “I cannot believe in the court system. Justice is supposed to prevail but it hasn’t in this case.”

Ironically, Drogitis spent last week on jury duty, deciding a case in which someone allegedly sold methamphetamine to an undercover police officer. The minimum sentence jurors were asked to consider was 15 years.

“Don’t get me wrong,” he said. “Drugs are bad and lead to violence, but nobody was killed. . . . This woman took a life. The punishment should fit the crime.”

Reid was born in 1973, the year that Drogitis and Cramer met, introduced by Phil’s older brother. The three men worked together at a furniture company.

Phil and John would become inseparable--until the accident.

These days, Drogitis need only spot an automobile that both men admired or drive a certain route they would bicycle to bring Cramer back to life. And a few nights ago, Phil Cramer stepped around the corner of the Drogitis kitchen once more, near the toaster where Drogitis cooks his bagels each morning.

They exchanged greetings, and walked into the living room. At the same time, just before dawn, the alarm clock interrupted.

“One reason it’s so hard for me to accept is that it was so black and white,” Drogitis said. “Phil was dead. I was fine. I had a hard time dealing with that. I went to counseling and I said: ‘Why couldn’t we both have been hit and had a few broken bones?’ Then we could have recovered together.”