Mechanic’s Life Ended Behind the Wheel of His ‘Pride and Joy’

Friends say Robert Martinez’s car--a classic 1957 Chevrolet Nomad station wagon that he had painstakingly restored--was his most cherished possession.

“It was his pride and joy,” Carrie Zimmerman said Thursday. “It was his life. And that’s where he ended it, sitting behind the wheel.”

In what police described as “one of those weird, unfortunate things,” Martinez--a victim of Wednesday’s destructive storm--apparently died swiftly of carbon monoxide poisoning when the tailpipe of his car clogged with water after he got stuck in a flooded intersection in Long Beach.

Debbie Hanson of the Carbon Monoxide Information Bureau in Chicago said that although accidental deaths from the colorless, odorless gas in motor vehicles “are pretty common, one like this--a tailpipe clogged with water--that’s a pretty rare occurrence.”

Karen Kerr, a spokeswoman for the Long Beach Police Department, said Martinez’s 38-year-old station wagon was among a number of vehicles that stalled when water up to three feet deep flooded the intersection of Willow Street and Clark Avenue during a heavy downpour Wednesday night.

“A police sergeant was attempting to help the motorists and clear the area,” Kerr said. “He saw the man sitting in his car. When the man didn’t respond, the sergeant went over and tapped on the window. The sergeant opened the door and found the man had died.”

Officers said Martinez was pronounced dead at the scene. Scott Carrier, a spokesman for the Los Angeles County coroner’s office, said the cause of death has not been confirmed. Carrier said an autopsy will be performed today.

Mark Goldstein, a San Diego chemist who has devoted much of his research to a study of the effects of carbon monoxide, said that although he could not recall specific instances in which accidental deaths resulted from a tailpipe clogged with water, there have been a number of deaths resulting from a tailpipe that became clogged with other substances, including snow.

Goldstein said the poisonings occur when carbon monoxide from the car’s exhaust system seeps up into the passenger compartment and is inhaled, interfering with the ability of the victim’s blood to carry oxygen.

“It’s even happened to people in a stationary car with a window cracked open,” he said. “There’s no odor, nothing visible, you can’t taste it and you really can’t feel it. Carbon monoxide usually causes a bit of fatigue, but there’s very little warning. People often have no sense of what is happening, and it can happen very quickly.”

Hanson said a study of 56,000 fatalities in which carbon monoxide was a factor showed that about 12% involved unintentional deaths caused by exhaust from motor vehicles.

Martinez and his 33-year-old wife, Jeannett, had lived in Signal Hill for about seven years, according to neighbors.

The neighbors, who described themselves as “almost like family,” talked quietly about the couple--his generosity and love of automobiles; her fondness for Mickey and Minnie Mouse that they had come to share during their life together in the apartment on East 19th Street.

Zimmerman, who lives upstairs, said that instead of a conventional bride and bridegroom on their wedding cake, the Martinezes chose Minnie and Mickey. The Martinezes’ apartment was filled with memorabilia of the two Disney characters.

But Robert Martinez, an auto body repairman at a dealership in Cerritos, was best known as a car buff--a man who shared his enthusiasm for automobiles by helping his friends work on theirs.

Bill Kindig, president of the Nomad club to which Martinez belonged, said his friend had won a number of trophies for his immaculate car--painted pearl white and burgundy, with brilliant yellow flames on the side.

“He spent most of New Year’s going about the neighborhood, fixing people’s cars for free,” Kindig said.

Jeannett Martinez was barely able to speak Thursday, but there was one thing she wanted to tell a reporter.

“He was a loving, caring man,” she said softly. “There is nothing he wouldn’t have done for anybody.”