Close Call

Although Shelby Wilcox was more seriously injured than Traci Gallian after they rolled around in the twisted metal of Gallian’s car nearly 15 months ago, in a way, she was luckier.

She doesn’t remember it.

Wilcox suffered a fractured skull--accounting for the memory loss--and a shattered right thighbone when the car she and Gallian, her Cal State Northridge softball teammate, were riding in collided with a vehicle operated by a drunken driver on Dec. 16, 1994, near Morro Bay.

“I remember leaving Northridge,” Wilcox said. “The next thing I remember is waking up in the hospital.”

Gallian, whose injuries were comparatively minor, went through a different kind of suffering after the accident.

For months, she was haunted by the memory of looking across the front seat of her overturned Chevy Blazer at the friend she thought was dead. Gallian had trouble simply getting in a car, or seeing an accident on television, without having flashbacks.

And as she watched Wilcox’s slow, painful recovery, Gallian couldn’t help but wonder if she, as the driver, could have done anything different.

“But now I realize there’s nothing I could have done,” she said.

Time has healed most of the wounds.

After sitting out last season, both players now are physically able to be contributing members of the Northridge softball team, which will play its first home games Sunday against Colorado State.

Wilcox, a junior outfielder, has started seven of Northridge’s 17 games and is batting .364. Gallian, a sophomore catcher, has played in 10 games, mostly as a pinch-hitter.

The psychological scars are slowly healing, but Gallian makes it clear that recalling the events for a reporter doesn’t help her efforts to push them out of her memory.

“I shake every time I talk about it,” she said. “This is going to be the last time.”

*

Gallian and Wilcox played high school softball in the Central Valley, Gallian in Visalia, Wilcox in Fresno. They knew each other only well enough to know they didn’t like each other.

Though they hadn’t met, what they heard from mutual acquaintances was enough.

In fact, they were at Northridge for months before they finally spoke. After a while, they realized they had no reason to dislike each other and became friends.

In fact, they were planning to become roommates for the winter 1995 semester. After going to teammate Kathy Blake-Small’s wedding in Atascadero, the two intended to return to Northridge to move their belongings into their apartment.

That was before Roberto Elizarraraz’s wrong turn.

It was a Friday, the evening before the wedding. Gallian and Wilcox, traveling north on a four-lane stretch of Pacific Coast Highway, were about a thousand yards from the end of the 200-plus mile trip.

They had just pulled into the right lane to turn off the highway when Gallian saw headlights speeding toward her.

Apparently, Elizarraraz had pulled out of a liquor store and onto the highway at an intersection. Instead of crossing the northbound lanes and turning left onto the southbound lanes, he turned directly into oncoming traffic in the northbound lanes.

Elizarraraz’s 1978 Ford pickup crashed into Gallian’s vehicle, which flipped off the road. Elizarraraz, 58, was killed. Police said he had no driver’s license, no auto insurance, and was under the influence.

Wilcox was knocked unconscious in the overturned Blazer. Gallian was stuck in the driver’s seat.

“The car looked so big,” Gallian said. “I couldn’t reach her. I saw her and she wasn’t moving. The first thing I thought was if that stupid guy isn’t dead, I’m going to kill him, because I thought Shelby was dead.

“You just don’t know what it’s like to look over and see, basically, your good friend dead.”

Wilcox was not dead, probably because she was wearing a seat belt, police said. She was rushed to the hospital for emergency surgery and didn’t regain consciousness for nearly a day.

Wilcox’s parents, already in town for the wedding, were expecting the two to arrive for dinner at 5:30 p.m. Just about then, Wilcox’s mother heard fire trucks rush past.

She spent four anxious hours wondering about her daughter before she learned that those fire trucks were for Shelby.

Shelby finally saw her parents the next day in a San Luis Obispo hospital. Gallian’s parents arrived from Visalia about midnight.

Gallian was released from the hospital after one day, her injury diagnosed as a broken collarbone. Wilcox, who had metal plates inserted in her skull and thighbone, was hospitalized for five days.

*

Though doctors told Wilcox she would be able to make a full recovery and play softball again, she said she wasn’t too concerned with softball.

“I did take a look at my life and learn to just enjoy each moment,” she said. “I want to succeed in softball, but softball is not my life.”

Wilcox’s rehabilitation was a painful one. For three months, she walked with crutches, then for three weeks with a cane. “That was a humbling experience,” she said.

She also was frustrated by the memory loss. Gallian said she sometimes visited Wilcox in the afternoon, only to have Wilcox forget within hours she had been there at all.

On one occasion soon after Wilcox had returned to classes at Northridge, she stared for what seemed an eternity at a pad of paper while she tried to remember what the number “1” was or how to write it.

“I had trouble [with rehab],” she said. “I would be thinking ‘Why do I have to do this? Why couldn’t I have just died?’ ”

Meanwhile, Gallian seemed to be doing well. She had to wear a brace on her right arm, but that was as much because of an existing softball injury as it was the accident. She had arthroscopic surgery on her right shoulder.

As the weeks passed, though, Gallian began having problems with her left shoulder.

She went back to the doctor who had examined her the night of the accident and she learned she had actually dislocated her collarbone. For two months, she had to wear a full-torso brace that kept her back and shoulders upright.

While their injuries were different, they shared an anger toward Elizarraraz.

Wilcox, trying now to put a positive spin on the situation, said: “I’m a competitive person, and if the drunk driver wanted to play a game, I won, because I’m still alive.”

As for softball, Wilcox and Gallian were around the Matadors frequently last season, but they made a point of not getting too involved. “I wanted the best for the team,” Wilcox said, “but I didn’t want to watch because I knew I could have been part of it.”

It was not until last August that both were able to start doing any serious softball workouts.

Today both say they are close to full health, but not quite. Wilcox said she can’t run at full speed, as much for mental as physical reasons.

“Sometimes I worry about running into people with my leg,” Wilcox said. “I just really don’t want to see any metal popping out of there during a game.”

Gallian said she can hit but feels stiffness in her right shoulder when she throws.

“I’m getting closer and closer every day,” she said, “but you never feel the way you did before you got hurt.”