Fight for Safe Rides Pits Mom vs. Mickey Mouse

It is hard work, Kathy Fackler says, to be at odds with Mickey Mouse. To walk into the Happiest Place on Earth and be in enemy territory. That’s what it feels like when you’re a La Jolla mom turned amusement park safety crusader.

Since her son David’s foot was mangled on Disneyland’s Big Thunder Mountain Railroad three years ago, Fackler has become the nation’s most vocal advocate for safer theme parks.

She has broad support from state regulators, accident victims and some lawmakers, and her prominent role as both agitator and agitated mother has her juggling interviews with CNN and People magazine.

“I hate dragging Disney through this, over and over again,” said Fackler, 43. “I hate trotting out the story of David’s injured foot for public consumption. There is no dignity in what I do, but there is a strange kind of honor. The system needs reform, and this is the only way I know to achieve that.”

Speaking out has its costs. Every word is analyzed by industry officials and roller coaster lovers, every opinion scrutinized. For a suburban householder, she has a remarkably large number of enemies.

“She’s the most obvious target out there,” said ride enthusiast David Althoff Jr. “She’s saying nasty things about an industry we really like.”

Those “nasty things”--calling for regulation and the reporting of injuries--has brought her kudos from Parenting magazine, which recently named her a “Parenting Leader.” Reader’s Digest called her an “Everyday Hero.”

The general manager of Knott’s Berry Farm even invited her to give a safety talk to his employees.

She successfully lobbied for a California law that regulates theme parks and has been instrumental in helping shape the regulations. The first set will be enacted over the next several weeks.

And at the request of Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), Fackler testified last year in Washington D.C., in support of his bill that would require federal oversight of the industry. The bill stalled after being reintroduced this year, but picked up steam this summer after the high-profile roller coaster death at Six Flags Magic Mountain.

Fackler has many critics--but few who will state their opinions on the record.

“How can anyone take on a concerned mother publicly?” asked one frustrated industry insider, who noted that Fackler is adept at navigating the media and has the ear of the state regulatory agency and clout with politicians.

Vituperative e-mails accuse her of being the irresponsible mother of a badly behaved youngster.

Industry attorney Boyd Jensen, who has clashed publicly with Fackler at regulatory hearings, said he has observed her under the “light and glare of attention from the media.”

“While I have personal affection for Kathy Fackler, I am not convinced that her first priority is safety,” Jensen said. He would not elaborate.

Disney officials declined to comment about Fackler.

People who have known Fackler a long time, though, are not surprised by her latest quest. She’s a hard-driving person, tackling every project with passion and a single-minded drive.

“I have almost a hyper sense of responsibility,” she explained. “Go ahead and use the word. Obsessive.”

Her conversations run in overdrive, too. She speaks with lightning-fast speed, so quickly that at a recent regulatory hearing, one board member urged her to “take a deep breath, Kathy. Slow down.”

She worked so hard as a mentor to abusive mothers in San Diego that former President George Bush named her a “Point of Light.” When she was a software engineer, former colleagues called her “queen of the work-arounds” for the way she angled around obstacles to complete a job.

“You gave her a task; it got done,” said her husband, Mark Fackler, who met her in 1982 when they shared a cubicle at General Dynamics. Later, she worked at his start-up firm, which has since burgeoned into Stellcom, a multimillion-dollar wireless technology company with 400 employees and offices nationwide.

Working Furiously From Home Office

The family lives atop Mt. Soledad in the La Jolla Muirlands in a spacious two-story home with a vast backyard and an empty lot next door that they just bought. They plan to convert it into a grass field for the children to play Wiffle Ball, soccer and football.

Fackler spends much of her time hidden away in a corner of the downstairs guest room that doubles as her office. She clicks away on her computer, surrounded by slips of paper from fortune cookies that challenge (“It will not be possible to reach a consensus on an important issue”) and uplift (“You are bold and daring; others admire these qualities in you”).

She shoots off e-mail to state regulators and legislators and drafts her safety speeches and presentations. She once sent flowers to a Disney executive after the Anaheim resort announced it would have paramedic service on site 24 hours a day.

So much effort goes into her safety venture that her children say one of Fackler’s favorite phrases is “Five more minutes, five more minutes. . . .”

But Steven, 11, and David, 8, also call her a “pretty good” mom, who insists on daily family dinners and quality time together--even if it’s scheduled down to the minute on an online calendar.

Baseball all-star games. Junior lifeguards. A day trip to Los Angeles to see “The Lion King.” She and Mark Fackler bought their own scooters so they could ride with the boys at the park. And not many mothers would choose “Quantum Mechanics” as a bedtime story, the book she’s tackling now with Steven, an aspiring rocket scientist.

“She reads with us and plays with us,” Steven said. “She plays catch.”

“Hmmm . . .” David paused as he tried to describe his mom. “She made a Web site. And she used to have long, curly hair.”

Now, her blond hair is cut short, chopped off when David was young because he liked to yank it. She is tall and slender, with arms tan from the San Diego sun.

It was a pretty perfect life until David’s accident in March 1998.

Fackler boarded the car on the mining-themed roller coaster, seated in the middle with one arm around each son. Back then, she thought that was the safest arrangement because she could clutch them both.

When the ride came to a temporary stop, David, nearest to the open side, stuck out his foot and prepared to exit. But the ride lurched forward and David’s foot was stuck, jammed between the right curb and the track. His foot was torn in half. He lost tissue and all five of his toes.

“It was the easiest thing in the world to avoid,” Fackler said. “All I needed to know is that David should not have been pressed up against an open side.”

Yet she thought of it as just a freak accident. The family never sued, although Disneyland later paid them a settlement. Although the terms of the settlement were secret, a subsequent court filing in San Diego County shows that Disneyland paid about $30,000.

Later that year, though, a metal cleat tore off the Columbia Sailing Ship and struck a tourist in the head, killing him.

In newspaper accounts, Disney touted its safety record, saying the fatality was the first serious injury of a guest in four years. Fackler wondered, wasn’t David’s foot a serious injury? And if Disney didn’t count that as a serious accident, how many other accidents remained unknown to the public?

She began to research the issue, quickly discovering that reliable statistics were unavailable because fixed amusement parks were not required to report injuries.

She called for public education and launched her Web site. She made numerous trips to the state Capitol to support Sen. Tom Torlakson’s bill to regulate amusement park safety, which included requiring reports of injuries.

“She played a huge role in its passing,” said Torlakson (D-Antioch). “It took courage on her part to come forward with her story, reliving the trauma that she and her son and family went through. She was just very convincing.”

A framed copy of the California bill hangs on the wall next to Fackler’s computer. On her desk stands a photo of the Zucker family. Brandon Zucker, 5, suffered serious brain damage last September when he was trapped beneath the Roger Rabbit Car Toon Spin attraction at Disneyland.

The picture reminds her why she works so hard.

“It is a very isolating experience to be hurt or have your child hurt at a big park--particularly a Disney park,” Kathy Fackler said. “This is a small, little, fledgling community. One of the most difficult and rewarding parts of what I do is to be there for people going through accidents.”

For the Zuckers, that means being a strong shoulder to lean on. She is sometimes their voice, speaking out when they--and other accident victims--cannot.

“She is an angel to me,” said David Zucker, Brandon’s father. “She’s very courageous. She doesn’t have to do it, but she does.”

Victoria Nelson of Napa, whose daughter died in a 1997 water slide accident at Waterworld USA in Concord in the Bay Area, said: “I am in awe with her determination and strength.”

It almost seems as though the stars aligned to put her in this position. She’s an engineer who understands ride mechanics, and has a husband who runs a successful business that allows her not to work. An articulate person, she can write letters and speak publicly, even if her stomach churns every time she stands in front of a large group.

Threatened For Speaking Up

Critics charge that she is simply a mother with a grudge against Disneyland. Every time she is quoted publicly, coaster fans lampoon and lambaste her on their Web sites and in newsgroups. They send her a flurry of e-mails telling her to back off, to leave things alone. They have threatened her safety.

In one recent e-mail, a Texas roller coaster enthusiast and former ride operator wrote to her: “You, ma’am, are a moron. How dare you operate a whiner Web site, because your child VIOLATED RIDE RULES, and got hurt. You want more responsible action on government and park shoulders? What happened to personal responsibility?”

And in a roller coaster newsgroup, another enthusiast accused her of being “the Safety Sheriff for the theme park community, plugging her son’s tragedy as if she were Kathy Lee Gifford.”

She hears the term, “rider responsibility” and the criticism that David would never have been injured had he kept his foot inside the coaster.

Fackler agrees. But her efforts are, as she has often been quoted, “To make ride designers think like 4-year-olds, and 4-year-olds and parents to think like ride designers.”

She does not believe in sweeping regulation and limits to make coasters less fun. Her battle is for public education, accountability and reporting. If the public does not know how often rides fail--or how they fail--there is no way to track trends or make changes.

Despite their criticisms, many of her opponents admit a grudging respect for her.

“I think there’s an awful lot of people out there who don’t understand what she’s trying do,” said coaster enthusiast Althoff. “When you get right down to it, she wants what we all want. We all want safe rides.”