Women's second encounter leaves much better memories
Published: Saturday, October 15, 2011 at 7:35 p.m.
Last Modified: Saturday, October 15, 2011 at 7:35 p.m.
Two years ago today, cyclist and rehab-hospital worker Sally Wong was taking a lunchtime ride out of Sebastopol when, wham!
“All of a sudden I felt this impact,” said Sally, who was 43 at the time.
She found herself on her back in a Burnside Road ditch. A man was telling her that help was coming, he'd phoned 911 after he saw a car clip her bike from behind and then continue down the road.
Sally could have been hurt much worse. She was treated in an emergency room for a contusion to her right shoulder and sent home.
The following day, Oct. 17, 2009, a woman of 91 was reading the PD at her home on Burnside Road when her heart just about jumped from her chest.
Spotting the story of a cyclist injured by a car that didn't stop, it occurred to her that though she thought she'd driven home from a hair-salon appointment that day without incident, it might have been her car that hit the bicyclist.
She walked out to check her Toyota Corolla. Sure enough, there was some minor damage to the right front. She contacted authorities at once.
California Highway Patrol officers spoke with and determined that she'd had no idea that her car had clipped Sally's bike. She wasn't charged with a violation.
The driver and the cyclist never met as their attorneys worked out a settlement that helped Sally with the medical expenses.
Jump forward to just the other day. Sally was on the job as a physical therapist assistant at Sebastopol's Apple Valley Convalescent Hospital when she spotted a familiar name on the patient list.
It was Eunice Peterson, the driver of car that had hit her. And what she being treated for? A contusion to her right shoulder that she'd suffered in a fall at home.
“I was in complete shock,” Sally said. She thought about it a while before deciding that she wanted to approach Eunice and say something to her.
She walked into Eunice's room, told her that she's Sally, with physical therapy. Then she said, “You don't know this, but we sort of know each other” — they'd run into each other in 2009 on Burnside Road.
Eunice's eyes opened wide. “Oh,” she said, “are you the girl on the bike?”
“Yeah, that was me.” Sally replied. She told Eunice she was fine and that she so appreciated that she'd come forward as soon as she realized what had happened on the road.
“She was really apologetic and the sweetest lady I ever met,” Sally said. Eunice told her that she'd voluntarily surrendered her driver's license after the incident because she wanted to take no chance that anything like that would happen again.
As Sally was leaving Eunice's room, she looked back and saw that the elderly woman was crying. Sally returned and reassured that everything was fine. She said Eunice told her, “Now we're friends.”
“That was so sweet of her to say,” said Sally, who is long back to riding, though now with one of those little helmet mirrors that allows her to see cars coming up from behind.
She likes knowing that her second brush with Eunice “is just something I'll never forget.”
PINK SOCKS? We'll see what effect they have on the game next Tuesday, when boys on the Montgomery and Maria Carrillo soccer teams go pink to attract funds and awareness to the fight against breast cancer.
Monty coach Jon Schwan lofted the idea, and Carrillo's Mike Mastin liked it. So players on both the home team's JV and varsity teams will sport pink socks in the games at 5 and 7 p.m. at Montgomery. Carrillo's boys will wear pink wristbands.
The ball will be pink, too. Members of Montgomery's spirit squad will pass out pink balloons and accept donations to Susan G. Komen for the Cure.
“My grandmother had breast cancer,” said Coach Schwan, “so I'm going to write her name on a balloon and have it right there on the bench with me.”
Chris Smith is at 521-5211 and chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com.
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