Smith: Their lives changed in the creek

A couple of strangers became brothers the other day in a room at Memorial Hospital. No medical procedures were required.

In the bed was a busted-up Mike Shea, the 34-year-old Petaluman whose sliding motorcycle crashed into the railing of elevated Highway 101 in downtown Santa Rosa on Sunday morning, flinging him into the air. He free-fell about 35 feet and slammed down into a few inches of water in Santa Rosa Creek.

His visitor at Memorial was Kenwood’s Gannon Orton, who’d jumped from his car on the southbound ramp from 101 to Route 12 when he saw a dumped motorcycle spin to a stop, but no rider. “I was looking for him in the bushes,” Orton said, “when I heard someone scream, ‘Down here!’”

Orton hurried down to the creek and to the man who’d called to him. Together they cautiously rolled the face-down, helmeted body of Mike Shea from the shallow water.

The motorcyclist looked to be dead. Orton cleared water and gunk from his mouth and nose. He and the second rescuer shouted at Shea, “We need you to breathe!”

An off-duty emergency medical technician joined in the effort in the creekbed. Orton was afraid that Shea’s chest was crushed by the impact of the fall and he didn’t want to attempt compressions.

“I was just rubbing his chest, trying to get him going.”

Shea took a breath. He struggled for air so Orton used his fingers to open his jaw and move aside his damaged tongue.

As an ambulance took Shea off, Orton doubted he would survive. He was astounded to walk into the hospital room two days later and see that Shea was fully alert and on the mend.

The two of them cried and agreed that, now, they’re family.

Shea said Wednesday he remembers nothing about the crash or the fall. “I’m bedridden and I’m in pain but I’m getting better every day,” he said.

He senses his life was changed by the bizarre crash and tumble that could have killed him. And by Orton and the other men who plucked him from the water and brought him back.

“Every day’s a blessing,” the patient said. “I may not have looked at life the way I’m looking at it now.”

He wept while grasping for the words to express his gratitude to Orton and the others.

“If there were more people like that on earth,” he said. “we’d be in better shape.”

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THE BIRDS might be the perfect title for a cinematic event in Sebastopol this weekend but that name’s taken.

Filmmaker Judy Irving, creator of the 2003 documentary, “The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill,” will be at Rialto Cinemas on Sunday to show and talk about her newest work, “Pelican Dreams.”

It tells the story of the young brown pelican, dubbed Gigi, that caused a stir when it landed in a traffic lane on the Golden Gate Bridge in August of 2008. Irving’s new film tracks the bird’s encounter with humans and addresses “the implications of our urban world view, and how it affects nature.”

The filmmaker will be at Rialto Cinemas to take in Sunday’s 3 p.m. showing and speak afterward. There also will be special guests: raptors in the care of the Bird Rescue Center of Santa Rosa will be on hand - on claw? - at the theater from 5:30 to 7 p.m. Saturday and from 4:30 to 6 p.m. Sunday.

Chris Smith is at 707-521-5211 and chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com.