Freestone bakery rebuilding, owner hopes to open Friday

New steel poles filled with concrete now will stand sentry in front of Freestone's popular Wild Flour Bread bakery to stop more vehicles from crashing into the front of the Bohemian Highway building.

Workers Tuesday began installing a row of 3-foot poles while owner Jed Wallach and a crew assessed structural repairs to the bakery after a BMW Sunday plowed through the front wall and window.

Richard Spiker, 83, of Santa Rosa was pulling in to park when he mistakenly stepped on the gas pedal instead of the brake, according to the CHP.

Just inside, Judy and Keith Vaughn of San Carlos and others were eating when the BMW hit their table, knocking them to the floor. One man had a possible broken leg but no one suffered major injuries.

Wallach now faces major repairs to the old building, and is hoping to reopen Friday, Feb. 9.

“Ultimately, that's small potatoes. If we can't reopen in time for this weekend, OK. At least no one was seriously hurt,” he said. “I don't know how we managed to avoid that.”

Wild Flour Bread, in its 20th year, and open Friday-Monday, has become an iconic stopping point for locals and tourists. Bread, scone and sticky bun buyers, especially on weekends, typically fill the small space and snake out the front door waiting their turn at the counter.

“Twenty minutes before this happened, there were 30 people in line, right inside,” said Vicki Vaughn of Sebastopol. That had reduced to one or two when the car burst in.

Vaughn, her parents and friend Christian Wright of Sebastopol had waited in the line to get their loaves of warm Egyptian bread and rosemary fougasse. They sat at the long table at the front windows “eating away” and talking about how it all reminded them of being in Europe.

Vicki Vaughn had stepped outside when she heard a loud sound and realized what was happening.

“It was horrifying. He didn't stop and he didn't know how to stop,” she said of the driver. “Everyone was in a panic.”

She rushed back in to find the car inside, the driver and his wife sitting in the BMW, looking stunned. The impact knocked several people over including Wright, who was thrown across the room into the sales counter, she said.

Gold Ridge firefighters and paramedics responded, treating the man with the leg injury and five others with minor injuries.

Wallach missed it. He had been there minutes before, helping serve the crowd, but had just left for his weekly bike ride. He got a call and hurried back, worried about his customers and proud of his employees for handling the situation.

This week he was awaiting engineering assessments and a county permit.

Decades ago the old building was an auto repair garage and the bakery's front wall was once garage bay doors - but it's been a long time since cars were supposed to be inside.

Sunday's damage exposed additional work which could be done, Wallach said. “It looked like a smaller, huge project. Now it looks like a bigger, huge project.”

This was not the first vehicle intrusion at the bakery. There was another crash in May 2015 involving a suspected drunken driver who hit a car in the parking lot, injuring one person and damaging the bakery's front door. The crash raised questions about traffic safety in the busy village between Highway 12 and Occidental, as the bakery and other businesses catering to visitors bring in drivers and bicyclists.

Wallach said he'll open when the building is deemed safe for customers and the poles, or bollards, are in place. The poles sit a few feet from the front of the building, and he hopes they'll be enough to stop a repeat crash.

“I just don't know what else to do,” he said.

You can reach Staff Writer Randi Rossmann at 707-521-5412 or randi.rossmann@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter@rossmannreport.