Padecky: Tragedy gave Casa football coach John Antonio new perspective on life

Shake it as much as he tries, but John Antonio thinks about it every day, the memory putting him somewhere between urgency and appreciation, when he saw life leave, when he knew he was never going to be the same. As a father. As a husband. As a football coach. As a Petaluma cop.

Last Friday, Antonio was offered and accepted the offer to become Casa Grande’s new football coach. The kids already know him. Antonio is the guy in dark blue, the School Resource Officer who’s on campus every day. So yes, it’s true, it’s not every high school that has its football coach packing heat on campus.

That uniform, that weapon, that doesn’t even approach a salient description of Antonio. What happened Aug. 31, 2016, does. Has ever since he walked up an embankment off Petaluma Boulevard North carrying the bodies of two girls, sisters just 7 and 9 years old. The car their mother was driving went off the road and flipped upside down in 6 feet of the Petaluma River. The mother survived. The girls drowned.

Later that day, Antonio - at the time an assistant football coach at Casa, who previously was head coach at Piner for five years - went to the home of Casa’s then-football coach, Trent Herzog.

“I told Trent I don’t think I can coach anymore,” Antonio said. “Why? I don’t remember why. I really don’t know.”

Antonio may be a cop, may represent a position of high authority, all of that may project a stereotype of a hard case, but he’s blood and tissue like the rest of us. He was beginning to process his shock, his sadness. He woke up the next day, went grudgingly to practice, and changed his mind.

“I saw the kids,” Antonio said. For the next year, he only coached his son’s teams. He wanted to concentrate on being with his family as much as possible.

In his sons, Antonio saw exuberance, enthusiasm, energy. Those are the things he sees as well in himself. Still does. All that is overlaid now with the reminder of Aug. 31, 2016.

“I realized how short life is,” said Antonio, now in his 18th year as a patrol officer in Petaluma. “It’s not like I haven’t seen some pretty nasty stuff. But this time, for some reason, it really affected me.”

Yes, it very well could have been holding the lifeless bodies of two young children. Through no fault of their own they would never grow up, never fall in love, never have a family, never have children, never have a career, a life in all its shades of happiness and sadness. It hit Antonio hard, this family thing, because he was born in this town, went to St. Vincent’s where he starred in two sports, lived all his life in this town save a couple years. He now lives on the same street that he grew up on, just a couple blocks from Casa’s campus, with his wife and the two boys. With his dad and mom on the west side. Probably couldn’t throw a football around here without hitting one of his friends.

That was before Aug. 31, 2016. Before, Antonio treated each day like so many of us do. There’ll be tomorrow. And the day after, and the months after, and the years after. Plans? Dreams? Sure, we’ll get around to them.

And then he held those two little girls in his arms and it all changed. His Casa kids will never meet anyone who lives more in the moment than their coach. His practices will be organized to the minute. His time is their time. His life is their life. He won’t waste their time and he won’t waste his. His kids won’t hear their coach say, “Yeah, sure, I’ll get back to you.”

“That accident changed me forever,” said Antonio, 41. “Life is precious. It’s living for today.”

When it comes to squeezing life out of every moment, very few people can squeeze it like Antonio. He’s on campus four days as the security officer. Then there’s football practice after school. When the Gauchos end practice, Antonio goes to another field to watch his son Andrew practice for the Petaluma Panthers. He’s president of a flag football league. He coached Andrew in Little League last summer. Oh, as a reminder, his day job requires him to carry a weapon if only for his safety.

Said Antonio: “My parents live across town. While I’m driving over there I’m going from station to station on the radio. Probably no more than 30 seconds per station. I listen then I move on. I don’t want to miss a thing.”

He’s up by 5:45 a.m. When he has time he sleeps six hours. When he can’t, he goes for four hours. He said he may be on his second cup of coffee by the time his family wakes up in the morning. He’s the Energizer Bunny and here’s betting someone will start calling him that.

Why not? Antonio makes himself known. He’s not just the dude in the blue uniform. How many coaches will come out in public and say they went into therapy after the nightmares of that August day? How many coaches would admit they thought of quitting the sport they loved because of that trauma? How many coaches would admit publicly to being that vulnerable?

Shoot, how many of us - coaches, cops, teachers, pipe fitters, anyone for that matter - would come forward publicly as a real human being and not hide behind the male stereotype of tough coach or tough cop? John Antonio is as real as it gets, never more in evidence as by what he will say next.

“I still get some bad separation anxiety at times,” he said. The man has experienced loss and it wasn’t even his children. But those little girls could have been anyone’s little girls. His boys, the ones at home, are so close he can walk home to see them. Those other boys, those in football pads, are his extended connection to the vibrance of adolescent youth. Add his parents and his friends and Antonio has surrounded himself with life. It is his comfort, his joy, his cloak against a cold wind.

“I’m all in with this,” John Antonio said.

Of that there can be no doubt.

To comment, write bobpadecky@gmail.com.