Nearly 7 years ago this Santa Rosa native suffered a near fatal stroke. Now with the help of his childhood friends, he’s heading back into the wild

In the immediate wake of surgery for that stroke, in which doctors worked to remove clots from his brain, he suffered a different kind of stroke, a hemorrhagic stroke, meaning a blood vessel had ruptured and was bleeding in his brain.

Then his team discovered pressure building in his brain. Surgeons subsequently removed a quarter of his skull.

He was in a coma for a month.

When he was medically cleared, he was flown to a rehabilitation facility in Vallejo.

He remembers a visit from a surgeon, an old tennis partner.

And he remembers seeing his wife, Starr. She’d balanced caring for the couple’s two young sons while flying in and out of Atlanta for the preceding month, but McLaughlin has no memory of that time.

His timeline, albeit foggy, starts again in Vallejo. His memories start with Starr.

“She crawls into bed with me and tells me what happened in the way that only a spouse can,” he said. “She said, ‘We can do this, but it’s going to take a lot of perseverance and hard work.’ She kept saying ‘We,’ ‘Our’ and ‘We can do this.’”

McLaughlin was paralyzed on his left side. He was 75% blind. A massive piece of his skull remained frozen in Atlanta.

“My head was like a deflated basketball. My skin was sagging into my brain,” he said.

When surgeons reattached the section of his skull, it became infected. Six months later, they had to go back in and remove it again.

Today a portion of his skull is prosthetic, made of resin and created by a 3D printer.

Heckler remembers walking into McLaughlin’s hospital room seven years ago and struggling to recognize his friend of four decades, the guy he’d gone to school with, who was his roommate when they lived in Japan, and with whom he’d spent countless nights in the backcountry miles from anywhere.

It was difficult for him to reconcile the Ian he knew, the whip-smart attorney, the cool one, the guy who had everything, with the patient he saw in that bed in Vallejo.

“He had a helmet. He was lying in his bed and really had no control over anything,” Heckler said. “It was a dark hospital room, he has ESPN looping on a crappy box TV in the corner and it smells like hospital. He can barely recognize me. His brain was sort of there but it was like looking through a big, cloudy mess.

“It was like, ‘Holy sh**.’”

A dream trip

Today when Heckler remembers those days in late 2016, he can hardly believe it.

Both because he can’t believe McLaughlin was felled like he was, but also because he can hardly believe his friend has risen like he has.

Today, McLaughlin, Heckler, Weitzenberg, Roeser and still more members of Santa Rosa High’s class of 1987 are days away from going backpacking to Lane Lake in the Southern Sierras.

And McLaughlin is planning the trip. Just like he did all those times over the years.

He will celebrate this 54th birthday in the mountains, with his friends.

It’s a trip McLaughlin has dreamed of for years, but one which only now, seven years from the moment his life was forever changed, that he feels confident enough to execute.

Today he walks with a four-point cane in his right hand. His left side remains stiff, his hand clenched. His balance is affected. He must concentrate on each footfall.

This hike will be no easy feat. It’s 3-plus miles to a campground at Lane Lake. Three miles of uneven, obstacle-filled terrain.

But with McLaughlin will be 10 guys who have all, at different stages of life, spent time in the backcountry with him. Many he’s known since elementary school.

He tapped them for a reason. For their lifelong friendships, for their outdoor experience, for their shared histories.

The only guy who McLaughlin hasn’t backpacked with before is his physical therapist Skylohr Taylor.

But Taylor, a Casa Grande High grad, is all in. He, too, wants to see McLaughlin make this hike.

Over the six years they have worked together, Taylor has seen how far he’s come.

“The first one or two years, he was not the same guy,” he said. “He had such brain fog, he wasn’t highly motivated and he didn’t really understand what we were doing.”

But as his physical skills grew, so did his mindset.

“He was a disciplined guy and he’s still a disciplined guy,” Taylor said, noting that McLaughlin usually works out and preps for at least an hour alone before each PT session.

And the work isn’t just physical.

McLaughlin said he long ago faced down the depression of losing the life he once had and has put all of his will into creating the life he wants today. Part of that is getting back into the wild, a space and place that he has loved since he was a boy backpacking every summer with his family.

“Psithurism. That’s the name for the noise of the wind in the trees. It’s calming and beautiful, it moves me to tears sometimes,” he said. “It reminds me that I’m part of something bigger than me.”

So every day — every single day — for years, McLaughlin has walked to the barn on his property in Walnut Creek and worked out, thinking of this trip, of his lifelong friends, and about being in a place that makes him deeply happy.

He’s worked on skills he knows he’ll need on this hike — dropping into a squat, pulling himself out of it, lifting his left foot over obstacles, maintaining balance on uneven ground — and worked on his confidence.

“Our therapy really started as very physical in the first three or four years, and the last couple of years it’s become more of a mental game,” Taylor said.

And there, Taylor said, is where the strength McLaughlin has acquired through all of the work and all the therapy may play second fiddle to the strength he draws from lifelong friends.

“Their support is massive,” Taylor said. “That is the secret ingredient in this trip that is going to get us there. Physically, Ian can do this trip. He can backpack, he can do it physically. Now it’s mentally, can he keep himself together? Can we all keep him together? We all play a role in that.

“The fact that he’s got 10 great friends over his lifetime, saying ‘Hey, no pressure, man.’ I think it’s going to make a huge difference.”

‘It’s about living’

McLaughlin has been hyper focused about this trip, but he says the work is bigger than that.

“For me it’s about living the rest of my life and getting back and being able to walk confidently in the community,” he said.

He’s pushed by a fierce internal drive, but he’s also motivated by friendships forged decades ago, by experiences with these same guys when they were teenagers, planning these same backcountry trips together.

“Ian was always the ringleader of the whole backpacking thing,” Weitzenberg said. “He was the one who got the wilderness permits and said, ‘This is where we are going to go.’”

The dream of this trip was hatched years ago, at a time, McLaughlin now admits, when he could not have pulled it off.

His rehab has run the gamut — slow, almost miraculous, painful.

The stroke severely affected his balance. McLaughlin’s “midline,” essentially the vertical line running from head to toe is off. He naturally leans to the side because his perception of where he is in space is slightly off.

“That is incredibly challenging to balance,” Taylor said.

And if McLaughlin starts to lose balance, or fall, his left side struggles to react in time. He describes it like a redwood falling.

“I’ve had 15 falls to my left side … all in the last four years,” he said. “Overall, I’ve had five broken bones — two ribs, a wrist, a shoulder, a broken orbital. It’s been such a brutal few years.”

Much of McLaughlin’s work today is around confidence and calming anxiety.

It’s both physical and mental.

“The mind-body connection is so strong, if I’m feeling anxious, it causes spasticity in my left side, so it’s very important for me to remain calm and focused and confident,” he said.

Spasticity causes McLaughlin’s muscles to tighten and lock up.

“My movements are hampered by my psychology for sure,” he said. “It’s relearning to trust my left side at least to walk on it.”

‘Inch by inch’

Heckler has been with McLaughlin from the beginning.

Yes, since that fifth grade soccer team. But also from the beginning of his recovery.

A dentist in nearby Orinda, Heckler has many Fridays off, so on those days he drives to Walnut Creek to see McLaughlin and witness his rehab.

McLaughlin’s unofficial motto — the phrase he uses in his recovery blog, on his social media posts that update friends and family about his progress — is “Inch by inch.”

That’s no lie, Heckler said.

McLaughlin’s recovery, his small wins, have been a grind, gains of inches, not feet most days.

When McLaughlin started talking about a backpacking trip in the high country a couple of years ago, Heckler stopped short.

“When he pitched it, I’m like ‘No f**king way. I’m not on board.’ I’m not the guy to say no, but there is no way,” he said.

But as McLaughlin worked, and sweated, and rehabbed, Heckler became a believer.

“It’s emotional for me just because I have been in the trenches, so I know exactly how far he’s come,” he said.

Agreed, Roeser said.

He remembers when McLaughlin first stood up out of his wheelchair, how long and how much effort that took.

To see him today?

“I know it’s cliché but it’s nothing short of a miracle,” he said.

And like Heckler, Roeser remembers having some misgivings when McLaughlin first floated the idea of this trip.

“In the back of our minds we’re thinking that it might be a little ambitious at this point,” he recalled.

But today, Roeser, like Heckler, is a believer.

“He has worked his ass off,” he said.

“Us being together, up there doing things that we all know mean so much to him?” he said. “If Ian takes two steps from the trailhead, it’s still a win.”

McLaughlin’s grit might be a driving force behind the trip, but so too is his personality, Weitzenberg said.

Who else but McLaughlin could get 10 busy professionals who now live all over Northern California together for a backpacking trip?

“Ian’s courage brought us back together,” he said. “Ian’s grit and determination to not only have survived this incredible nightmare but then to return to the thing that made him the happiest, which was backpacking with his buddies. If we don’t make it out of the parking lot, we won.”

‘Good, good people’

Photographs from trips of the past show a much younger McLaughlin, backpack on, framed by stunning views of the Sierras.

Here he is with Weitzenberg. And with Heckler. And Tony Johansen, another Santa Rosa High classmate. And buddies from law school.

On a recent morning at their Walnut Creek property, Starr McLaughlin pulled out a few photos of her husband and his friends. She smiled as she looks at them.

Starr isn’t going on this trip. It isn’t that she doesn’t want to or isn’t welcome, it’s that she knows what these guys mean to her husband. She understands their bond and why this trip has remained such a driving focus for Ian.

“I’m not worried. Not at all,” she said. “I think every single one of his friends, any one of them, all of them, would just be right there for him.

“They are just good, good people.”

Good people who know that success won’t be measured by how far they get on the trail, and who understand that courage, and meaning, are found simply in the attempt.

“Wherever they are going, I can’t wait to see that final picture.”

You can reach Staff Columnist Kerry Benefield at 707-526-8671 or kerry.benefield@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @benefield.