Injured in the line of duty

On that Sunday afternoon, her job included looking for strong-arm robbery suspect Santiago. A fellow officer had told her she'd probably seen Santiago often on Santa Avenue but just hadn't put a name to him.

Sure enough, that afternoon, as Wade was driving her patrol car south on the avenue, she passed a man on the sidewalk whom she realized as Santiago. She prepared to make a U-turn and approach him.

"Right then," she said, "I was dispatched to a fight on Kawana Springs Road."

She rolled to that location but found nothing. She wanted to return to Santa Rosa Avenue and to Santiago, but she figured he might have been spooked when she'd driven past him. So she parked near the bicycle path on Colgan Avenue, looked to see if he was there, then walked west toward Santa Rosa Avenue.

She recalls that she was alongside the America's Best Value Inn at Colgan and Santa Rosa avenues when something halted her.

"I heard this little girl's voice from above, saying, &‘Who are you looking for?' "

She looked up to see a child standing at the motel's second-floor railing. How cute, the officer thought. She replied to the girl, "I'm looking for a bad guy!"

The child then pointed catty-corner across Santa Rosa Avenue, toward the Chevron station and Denny's restaurant. "He's over there," she said.

Wade wasn't expecting that. She asked the child what the man she was talking about was wearing. The kid answered, "He has on a soldier's uniform a black knit cap."

Astounding. When Wade had spotted Santiago on the sidewalk minutes earlier he was wearing military garb and a black knit cap. She climbed the stairs and spoke to the girl's mother, who confirmed they'd seen a suspicious-acting man walk past the motel, cross the street and duck into bushes near Denny's.

Wade radioed a fellow officer on patrol nearby and told him she'd quickly return to her car and meet him at Denny's. She remembers pulling up and stopping outside the restaurant.

"That's it," she said. "Then it's gone."

She has no recollection of what happened next but has been told that Santiago fled on foot to the east, across Santa Rosa Avenue and that she sprinted after him. She's heard how horrendous her accident was.

She learned later that she spent eight days in Memorial and was treated for multiple fractures to her face and damage to her left knee and elbow. It was her left side that took the brunt of the collision.

She also learned that while she was fighting for her life she received a flood of cards and messages of support from colleagues and members of the community.

"I wasn't supposed to survive, but I did," she said. "I'm very grateful to everyone for their prayers and good wishes. Sonoma County has come through for me, big time."

By now Wade has undergone five surgeries to her eyes and she'll soon have another, which she hopes will correct the double-vision. She's had two rounds of oral surgery and one knee surgery.

Although she's by nature not a complainer, she will admit it's irksome that the brain injury has affected her sense of smell, which has done strange things to her sense of taste. She used to like olives, pickles, watermelon, raspberries but not now.

"The weirdest things, I can't stand anymore."

There is no sugar-coating the most painful consequence of her injuries.

"I was just devastated when I had to retire" from the Police Department, she said. "Just devastated."

Police work "is a very hellish field in many ways," she added. "But, boy, is it rewarding. I was getting better and better at it."

Colleagues and superiors had taken notice of how hard she drove herself to learn from seasoned officers and to hone her skills.

"That's what Lucia has, a willingness to learn and to try anything," said Police Chief Tom Schwedhelm. "Her attitude comes across. She's the type of person any employer is looking for."

Jeff Peterich, who'd gone through the public safety academy at Santa Rosa Junior College with Wade in early 2006 and become a Windsor police officer, said he never saw a more diligent cop.

As bitter a pill as her disability-caused retirement is, Wade is grateful to receive medical and disability benefits and to have recovered to the degree she has.

"So I've got some knee problems," said the former marathoner. "I can walk!"

She takes stock of how fortunate she is each time she and her partner, Monica Nascimento, who works as a patent assistant at a law firm, walk their Doberman pinscher, Cody, and chat with neighbors who've pulled for her throughout the ordeal.

She said she's not about to retire altogether and she wants still to be of help. She's begun to do some volunteering and she's strongly drawn to the prospect of working with victims of elder abuse, child abuse and domestic violence at the Family Justice Center that Sonoma County will open this year.

She is no longer a police officer serving her city by pursuing criminals, and that's rough. But she's alive.

"I'm sure I'll figure something else out," she said.