Doctors told Pedro Medina that the injuries he suffered fighting in Afghanistan had left him paralyzed. But six months later, the Chicago cop is walking. “Pete’s an inspiration for us and his fellow soldiers,” his longtime partner says.
By Frank Main
Chicago Sun-Times
CHICAGO — When the mortar rounds started exploding around him, Master Sgt. Pedro Medina scrambled for cover.
“I needed to get to a solid structure, fast,” Medina said.
He ran to a building on his military base in mountainous southeastern Afghanistan. But the building proved to be anything but solid.
A Chinook helicopter was taking off to escape the attack, and a violent downdraft from the rotors collapsed the building. An iron I-beam landed on Medina. It crushed his neck, pelvis and foot. The May 18 accident left Medina without any feeling below his neck. He was stunned when the doctors told him he was a quadriplegic.
Almost six months later, he’s walking with a cane in a veterans hospital in Tampa. And hundreds of Chicago Police officers are rooting for him to make even greater strides because Medina is not only a high-ranking enlisted soldier in the Army, he’s also an 11-year veteran of the Chicago Police Department.
Medina, 34, is one of 361 Chicago cops who are also military reservists. Twenty-one of them are currently stationed in combat zones, and another 14 are serving in the United States, according to Chicago’s Fraternal Order of Police. Of them, Medina has been the most seriously wounded in a combat zone, officials say.
“Pete’s an inspiration for us and his fellow soldiers,” said his longtime police partner, Officer David Uting.
Medina, a 17-year Army veteran, serves with the 333rd Military Police Company, an Illinois Army National Guard unit.
When he wasn’t on duty with the Army, he was an officer in the Humboldt Park Police District in the Northwest Side neighborhood where he grew up with his grandmother.
While juggling those two careers, Medina also attended University of Illinois at Chicago, where he earned a degree in exercise physiology in 2007. That knowledge became invaluable after Medina was injured: He could speak the same medical jargon as his doctors and therapists.
“They would ask me, ‘Are you a medic or something?’ ” he said, laughing.
For about a month and a half, Medina was what he calls a “true quad” -- a quadriplegic who couldn’t move his arms or legs at all. But as he lay in bed, he kept struggling to move his limbs.
“One day, I started tapping my middle finger on my right hand on the bed at Walter Reed,” he said, referring to the Army medical center in Washington. “They were just small movements, but I continued to work at it. Now, I can make a full fist and extend my hands.”
He’s been continuing his rehabilitation in Tampa, where he willed himself out of his wheelchair. For nearly two weeks, he’s been walking with a cane.
“First, I went 300 meters, then 800 meters,” Medina said. “It was exhausting.”
He recently attended a college football game in the Tampa area at the invitation of a Coast Guard admiral and was able to walk up the stadium ramps on his own. And he’s planning to rent a tuxedo for a Coast Guard ball.
“He is a miracle guy,” said his partner, Uting, who led a group of Chicago Police officers to Tampa to visit Medina.
They sneaked him out of the hospital and took him to the Gulf of Mexico, where they rolled him into the surf in his wheelchair. Medina said he wants to go back to work as a soldier and a cop because of that brotherhood.
His goal is to become a command sergeant major -- the Army’s top enlisted rank -- and serve at least three more years to become eligible for full retirement with 20 years.
He also hopes to return to the Chicago Police Department’s patrol division. “I talked to the department, and they told me as long as I can type with one finger and get myself to work, I have a job with the city,” Medina said. “Not only can I type with one finger -- I am walking.”
For now, though, Medina is concentrating on his recovery, as well as inspiring other soldiers whose injuries are even more serious. One of them, Marine Lance Cpl. George Abinader, 20, has a severe spinal cord injury. When they met, Abinader couldn’t speak.
“Now, George and I watch movies together,” Medina said. “He sits up straight, and I say, ‘At ease.’ One day, I asked him to say my name. He struggled, but he said, ‘Master Sgt. Medina.’ I got quite emotional. This is not only about me. You don’t let brothers of yours charge a hill alone.”
Copyright 2009 Chicago Sun-Times