By Robert Salonga
Contra Costa Times
ANTIOCH, Calif. — James Vincent remembers it clearly.
His patrol car went airborne, and he felt weightless. He recalls trying to hit the brake pedal, realizing then that was probably impossible.
A wave of cold shivered down his back. He was trapped inside the car that had overturned and crashed into a Pittsburg house. Vincent believes that cold rush marked the moment his spine broke, paralyzing him from the waist down.
The six-year Antioch police veteran has extensive rehabilitation ahead for the injuries he suffered in a March 9 police pursuit. He and other officers were pursuing a car theft suspect when Vincent hit a dip in the road and lost control of his squad car. But his desire to be a law enforcement officer hasn’t wavered.
“I’m broken, I’m not beat,” Vincent, 29, said from a rehabilitation lounge at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center in San Jose.
Seven weeks after the crash, he is upbeat and determined to return to police work. In a wheelchair, secured by a brace around his torso, his elbows wrapped in bandages to protect damaged nerves in his elbows, Vincent said he has put the experience behind him and is looking toward opportunities that will require his mind more than his body.
“I’ve been talked to about some other jobs "... that really interest me, that are very technical and not on the physically demanding end,” the unmarried Oakley resident said.
The priority for now is to retrain himself to perform everyday tasks without the use of his legs. That includes learning how to roll out of bed, get up after falling down, and dress himself.
“I’m learning how to do basic things that everybody does that you take for granted,” Vincent said.
He’s gotten the hang of moving around in his wheelchair after a two-week learning curve, and is moving up in the rehabilitation center’s unofficial competition in endurance tests among other patients in wheelchairs.
“I’m ahead of the pack,” Vincent said.
He had a quick answer for what keeps him motivated.
“I’ve got another guy now trying to be ahead of the pack,” he said, laughing.
Vincent makes regular use of the facility’s exercise equipment, performing bench and shoulder presses with cable-driven weights, giving him an upper-body physique indistinguishable from that of a standard gym rat. He’s an imposing figure, with a shaved head, broad shoulders and tattooed arms.
Vincent said his father, Tom, a 30-plus year police veteran in Turlock, where Vincent grew up, had tried to talk him out of a police career and nudged him toward firefighting. The speech didn’t take. Inspired in part by the man trying to dissuade him, he briefly considered other careers but always came back to police work.
Six months before completing course work in criminal justice at Cal State Stanislaus, Vincent was tapped by the Antioch Police Department. Six years later, he accepts what happened to him as a hazard of the job.
“I view it as an accident. Nobody did it on purpose,” he said.
His view is tempered by events that occurred within weeks of the crash: four Oakland officers slain by a parolee in March and the shooting deaths of three Pittsburgh, Pa., officers in early April.
“Those were horrible tragedies across the board,” Vincent said. “It might wake some people up that this "... could happen to any of us every single day. We’re soldiers. We’re fighting a war on crime.”
Vincent has received an outpouring of support, ranging from Contra Costa County residents visiting him at John Muir Medical Center in Walnut Creek, to friends, family and colleagues paying him daily visits in San Jose. He learned recently that even people he arrested donated to the Antioch Police Officers Association fund set up to help with his recovery.
Vincent says the support -- and occasional fast-food smuggled into his room -- have kept up his spirits as he weathers what he calls the good and bad days of rehabilitation.
“I don’t think I could do it alone,” Vincent said.
Vincent is encouraged by advances in stem cell research he hopes will restore his ability to walk during his lifetime. He is determined that his injuries won’t be the end of his career, citing high-tech crime-fighting opportunities such as tracking down criminals via cell phone patterns and Internet monitoring.
“There’s a lot of investigative work to be done while waiting for advances (in stem cell research) to be made,” he said.
As Vincent prepared to get ready for the day’s physical therapy session, he said he had no time to dwell on his injuries.
“You gotta push yourself through it. You have no time to be angry at the world,” he said. “There’s going to be life after this, and I’m going to be ready for it.”
Copyright 2009 Contra Costa Times