Richard Brooks
The Press Enterprise
Even for a deputy, Detective Al Lobo is a tough man and hard to kill.
A bad case of pneumonia — likely contracted while working in the San Bernardino County sheriff’s jail in Victorville — led to an infection that robbed him of both legs below the knees, his left arm at the bicep and all the fingers of his right hand.
“Don’t ever give up,” are the words that the Riverside resident lives by and the philosophy he recommends to others. “It’s all in the head: You have to have a positive outlook on life and … be determined to go to the next level.
“Life has its challenges, yes. But people tend to give up too easily.”
Nearly 21/2 years after his amputations, Lobo is battling the county to approve the resumption of physical therapy treatments for him, including workout sessions on a leg press machine and a recumbent bicycle. He also wants the county to caution emergency personnel about the dangers of pneumonia and help them to avoid it.
His goals include returning to work.
“The sheriff promised that as soon as I’m ready to come back to work, there’s a position waiting for me,” he said. “If I had the right prosthetics, I’d be sitting at my desk right now.”
Sheriff Rod Hoops confirmed that the offer stands. No details have been firmed up, but the job is apt to be in the department’s business office, he said.
“Al did a great job. He was a good field deputy,” said Hoops, who added that Lobo also is a nice person. “Very outgoing. Very peaceful. When you mention Al Lobo, everybody smiles. He’s a good guy.
“And he’s a fighter. I’m looking forward to the day that we can hire him back.”
The son of a tea factory worker in Pakistan, Lobo earned an accounting degree in that country and worked as an accountant for the U.S. State Department in Karachi. At age 25, he emigrated to the U.S. to further his education and - as a Christian - to escape religious intolerance.
“There are plenty of Christians there,” Lobo said of Pakistan, “but they are all discriminated against.
“But that country is not what people think: Only 25 percent of them are causing all the problems.”
Once in the U.S., Lobo joined the Sheriff’s Department at age 30.
At 45, he became the oldest deputy in department history to complete SWAT training. Now 50, he has spent 20 years as a cop, including stints as a deputy in San Bernardino and Rancho Cucamonga, and as a narcotics and SWAT detective - and a temporary assignment to a federal terrorism task force.
Until his illness, Lobo says, he ran four to seven miles every other day. On off days, he said, he lifted weights for an hour.
Then, his assignment as a jail detective changed his life.
Most jailers catch the flu, he said. But when his symptoms persisted for four months, he went to a doctor.
Antibiotics didn’t work, and the condition worsened, he said.
One night, Lobo passed out after asking his son to drive him to urgent care. He spent the next eight months in the hospital, initially for treatment of pneumonia that progressed into sepsis, a rampant blood infection.
During that time, Lobo twice slipped into a coma, his heart stopped beating 17 times, and he suffered six heart attacks and possibly a stroke, he said.
He awakened from the last coma to discover that his limbs were gone. Doctors amputated them to save his life after the blood infection shut down normal circulation to his extremities.
Dumbfounded, Lobo became unresponsive to everyone around him. They assumed he’d slipped into depression.
“I wasn’t going into depression,” Lobo said. “That was my way of processing it.
“I just get quiet.”
Then he got mad.
“I got angry at everybody but God,” Lobo recalls. “As time went on, I had to focus on my relationship with my children, because that’s what kept me going. If I did not overcome this obstacle, they would not have a dad.”
The road to recovery has been bumpy. He had to get a new car that has room for his prosthetics. His bathroom and every door in his home have been enlarged to accommodate his wheelchair. He sleeps in an easily adjustable bed. And the carpets have been removed to help him avoid catching his shoe heels and falling.
In the view of his fiancée, the key sticking point is that Lobo has been unable to persuade the county to continue his physical therapy which, the couple says, has tapered off from hourlong sessions three times a week to nothing.
“He hasn’t had physical therapy since July 2,” said Halimah Shenghur. “If he doesn’t get physical therapy … his progress toward being independent and being able to walk goes backward. His muscles get very weak.
“I have to massage him every night for two hours so that he doesn’t have pain and muscle aches. He doesn’t have the strength to get up and move when he hasn’t been on the machines.”
Though his is an extreme case, Lobo also wants the county to warn deputies of their heightened risk of pneumonia and to make pneumonia vaccinations available to them, in the same way that hepatitis shots are provided.
But his biggest challenge, he says, is the continuing series of denials and appeals that have marked his fights for extensive physical therapy, improved prosthetics and reimbursement for trips to the Florida firm that makes his artificial legs and recommends annual visits for specialized therapy.
He credits his fiancée for acting as his advocate in that fight.
“The biggest thing you need is somebody on your side to battle for you,” Lobo concludes. “A loved one.”
Copyright 2012 The Press Enterprise, Inc.