There was a time not too long ago when Luke Dithrich's career with the U.S. Border Patrol seemed destined to end in an intensive-care unit in Southern California.
Torn aorta. Ruptured spleen. Collapsed lungs. Amputated left leg.
Even his doctors seemed prepared for the worst, giving Dithrich at best a 10 percent chance of survival.
Yet he made it out of a monthlong coma alive and more than three years later finds himself back on the job at U.S. Customs and Border Protection, this time in the Buffalo area.
"It is what it is," Dithrich said. "For me, it's just something that happened."
Just something that happened? Not exactly.
Not when you consider how it happened and how his fellow Border Patrol agents rallied around him in the days, weeks and months that followed.
Dithrich's story is one of those tales of a law enforcement officer cheating death and of his brethren putting aside everything for a fellow officer in trouble.
"The last thing I remember is carving pumpkins a week before the accident," Dithrich said of the off-duty motorcycle crash that left him without his left arm and leg.
Even now, years after the 2008 accident, he has no memory of the mentally ill man who authorities believe purposely ran him down while driving the wrong way down a highway near San Diego.
He also has no recollection of his hospitalization -- he was in a medically induced coma for a month -- or of the Border Patrol agents who donated more than 4,000 hours of vacation time and sat by his bed 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
" 'Surprised' isn't the word," Bill Dithrich, Luke's father, said of the attention and support his son received from fellow agents. "We were amazed. It was just unbelievable."
Dithrich said he and his wife, Paula, flew to San Diego as soon as they learned of the accident -- they still live in Luke's hometown of Meadville, Pa. -- and found a delegation of Border Patrol agents waiting for them at the airport gate when they arrived.
And the agents never left them or Luke, even as he lay in a coma.
"We would stand up," said Bill Dithrich, "and one of them would jump and say, 'What do you need?'"
For the first few weeks, the Dithriches watched and waited as Luke underwent one surgery after another.
When the car hit him, Luke was caught between his motorcycle and the car, and the left side of his body took the brunt of the crash as he was dragged more than 80 feet along the pavement.
His left leg was so badly injured that it had to be amputated above the knee, and his left femur, the thigh bone, required several surgeries to repair a compound fracture.
There also were extensive injuries to his left forearm and several fingers, not to mention punctures to his spleen and aorta.
Only later did Luke discover that the man who hit him that morning was looking for trouble. Luke said the man was later declared incompetent to stand trial and is currently in a mental institution.
"He later admitted he was trying to hit people," Luke Dithrich said. "And apparently, I was the lucky one."
Lucky enough to survive.
Dithrich regained consciousness for good about a month after the accident, although his father insists he saw his son smile much earlier.
The fatherly recollections of Dithrich's recovery were documented day by day in a blog intended for friends and family across the country.
"I put everything in it, what he went through, how we were feeling, everything," Bill Dithrich said.
By late December 2008, two months after the crash, Luke was out of intensive care and doing well enough with his rehabilitation to visit his Border Patrol station in San Diego.
Little did he know that he would be back at work less than a year later.
Dithrich spent the next two years in rehab and recovering from a second amputation after he returned to work. Doctors removed part of his left arm in early 2010 when a nerve transplant failed.
Despite the setback, he never dwelled on the negative. Instead, he would joke about his missing leg or laugh about someone finding his missing fingers along the highway near San Diego. "I never saw him in a down moment," Bill Dithrich said. "He's always positive."
One of the reasons is that Luke Dithrich never lost sight of his ultimate goal: returning to work at Customs and Border Protection.
His injuries made it impossible for him to work as a field agent, but Customs and Border Protection decided he could return as a sector-enforcement specialist. The new job involves a lot of surveillance and dispatch work.
"I miss what I can no longer do," Dithrich said, "but you learn to adapt."
And the job isn't the only good thing about his move east to Buffalo. Shortly after arriving here, he asked his girlfriend, Missy, to marry him, and she said yes.
"I'm a lot more laid-back," Dithrich said of his life and how the accident has changed him. "I really don't stress about much anymore."
Customs and Border Protection officials say the agency's willingness to work with Dithrich is a reflection of its efforts at improving disability hiring, a goal of the Obama administration.
The agency signed an agreement earlier this month to ensure that it will increase the recruitment, hiring, advancement and retention of workers with disabilities.
"I just love the job," Dithrich said. "If I didn't have this job, I don't know what I'd be doing."
Copyright 2012 - The Buffalo News, N.Y.
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
