May 12--When the car flipped right in front of him, Danny Inacio almost didn't believe what he was seeing.
What he did over the next few minutes made people feel the same way about him.
The 22-year-old Livingston resident was driving his girlfriend home to Winton on Tuesday afternoon when the black Jetta in front of them hit a median. The Jetta was going at least 50 mph when its driver tried to turn into the Livingston Child Care Center on Walnut Avenue. When the Jetta hit the median, it flipped.
Then it flipped again. And again. And again. And again.
When it stopped, the car was upside-down, badly smashed and smoldering. "It probably rolled 10 times before it hit that pole," Inacio recalled, standing at the site of the accident a few days later. "If it wasn't for the pole, I don't know how far it would have kept going. It looked so crazy, I almost didn't believe it was happening."
Inacio quickly pulled over. "My first reaction was to go see if they were alive," he said. "I thought, 'We gotta get whoever's in there out or else they'll get burned.'"
Inacio approached the passenger side. He could see two men inside. One appeared conscious, but he wasn't talking. Inacio tried the front passenger door. It was jammed, so he tried the back door.
By that time, several people had run over from a crowded soccer game at a field across the parking lot. A man pulled out his pocketknife and cut through the passenger's seatbelt. Inacio then helped pull the passenger from the smoking car. Someone else freed the driver.
"We laid (the passenger) on the grass," Inacio explained. "I tried talking to him, but he wasn't saying anything. He just looked like he was in so much pain. He was bloody. He looked wasted."
Inacio, soft-spoken and shy, doesn't think what he did last week deserves praise. "I wasn't the only one," he said. "Other people helped get them out, too."
That's true, says his aunt, Erica Inacio. But given all that he's up against, she thinks what her nephew did was special.
Inacio's right side was paralyzed by a stroke when he was 4 years old. Now, he walks, talks, drives and plays soccer with his family.
But it wasn't always that way.
"When he went to bed, he was fine," Inacio's father, Ernest Inacio, recalled about the night his son suffered the stroke. "But then he woke up vomiting. He couldn't move or talk. We didn't know what was happening. I drove to the hospital as fast as I could."
About three months after his stroke, Inacio started speaking again. "It was like he was starting all over," his father said. "His first word when he started talking again was 'TV.' I remember it so clearly. He just wanted to watch TV."
But walking again would prove a much bigger challenge.
Inacio rejected a wheelchair. He used a walker for a little while, but with his right hand paralyzed, it was hard for him to use it. For about six months after the stroke, Inacio's parents or grandparents carried him most places he went, his father said. Slowly, he learned to walk again.
He began a regular physical therapy routine and was forced to wear braces on his legs. He hated them, his father recalled, because kids at school made fun of them.
Until he was 9 or 10, he suffered from seizures, sometimes several a month. "It was very hard for him, and in some ways, it still is," his father said.
As a teenager, he was rejected when he tried out for the Livingston High School soccer team. He blamed his disabilities and vowed he'd never play the sport again. "He came home so angry that day, but it didn't last," his father said.
One of eight children, Inacio graduated high school with good grades in 2004.
He now lives half the time with his dad in Winton and the other half in Livingston with his grandparents, who came here from Portugal almost four decades ago. "They're getting older. I come here every other week and help out," Inacio said. He helps keep their house tidy. He helps with their garden and with the pug dogs and Boston terriers they breed. He takes his grandfather, who has diabetes, to his medical appointments.
Inacio's not in school now, but he plans to start back at Merced College once he has the money. He wants to be a kindergarten teacher. "I love kids," he explained.
Inacio conceded that his disabilities still affect his life every day. "I've been trying for so long to get a job, but no one wants to hire me. Everywhere I go, they take one look at me, and they figure I can't work." Though he walks almost normally, he drags his right foot. He can move his right arm, but not his hand or fingers.
Still, Inacio stays fairly positive overall, his family says. "He has to work twice as hard as everybody else to prove himself, but he does it," said his aunt, Erica. "He works hard and he's always trying to help people. When everybody who saw that accident just kept driving, Danny stopped because he has such a big heart."
Police think the men inside the car that crashed were drunk, Livingston police Lt. Chris Soria said. He identified the driver as 26-year-old Juan Luis Pecheco and the passenger as 19-year-old Isidro Martinez. Both men were transported to Memorial Medical Center in Modesto. Pecheco was discharged Thursday. Martinez was still in intensive care a few days after the crash.
Pecheco, who couldn't be reached for this story, will be charged with drunken driving, Soria said.
Inacio left the scene of the crash when police and emergency crews began arriving. "I figured I was just in the way by then, so I cleared out," Inacio said.
He wonders about the men inside the car and whether the crash will leave them with any long-term problems. "I hope they're not disabled," he said without a trace of irony. "I hope they're OK. I hope they recover."
Reporter Corinne Reilly can be reached at (209) 385-2477 or creilly@mercedsun-star.com.
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