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Tragedy to triumph

When a deputy and a teenage boy cross paths, she is seriously injured and he dies. Now she helps others in his name.

By ANDREW MEACHAM
Published September 16, 2005

After the arrest had gone horribly wrong, after news helicopters and rescue vehicles had left the 7-Eleven on Causeway Boulevard, Deputy Carmen Varga would retain one thought: Oh my god, I'm throwing up in front of everybody.

Sheriff Cal Henderson and all the brass at the Sheriff's Office were surrounding her, it seemed. And now she was getting sick.

In her three years on the force, this was as low as it got.

That day in January 2004, a teenager had backed into her with a car, knocking her unconscious. The 17-year-old she was trying to arrest had dragged her partner across a parking lot. Now, the teenager was in critical condition with a head wound from a deputy's gun.

Varga would leave Tampa General Hospital the next day with stitches in the back of her head and worries on her mind.

What had caused the teenager to bolt? What would happen? Would she be able physically to get back on patrol?

Varga did not know it then, but one of the worst moments of her career would help lead to one of the best.

Varga, 48, always wanted to be a police officer.

Growing up in the Midwest, she thought police work held out the chance to help people in crisis. When she moved to Canada, she applied for a job at the Toronto Police Service.

But at 5 feet 2, she could not pass the height requirement. So she drifted through professions. She started nursing school but lacked the money to finish. Then she tended bar on the outskirts of Vancouver. Next, she worked as a correctional officer in a women's prison.

Finally, at age 44, she was hired by the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office. Some of her fellow cadets were skeptical.

"I actually had one who told me, "You're the same age as my mom. What are you doing here?"' Varga said.

The doubts only boosted her resolve. She emerged from training academy with the top grade point average in her class.

As a new deputy, Varga spent her time patrolling subdivisions in eastern Hillsborough. She organized drives to benefit needy families, especially during the holidays.

She could get anyone to donate.

"They would give her candy or anything else she asked for," said Kathleen Taylor, a past president of the Sterling Ranch Homeowners Association.

Jeremy Samuelsen, 17, also spent time helping the underprivileged, his mother said. On Sundays, he went with a youth group from Resurrection Catholic Church to feed the homeless.

Samuelsen grew up in a Valrico neighborhood populated by one-story, well-kept houses. Late-model pickup trucks, sport utility vehicles and vans dominate the driveways. Many residents fly American flags.

His parents, John and Kathy, adopted Jeremy and his sister Charity when they were infants. John works as a state placement coordinator for the developmentally disabled; Kathy works as a field administrator for Sunoco. They've been married 28 years.

Jeremy liked music, from hip-hop to Christian rock. He drew on whatever was handy, using Sharpies to sketch Pokemon characters. He especially liked to draw Jesus on the cross.

Church member Stacy Feiler remembers that Jeremy was fascinated by a necklace on sale at a church fair. The dog-tag necklace bore an image of a suffering Christ.

"Why do you like that so much?" Feiler asked him.

"It tells me that somebody else had it even worse than me," he said.

His mother described him as charming and a good talker.

"You wanted to see the best in Jeremy because he did try," Kathy Samuelsen said. "But it was bigger than he was."

"It" was a drug and alcohol problem, she said.

The first time he got arrested, he was 13. That year, he got arrested three more times in five months.

Words such as "burglary," "larceny," and "vehicle theft" dot his record.

Between 2001 and 2004, Jeremy was sent to an adolescent rehabilitation facility twice. He served about 10 months each time.

Between those stays, Jeremy attended Bloomingdale High, which he hated. But while in treatment, he did not get in trouble with the law.

In September 2002, when Jeremy was living at home, his parents reported him to the Sheriff's Office for violating curfew. Authorities charged him with violating his probation.

One month later, authorities would tack on another charge, this time for domestic battery. It happened after Jeremy pushed his adopted sister onto a chair during an argument. Jeremy's family reported this offense as well, even though they later wished they had not.

He was arrested again.

It was a Friday morning on Jan. 9, 2004, when Deputies Carmen Varga and Brian Dalton fielded an armed robbery call over their police radio. The call came from the Sampson Park subdivision.

The cluster of modest homes in Riverview is a code inspector's heaven: there are multiple cars parked in yards, rain-soaked mattresses, and debris stowed curbside.

Two men reported they had been robbed of money and a car stereo. But when Varga, Dalton and a third deputy arrived at the scene, no one was there.

A while later, Dalton noticed a new message about the same Sampson Park robbery on his dashboard computer.

This time, two teenagers were waiting for them in the 7-Eleven parking lot. One of them was Jeremy Samuelsen.

Varga asked the boys what they were doing in Sampson Park in the first place.

"It's not a good area," she said. "People don't just drive around there."

The boys said they were visiting a friend.

Midway through questioning, a dispatcher squawked over the radio: Samuelsen was wanted for domestic battery.

Varga applied handcuffs to one of Jeremy's wrists. When she tried to handcuff the other, he bolted as if motivated by a starter's pistol.

"I told you this would happen," Jeremy told his friend, Varga recalled.

As deputies chased him across the store's parking lot, Jeremy tripped. While on the ground, he yelled, "I give!" as if surrendering.

As deputies closed in, he hopped into his friend's empty Nissan, with the keys still in the ignition. He started the engine, as the deputies tried to pull him out the open driver's door by his legs.

Jeremy threw the car into reverse. The car knocked Dalton to the pavement.

The left rear bumper hit Varga, pushing her backward. Her head slammed into the asphalt with enough force to paralyze her for a moment.

Jeremy would hit two parked cars before Dalton fired a single bullet into his head.

The next thing Varga clearly remembers was an ambulance attendant beside her in the 7-Eleven parking lot.

The atmosphere at Tampa General Hospital was equally surreal.

Varga remembers lots of people around her, and vomiting in the middle of it all.

"Almost everybody of higher rank was there," she said.

Doctors released Varga the next day, but her recovery was just beginning. Besides a brain concussion, Varga had also sustained an inner ear concussion, four herniated disks, nerve damage, and a nasty cut on the back of her head.

The same day Varga was released from the hospital, Jeremy Samuelsen died.

His hospital waiting room was filled with members from Resurrection Catholic Church. As the group waited for his death, they discussed how some good could come of his life.

His parents directed that Jeremy's organs be saved as emergency transplants for others. Also, his friends suggested creating a foundation that would fund projects to help educate kids.

They would call the foundation Jeremy's Hope.

In Varga's Brandon home, the simplest tasks proved difficult.

The injury to Varga's inner ear caused post-traumatic vertigo, which occurs when the brain's ability to sense gravity becomes disrupted. The vertigo ruined her balance for months. She felt an almost constant motion sickness. Whenever she moved, it seemed as if the room was spinning with her.

Over the next several months, Sterling Ranch residents sent cards and flowers, and fellow deputies offered moral support.

As Varga recovered, she pressed doctors and her supervisors to allow her to return to active duty.

"I tried really hard to get where I am, and I'm not ready to lose it," Varga told then-Captain Jose Docobo.

In March 2005, 14 months after her injuries, Varga returned to work.

At Kathy Samuelsen's Valrico home, Jeremy's art work stills adorns the refrigerator. But there are no photos. It is still too painful.

In July, more than a year after her son's death, Samuelsen read an article about Varga's charity work.

The story hit Samuelsen like a sledgehammer. For the first time, she felt an urge to contact the deputy.

"There was something in my life that was not right," she said. "It's like God said, "This is what you need to do to complete the healing."'

So she asked to meet Varga for coffee.

They met at a Denny's restaurant and talked for 31/2 hours: about the day Jeremy lost his life and Varga nearly lost hers, about the charity work both were doing and how they might combine forces to reach more people.

Samuelsen let her know that she bore no hard feelings.

"They were doing their jobs," she said. "That's what we pay them to do."

Varga said she has felt no misgivings about what happened. Even so, the death has stayed on her mind.

"I have a son who is the same age as him, so it touches home," she said.

Months later, she still wondered why Jeremy had fled.

"I just can't understand why he reacted the way he did," Varga said. "And I guess nobody will know."

After the meeting at Denny's, Varga decided to give her energy to helping Jeremy's Hope.

"I enjoy it," she said.

Using funds from the foundation, the women have donated school supplies to seven area schools. They have visited middle schools, and plan a bicycle rodeo to teach bicycle safety in the fall.

Now, they speak to each other every day.

- Andrew Meacham can be reached at 661-2431 or ameacham@sptimes.com

[Last modified September 16, 2005, 12:36:05]