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Whatever happened to ...

By BILL COATS
Published January 1, 2007

LUTZ

A few weeks ago, Tom Bailey was uneasy walking outdoors, unless he was on level pavement. Now, Bailey is walking on his lawn, at least where it slopes downhill.

Success may come in small steps for Bailey, 48, but it is success.

On Jan. 15, Bailey had walked more than 2 miles home from a bar when the mirror of a passing pickup smashed the back of his head. He lay comatose and partly paralyzed beside Debuel Road until passers-by found him and called for help.

Bailey, his family and hospital therapists have worked ever since to try to return him to normal.

He moved his right thumb while still in intensive care. In February, he spoke the name of his wife, Sandi. Over the summer, Bailey progressed to a wheelchair, then a rolling walker.

His paralysis has eased to a mild numbness on his right side: He cannot feel a mosquito landing on his skin, but he can feel its bite.

With painstaking therapy every day, Bailey has learned anew how to talk, walk, dress himself and everything else.

"He was like a baby," said Bailey's 73-year-old dad, Jim Bailey, his most constant therapist. "You had to do everything for him."

* * *

David Reyna, meanwhile, has been behind bars since the morning of Jan. 15, hours after Bailey's accident. That's when Hillsborough County sheriff's deputies saw that the Ford F-150 pickup sitting in Reyna's driveway, a mile away from Bailey's house, was missing its passenger-side mirror. Reyna opened his front door and looked at two deputies, who were suddenly sniffing the aroma of marijuana.

They later discovered pot that was on three cookie sheets in Reyna's kitchen, in Tupperware in the refrigerator, bagged in the freezer and growing in the bedroom.

Prosecutors hit Reyna with four marijuana charges. They also charged him with leaving the scene of an accident. But lacking witnesses, they didn't charge him with harming Bailey. In a plea deal, Reyna accepted a year in prison, which he will soon complete.

But this month, the marijuana charges had a critical aftereffect in Tallahassee, where Reyna still was on probation from a 2001 cocaine arrest when he was a student at Florida State University. On Dec. 19, Circuit Judge Kathleen Dekker of Tallahassee sentenced Reyna to 10 years in prison because his marijuana case in Lutz violated terms of the Tallahassee probation. Reyna will get credit for the year of incarceration he received in Tampa.

Sandi Bailey had been disappointed in the Tampa outcome. She was pleased to hear about Reyna's 10-year sentence in Tallahassee.

"We were really crossing our fingers that they would slap it to him this time," she said. "The longer he's in there, the better it is, so he doesn't have the chance to do this to anybody else."

* * *

Tom Bailey has no memory of going to the L.A. Hangout, a Lutz bar, to watch a Broncos-Patriots NFL playoff game. No memory of discovering that his pals, in a mixup, had left him there. No memory of striding north, toward home. No memory of a helicopter flight or weeks in St. Joseph's Hospital. No memory of his early steps toward recovery.

"It's a shame I had to lose a year out of my kids' lives," said the father of three. "They've grown up so much, and I don't remember any of it."

Bailey's first memory is of getting better in a Wauchula rehabilitation center, faster than other patients who had less support from their families.

"I'm coming along great," he said. "You've got to have love for life, you know, to deal with things."

Jim Bailey, a retired math teacher from Zephyrhills, suddenly found himself caring for his only child a second time.

"It brings tears to your eyes at times," he said.

The elder Bailey has been a taskmaster, and at other times, a calmer-downer.

"I've had to clamp down on him at times about overdoing things," Jim Bailey said.

Now, he thinks Tom will recover fully.

Like his wife, Tom Bailey is glad Reyna will be off the streets for years. But he is sad.

"He did leave me to die," Bailey said. "But I feel sorry for him anyway."

Bill Coats can be reached at 813 269-5309 or coats@sptimes.com.

[Last modified December 31, 2006, 21:43:35]