CHICAGO - Think of the things you might have complained about today: your job; perhaps, your kids; maybe that persistent pain in your back.
None of those gripes merit a complaint in the life of 38-year-old Densey Cole, a Chicago Police Officer who no longer sweats much of the small stuff after a nasty, on-duty accident two months ago.
It was May 27. Cole was driving solo to a call of a robbery-in-progress, when he says a car crossed the median at South Halsted and 98th Street and T-boned his police SUV. The force of the collision subsequently threw his ride head-on into a pole.
"I hit my head on the roof of the Tahoe. And that's what I believe broke my neck," said Cole, in a voice hushed by the trauma of the accident, and the breathing tube now coming out of his trachea.
Although critically injured, Cole never lost consciousness after the accident. In vivid detail, he says he remembers everything, especially what happened next.
"Some kid from the gas station across the street ran across," Cole said. "Pushed me over and stole my gun. My wallet. Then kinda stayed in the vehicle and told me, you can't move. I'm gonna shoot you. I'm gonna kill you."
"He pushed me over. And moved me. He kept moving my head. So, in my mind there's a possibility he may have worsened my spinal cord injury."
Cole, a 16-year-veteran of the Chicago Police Department says he thought this was it. There he was, pinned in his police SUV and flat-out helpless. Ironically, just minutes earlier he was responding to a call for help.
"What type of person would prey on a wounded officer this way?" an outraged, Chicago Police Superintendent Jody Weis said soon after the incident.
According to cops, that person is Rasaan Shannon.
Arrested a couple of days later, 22-year-old Shannon faces charges of robbery, disarming a police officer and unlawful possession of a weapon by a felon.
Cole says it makes him feel good Chicago Police recovered his gun. But he acknowledges it's one of the few positives, from what was otherwise the darkest day of his life.
"What has this world come to. Here I've had. I suffer a terrible injury. And then some stranger sees it as an opportunity to steal."
But instead of depression, Cole is now tackling life with determination as a quadriplegic, rehabbing in Colorado.
On July 1, he checked into one of the nation's leading rehab centers for spinal cord injury patients, suburban Denver's Craig Hospital.
There's a daily regimen of stretching and muscle work at Craig, all of which Cole takes on with tenacity, often with his wife Mary by his side. After nearly three years of dating, they tied the knot June 26 at a hospital in Hinsdale, Illinois.
"If I didn't have Mary, I wouldn't know what I would do, I probably would be dead, or at least my spirit would be," stressed Densey Cole with emotional punctuation.
"You don't really realize how strong you are until something like this, you know, really comes to play," replied Mary Cole.
When Densey Cole got to Craig Hospital, he was a diagnosed quadrapalegic.
After 50 days spent lying in bed in Illinois, his limbs and joints desperately needed stretching as the first step of rehabilitation. But already, the first few weeks of therapy have produced encouraging results, and his first movement: a faint wiggle eked out by one of his thumbs.
"Let me see your right thumb there. There was nothing there two days ago," Dr. Gary Maerz, a brain and spinal cord specialist at Craig, said to Densey Cole as he checked up on his patient during a regular visit. "Just seeing my thumb move. It's like. Oh my God!" exclaimed Cole.
The progress has increased since then, albeit modestly. Cole can now move both thumbs, toes on both feet, his left ankle, and he's off a ventilator.
Maerz says he doesn't expect Cole to walk out of Craig after the three months of therapy here, but does project more improvement.
"Based on that gut feeling, I still remain optimistic for some additional recovery," Maerz said in measured words. In his line of medicine, he's careful not to unnecessarily raise hopes. Instead, he seems to prefer a diagnosis rooted in reality. "The hardest things to deal with, with a spinal cord injury is the uncertainty of it. You don't know the magnitude of it. You don't know if it's going to change. If you're going to get better or not, and you don't find out any time soon."
That said, Maerz is pulling for Densey Cole: "He's a worker. He's a fighter. He tough. He takes things on."
And his fellow officers back in Chicago appreciate the fight. "I think any of our brothers in blue, we would root for, but Densey is just a special person. Anybody who knows him and has met him thinks the same way," says Cole's shift supervisor, Captain Virginia Drozd.
Cole says he's asking for no pity considering his plight. Instead, he says he wanted to come forward largely to help the public better understand the risks police officers take every day. "I think a lot of people just think you drive around,
and you write tickets, because there's a quota...every call you go on, it's about living or dying," he said.
If you're interested in helping Densey Cole, the family says you can send donations to a fund, which is taking collections to cover those costs not covered by worker's compensation.
Densey Cole II Benefit Fund Chicago Patrolmen's Federal Credit Union www.patrolmensfcu.org 312-726-8814
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