set text size : A l B l C

CHP Officer Mike Remmel was A Happy Man Before He Lost His Legs -- and He's A Happy Man Now

There are no quotas in law enforcement," says Mike Remmel, '86 Criminal Justice. "Every day is a different day."

At dusk, January 10, 2006, on Highway 49 near his hometown of Sonora, Officer Remmel was investigating a non-injury traffic accident -- a Mercedes had run off the road and gotten stuck in the mud.

"It's a strange thing to say, but one of my favorite parts of this job is getting to an accident scene and having it be absolute chaos," Remmel says. "For me, it's the second or third accident I've been to that day, but the odds are for the people involved it's the first time they've been in this situation, and you see how scared they are. You get there and calm them down and reassure them and fix their problem. I love to turn chaos into calm and make everybody realize law enforcement is doing their job and doing it for them. You go home with so much satisfaction."

After his shift on January 10, Officer Remmel would not be going home.

He remembers headlights coming at him. He remembers flying through air, and he remembers excruciating pain. An 80-year-old driver in a pickup truck struck him at a speed of 45 miles per hour. The impact flung Remmel 23 feet, over the tow truck already on the scene. His left leg was severed above the knee, his right leg approximately four inches above the ankle. The two tow truck drivers applied tourniquets. Paramedics got him to the Columbia Airport, where he was helicoptered to the Doctors Medical Center in Modesto. Throughout the ordeal, Remmel never lost consciousness.

"My Life was Altered; It Wasn't Ruined."

"I've spent my career watching people's lives change in a moment through no fault of their own," Remmel says. "It was simply my turn. There was nothing I could do to fix what happened. My legs weren't going to grow back. There was no reason to be mad at the woman who hit me. I had to accept those facts and move on."

Moving on could have meant retiring from the CHP after 20 years of service or living "on a beach in a bungalow someplace, after suing everybody involved," Remmel admits. "But I didn't know if that person would be a fulfilled person. I knew the person before the accident: a happy person who loved his life. So I made a decision not to collect any money from this event and to get as much of my old life back as possible."

For Remmel, that meant, first and foremost, returning to his CHP job.

"With a lot of jobs, it's a job you go to. But you become a police officer. Your integrity, your honesty, the way you live your life away from your job is just as important as your behavior on duty. You are an officer 24 hours a day. I wasn't going to let this event tell me when to quit."

Making History

Following his initial surgeries, Remmel requested a transfer to the Santa Clara Valley Medical Center because of its reputation as a renowned rehabilitation facility.

"The insurance company loved it because the cost was something like $10,000 less a day," Remmel jokes.

At SCVMC, Remmel's upbeat attitude baffled the staff psychologist. "She didn't like that she'd never seen me cry or found me in a fetal position, asking 'Why me?'" Remmel reveals. "I tried to explain to her that I had accepted it."

While a patient, he woke at 5:30 am, shaved, dressed and "by 6 am I'd be at the nurses' station," he reports. "I had that mobility. I felt lucky to have that mobility. The psychologist thought I was in denial. But since I still haven't fallen apart, I'm going to guess that I have accepted my injuries."

Nineteen months after the accident and following more than a year of rehabilitation and intensive training to learn to use his new prosthetic legs, Remmel passed the last of the 14 fitness and agility tests required of CHP officers. His $40,000 computerized left leg was developed for soldiers wounded in Iraq; his right leg is completed by a $10,000 carbon fiber leg. Four days after passing the final fitness test -- running the 100-yard dash in 20 seconds -- he returned to work, the first double amputee to be cleared for field duty in CHP history.

Lessons Outside the Classroom

A native of San José, Remmel worked full time while attending SJSU -- first at Coco's Restaurant on Hamilton Avenue and later as a security guard for Macy's at Valley Fair. When he first enrolled, he thought he'd become a teacher. Then he took an Administration of Justice class as an elective. "Just that one class made me realize the job was a perfect fit for me," he says. "I like being in charge."

A different kind of "eye opening" experience occurred outside the classroom. "There were a lot of community homes for the mentally and physically disabled nearby, and the residents often took walks through campus, and I used to socialize with them," Remmel says. "They didn't see their disabilities as disabilities; they saw them as challenges. And they still took so much joy in life. One of the things that helped me get over my injury was remembering those folks and our conversations."

Remmel joined the CHP straight out of college, and after assignments in Redwood City and Tracy, working the I-5 corridor, he nabbed the posting he'd wanted all along. "My plan from the beginning was to come to Sonora," he says. "I wanted to spend my life up in the pine trees."

Putting His Newfound Celebrity to Use

Remmel used to avoid speaking to the media. "I just felt I wasn't spontaneous and quick enough to show a positive image of the Highway Patrol. So I left that to the people who were better at it." When a local reporter combed the archives after Remmel's accident for a photo of him, "all he could find were photos of my backside," Remmel says. "I was always walking away from the cameras."

He now feels that his recovery has provided him with "a podium to speak from, something I'm passionate about that might help and inspire people."

He first spoke at a local high school, which led to invitations from civic and church groups. These days his calendar is packed with speaking engagements throughout the state for audiences as large as 600.

In addition to inspiring people who have physical disabilities, he says he hopes his story also "helps spread the word about the Highway Patrol and maybe brings in some new applicants, which we need."

Moving On

"It's so obvious, so visual, to look down and stop at the knees. You just have to go forward and return to as much of a normal life as possible," Remmel emphasizes.

Officer Remmel is back on field patrol. Once again he's enjoying fishing, camping, and backpacking. And his golf game has actually improved.

"Turns out I'm a better golfer without the lower body movement," he says and laughs. "Since I don't hit the ball as far, I'm only one fairway over, not two."

-- Kat Meads

This story originally appeared in the Spring 2009 issue of SJSU Washington Square magazine