Suicide of Disabled Driver Fulfilled a ‘Divine Bargain’ : Tragedy: Greg Peek shot himself after injuring children in a car accident.

LANCASTER —  Greg Peek lay in the bitterly cold stream, unable to move, his mother holding his head out of the water as the sirens approached.

It was February, 1979, and Greg--Greggie then--had gone exploring while his family picnicked at a Ventura County park. “It had been raining. He was playing on some rocks,” said his mother, Donna Hoey. And then he was gone. Greg fell over the side of a 50-foot cliff, landing in the stream.

His mother thought her son’s life was over. But it was not to end until last month, 17 years later, on a residential street in Lancaster, when Greg put a gun to his head.

The long voyage to that suicide began with a question by the 10-year-old Greggie, lying still in a hospital room. Unable to move his legs and hearing words like severed spinal cord and paralyzed , he asked:

“Mommie, does this mean I won’t be able to have children?”

He was not. But fathering children was about the only thing the strikingly handsome Greg Peek could not do. Confined to a wheelchair, he lived alone in a three-bedroom house on Cheetah Lane and planted rosebushes throughout the yard. He drove a Pontiac Firebird, customized so that he could work all the controls with his hands, and refused to park in handicapped spaces. He went camping and to the ballet. He dated and was the ringmaster of a large circle of friends.

It was being around children, though, that made Peek happiest, his family said. And it was these deep feelings for youngsters that brought his life to an end last week, at the age of 27.

On Sunday, April 23, Peek was driving his Firebird to see the wildflowers in the foothills around Palmdale. At the intersection of Avenue K and 30th Street West, he ran a red light, possibly because he was momentarily blinded by the setting sun. His car crashed into the side of a BMW.

Peek pulled himself into his wheelchair and wheeled toward the crushed car, now on its top. As he got closer, he saw the children, bleeding.

“He was saying, ‘Oh, my God, oh, my God! There’s children in there, there’s children in there. I didn’t see the light,’ ” said Michael Mosback, a witness to the accident.

In a few minutes, help arrived. Again, the sirens were wailing, emergency lights swirling and paramedics frantically working on little bodies.

Peek turned away from the awful scene. He quietly rolled his wheelchair to the side of the road, pulled out the handgun he carried for protection and without a word, shot himself in the head.

“He was in pain every day of his life,” said Peek’s stepfather, Allen Hoey, “so death offered no sting. What he couldn’t stand was pain in other people.”

A week after the accident--from which the children in the other car are expected to fully recover--Peek’s family and friends looked back on his life. Sitting in a circle in the living room of the Hoeys’ spotless tract home in Lancaster, they switched from past tense to present and back again when speaking of him.

“He was our heartbeat,” said Allen Hoey, holding the hand of Peek’s mother. “He’s our conscience.”

From the waist up, Peek looked like a wrestler. His shoulders, back and chest swelled with muscles, built primarily by hoisting his wheelchair in and out of his car. He inherited the dark, warm eyes and olive skin of his mother’s Italian ancestors. And he dressed impeccably, often in a tuxedo or silk shirt, even if his destination was a simple dinner at his parents’ house.

In his car at the time of the accident were a beige linen suit jacket and blue bow tie--this for a trip to the Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve.

The fine clothes and upper-body bulk could not conceal the legs atrophied by 17 years of disuse. His limited mobility was the reason he carried the gun, family members said, an equalizer acquired after he was accosted in Downtown Los Angeles.

Raised, along with older brother Eric and younger sister Jennifer, by his mother, Peek wheeled his chair through Agoura High School and later Pierce College, where he majored in psychology. When his mother married Allen Hoey six years ago, Peek moved to the Antelope Valley to be near them.

There were long stays in the hospital, but Peek had friends to help him through these times. In 1992, while he was in the midst of a six-month stint in the hospital, his best friend, Alan Arkin (who along with Alan’s girlfriend was in the car at the time of the accident), bribed a hospital security guard and delivered an after-hours, full-blown bedside party, complete with pizza, beer and girls.

Despite his disarming smile, quick wit and boundless energy, however, Peek’s life was far from that of an idealized poster boy.

He desperately wanted to work, but the jobs he coveted went to applicants who could walk. He got a job six years ago as a clerk at a J. C. Penney outlet, but the store closed shortly after he started. It was Peek’s only full-time job--most of the time, his main income came from Social Security.

Fiercely independent, Peek lived by himself and drove a car. But his lack of steady work made him feel incomplete and was the source of his rare complaints about his condition.

“It just killed him,” said Allen Hoey. “That pained him every single day.”

Too proud to allow a girlfriend to help with some of the daily physical challenges of his disability, all of Peek’s dates quickly became “just friends,” according to his sister, Jennifer.

“They didn’t have a problem with it; Greg did,” said Jennifer, 23. “He had a lot to offer, and he was doomed never to share those gifts.”

While nagging his sister and brother incessantly to hurry up and have babies, Peek’s constant companion was Sammy Malone, a Chesapeake Bay retriever named for Peek’s favorite television character. When Peek decided to get a dog, he insisted it come from a shelter.

“He didn’t want a puppy because everyone takes the puppies,” Jennifer said. “Sam was on the list to get gassed.”

“He was,” said Allen Hoey, “the kind of guy most people today just wouldn’t understand.”

After years of searching for a direction in his life, Peek began paralegal studies last year with hopes of becoming an advocate for children. He also talked of earning his pilot’s license to run rescue missions for children in troubled countries.

He was not, his friends and family said, a man ready to die.

In explaining their son’s death, Donna and Allen Hoey--both staunch Catholics--arrived at the same, spiritual conclusion. Greg, they said without hesitation, offered himself in trade for the lives of the bleeding children. It was a deal he made with God.

And they believe God has fulfilled the divine end of the bargain.

The most seriously injured child, 6-month-old Jade Lewis, is expected to leave the hospital this week.

“A sacrifice,” Allen said matter-of-factly. “God will exchange.”

For Eric, Peek’s brother, the explanation comes not so easily.

“He’s free,” Eric said, his voice cracking. “He’s running around. He’s not stuck in a wheelchair.

“That’s the only thing that helps me.”