Amid Daily Struggle, a Focus on the Future

Lying flat on the linoleum tiles of his garage, blood seeping from a wound in his neck, 13-year veteran cop Richard Elizondo tried to move his limbs and wondered why he couldn’t feel them.

“I remember a loud explosion, and I fell to the floor and couldn’t get up,” he said in a recent interview. “My first thought was that something blew up and my arms were blown off.”

But it was a bullet, allegedly fired by a gang member, that partially severed the 35-year-old’s spinal cord, rendering him paralyzed.

Elizondo and his son Richie were ambushed by a gunman--in an apparent theft attempt--as they stood in the garage of their Pico Rivera home seven months ago. His son made a full recovery from his wounds, but Elizondo has been paralyzed from the shoulders down ever since.

“I still wake up every morning trying to get myself out of bed, thinking it was a nightmare,” he said. With more than 85% of his body numbed, the former crime scene investigator who once loved to dance, ride his bike and play the harmonica now spends the better part of each day strapped into an electric wheelchair.

In a flash of gunfire, the longtime crime fighter became the victim of a violent crime. Now his daily struggle, both physical and emotional, involves a different kind of courage, a largely private ordeal that takes place out of the public eye.

And yet, despite his condition, Elizondo hopes to resume police work one day. He still keeps his badges with him, tucked into a wheelchair pocket. “Law enforcement is in my blood,” he explained. “It becomes a part of you.”

No longer capable of “chasing bad guys,” Elizondo has had to create new routines that often hinge on simply getting through the day.

“My life prior to the shooting seems very distant now, almost in another world,” Elizondo said. “Every aspect of my life is new.”

Each morning, Elizondo lies in bed trying to send signals to different parts of his body, hoping he has regained a sliver of sensation.

Although the miracle of instant mobility has not occurred, Elizondo has made important progress. There are pinpricks of sensation in the toes of his left foot, and feeling has returned to much of the left side of his body. He has regained significant movement in his left arm, though his hands are still numb.

And slowly, Elizondo is managing to put the past behind him. “I’ve gotten as far as accepting the fact that I’m in this position,” he said, but “I still haven’t made sense of it all.”

*

Elizondo’s troubles began on a Thursday night in January, just before 9 p.m. He and his 15-year-old son were returning home from visiting friends with a case of popcorn and a plan for the weekend. An organized crime buff, Elizondo had planned to spend the weekend with his son on their new leather couch, watching a “Godfather” marathon.

As they neared their tan townhouse on Gallatin Road, father and son, who lived alone, performed their arrival ritual. Elizondo opened the garage door with the remote control. Richie got out first and entered the house through the garage door. Elizondo parked his teal 1997 Chevy pickup and stepped out to talk to Richie.

Richie hit the wall button to close the wooden garage door, and at that moment, a shower of bullets slammed into Elizondo and his son from outside. A single bullet entered Elizondo through the back of the neck, nearly severing his spinal cord. Another tore into his right shoulder area. He fell to the ground, unable to move.

The force of the gunfire hurled Richie from the doorway to a nearby bathroom, where he landed on all fours. A single bullet had pierced his right arm, entered his upper chest, lacerated a lung and lodged in his spine. When the teenager came to, he thought he had been dreaming. When he realized he had been shot, he began to scream. He crawled back to the garage door and peeked in.

“My dad was lying by the doorway, bleeding,” Richie recalled, “four feet of blood coming out of his neck. He wasn’t talking. I thought he was dead.”

Elizondo heard his son screaming, but couldn’t respond. He could barely breathe. The youth crawled from the garage doorway to the telephone and dialed 911. Elizondo listened to his son describing the incident. “It was then that I realized I’d been shot.”

After speaking to the operator, Richie passed out briefly. He regained consciousness, crawled out to the garage and lay down a few feet from his father.

“I heard my son screaming ‘Oh my God, Dad, are you all right?’ ” Elizondo recalled, breaking into sobs. “I told my son, ‘Hold on, we’re going to be OK.’ ”

Paramedics and police arrived within minutes, but were unable to find the Elizondos, who lay hidden behind their garage door. “I heard the voices of the paramedics saying, ‘Where are they?’ ” Elizondo remembered. He told Richie to open the garage door so the police could find them. Richie refused, afraid the gunman might still be outside.

Elizondo, who had been Richie’s drill instructor in a physical training course, gave his son a direct order: “Richie . . . get up, because neither one of us is dying in this garage.”

Richie did as he was told. As the ambulance sped toward the hospital, Elizondo fought the urge to pass out. He asked the medics to call out cross streets to him, so he could calculate how much longer he would have to hold on. “Something kept telling me, ‘All you have to do is close your eyes and rest,’ ” he said. But “I realized sleep meant death and I didn’t want to die.” Elizondo heard the conversations around him and knew he had a paralyzing wound. “But I was glad to be alive. The only thought in my mind was, ‘I’m glad my son and I are alive.’ ”

*

When Elizondo was 6 years old, he saw the character Pete Malloy on the popular television program “Adam 12” and knew what the future held for him. At 15, he enrolled in the Los Angeles Police Department’s Explorers program, and by 21, fresh out of the Rio Hondo Police Academy in Whittier, he was hired by the Maywood Police Department. For the next 13 years, Elizondo served several southeast Los Angeles County communities as a police officer.

He had worked full time for the Hawaiian Gardens Police Department for 2 1/2 years. Three months before the shooting, when that city disbanded its police force and contracted with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, Elizondo lost his job and medical benefits.

The officer believes that the city owes him $30,000 in back pay, unused vacation and overtime, money he would like to put toward his medical bills, he said. Elizondo now lives off his weekly $336 disability check and the services that Medi-Cal provides. In June, he and 13 others sued the city, charging breach of contract.

After losing his job, Elizondo picked up part-time work as a crime science teacher, drill instructor and campus police officer to make ends meet. None of those jobs offered medical benefits. On Jan. 15, Elizondo was sworn in as a volunteer reserve officer with the Maywood police. Less than nine hours later, he and his son lay bleeding on the garage floor.

*

Three days after the shooting, with few leads to speak of, Det. Ray Lugo of the Sheriff’s Department’s homicide bureau had a stroke of luck. A tipster informed him of a 23-year-old gang member from Pico Rivera who had bragged about “lighting up” Elizondo and his son. Ismael Michael Medina, also known by his gang moniker “Wicked,” had talked to friends about stealing weapons from Elizondo’s home for months, Lugo said.

Within a few days, authorities arrested Medina on an unrelated drug charge. He was later charged with attempted murder of a peace officer and other offenses. According to Lugo, Medina was probably about to enter Elizondo’s home to burglarize it when Richie and his father arrived unexpectedly. “I guess he just panicked,” Lugo said.

Elizondo has a different theory. “That was a classic ambush,” he said. “That person waited until [my son and I] were standing side by side, and then shot us.” But, he added, “I don’t know why he did it.”

At Medina’s June preliminary hearing, one reluctant witness testified with more than 40 stitches in his face after being attacked in prison for “being a snitch.” Medina’s girlfriend showed up in court covered with bruises after a group of female gang members jumped her on the street, she said. The women put a gun to her head and threatened to kidnap her child if she testified against her boyfriend, she added. The girlfriend is now in hiding, officials said. Medina’s trial is set to begin Oct. l.

*

For the first two months after the shooting, Elizondo was shell-shocked. “The snapping of a nurse’s glove scared me. I felt like I was jumping out of my skin.”

He languished in one hospital, dropping 30 pounds and suffering a collapsed lung, while waiting for Medi-Cal to kick in. His family sold his home and car to help pay his medical bills.

Weeks later, Elizondo began to feel sensations in the toes of one foot. “It felt great,” he said, pausing to receive a sip of water from a cup held by his brother. “It gave me a lot of hope.”

Seven months after the shooting, Elizondo has settled into a new life. He lives in a Downey senior citizens complex, cared for day and night by a hired nurse. His older brother Lorenzo stays with him six nights a week.

Though most of his body remains numb, Elizondo can now navigate his electric wheelchair, feed himself with a special arm support and move both arms.

Richie and his mother, Elizondo’s first wife, have decided to leave Los Angeles. Richie will enter high school in the fall and plans to visit his father often.

Meanwhile, Elizondo, who has begun to reconcile with his second wife, is trying to stay focused on his future. Earlier this month, he gave his first guest lecture since the shooting to a crime science class. He plans to finish his bachelor’s degree in psychology. A fund has been started by the Southeast Regional Occupational Program in Cerritos to help him purchase a specially equipped van. He may even return to law enforcement as a crime scene analyst.

“My goal, God willing, is to have full recovery,” he said, looking out his third-floor apartment window. “My realistic goal is to have life back as close as possible.”