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tourniquet and offered words of comfort. “She was an angel, dude. That’s an angel right there,” Bochat said. Marilyn Barillas found out from Facebook. Her boyfriend was already in an ambulance somewhere when she arrived at the scene, petrified. “I was scared, worried, I didn’t know how badly he was hurt,” Barillas said. Two days later, doctors amputated Bochat’s right leg. Blood vessels and ligaments were ripped into pieces — they could not save it. His left leg was in a cast and stitches sutured the gash in his head. Bochat today is in a wheelchair but keeps his spirits up. “He has really good upper body strength, so he is able to maneuver himself around, off the chair and into the bed,” Barillas said. Her boyfriend’s troubles aren’t in the rear- view mirror, though. ‘The driver of the Volkswagen failed to avoid colliding with the stopped vehicle,’ police say. Two weeks later and not so much as a phone call from Maricopa Police Department, Bochat said. He doesn’t know if he’s the victim yet, although
he feels like one, it could well have been his fault. MPD spokesperson Quinn Konold said Aug. 19 that “charges against both drivers are still pending.” “Evidence on the scene and contact with Bochat indicate possible alcohol impairment,” Konold said. DUI and accident investigation follow-up is currently underway. Regardless of legal and insurance outcomes, Bochat and Barillas want safer roads in Maricopa. “These are people’s lives, every day, we’re all going somewhere,” Barillas said. “Because of somebody else’s negligence, he’s now lost a limb.” It’s too early for Bochat to decide if he will try a prosthetic, hand controls or his left leg — no, that’s not illegal — but he is sure of one thing. He’s got more gas in his tank. To hell with his driving leg. “I love driving,” he said. “It can’t stop me.” “I might be an a**hole, but they were just frozen, dude.” JAKE BOCHAT
There’s no shoulder, so he pulled over as far as he could in the right lane, headed south just past Bowlin. He was coasting — he couldn’t go anywhere else. There wasn’t a car in sight that afternoon, just before 6:30 p.m. with sunlight still falling from a dusky sky, when he got out to pop the hood. Then came the impact. A 30-year-old man in a Volkswagen ID.4 SUV careened into his rear driver’s side, sending him flying into the nearby ditch. “I don’t know how I flew there, really, but I did,” Bochat said. “I tried to stand up real fast, but I fell to the ground. I immediately started panicking because I lifted up my legs and blood was gushing out of the right one.” People gawked as he stripped his shirt and tied it around his mangled leg to stop the bleeding. More blood poured from his head. “I was just cussing at those people, I was so mad,” Bochat said. “They’re not helping me because half of my leg’s lying next to me and they don’t want to touch me, but I was losing a lot of blood. “I might be an a**hole, but they were just frozen, dude.” Finally, one woman, petite and eight months pregnant, helped tighten his makeshift
What didn’t kill him made him stronger He lost his leg. But he didn’t lose his spirit
with, leaving behind a gruesome fountain of blood. “I just turned my life around out of a pretty bad slump,” Bochat told InMaricopa . “I guess that [tragedy] is what has to happen to you when you’re doing good.” Cars gave Bochat life. One nearly took it away. But, after that crash on Aug. 6, he said losing his leg was the “best way it could have happened.” Funny, that. You wouldn’t expect the longtime Heritage District resident to feel gratitude as he lay bleeding helplessly on a bed of rocks hot enough to char skin, lying in a ditch off John Wayne Parkway. But he did. For once, he was truly happy to be alive. He drove past that spot a thousand times before. Bochat, a 38-year-old mechanic in Maricopa, had been fixing up his friend’s 1979 Ford Mustang and took it for a spin. It was his day off. He was leaving Circle K, 18141 N. John Wayne Parkway, when the Mustang started acting up. Driving through the stoplight at Bowlin Road and John Wayne Parkway, the car “lost all power” and “went dead in the water,” Bochat said.
BY ELIAS WEISS AND BRIAN PETERSHEIM JR.
J
AKE BOCHAT’S LIFE ALWAYS revolved around cars. Ever since he was just 6 years old, tinkering away on that old Chevy Nova.
The future was bright. Until it turned dark. It’s 2004 in Maricopa; the city isn’t even a month old. A boring, one-stoplight, nothing town for the 18-year-old Bochat. This is the first time he steals a car. Not the last. Life didn’t get easier in the years that followed. He struggled to find his footing as a young adult; shoplifting, drugs, always skipping court. He wasn’t really hurting anyone except himself. He might even be culpable for his new fate. But cars — cars were his constant. They were cathartic for him. All the way up until the day one tore his leg off, the one he drives
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Jake Bochat is put on a stretcher and loaded into an ambulance Aug. 6 (above). Jake recovers from leg amputation surgery in the hospital (farther up).
InMaricopa.com | September 2024
September 2024 | InMaricopa.com
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