Saving a life: Hawks employees have enduring bond

Wally Blase, meet Catie Scott.

The employees of the Hawks organization, barely acquaintances despite the connection, forged an enduring bond under the most extreme circumstances June 15, 2012. Holding another’s life in your bare hands will do that.

Scott was struck by a drunk driver as she crossed Piedmont Avenue on that fateful night. The broken body of the Philips Arena event manager lay in the street as Blase rushed to her side as one of the first responders. The head athletic trainer of the Hawks stabilized Scott until paramedics arrived and helped saved her life.

“I hug him every time I see him,” Scott said. “He means the world to me.”

Life changes in a flash

Scott, having just finished working an Atlanta Dream game, was in a hurry to get to Smith’s Olde Bar. Her favorite band, Truth and Salvage Company, was performing. She was steps ahead of best friend and co-worker Megan Lodestro, eager to see the group in which she had become friends with several members.

Blase sat at a high-top near the front window with friends Eric Waters, the head trainer of the Washington Wizards, and band member Bill Smith, whose brother Casey Smith is the head trainer for the Dallas Mavericks. Small world.

“I saw something fly by out of the corner of my eye,” Blase said. “Eric said, ‘Holy crap, somebody just got hit by a car.’ Everybody ran to the windows. He ran to the door right away. I sat there because I didn’t want to go see what I knew I was going to see. He got to the door and he said, ‘We’ve got to go help.’

“When we got to her, I didn’t know who it was. Didn’t know if it was a girl or a boy. She was face down, bleeding everywhere. Eric was already checking her vitals. I immediately grabbed her head and applied traction, assuming a spinal injury. We started to do an assessment. He couldn’t find a pulse. I was checking for one. This is going to get graphic, but she was blowing bloody snot bubbles out of her nose, so my goal was to keep her head in traction but out of all the blood, so she didn’t asphyxiate. I realized that she had to have a pulse because she is breathing.”

Long road to recovery

Scott was taken to Grady Health System with a long list of injuries — multiple fractures to her skull; a back broken in four places; a broken wrist, thumb, collarbone, scapula and rib. She can no longer hear out of her right ear after all those bones were crushed.

She has trouble remembering names. She lost three months of memories — including attending her stepfather’s burial with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery. Only after being reminded with pictures by her family long into her recovery did the memory return of the important and emotional life event.

“She had multiple (fractures of the skull); any one of them could have taken her life,” said Dr. Hany Atallah, Chief of Emergency Medicine at Grady. He credited the first responders and the trauma team for saving Scott’s life.

It would be more than a day later before Blase would discover his connection with the accident victim. He used the Internet and checked the police blotter for any word of her condition. He went to Philips Arena the next day, and as he tried to share the night’s events, all anybody wanted to talk about was the horrific accident involving Scott. It was then that Blase realized that the Catie he helped save and the Catie everyone was talking about were one and the same. He also realized that Scott’s friend that night was the same person he talked to for the first time that very morning to request an identification badge for a new assistant trainer. Small world.

Scott spent two weeks in Grady, more than three weeks at the Shepherd Center and then in the outpatient program Pathways. Blase and Waters visited in the hospital. It was only when Scott was able to return to work, at first just four hours on one day a week, that the bond would be fully cemented.

“Seeing her in the hospital was one thing because it was kind of clinical,” Blase said. “When she got here, then it became emotional. We started crying. It was just amazing for this person who I thought was going to die and then after that didn’t think was going to be able to function was back here at Philips Arena. We formed a bond.”

Scott’s sister, Heather Durbin, came to Atlanta for six months to provide constant care. Durbin’s husband and their children would visit from Greenville, S.C., on weekends.

“My family means everything to me,” the 35-year-old Scott said. “My family checked out of their lives to be with me.”

As Scott was on the road to recovery, the band they all went to see that night returned to Atlanta for a benefit concert. Then based in Los Angeles, they put on a show almost four months later, on Oct. 6, for family and friends of the women they had come to know.

“It’s such an honor for anyone to come see your band play,” Truth and Salvage Company band member Smith said. “When something tragic like that happens, you feel horrible. You kind of take on a little bit of the responsibility. This person was coming out to see your band play, and all of a sudden this tragic event happens.

“I don’t know if words can describe it. The blessing in disguise is that it brought us really close to Catie, and we always wanted to help her as much as we can.”

Holding no grudge

The story takes another revealing turn in regard to the driver who struck Scott. While there are still legal issues pending, Scott did not want to see him serve prison time for the accident.

“Everybody makes mistakes,” Scott said. “If you ever go to Smith’s Olde Bar and you are walking across Piedmont Avenue, not everybody crosses at the crosswalk. I wasn’t at the crosswalk. I made a mistake. I did. I hadn’t been drinking, and the gentlemen who hit me, he was and he didn’t stop in time to miss me. But he made a mistake, and so did I.

“I have no memory of it. I’m sure he does. I think that’s enough. I made it. I’m still here, doing really well. Pay it forward. Let everybody else know. I made a mistake. I learned the hard way, but a good way.”

Scott appears in a commercial for Grady in which she describes what happened to her and the care she received. Scott and the trauma team that aided her recently were honored during a Hawks game. Scott called Blase over from the Hawks’ bench to join her. They shared another hug.

“She is such a good person,” Blase said. “You are so happy for her. I don’t know how first responders do it all the time. They save people’s lives every day. I don’t know if they get the chance to be thanked the way Catie thanks us.

“Here we helped save this random person who we didn’t even know and then walked away from it with this empty feeling, not knowing what was going to happen. Then as the pieces unravel, you realize it’s someone you work with, somebody you’ve seen all the time but weren’t really close with, and then you develop a relationship. It’s amazing.”

Singing a new tune

Scott said she looks at life differently now. She slows down. She doesn’t take things for granted. She appreciates her family. She crosses only at the crosswalk and makes sure those she is with do the same. If someone is crossing the street in front of her as she drives, they can pass. She said she would rather have her car damaged than another person.

“I’ve been through a lot,” Scott said. “My family has been through a lot. I’ve always thought that everything happens for a reason. But now, I absolutely 100 percent believe that everything happens for a reason.”

It was music that brought Scott and Blase together that night. It has been a part of their relationship since. She recently invited him to an upcoming concert.

“There was a reason Wally and Eric were in that bar that night and the reason Catie loved that band so much,” said Lodestro, who works in security operations for Philips Arena. “To me, it was one of those things where everything that was supposed to happen is going to happen. As hard of a struggle as it has been for Catie, I think that if this is at all possible, if you knew her before the accident, she is such a stronger person now. I blame music. It’s a good blame.”

Small world. Better world.