Nov. 18--Police officer Mark Johnson was on his way home for a quick bite to eat when his radio buzzed.
A driver had lost control of his car and hit a utility pole on Shore Drive in Virginia Beach. The vehicle had flipped several times and was on fire.
Miles from the crash on the hot, humid night of June 11, 1998, Mark turned his patrol car around and headed to the scene. Dinner would have to wait.
As he drove north on Great Neck Road and crested the Long Creek Bridge, he saw two people in the street waving to get his attention. Even without their help, it was hard to miss the upside-down Dodge sedan.
Its candy-apple-red hood was charred black. Flames crept toward the passenger compartment.
The passers-by filled in Mark about the crash, but one detail stood out: The driver was still inside.
Mark raced to the car, opened the door and reached in, expecting to pull the man out. He wouldn't budge.
He was dangling upside down by his seat belt, and the dashboard was pinning his legs. Plastic was melting onto his skin. His clothes and shoes were burning. He howled and flailed even though he was unconscious.
Mark tried to cut him out, but smoke overtook the officer and he backed away. He ran to get the small fire extinguisher from his police cruiser, but it was no match for the rubber, plastics and oil feeding the blaze.
The passers-by came running back from a nearby gas station lugging two large extinguishers. They emptied both before Mark dared return to the car. This time, his knife cut through the seat belt.
The man, still on fire, fell into his arms.
Mark wondered how he would stop him from burning without causing further damage.
Firefighters had arrived, and Mark flinched as the water from their hoses splashed off the car and hit him. Soon the flames were doused, and paramedics jumped in. An ambulance rushed the man to the hospital.
After filling out paperwork and interviewing witnesses, Mark resumed his dinner break. He freshened up and went back on patrol.
He moved on with his night, and seemingly, his life.
"Sometimes it's just seconds you're a part of a person's life and never, ever see them again," he would say later.
And for many years, that's exactly what happened.
Billy Allred survived the crash, but his legs sustained significant burns. For two weeks, the 21-year-old was heavily sedated.
Mark visited him a few times in the hospital, but Billy didn't know the officer was there.
When Billy woke up, he was surrounded by friends and family.
Nerve damage had rendered his legs useless, and doctors advised amputation below the knee. Billy asked for time to think it over.
He spent the next few days talking with his dad, who had lost four fingers at the knuckle in an electrical accident. His father knew the pain of losing limbs and the stigma that goes along with it. He wanted Billy to wait. There would be no going back.
Billy told himself he could recover quickly. He had been a wrestler in high school and had always been athletic.
Only three years before, the 160-pound Great Bridge High School senior had used his legs for a wraparound move that crowned him the Group AAA state wrestling champion. He earned the nickname "Leg Man."
As a junior, he had placed fifth at state and vowed to work harder. He was a fighter who knew how to overcome long odds.
Now, as he mulled over his future while in the hospital, he thought that maybe he didn't have to lose his legs.
One night, Billy decided to test his strength by making a few trips down the hallway in a wheelchair. The excursion tore the paper-thin skin on his heels. With his girlfriend's help, he stumbled back into bed. Broken physically and mentally, he decided on amputation.
He was released from the hospital three months after the crash and went to live with his mom in a two-floor walk-up. He couldn't move around without help, and he wasn't working. He suffered bouts of depression. He felt useless.
In an attempt to lead a normal life, he tied the knot with his on-again, off-again high school sweetheart. The marriage didn't last.
Billy began therapy that fall, starting out with sit-ups and floor rolls. By the end of the year, he was ready to get back into action. Wearing a T-shirt that read "I'm alive," he gripped his sister's hand and stood on his new $26,000 prosthetic legs.
By January 1999, he was walking and had achieved 80 percent mobility. But that wasn't enough.
"I want to mountain bike and return to a wrestling mat," he told a Virginian-Pilot reporter. "And although I might have to learn a new take-down technique, I'll get the pin."
Nine months after the crash, Mark was in Richmond to accept the region's VFW Law Enforcement Officer of the Year award. He looked out at the audience and saw his wife and Capt. Jim Cervera, now the police chief, applauding him.
It wasn't the first recognition he had received for pulling Billy out of the car; it wouldn't be the last.
On his chest, Mark wore the Silver Cross medal, the department's second-highest award. But inside, he carried the regret of not saving Billy sooner.
He knew that Billy's legs had been amputated, but Mark hadn't seen the man since his surgery.
Every now and then, Mark would think about Billy. If he had pulled him out of the car on the first try, would the amputation have been necessary?
Had Billy moved on, Mark wondered, or was he languishing in a wheelchair?
Once Billy was fitted with prosthetics, he learned not to be afraid of falling and wore the legs so much that they became part of him. Doctors and fellow patients marveled as he walked miles on a treadmill.
"You've got to live your life and keep going," he said.
He joined an amputee support group, started driving to physical therapy and made plans to return to school.
In February, he was asked to serve as an honorary wrestling captain on Billy Allred Day at his Chesapeake alma mater. His duties included handing out trophies.
It was eight months after the crash, and he was back in the Great Bridge High gym where he had practiced for hours as a teenager. One sure step at a time, he walked to the wrestling mat. Cheers erupted.
Billy eventually remarried and raised two boys, Nick and Kolby. His weekends were filled with lazy days on a fishing boat off the coast of the Outer Banks, where the family lived.
But something was missing.
He and his wife, Brooke, moved back to Hampton Roads and enrolled their kids in the district Billy had attended.
He'd sit on a chair in the garage and spend a half-hour swinging at a punching bag. His arms would get a workout. He would be out of breath. But it wasn't the exhilarating sensation of using every muscle to pin someone. It certainly wasn't the same as being declared a champion.
For 10 years, Billy struggled to regain that feeling.
In 2009, a friend lent him a bike. He rode it around the neighborhood with ease. Apparently you don't forget, he thought.
Sure of himself, he took it on a trail in Williamsburg. The brakes needed tightening, so he made the easy fix. As he sped downhill, the wind whipped in his face. His quadriceps stretched and contracted as he pedaled faster. He tapped the brakes, and the gears locked up.
He tumbled over the handlebars and landed on his shoulder. Despite the pain, the adrenaline pulsed.
This was what he needed.
Mark patrolled the 2nd Precinct of Virginia Beach for several years after the crash and also helped with a middle school D.A.R.E. program as a resource officer. He liked showing students that police officers are human. He smiled when they challenged him to climb the rope in the gym. Occasionally, the Minnesota-born cop would let them beat him in floor hockey.
If they had a few extra minutes at the end of class, he allowed the kids to ask questions. Most of the time, he answered inquiries about his gun and the number of people he had shot.
One day in 2003, a seventh-grader pointed to Mark's uniform. Less than an inch high, a shiny red badge above his pocket caught the boy's eye. What did the officer do to earn it?
Mark spoke slowly as he told the story of Billy. His voice broke, and he grasped for the right words.
When the teacher stepped forward to ask whether he needed a break, Mark shook his head. He turned toward the chalkboard. With his back to the class, he drew the scene -- a light pole here, the car over there.
The extra minute was enough for him to collect his thoughts.
When he turned around again, wide eyes greeted him. He took a breath and finished the tale.
After the class, Mark pulled aside the boy who had asked the question. The officer thanked him.
For years, Mark had compartmentalized his work while trying to make sense of it all. Now, he was seeing his own memories in a new light.
By last summer, Billy was a wrestling coach to his sons and other kids. The Great Bridge gym where they practiced carried reminders of his days as the "Leg Man."
On one wall, a plaque bearing his accomplishments hangs opposite his name. The other walls tout the three state championships his team won while he was a member.
Life was going well. When he wasn't coaching, he worked as an account manager at a temp agency in Chesapeake.
Tuesday nights were spent learning English composition at Tidewater Community College. On weekends, he cleaned office buildings with his wife.
Not satisfied with just biking, Billy added kayaking and running to his list of conquests. Chesapeake's Oak Grove Lake Park, a spot he spent hours at as a kid, was one of his favorite areas to unwind.
It was there that Mark, now 43, walked with a friend one afternoon in July. They took the 1.5-mile loop around the lake and talked about his years as a cop.
After several years of working as a detective, Mark was set to go back on patrol in August, this time in the 4th Precinct. He mentioned a crash that he had worked 15 years earlier and the five awards that followed.
A few days later, Billy received a call at work from a woman he had dealt with only over the phone through the temp agency.
"Can I ask you a personal question?" she asked.
She wanted to know how he lost his legs.
A few days earlier, she had been talking with a police officer in the park. Had Billy been the one that her friend, Mark Johnson, had rescued? If so, would Billy want to get in contact with him?
They didn't live far from each other -- Billy in Great Bridge and Mark in Virginia Beach just over the Chesapeake line -- and had often walked with their kids around the same city parks. Mark had patrolled in the area where Billy had biked in Virginia Beach.
Billy jumped at the chance to speak with the man who had saved his life. He got Mark's number, and the first time Billy called, they talked for hours.
When Mark expressed the guilt he had been carrying, Billy was taken aback. He told the officer that he wouldn't even be alive if Mark hadn't been there that night.
Billy considered his life to be on track, and it hurt to know he had been able to move forward and Mark hadn't.
They became friends on Facebook, and Mark spent hours clicking through Billy's photos. Him sitting in a wheelchair next to his mangled car, another of him grinning in a kayak and dozens of him crouching next to his peewee wrestlers.
"He puts a lot of able-bodied people with two legs to shame," Mark said.
The two talked about meeting face to face.
Three months went by.
The first Sunday of October was unseasonably warm -- a perfect day for a bike ride at Indian River Park.
As the afternoon faded, Mark and Billy got out of their cars and shook hands. Billy's kids and Mark's 10-year-old twin boys watched as they made small talk. They unloaded their bikes.
Eventually, Billy headed down a trail as the four boys pedaled behind him.
Mark stayed back a few minutes, shuffled through his bag and checked his phone, then quietly rode down the path after them.
Billy led the pack, speeding over hills, and joy radiated as he navigated the bumps in the dirt.
Mark stopped frequently to take it all in. Each time, he leaned on his handlebars and watched Billy zoom past him. Mark just smiled and shook his head.
Occasionally, they'd stop to chat about sports, their kids and the years since the crash. Two hours later, as the sun started to set, they walked their bikes back to their cars.
They exchanged ideas about the next meeting. It would have to be after wrestling slows down. And after Little League practices end.
But, they said, it would happen.
Mary Beth Cleavelin, 757-222-5561, [email protected]
Copyright 2013 - The Virginian-Pilot
