Paper:  MESA TRIBUNE

Published:  THURS. 12/18/97

ASU grads inspires others, beats odds

Once promising athlete to receive his degree

BY PAUL MATTHEWS

The Tribune

David Carey remembers the pain exploding through his body like his fastball roaring across home plate.  

One minute he was laying in bed sound asleep. The next he was wracked by searing pain, unable to move.  

A bullet fired from a gun thought to be unloaded screamed down the hallway of Carey's two-room Scottsdale apartment and raced through his closed bedroom door.  It struck first in his upper back, shattering two vertebrae before coming to a rest in his jaw.  

In that instant of confusion and pain nine years ago, Carey became a quadriplegic.  

Today, Carey, 28, will go through graduation ceremonies of the Liberal Arts College at Arizona State University, and Friday will attend commencement for the university's 3,000 winter graduates.  

He will receive a bachelor's degree in physical education and he hopes to land a job doing something with the Americans With Disabilities Act.  

“I've always wanted to be a coach,” the former Scottsdale Community College baseball player said.  “I don't see it happening at this point.”  

Carey's route to a college degree took longer than he planned.  He says he isn't bitter and the compassion in his hazel eyes confirms this.  But when he left Bay City, Texas, in 1988 to pursue athletics at Scottsdale Community College, he clearly had a different future in mind.  

A Proposition 48 candidate, Carey was recruited to SCC as a football player but quickly walked on to the baseball team as a pitcher.  

“I think he was just scratching the surface on his ability,” said SCC baseball coach Larry Smith, then in his first year.  “He was a great athlete, he had a great work ethic.”  

But on March 7, 1989, Carey's career ended.  He went to bed relatively early that night, about 10:15 p.m.  

“I woke up feeling like I was being electrocuted,” Carey recalled.  

According to Carey, one of his roommates and a teammate had stolen a gun earlier in the evening and brought it into the apartment.  The gun went off accidentally in the living room while Carey slept in his bedroom.  

“The first thing I thought was I was having a stroke,” Carey continued.  “I couldn't talk, I couldn't breathe.”  

Carey's injuries were so severe, doctors gave him a slim chance to survive.  

“They couldn't even guarantee he'd be alive when I got here,” said his mother, 56-year-old Cora Carey who immediately left Bay City for the Valley.  

After three days on the edge of death, Carey began to improve.  His concerns about school and baseball were now replaced with a struggle for life.  

“You're not concerned with what's going on around you, you're concerned with staying alive,” he said.  Several weeks in the hospital were followed by 40 days in rehabilitation at Good Samaritan Regional Medical Center. His family moved from Texas to Tempe, providing a support structure for him as he shuffled between nursing homes. He now lives in an apartment.

Though his spring semester at SCC was lost, Carey re-enrolled at SCC that fall.  

Dee Duggan, the disability resources coordinator at SCC, said it was a shock to see the lanky 6-foot-4-inch athlete in a wheelchair.  But his positive attitude and his drive to finish school rubbed off on other disabled students, among them a blind student who decided to knit Carey a scarf.  

At first, Duggan wasn't sure whether Carey would wear the scarf.  She soon had her answer.  

“When she gave him that scarf he never took it off,” Duggan said.  “He wore it all the time. What I saw in that was symbolism — David caring for the person that was blind and David wanting to show his appreciation for her by doing something for her when it started with her wanting to do something for him.  That's David.”  

Carey volunteers on a number of ASU committees that work toward improving facilities for the disabled.  His attitude and spirit so impressed members of the athletic department that one administrator told ASU baseball coach Pat Murphy he had to meet him.  

“After I talked to him for awhile, I asked him to come speak to our team,” Murphy said. “He was unbelievable.”  

The speech was so well received that one player called Murphy at home to thank him for bringing Carey to the team.  

“He's helped a lot of people,” Murphy said.  “I know he helped me.”  

Paralyzed from the chest down, Carey has lost 40 pounds since the shooting, weighing a slim 165 pounds.  He maintains control of his biceps but he has limited movement in his wrists.  

Carey insists he doesn't harbor any bad feelings toward the people responsible for the shooting.  

“I'm not really angry, I shouldn't be bitter,” he said.  “I'm sure they have no idea what I go through.  People do things and they don't see the consequences of their actions.”

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