It Always Seems to be the Innocent

ACCIDENTS SEEM ALWAYS TO TAKE THE GOOD PEOPLE

San Jose Mercury News By: JIM TROTTER column

JOE AND BETTY TRIPOLI were down at Ridgemark Golf and Country Club in Hollister last Sunday, playing a round with Sam and Verna Fazzio and Bruce Faria. The men had a small ''skins'' game going, winner take all on each hole, and there was the good-natured banter that exists among lifelong friends taking in a beautiful day. Joe and Betty were teen-age sweethearts who had just recently celebrated their 37th anniversary. Joe and Sam had grown up together in San Jose, near Bird Avenue in the old cannery district. Along with boys named Spagnola, DiMarco, Bautista, Molina and Rubio, among others, they were quite a nucleus as they moved through Gardner Elementary, Woodrow Wilson Junior High and Willow Glen High School in the '40s and '50s.

They loved to dance at the Hot Spot, when it was in the basement of the old YWCA at Second and San Salvador. They were part of the fabric of this valley when it was smaller and quieter. Many of the guys still see each other. ''They called us the 'Gumba' brothers,'' said Fazzio, of his relationship with Tripoli. ''We're Italian, and you hardly ever saw one of us without the other.''

LAST SUNDAY, the Fazzios stayed behind to water the garden at a place they have in Hollister, and the Tripolis left Ridgemark to return to San Jose.

At the intersection of the country club drive and Highway 25, a four-way stop, Tripoli stopped and pulled out. Gary Edmund Strehlow, who the California Highway Patrol said was drunk and had taken the liberty of commandeering a Monterey County Rides Program van for his personal use, did not stop.

''When we got on the scene, after they had taken Joe and Betty to the hospital, I saw it was a white car,'' said Fazzio, ''but it really didn't register. And then I saw Joe's beautiful Ping bag hanging out of the trunk. I got alongside the car and saw how damaged it was, and I knew Joe couldn't have survived.''

Tripoli, 56, did not survive.

It is with personal grief and outrage that I say we have lost another sweet and caring person, a man much beloved by his family and legion of friends, his co-workers and customers, to a driver who should not have been on the road. How it is that these accidents always seem to take the good people, I cannot say. But they always do.

STREHLOW has been charged by the San Benito County District Attorney with vehicular manslaughterand drunken driving.

''Joe was loved around here,'' said Bob Ricks, general manager of Frontier Infiniti on Stevens Creek Boulevard, where Tripoli was service manager. ''He was a father figure to some of our employees. He came to me with the idea of the monthly employee barbecue. He set up the pit. He did the cooking. Customers came in that day at noon, Joe would give them a hamburger. The service business here doubled under Joe's direction, and he had just recently won a big national award - a golf trip to Cancun. Betty and he were to leave early next month.''

I never received a hamburger, but one noon I decided to forgo my usual stop at a quick lube and instead stopped in at Joe's shop to have the oil in my car changed. Although my vehicle is of the previously owned variety, Joe treated me like the head of a corporate fleet. Naturally, I never went anywhere else again.

Soon, we were talking about more than the car. We talked about what we were up to, about our kids. He told me what Betty thought about columns I had written. I suspect Joe made everyone feel this way. I counted him as a friend.

''He was a warm and caring individual,'' said Fazzio. ''He would go out of his way to help someone. There wasn't too much he wouldn't do for you.''

SANDY TRIPOLI, Joe's daughter, said, ''I've always watched those commercials against drunk driving and I never thought our family would be victims. It doesn't kill one person, it kills a family. I'm supposed to get married in September, and all my dad wanted to do was walk me down the aisle.''

I talked to Joe Jr. as he was going through his father's Rolodex, calling people to let them know. "I've grieved a little bit,'' he said, ''but I still think of Dad as being right here next to me.'' Friday morning, as funeral services began at Lima Family Mortuary, there was a scene that should be the essence of any message to would-be drunk drivers.

Betty had suffered internal injuries, including a broken collar bone, but she had gotten out of her hospital bed to be there. Walking with the help of her family to the open casket, she cried out as she saw her husband for the first time since last Sunday afternoon, when the world had seemed so pleasant.

Goodbye, Joe. We're going to miss you.

SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS

Tags: DUI Related |  Victims