UPLIFT presents Rodger McDaniel with public service award

Photos by Mindy Dahl

Wyoming Tribune-Eagle education reporter Josh Mitchell wrote about UPLIFT’s 20th anniversary celebration in Wednesday’s edition.

The celebration was held Tuesday evening in the Cole Elementary school gym. One of my fellow UPLIFT board members, Brenda Ducharme, teaches at the school.

UPLIFT, the Wyoming affiliate of Federation of Families for Children’s Mental Health, presented Rodger McDaniel (shown in lower left in photo with UPLIFT Director Peggy Nickell) with its public service award. McDaniel is the outgoing director of the Wyoming Department of Health’s Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services Division. He will be missed.

I served with Rodger in the early 1990s on the first board of Laramie County Habitat for Humanity. I moved on to other volunteer roles and a few years later, Rodger and his family were in Nicaragua directing that country’s Habitat projects. He returned to his law practice, became an ordained minister and was eventually tapped by Gov. Dave Freudenthal for public service. His retirement was announced last week.

Rodger’s been crucial in bringing vision to a state that struggles with some rotten mental health and drug abuse statistics. Crisis centers – even in the Capital City – are few and far between, as are clinicians. The division’s Medicaid Waiver program for children and teens have helped pay for residential treatment and, even more importantly, aftercare when the child returns home.

Here’s hoping that Rodger and his colleagues have put us on a course that even 2010-style regressive politics can’t change. Wyoming’s new “Code of the West” may be fine for ropin’ and brandin’, but it doesn’t help curtail alarming teen suicide statistics and the state’s shortage of quality children's mental health treatment.

Josh interviewed me for the Nov. 17 story. My two cents worth:

Mike Shay is an UPLIFT board member and both of his children received help from the organization.

UPLIFT outreach coordinators attend school meetings with parents, Shay noted. The organization helps navigate parents through the complex system and connects families with different services, Shay added.

“UPLIFT”s been crucial in Wyoming,” Shay said.

I’d send you to the WTE site to read the rest, but it’s not on there.

As I've said here before, my son struggled with ADHD and my daughter has mental health issues. Both were helped by the incredible UPLIFT staff. We need these professionals to navigate school and government and treatment centers. They serve as guides to us confused, stressed-out parents.

You can find out more about UPLIFT at http://www.upliftwy.org/

Can't leave well enough alone? You must be a blogger.

Did your mom or grandmother ever say, "You can't leave well enough alone?"

Funny expression. When it something "well enough" and why should you leave it alone? Shouldn't it be "well done" or just finished?

Many bloggers I know can't leave well enough alone. Maybe that's what drew them to blogs in the first place. Unlimited space where you can ignore well enough into eternity.

Anyway, some of you followed my serial tale of the Oct. 22 near-miss crash with a drunk driver on I-25. I told the installments on Facebook as sat in my Ford on the way to Pueblo later than day.

I received an "unsafe lane change" ticket which I was going to pay but thought better of it. The young driver who almost killed us was busted for DUI -- drunk at 8:15 a.m. So I decided to write a letter to the Colorado Department of Motor Vehicles and copies to various other agencies (see the end of the letter).

Here's the letter:

Oct. 26, 2010

Colorado Division of Motor Vehicles
Department A
Denver, CO 80243

To Whom It May Concern:

I am not a perfect driver.

But I am a pretty good one.

I drive thousands of on-the-job miles around Wyoming each year. That’s in all kinds of weather. I put thousands of personal miles on my own car each year traveling back and forth between Cheyenne and Fort Collins and Denver, which is my home town.

No tickets. No wrecks. Maybe a few close calls, but that’s to be expected in the Rocky Mountain states, where driving conditions can change in the blink of an eye.

That’s how accidents happen – in the blink of an eye. I may have blinked on Friday morning, Oct. 22, near the Harmony Road interchange on I-25 in Larimer County. I looked in my side view mirror, clicked my turn signal, and then eased into the left lane. I was avoiding the heavy morning traffic merging on to the highway.

Next thing I know, I saw a green Subaru on my left. I pulled back to the right lane, slowed and watched as the Subaru kicked up a cloud of dust from the median and then crossed right in front of me and off to the right. In the chaos, I slowed and pulled off to the right shoulder about 100 yards down the road. I got out of the car and made my way back to the Subaru. It was upright facing the wire fence. The car had a few dings and the tries were flat. The driver was out of the car and seemed to be O.K. I apologized, certain that I had caused the accident. The driver was young, maybe mid-20s, with a sparse beard. He was dressed in black. His hands shook from the shock, or at least that’s what I thought at the time.

Thirty minutes later, he wore handcuffs in the back of a Colorado State Patrol car. He was on his way to jail for driving while impaired.

And I got a ticket for unsafe lane change. Or, as the ticket read: “Changed lanes when unsafe.”

Funny how your perception can change almost instantaneously. One moment I’m feeling terrible because I may have made a bad move that led to the wreck of another person’s car. The next minute I’m thinking, “We could all be dead.” “All” meaning my wife of 28 years, my 17-year-old daughter and me. And the driver of the Subaru who was drunk at 8:15 on a Friday morning.

When I was merging left on the highway, I didn’t see the driver of the Subaru because he wasn’t there. My guess is that he was behind me and tried to speed around me on his way to work, which is where he said he was going. My statement to the police said that “I didn’t see the Subaru.” I meant that literally. When he looked in my side view mirror, the Subaru wasn’t there. And then, in the blink on an eye, he was there and spinning out of control in his 4WD Subaru Outback. That’s one safe car, known for its reliability and safety. That the driver emerged unhurt speaks to that.

But you can give an impaired driver the world’s best car and he or she can find ways to do unsafe and dangerous things in it.

I am contesting my ticket. I may end up paying it when I go to court in Ft. Collins on 1/14/11, and that’s something I can live with. But I want the record to show that the unsafe lane-changing driver was not me but the driver of the Subaru. He was unsafe when he got into his car that morning. He was unsafe speeding down the highway. My miscalculation resulted in his unsafe and unsound response that downed a highway light pole, wrecked his car, and could have resulted in death or injuries to my family and any number of other drivers on the road that morning.

I conclude by commending the Colorado State Patrol, the Larimer County Sheriff and the ambulance EMTs who were at the scene. Professionals all. One patrolman even jumped my car, dead on the side of the road from extended use of emergency blinkers. Thanks to him, we quickly resumed our trip to Pueblo. We were late, but intact.

Sincerely,



Michael Shay

Cc: Colorado State Patrol
Larimer County Court
Farmers Insurance