When Marc Robinson was in a severe traffic accident in January, the people of Portage County came together to support him and make sure both he — and his dog — made it back to Idaho safely.
The people of Northeast Ohio changed a mindset the truck driver had been slowly cultivating for decades.
“It’s been a real restoration of my faith in mankind. You get a little cynical by the time you get six decades old, and you’ve seen the worst in people all your life, and then all of a sudden you see the best of people from everywhere, and it’s like, ‘Wow.’ That has been just absolutely amazing to me,” Robinson said.
Robinson’s attitude adjustment is rooted in Portage County’s people, who recently came out in droves to care for him after a Jan. 16 interstate accident, to care for his dog until they could be reunited, and to get him back home to Idaho.
Just after midnight on Jan. 16, the Rootstown Fire Department responded to a motor vehicle accident on I-76. Two semi-trucks had tangled on the icy roads, and the first responders had to extricate Robinson from the cab of one of the trucks. The other driver did not need to be transported for medical attention.
Also on scene were Brimfield’s and Kent’s fire departments, the Portage County Sheriff’s Office, the Ohio State Highway Patrol, the Ohio Department of Transportation, the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, Fall & Stebbins Automotive and John’s Towing.
While their tasks were underway, Robinson’s dog Daisy ran back from a nearby wooded area and jumped into the cab. Turns out she’d been ejected from the cab during the crash and desperately wanted to be by her master’s side. After all, she’d been his trucking companion her whole life.
Unfazed, Rootstown’s med unit transported Robinson to Summa Akron City Hospital and Daisy to the county dog warden’s office. A Portage County sheriff’s deputy brought her back to the Rootstown fire station, where there was no shortage of caring hands.
Robinson remained at Akron City Hospital, where his left arm was amputated. He knew his life was immediately and irrevocably changed.
“Suddenly having people do things for me was not normal to me. I don’t even know how to accept help from other people, and what I got was not just help, it was a complete outpouring of love and support. Help at a time when I was completely helpless. It just completely amazes me,” he said, the emotion still evident in his voice in mid-February.
What to do next? Daisy was safe at the station, but Robinson lived with his wife Theresa in Challis, Idaho, a central-state mountain town of about 900 people.
When Rootstown’s firefighters got a message to her, she contacted the PCSO, which connected her with Rootstown Fire Chief Chuck Palmer. He brought her up to date and put her in contact with his wife Rose, who became the point person for coordinating communications between the RFD and Robinson’s Idaho family.
Meanwhile, doctors pronounced Robinson, a Navy veteran and survivor of the 1983 Beirut bombing, to be in stable condition in Summa Akron City’s ICU. Two Beirut veterans, Bob Thoma from North Canton and Dan Kilgore from Canton, kept a constant vigil by Robinson’s bedside and served as a conduit of information for his family.
The nonprofit organization Beirut Veterans of America became aware of Robinson’s condition and assisted Robinson’s family in starting a GoFundMe account, which has so far raised $19,377 to help with current and future needs. The BVA website and the American Brother Foundation also highlight Robinson’s plight, asking anyone who is able to donate what they can.
Back at the station, Daisy had no obvious wounds, but was moving slowly and gingerly. Concerned, the crew contacted Portage Animal Clinic in Brimfield, where veterinarian Lindsey Cromes, vet tech Heather Glennon and vet assistant Nicole Trimble saw her without an appointment.
They determined Daisy might have internal bleeding, so Cromes and Glennon drove Daisy to the clinic’s main site, Stow Kent Animal Hospital. There, veterinarian Mark Carlson reviewed additional scans and observed her for several hours. He determined Daisy did have some internal bleeding, but no worries: Daisy would heal herself in time, Trimble said.
Carlson cleared Daisy to return to the Rootstown fire station, with orders to return to Stow Kent Animal Hospital the next morning for more labs and scans. She was given a clean bill of health, and began her mascot duties the same day.
None of the vets charged a dime for their services, which included keeping Dr. Jeff Bennetts, Daisy’s vet back home in Challis, Idaho, informed throughout the process.
Daisy took her mascot duties seriously, each day sporting a red neck scarf with a Rootstown firefighter gold badge that Rose Palmer had made. Behind the scenes, Thoma and Kilgore arranged a video call between Robinson, Daisy and his family in Idaho.
Meanwhile, since Daisy’s local vets could not yet clear her for air travel, the question was how to get her home. When reach-outs to agencies that transport dogs came up empty, “suddenly the fire department decided, ‘We’re going to do it ourselves,’” Robinson said.
Turns out Chief Chuck Palmer had mentioned the need for a ride to Ryan Oprandi, general manager of Sarchione Chevrolet in Randolph. The dealership, which holds fundraisers every year for Dogs For Our Brave, quickly donated a car and money for the trip.
“We heard that he was a veteran so we didn’t even think twice,” Oprandi said. “Chuck needed a vehicle so we gave it to him. Nothing worse than having those two separated. What’s a couple tanks of fuel and a vehicle for a night or two? No big deal.”
On Jan. 19, again without charge, Daisy’s vets gave her the go ahead for a road trip and provided meds to help her make her journey comfortably. The trek started in earnest Jan. 20, when Chief Chuck Palmer, Rose Palmer and firefighter Mike Boyd loaded Daisy into the car and started driving.
First stop was Summa Akron City Hospital, where the trio, accompanied by a group of RFD firefighters, reunited the soon-to-be discharged Robinson with his faithful companion. Then, back to the car. They got to Foristell, Missouri, shortly after midnight on Jan. 20., spent the night in a hotel and got on the road again.
Operation “Driving Miss Daisy” turned out to be shorter than the Palmers and Boyd expected. That, Robinson said, was thanks to Sandy Glover, a fellow trucker he’d often chatted with on the CB radio when their crosscountry paths matched up.
“My wife posted what happened on FB when it first happened, and I was in the hospital. She saw that, and she reached out to all the other truckers that I knew that she knew, and when she couldn’t get any of them that were in that area to help, she called her daughter Julia and son-in-law Jonathan, who were in between trucking jobs down in Oklahoma and had nothing else to do. They volunteered. They drove up there to Missouri,” Robinson said.
There, they met the Ohio contingent, picked Daisy up and drove her to Robinson’s house in Idaho. As luck would have it, they arrived on Jan. 22, about an hour after Robinson’s plane landed.
Robinson’s ordeal is far from over. He doesn’t have any health insurance, so he is trying to re-engage with the VA system to obtain a prosthetic and further treatment. He knows he’ll have to negotiate what he anticipates will be the usual round of initial denials, but his spirits remain unshaken.
“I’m doing great. I’m surrounded by my family and my friends, and Daisy’s alive,” he said, adding that he’s enrolling her in a course to become a trained service animal.
When he tells his story to family and friends, the response is uniform disbelief, Robinson said. Still, it happened, and he makes sure they know it.
“You people are the most awesome people in the world. Keep doing what you’re doing. Your support and faith in someone you didn’t even know was totally amazing and beyond belief. You’re the greatest people on earth, really it’s beyond words. Totally awesome. You people are the best,” he said.
Pronouncing our community and especially the Rootstown Fire Department “awesome,” Robinson said the worst possible time in his life had a golden lining: the people of Portage County, Akron and Canton.
“I don’t know if it was worth getting my arm chopped off, but it was definitely life changing. It actually changed my view on the world itself,” he said. “I really hate that this happened to me but if it was going to happen to me, that was the best place in the world for it to happen. The people in your area were just absolutely phenomenal.”
Wendy DiAlesandro is a former Record Publishing Co. reporter and contributing writer for The Portager.