June 9, 2002

An officer lives, but is the cost too grave?

After suffering fourth-degree burns, doctors couldn’t believe Jason Schechterle was alive

   PHOENIX (AP) — He had been a cop only a few months when he was called to his first major fire. An apartment was engulfed, and a bystander shouted that someone could be inside. Another officer ran to the back of the building while Jason Schechterle stood at the front, alone, facing the flames, feeling the heat.

   The fire devoured everything in its path. He couldn’t see walls, couldn’t see ceiling, couldn’t see furniture — only the inferno.

Photo by Associated Press Phoenix police officer Jason Schechterle is shown in an undated police department photo.

   Afterward, Jason peered through a window. Two bodies lay on a charred bed, skeletons without hair, skin, features. Nothing that resembled a human being.

   “God,” he thought, “What a way to die.”

   “I haven’t seen you in God only knows how long,” Jason Schechterle cooed to his wife, Suzie.

   “You have a lot of making up to do, buddy,” she teased.

   It was their nightly call, a ritual since Jason joined the Phoenix Police Department 14 months earlier.

   “I’m gonna get in bed and snuggle right up next to you,” he said.

   “I’ll hold you to it,” Suzie said, laughing, more like a schoolgirl than a 30-year-old mother of two.

   Then the emergency tone sounded across Jason’s patrol car radio, and a call came crackling in.

   “Unknown trouble. 2735 East Thomas,” the dispatcher intoned.

   Jason put Suzie on hold.

   “513 Henry,” he radioed. “I’ll start up.”

   He went back to his wife.

   “Baby, I need to go. I’m en route.”

   Jason flipped on his lights.

   It was 11:17 p.m.

   “24th Street and Thomas,” he said, climbing in.

   The cab turned onto Thomas Road, but suddenly jerked and ran up on a curb.

   “Are you OK?” Tracy asked, but the driver said nothing. Instead, the cab picked up speed, lurching down the street as light poles and signs whizzed by.

   “Slow down!” Tracy pleaded. The driver didn’t respond.

   The cab flew through several green lights. Then Tracy saw the next light, at 20th Street and Thomas, change.

   Yellow ...

   The car in front slowed to a stop.

   Red ...

   The cab swerved to avoid the vehicle. To its left, a police car was stopped with its lights on.

   Tracy grabbed the seat and braced for impact.

   It was 11:21 p.m.

   Suddenly, there was a fireball.

   Capt. Michael Ore’s crew jumped out of the engine and began unraveling the hose. Then Ore saw the flashing lights.

   “We’re on the scene of a 962 ...!” he shouted into the radio, giving the code for an accident with injuries. “Give me a first-alarm medical. Police car involved.”

   And then: “Trapped victim!”

   Flames licked at the broken frame of the patrol car, its back seat crushed by the impact.

   “Hurry up!” he yelled to his crew. “There’s a man burning to death in there!”

   Darren Boyce aimed the hose inside the car, while rookie Henry Narvaez fought to open the driver’s door. “I can’t get it open!”

   Ore tossed an ax to Narvaez, who broke through the window. Boyce kept the flames at bay, but the front seat was smoldering beneath the smoke and steam. The stench of melted plastic filled Ore’s nostrils as he and Narvaez tugged at the officer, fighting to free him.

   But he was still strapped into his seat belt, and they couldn’t get to the latch.

   “Get a knife!” Ore screamed.

   A policeman who’d just arrived sliced through the seat belt, while a second officer loosened the legs. Together the men pulled the officer through the window just as an ambulance drove up.

   As they shoved him onto the gurney, a piece of skin peeled off the officer’s arm — revealing a small patch of white on an otherwise blackened man. Ore, a 26-year veteran, was stricken.

   “I’m not sure we did this guy a favor,” he thought as the ambulance pulled away.

   Suzie knew the deal Jason and Bryan had made when they joined the force. If something happened to either of them, the other would notify his wife. And now here was Bryan, kneeling at her bedside.

   “Jason’s been in a very bad accident,” Bryan was saying. “Another car hit him. He’s in bad shape.”

   Suzie called her ex-husband to watch over their 7-year-old daughter, Kiley, and 2½-year-old Zane, her son with Jason.

   Arriving at Maricopa Medical Center, she had no idea what she was in for.

   Then a burly man in aqua operating scrubs walked in, Dr. Daniel Caruso. The brusque, plainspoken chief of the Arizona Burn Center held nothing back.

   “Your husband sustained third-degree, if not worse, burns to his head,” he told Suzie, explaining that much of Jason’s face had been lost to the fire. The ears. The nose. The hands were bad, too.

   “We have to remove the burns,” he finished, “or he’ll have no chance of survival.”

   None of them had ever seen anything like this.

   The burns had consumed the skin, tissue and fat in Jason’s head, face and neck. His forehead was scorched right through to the skull. His hands were seared down to the tendons.

   When Caruso first got to the hospital, he ran his gloved hands over Jason’s head. It was hard as oak — a sign of fourth-degree burns, as severe as they get.

   Caruso’s mind raced. As serious as the injuries were, the treatment was the same as for any severe burn: Remove the dead skin and graft over it with new skin.

   The doctor knew if he didn’t operate immediately, infection would set in and Jason could die.

   In a stark white chamber, a priest performed last rites as Jason lay on a table under a spotlight.

   Caruso took his place at the end of the table, ready to begin on the top of Jason’s head. Foster and Smith lined up alongside the face. Using handheld knife blades akin to cheese graters, the doctors went to work, peeling back layer upon layer of scorched skin.

   They were looking for any sign of life beneath the burns. Dead tissue resembles worn leather. Healthy tissue looks like medium-rare steak.

   Healthy tissue bleeds.

   With each swipe, the realization set in of just how badly this patient was injured. With each swipe, there was no blood.

   Caruso traded the blade for an electronic, pen-sized instrument that cuts even deeper. He sliced through a swath of skin, and pulled it from Jason’s head.

   Still, no blood.

   Slice, pull. No blood.

   Caruso stopped.

   “Just what the hell are we doing here?” he demanded, unable to mask his own disgust. “We’re about to take off this guy’s entire face.”

   Each doctor was thinking the same thing: If it were himself on the table, he’d rather die.

   None of them had ever excised burns this deep from a man’s head and face.

   In the hot operating room, hours passed as more skin came off, and the surgeons’ few words grew more and more grim.

   “It’s not bleeding,” one groaned.

   “There’s nothing,” said another.

   “Oh my God, I’m down to muscle.”

   And then: “I’m down to bone.”

   Monday - Part II: Battling the burns, enduring the whispers
   Tuesday - Part III: Learning to see beyond the burns