Just about 10 years ago things were looking up for Arlington Heights
resident Patrick Kolman and his family.
After a driving under the influence arrest and a 1989 stay at an alcohol
rehab program in Elk Grove Village, Kolman stayed sober for a year. His
eldest daughter had just graduated from high school and he and his wife,
Susan, were taking all three of their daughters on a family trip to Florida.
Before they left, Kolman announced he was going to drink during the
vacation. Susan Kolman wasn't alarmed at the time.
She should have been. Her husband's addiction to alcohol was much stronger
than she had realized.
The trip now marks a tragic turning point.
"That started the nightmare from hell that never ended," she said. "It won't
end until he's dead, really."
Susan Kolman divorced her husband of 23 years in 1994 and became Susan
McKay. But over the previous 10 years, she and her daughters had watched
union plumber Kolman repeat a dangerous cycle. He'd drink and drive, get
dangerously sick and seek help, and then drink and drive again.
After that first DUI arrest, Kolman, now 50, was arrested and convicted for
driving drunk nine more times within four years, secretary of state records
show. Most first DUI offenses are suppressed from public driving records in
Illinois.
He is one of the worst repeat drunken driving offenders in northern Illinois
found in a Daily Herald study. The paper examined complete public records of
drivers with multiple DUI offenses between 1996 and 1999.
Kolman was arrested for what would have been his 10th DUI in May 1999 by a
Hoffman Estates police officer, but the charge was dismissed after his
lawyer successfully argued the officer did not legally stop him.
Today, he sits in a federal jail cell, unwilling to give interviews and
awaiting his fate on new charges that suggest he has continued a life of
crime.
Patrick Kolman could serve as a case study for what remains vexing about the
legal system created to deal with drunken drivers. Time and again he has
been arrested, convicted, sentenced and sent to jail. Still, he has had
chance after chance after chance to drink and drive.
He has never killed or seriously injured anyone while driving drunk. But
Susan McKay, their daughters, who do not want to talk about their father,
and others who know Kolman became victims nonetheless.
The news media tend to focus on those injured or killed by drunken drivers.
But repeat drunken driving creates victims of another kind - the family
members of the driver.
"I don't want to sound like I like him," Susan McKay said. "I hate him for
what he's done."
Drinking to near death
What Kolman has done is drink vodka and other kinds of alcohol until it has
nearly killed him.
Bottles of vodka were found open in his vehicle during 1995 and 1996
arrests.
An alcohol and drug evaluation contained in court records from a 1996
conviction - one of four that year alone - reports Kolman drank 6 ounces of
vodka at noon the day of that arrest. He reported drinking another 4* ounces
in a bar after work between 9:30 and 10 p.m.
He said he did not feel intoxicated, but the arresting officer wrote that he
observed Kolman drift in and out of lanes and almost hit other vehicles and
the curb.
"Driver could not stand at all and fell," the arrest report read. "Driver
had to be helped everywhere."
The evaluation said Kolman had been diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver
and was awaiting a liver transplant, but he continued to drink after
treatment and against medical advice. He never received a transplant, and
McKay questions whether he ever was allowed on a list, given his drinking
history.
He said he had a continued need to drink daily to avoid withdrawal symptoms,
including tremors and cold sweats.
The downward spiral began in the spring of 1992. Kolman was arrested on a
charge of drunken driving in Rolling Meadows with a blood-alcohol content
more than three times the .08 percent legal limit. He told police he drank
four beers and six double mixed drinks between 8 p.m. and 1 a.m.
It was his second arrest, but the first on his public driving record. In
Illinois, an overwhelming majority of first-time drunken drivers are
sentenced to supervision, and the arrest is kept only on internal legal
records.
"I am an alcoholic," he told law enforcement officials then. "I can't drink
at all."
Kolman was making $42,000 a year as a union plumber back then and reported
attending five to seven Alcoholics Anonymous meetings a week. He was
sentenced to two years' supervision, fined $500 and assigned alcohol
counseling, according to court records.
But that sentence was revoked after he was arrested again for driving drunk
the following September. In January and February 1993, he was charged with
separate counts of domestic battery.
When he failed to show up for a court date in late February, an arrest
warrant was issued. Eventually he was sentenced to one year in prison for
the two DUIs and both domestic abuse charges.
Details about the length of some of Kolman's other sentences are sketchy. A
1995 DUI arrest again resulted in a one-year jail sentence and placement in
a drug and alcohol program.
In 1996, Kolman was charged with DUI on April 7, April 14, April 26 and May
1. Cook County state's attorney records show he received probation for a
conviction from the April 26 arrest. The three other arrests occurred in
DuPage County. The first occurred after Kolman drove his 1991 Ford into a
ditch. On Nov. 22, 1996, he pleaded guilty to each of the three charges and
was sentenced to a total of one year in DuPage County jail.
But Kolman likely served only half that time because of good behavior
credits. He was stopped again in mid-1997 for driving after his license had
been revoked for several DUIs. He was sentenced to two years and served time
at the Dixon Correctional Center, according to corrections department
records. His discharge was complete last Jan. 11.
Through those years, Kolman listed home addresses in Arlington Heights,
Palatine and Hoffman Estates, or he said he was homeless.
Too much help?
By his 1992 arrest, Susan McKay could see her husband was seriously ill from
alcohol. She found him downstairs in the middle of one night, throwing up
blood. Later, she said, it was determined the blood was coming from his
esophagus, a common but dangerous alcohol-related illness.
She estimates he has been hospitalized for drinking-related illness 26
times. "The paramedics were at our house monthly," she said.
Paramedics, doctors, union representatives, friends and family members,
lawyers, judges, even police officers all helped give Kolman more chances to
drink and endanger himself and others, Susan McKay contends.
"It was a nightmare of attorneys, doctors, police," she said.
Union benefits helped pay many of Kolman's legal bills from his divorce and
drunken driving and domestic abuse charges over the years, his ex-wife said.
Two doctors who knew of his alcohol history prescribed Valium for stress,
McKay said. Judges and lawyers allowed arrests to be dropped or combined
into one case. Friends and family repeat-edly put up cash to get him out of
jail.
"In all those DUIs, he was always bailed out. We had good friends who bailed
him out who never thought they were putting him back behind the wheel and
putting us back in the position of dealing with this crazy man," McKay said.
"They should be held responsible."
Throughout all the drunken driving arrests, Kolman knew not to call his wife
to bail him out.
"I have thrown away keys. I have flattened tires. I have cut wires to try to
keep him off roads," she said. "But I finally decided it was doing me no
good."
Once, Kolman tried to drive cross country to his parents' home in Maryland
but was arrested in Ohio for driving drunk. His now-deceased father bailed
him out and got his car for him, but McKay said he was arrested again on the
way back the same week. Again, she said, his father got him freed from jail.
Court and secretary of state records show one 1993 DUI conviction from Ohio.
None of the support from family, friends or alcohol counseling seemed to
help.
He found bars that closed at 2 a.m. and others that opened at 6 a.m. Often,
McKay said, he would lock himself in a bedroom to drink.
Kolman spent 30 days in a second alcohol treatment program at the Hazelden
Foundation in Minnesota in 1992, the alcohol evaluation indicated. McKay
said he arrived home from it drunk.
Patrick Kolman is like many repeat drunken drivers. A recent federal study
describing the characteristics of repeat drunken drivers could have been
talking about him.
Repeat drunken drivers tend to be middle-aged white males with low income,
no more than a high school education, several other traffic offenses and
other crimes against people, the study found.
For years Kolman had been a successful plumber with a nice home in Arlington
Heights. He was the cliche: the life of the party who kept everyone
laughing. He always drank. He and his wife drank at home and when they went
out to dinner. He and co-workers would pound a few at a tavern after work.
"I don't know how long it had been going on (before) he admitted that he
couldn't not drink," McKay said. "What happened? I don't know."
No simple answers
What McKay does know is that she wants others to know this truth about
repeat drunken drivers like her ex-husband: "It's not a simple thing. You
picture the worst scenario. You picture them living in a ghetto. He had a
wonderful family. His drinking has destroyed that."
It has not, however, destroyed his family members. McKay considers herself a
victim, but she and her daughters also are survivors. McKay works
successfully at a senior citizens retirement community in Arlington Heights.
Her oldest daughter is married and expecting her first child this fall. Her
middle daughter is a senior honors student at a public Illinois
university. Her youngest just graduated from high school and beauty school.
In a brief phone interview from her Maryland home, Patrick Kolman's mother,
Mary Kolman, expressed concern for her granddaughters. Like them, she said,
she is angry at her son, "but I know it's a sickness. I know it's an
insidious sickness."
Kolman's drinking became such a burden that eventually, McKay said, she
reached the point where "I prayed. I prayed to God he would die."
Not long after Mother's Day last month, Patrick Kolman drove up to the house
where two of his daughters still live with their mother and asked them for
money. They refused him. Around the same time, he asked McKay's
brother-in-law for cash and snagged $20.
On the day his youngest daughter graduated from high school, Kolman again
rang his family's doorbell in Arlington Heights.
No one inside answered. "You just don't want to have to deal with it," McKay
said.
But she was forced to deal with it again when an FBI agent showed up at her
job last month, asking questions about her ex-husband.
Patrick Kolman was arrested in Des Plaines and charged June 14 with robbing
an Arlington Heights bank. He collected about $11,000 after handing a note
to a teller that said he had a gun, police allege.
He walked out of the bank, climbed into the minivan he was not supposed to
be operating and drove off, reports show.
"I was stunned," McKay said. "Nothing surprises me, but this was a shocker."
And then, she said, "It was just one more time - tell the kids the name's
going to be in the paper."
Imprisoned at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Chicago, Patrick
Kolman faces a maximum 20-year sentence on the robbery charge.
"It's a big relief that he's gone. I'm just glad he's not on the streets
anymore," McKay said. "I've always thought what he did with a car was
serious. They should've taken it more seriously."
Daily Herald Legal Affairs Writer Christy Gutowski contributed to this
report.
Patrick J. Kolman