'I never thought twice about driving over a bridge'
Karge Olsen drives over a bridge at least two times every day.
It's unavoidable and he hates it.
A few months ago, he found a quiet bridge where traffic doesn't stop. He looks from side to side as he quickly drives over.
"I'm just not a fan of man-made infrastructures," Olsen said.
You can't blame him.
Olsen barely survived the Aug. 1, 2007, bridge collapse in Minneapolis, when his Jeep nose dived on top of another vehicle. In the 13 seconds it took for the bridge to fall apart, 13 people died and 140 others were injured, including Olsen. The driver of the vehicle his Jeep landed on was among the dead.
Olsen, 28, spent months in the hospital and he continues to recover. He still needs crutches and his left foot is permanently deformed. His shoulder will never completely attach to his collarbone and he's in pain almost all the time.
But while the future holds more surgeries, it may also include law school and a political career. The Arlington Heights native is already an author, husband and father of a 2-year-old.
"No matter how bad it is for me, other people have it worse," Olsen said. "These days, I concentrate on putting food on the table for my wife and son and helping other victims."
Before Aug. 1, Karge encountered few hurdles in his life.
At Prospect High School, he was a peer counselor and on the varsity soccer team - he kicked the winning goal during his senior year Homecoming game. After graduation he rode an academic scholarship to Winona State University in Minnesota where he majored in history and philosophy and graduated with honors. At Winona, he also met the love of his life, Nichole, who attended St. Mary's College nearby. The couple married and had a son in 2006. They named him Karge, a German name, after his father.
On the afternoon the bridge collapsed Olsen had wrapped up a business trip and was driving to his mother-in-law's house where Nichole, 27, and little Karge were waiting for him. Normally, the route wouldn't take him onto the I-35 bridge over the Mississippi River - but a shortcut he took to avoid a traffic light in rush hour did.
"You can't rethink decisions like that and say 'what if,'" Olsen said. "So I don't."
He called his wife. "I'm on my way and I'll be there shortly," he told her voice mail.
About 15 miles away, Nichole Olsen had forgotten to turn the ringer on her phone back on. She had silenced it while Karge was napping, but now she, her mother and the toddler were watching his Baby Einstein DVD.
Suddenly, she felt a disquiet.
"All the sudden I got this bad feeling and said, 'turn off the DVD and turn on the news,'" said Nichole, a stay-at-home mom.
There before her was the wreckage of the bridge collapse. Somehow, she knew her husband was a part of it.
Nichole grabbed her cell phone and saw she missed four calls from her husband. The first one was his message. The other three weren't messages at all - just background noise. Dimly, she could hear sports broadcasters chatting on a satellite radio station about the Bears.
Nichole called Olsen's phone. No answer.
"I was sick," she said. "I went in my mom's room and prayed because I couldn't handle it. My mom was outside with Karge. I mean, he was so upset because Mommy was so upset."
She picked herself up and turned the television back on. After a few minutes of agonized watching the unbelievable happened - the TV camera caught a man sitting on the ground holding his head. It was unmistakably her husband.
She saw he was with emergency personnel.
"I knew he'd be OK," said Nichole. "I knew he was in pain and was probably in shock, but I knew he'd be OK."
Still, it would be hours before she would meet Karge at the University of Minnesota Medical Center.
Today, Olsen has no memory of the bridge collapse, of falling or of being rescued. He can't remember anything that happened 15 minutes before the collapse or the several days after it.
Police helped him piece together some meager facts: Olsen had just started to cross the bridge when it collapsed. His Jeep fell 70 feet, landing on top of another car that had landed on a concrete lip of the bridge.
Olsen thinks a stranger pulled him from his car and notified paramedics. So far no one has come forward, despite Olsen's plea on a recent TV broadcast to meet his rescuer.
Nichole, meanwhile, thinks Olsen got himself out of the Jeep and tried to call her. She believes that because he had a brain injury, he wasn't able to speak and leave a message.
"The blank voice mails, all I heard was background noise and some shuffling," she said. "If someone was helping him or talking to him, I would've heard that."
Olsen's cell phone was never recovered.
The next few days, Olsen calls "patchy." He only remembers bits. Pieces of a conversation he couldn't follow. A vision of his parents. Pain. Sleep. He asked the same few questions over and over, "What happened? Where am I?"
"Everything was fuzzy," he said. "I was on a lot of medication."
"It was almost comical," Nichole said. "He was asking the same questions. I was like, are you serious?"
Eventually, Olsen's memory returned - everything except the crash and its aftermath. For the young couple, the next few months were filled up with doctor appointments, surgeries and insurance paperwork. Only recently has their son started sleeping regularly again. Their pediatrician told them it's how babies deal with trauma.
"The little guy can't say, 'Why is Daddy different?'" Nichole said. "'Why can't he pick me up and throw me over his head like he used to?' It affected us all."
While Olsen has his method of getting over bridges, so does Nichole.
"It's very hard," she said. "From the second I start going over a bridge I think, how am I going to get my kid out of here if it goes down?" When her husband drives, she sits by her son in the back seat.
The book idea came after Olsen attended a legislative hearing aimed at improving the safety of the nation's bridges. He was also involved in getting a $36.6 million victims' compensation fund passed in the Minnesota legislature. At one of the hearings he met two widows.
"It stirred me up a bit," he said. "I just wanted to help them. I mean, here I am able to speak on my own behalf and other people aren't. It's an odd thing, even the gentleman whose car my car settled on. I never found out his name. It's amazingly sad."
Olsen and his father-in-law self-published his book, "Bridges Don't Fall Down: Stories from the I-35 Bridge Collapse," which came out this weekend. The book chronicles Olsen's recovery and what he remembers from the day of the disaster. He wrote poems in honor of the victims and wove in his story of survival.
"We, victims and survivors, push forward every day and that truly is an awesome thing," Olsen writes. "Some live with memories everyday, others are reminded by the lack of love or presence they have been left without and yet others feel it in every step they take.
"This work is a tribute to you and those you love. I think of you all every day. Those survivors of loved ones, those that hurt physically, those who suffer mental anguish, I am with you. I only hope I can continue to be a voice for those that are unable to speak for themselves."
Today Olsen is back at work. He works 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. most days so he can squeeze in doctor appointments. He needs a surgery every two months or so.
"I feel so much older," he said.
In many ways he is. He's not yet 30 and he has a family to support and injuries to heal. But he also has a future where he wants to go to law school and maybe become a politician.
The bridge collapse has a lot do with that.
"I came to a point where I decided that what happened to me didn't have to define me," Olsen says. "But I have to fight back. There are people I can help."
He doesn't let his fears get out of control. Bridges, elevators and parking garages all make him nervous. But he forces himself to use them all.
"I see the room for human error," he said. "Before the bridge collapsed, I never thought twice about driving over a bridge. No one did."
To order Karge's book, go to www.WarriorWords.net.