It seemed like just another busy October afternoon at Subaru of Las Vegas, when my phone rang. Seeing it was my daughter Emma who was living in Tiburon at the time I quickly answered with a “Hi Sweetie, what’s up?” Her response was both reassuring and disconcerting all at the same time.
“I just want you to know Dad, I’m okay,” she said calmly. “I just got into an accident with a semi-truck and I rolled like three times, and the car landed upside down.
They're wheeling me into the hospital right now, and Leon, who was riding in his dog carrier, is at the fire station hanging out with the firefighters until I get out.”
A flood of emotion hit me like a shot of adrenalin, and my eyes welled up without warning. All I wanted to do at that moment was to be there - with my daughter, and hold her close. This “dad” thing is not for the faint of heart, and it really knows how to wreck you sometimes!
For the record, this is not the first time Emma has totaled a Subaru Outback, but I sure pray to God it is her last. Before anyone concludes that my daughter must be a bad driver, I might add that my firefighter - engineer son, Cameron, has also totaled a Subaru and walked away without a scratch.
In all three instances, my children were not at fault. Thankfully, in each case, the Subaru safety systems and legendary ring-shaped reinforced construction performed flawlessly and kept my family safe.
I will admit Emma is a little more prone to something like this happening than most. Certainly not because I didn’t teach her good driving skills, but rather at the time of both of her accidents she was logging 40 to 50 thousand miles per year in her role as a Regional Salon Development Manager for Aveda - a division of Estée Lauder. It was on one of these business trips that she found herself sandwiched between a Nissan Frontier pickup and an 18-wheeler tractor trailer on the I-80 in Fairfield, California.
For reasons unknown, the Nissan pickup in the fast lane veered to the right and contacted Emma’s left rear quarter sending her Subaru Outback into an uncontrolled spin and under the trailer of the semi-rig. In turn, the 18-wheeler jack-knifed and rolled - landing on the concrete center divider and splitting the cab of the freightliner in two.
One Fairfield resident related to a local news reporter that he heard the screeching, saw the truck skidding, and Emma’s car up in the air as if someone was filming a Hollywood movie.
Coming to a rest on the roof and with all airbags deployed, Emma and Leon waited for help to cut them out of their seatbelts, which had locked under the weight of their bodies. Moving the driver’s side-impact airbag out of the way, Emma attracted the attention of someone approaching her car apprehensively - not knowing what they were going to find.
After a quick trip to the hospital for both the driver of the semi, who suffered a laceration to his left hand and Emma who had a minor concussion, Emma was on the road to recovery and to purchasing her third Subaru Outback.
Today, since Emma and her wife Danielle own and operate Brush The Salon, an Aveda lifestyle salon in historic Healdsburg, California, they do a lot of driving. Dividing their time between California and Nevada, Emma still drives her Subaru Outback 1200 miles round trip every month - explaining the 250,000 miles on the odometer.
