The family, about 10 of them, sat in the fast-food restaurant, struggling for the words they would say.
A meeting at the district attorney’s office was about an hour away. Cynthia Albo, a petite woman with desperately sad eyes, wrestled with her compulsion to always see the other side, to find forgiveness.
On this morning, she could not. Timothy, her youngest child, lay in a rehabilitation hospital, barely able to speak, to recognize even his own mother.
“These hit-and-runs have to stop,” she said, ticking off four others from the recent past, not including Tim’s on Oct. 3.
The Albo family has become quite knowledgeable and outspoken on the issue. The patriarch, Richard, after sitting quietly for most of the morning, vows to push for harsher penalties when he meets with the DA.
“To receive forgiveness,” Cynthia finally says, “I think there has to be responsibility. The man charged with doing this to my son has shown he has none.”
The couple’s children Pamela, 45, Rodney, 43, Melanie, 38, and Jennifer, 37, act as their parents’ chorus to describe what has become of Tim since that early morning when he and Heather Kornman, 27, were struck in the crosswalk at 20th and Cherokee streets.
It is, you come to understand, practice for what they will tell the DA.
Heather is OK and has left the hospital. Tim is starting to talk, to put together sentences, his family says, although much of it is disjointed and nonsensical.
His injuries were horrific. Doctors removed a portion of his skull for two weeks to accommodate brain swelling. He cannot walk or raise his right arm. He lies in bed wearing an adult diaper, Pamela says.
“He doesn’t understand when we leave why he cannot go home too,” Rodney says.
“It’s now like nurturing a baby,” Richard Albo says. “We have to teach him again how to walk, how to talk. And my son is a 26-year-old man.”
They worry about what penalties the man driving the car will face. Police arrested a 21-year-old Westminster man, Brandon Mondragon, in connection with the incident. He has been charged with two counts of careless driving resulting in injury.
The family worries about a plea bargain on charges that each now carry only a maximum of three years in prison. It is why they want to tell of Tim, whose life, they say, will never be the same.
The driver, they say, was so callous. He pulled his car over on Interstate 25, they later learned, to see how badly it was damaged after hitting Tim and Heather. And still he drove on.
“For us,” Rodney Albo says, “it would have made a tremendous difference in terms of punishment had he accepted responsibility, pulled over and went to my brother’s aid. Instead, he went on with his life like nothing happened.”
It is time to head over to the courthouse. Cynthia Albo, who has been fighting back tears all morning, asks if I would pass along her family’s thanks to everyone who heard their pleas for help and answered them. She cries.
They want to thank, in particular, the Arvada resident who spotted the damaged Chrysler parked at an odd angle on the street and called police.
“They never would have found it or the man driving it without that call,” Rodney Albo says. “We just want to say thank you.”
Bill Johnson writes Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at 303-954-2763 or wjohnson@denverpost.com.
