19-year Miami fire-rescue veteran died in a car accident two blocks from his home
By Matthew I. Pinzur, Adam H. Beasley and Nicholas Spangler
The Miami Herald
MIAMI, Fla. — Robert Garcia’s shift ended at 7:30 a.m. Friday. It had been a quiet week with no real action since Monday, when he directed resuscitation efforts at a nearby nursing home.
The talk among B-shift firefighters was of a training run to the Orange Bowl later that day and of a ski trip to Colorado in February.
“See you next day,” Garcia told his colleagues, as he always did, and drove away in his gray Nissan pickup truck.
But at 2:15 Saturday morning, the emergency call came over the radio; Rescue 14 arrived within six minutes, followed closely by other units.
The scene: Garcia’s truck and a red Honda, both crumpled, near the intersection of Southwest 16th Street and 24th Avenue.
Friends and fellow firefighters soon would learn their fun-loving 40-year-old colleague had died in a crash.
Garcia, a 19-year veteran of Miami fire-rescue, had been out celebrating a friend’s promotion to the fire department’s captains list.
According to a fire department spokesman, he was driving west on Southwest 16th Street at approximately 2 a.m. when two teenage girls in a red Honda Civic blew a stop sign on SW 24th Avenue and slammed into his pickup.
Authorities said the girls -- who were not identified because they are under 18 — were critically injured, but their condition was unknown late Saturday. Miami Police spokesman Willie Moreno said the crash remains under investigation.
By 4 a.m., the phones among Garcia’s friends were ringing back and forth.
One of the first calls was the one Erika Franco made to Jackson Deglace. Both are B-shift firefighters who’d worked closely with Garcia over the years.
“She was crying,” Deglace remembered. “She was upset. I was in disbelief. I could not believe -- I just saw him that day, and here I am -- just like that.”
By six in the morning, television news had picked up the story. Firefighter Nick Stein saw it before he came in for his shift.
“I recognized his truck,” he said. “And when they said it was a captain, I thought it was him.”
By Saturday afternoon, the intersection had become a memorial: more than a dozen roses peeked out of a black fireman’s boot, and many more flowers had been stuffed into the police tape wrapping a telephone pole.
“He was just well thought of, super intelligent and coming up,” said Miami Fire Chief William Bryson, who knew Garcia well.
“He made captain a couple of years ago and you fully expected he would go on up the ranks to chief.”
Garcia, who was single, had a large circle of friends and a thirst for thrill.
“He did more living in those 40 years than I’ll probably do in 80,” said Steve Munoz, whose promotion firefighters had celebrated Friday night.
Garcia had dropped him off at his car in Coconut Grove shortly before the crash.
Longtime friend Rosy Pastrana remembers Garcia giving her sons rides in his red Dodge Viper sports car. He also had a Yamaha motorcycle registered in his name, public records show.
“He was such a party animal, such a fun guy,” said Pastrana, who hung out with Garcia in a big group of friends, where he was known as “Little Robert.”
He had flown little planes for years, Munoz said, and was recently hooked on ultralights.
He even bought one, a Quicksilver Sprint — one engine, two seats.
“He had this elated sense of being alive, and he said being in the air gave him the opportunity to view things from a different perspective,” said Tony Anderson, owner of Ultralight Adventures on Key Biscayne, where Garcia took lessons.
“He’d say flying just became a need, a need to get out there to experience this type of freedom.”
But thrills were just that, his friends said, and never overshadowed his kind and generous spirit.
He had taken care of his father, Bernardo Garcia, until his death last year, and was always talking with friends about his siblings.
“He was such a good man, a good person, good-hearted,” Pastrana said.
On Saturday afternoon, Garcia’s helmet and bunker gear were still stuffed in his locker in the station garage.
The fire station flag was flying at half-mast.
Miami Herald staff writers Jennifer Lebovich and Lisa Arthur contributed to this report.
Copyright 2007 The Miami Herald
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News