It was a night I will never forget. Friday, December 5, 2014. Our overnight anchor Tom Clay called to inform me that one of our news department vehicles had been involved in a severe wreck in Wise Co. I knew that there was only one reporter driving a news car that night, so I called him repeatedly and texted him. I got no reply.
Since that night our news department has been without an important member of the team. Veteran news reporter/anchor Alan Scaia was hurt badly in that wreck. When I tracked down that he had been flown by helicopter ambulance to JPS in Ft. Worth, there were questions about whether he would survive. He did.
Later as I got to go see him over the days that turned into weeks and months, there were times when the question seemed to change – in my mind – from whether he would survive, to whether he would ever regain his mental acuity. He had suffered a brain injury in the wreck, you see, and the person I saw in that hospital room was not the person I knew as Alan Scaia.
The doctors insisted that Alan had a very good chance at recovery. They said that the horrible things I and other visitors saw were normal with a brain injury. It turns out they were right.
More than four months after his wreck, Alan is returning to work. The cognitive therapists say his brain is again good to go. I remember the day I visited him about a month ago when he came back into the room from therapy and I finally could see that the real Alan was back. He talked about how the lights finally turned back on upstairs. It was a great day.
So now he comes back to the job. And he comes back in typical Scaia style. It seems that because of his hip injury Alan is forced to use a cane. So of course he gets one that is modeled after the one used by the main character in the TV show House. He even mentioned that after another expected surgery down the road he might keep the cane for a prop and conversation starter.
This was one of those close calls that reminds you how close we all are to being here one minute and gone the next. Alan survived. We’re fortunate for that. It has been the hardest episode of my career as a news manager and one I never want to repeat.
Welcome back, Alan. We didn’t know how much we missed you until you were gone.
That’s what I’m thinking.
Rick Hadley
