A Seattle bartender is on a long road to recovery after a late night ride home from work turned into a serious motorcycle crash last month, and his community has since rallied around him with a fundraiser to help him heal. Danny Patat, who works at the Five Point Cafe, was left with painful injuries after a driver hit him, but through it all he says he counts himself lucky. Despite everything he went through, Patat described himself as the luckiest guy ever, grateful simply to be alive and back on the mend.
The crash happened on June 27th, when Patat was riding his motorcycle home from his shift at the Five Point Cafe. He says a distracted driver pulled in front of him at the intersection of 15th and Gilman, giving him no time to react. He recalled putting his hands on the hood of the car and then his face hitting it as well, hard enough that there was blood everywhere before he was thrown from the bike and flipped over onto the road.
The force of the collision sent Patat to the hospital with significant injuries. He described how his leg bent so far in the crash that it very nearly snapped the bone, pulling the muscle almost all the way out along the length of his leg. He was rushed for treatment in the immediate aftermath, and what had started as an ordinary ride home from work quickly became a frightening fight to recover from the damage his body had taken.
Patat is now going through both physical and occupational therapy as he works his way back onto his feet. Getting around on crutches and spending much of his time at home, he has tried to keep his spirits up through the slow process, even joking that the crutches are his new motorcycle. The recovery is expected to take time, and for now the simple tasks of daily life have become part of the long road back to health.
To help him through that recovery, the Five Point Cafe started a fundraiser on his behalf. Patat, who says he is about five years sober and has spent roughly six years working at the cafe, said he has been deeply moved by the wave of support. He described how people he did not even know showed up for him during the hardest stretch, a response that meant a great deal to someone who once felt he had no one in his corner.
For Patat, the outpouring of help has underscored just how far his life has come. He spoke about the job he found coming out of rehab and the years he has since put in at the Five Point, saying his life had blossomed into something beautiful. The community that gathered around him after the crash, he said, showed him a network of people he had built without even realizing it, turning a painful ordeal into a reminder of how much support he now has.
Out of his own experience, Patat is now urging anyone who rides a motorcycle to always wear the proper protective gear, especially a full face helmet. He credits that helmet with saving his life in the crash, saying that without it he would probably be dead, or at the very least would have suffered a broken nose, a broken jaw and lost teeth. As difficult as the recovery has been, he kept returning to the same simple message, that he is happy to be alive.