San Francisco Chronicle, CA
Oct 15 2005
A tragedy, but not an accident
C.W. Nevius
We are calling this an accident. But it wasn’t.
What happened last Sunday night was that Kevin McGuinness, who police
say was driving drunk again, blasted through intersections in Pacific
Heights, fled a hit and run, ran a stop sign and slammed into Yellow
Cab No. 701, according to police.
McGuinness’ four-door 2001 pickup crumpled the car, killing a
passenger, 21-year-old Tyler Brown, and the driver, 76-year-old Zareh
Soghikian.
Today, McGuinness is in jail, facing second-degree murder charges. He
has three previous DUI convictions. This could be his fourth. My
guess is he feels terrible about what happened.
At least now he does.
But what is hard to understand is how two such remarkable people were
put in that truck’s trajectory.
“This was two really good, young guys,” says Ruach Graffis, a member
of the executive board of the United Taxicab Workers of San
Francisco. “One was 21, and one was 76.”
Emily Wren, a Duke University student who met Brown there when they
were freshmen, says of McGuinness: “That man wasn’t just hurting one
person or his family. He was taking the life of someone who honestly
could have changed part of the world. And I know he would have.”
The funeral services are today. Brown’s friends and family will
gather back in Rhode Island, while Soghikian’s service will be in
Oakland at the Armenian Apostolic Church. At midnight last night, the
night cabbies were expected to gather at the crash site to share a
few stories about Soghikian. Some of them are remarkable.
His father was chief medical officer for the Egyptian Army, one of
his brothers is a doctor, and the other is an engineer/architect. The
6-foot-4-inch-tall cabbie ran a travel business and was also, his
sister-in-law Collen Soghikian says, “an excellent basketball
player” in his youth.
Meanwhile, on the East Coast, Wren may tell the volleyball story.
She and Brown were among five Duke students from “Engineers Without
Borders” who traveled to Sumatra last summer to help the village of
Lamnga rebuild its shrimp hatcheries after the devastation of the
Indonesian tsunami. (See their Web site at ewb.pratt.Duke.edu.) That
sounds like Brown, who at Duke lived at Wayne Manor, a “selective
living” house that emphasizes “community service.”
But it was also right in character for Brown to be among the
6-foot-tall Americans who ended up challenging a group of middle
school boys, none of whom was more than 5 feet tall, to a volleyball
match.
“And our team pretty much got its asses kicked,” Wren says.
Which Brown, of course, found hugely amusing.
“He had an incredible laugh,” says Jason Loughnane, who calls Brown
his best friend. “From anywhere in our apartment you could tell that
Tyler was watching something funny online because he would just laugh
so loudly by himself in his room.”
Brown ended up in Soghikian’s cab because he was checking out
graduate schools at Stanford and Cal. His double major, biomedical
and mechanical engineering, was ridiculously difficult, but Wren says
he had a plan. He wanted to “be a professor like his parents. But
before he did that, he was going to join the Peace Corps.”
“But more than that,” Loughnane said by e-mail, “he couldn’t wait to
be a dad. We had a lot of fun times chasing girls in college, but he
talked about how much he wanted a son and how I would be Uncle Jay to
his kids when we met up in 20 years to watch Duke basketball games
together.”
That sounds like something Soghikian would have appreciated.
“He was,” says Mark Gruberg, executive board member of the cabbies’
union, “gentlemanly and genial, graceful and gracious and deeply
caring.”
Mort Weinstein, a cabdriver who rode to work with Soghikian three
nights a week, says Soghikian charged him $5 for the ride to work
each night, “But it didn’t go in his pocket, ever.” It seems he met
an Armenian family one night in his cab who had lost everything in an
earthquake. He took their name and address and, Weinstein says,
“twice a year he would send the money to them.”
He could, however, be a little strict.
“Zareh holds the record,” Weinstein says. “One New Year’s Eve he
kicked seven passengers out of his cab for bad behavior. They didn’t
get the privilege of riding his cab.”
Tyler Brown got the privilege. And if they had to go, they could have
done worse than to be with each other. Two good guys, kindred souls,
whose paths somehow crossed a careening pickup one night in San
Francisco.
“I thank God that Mike (Brown’s friend Michael Giedgowd who was in
the cab) is going to be all right,” Loughnane says. “But I just keep
hoping that Ty will come home with him. It’s going to take a lifetime
to get through this.”
Officially we will call this a tragic accident. But when a guy like
McGuinness does this over and over, it isn’t an accident, it’s a
pattern.
But tragic? Yeah, I’d go along with that.