For now, my rule is not to accept an invitation from a person I haven't done business with or who, logic suggests, I am highly unlikely to ever do business with in the future. I then saw a photo pop up on my screen of 'People You May Know", and it brought back a flood of positive memories I had at my very first corporate job after grad school. It got me thinking about some of the people at that company, and what had become of them. I typed the letters G, I, L....and upon fully spelling his first and last name learned he was no longer a salesman but now a systems engineer at Microsoft. Then I thought of another colleague, Charles Fedorko. He was a satellite network manager from the east coast who had a certain charm and sparkle about him. He ended up courting and marrying a woman at the company who was a former broadcast TV journalist in Los Angeles who had shifted careers to come to Hughes Communications. I wondered what had become of Charlie. I typed out C-H-A-R-L-I-E-F-E-D-O-R-K-O. A couple of profiles came up, but none of them were the Charlie Fedorko I knew. The ones that came up were far too young in age. So I typed C-H-A-R-L-E-S-F-E-D-O-R-K-O. Again, a couple of profiles came up, but they weren't the Charles Fedorko I had worked with in El Segundo. I opened up another browser on my laptop and went to trusted Google to type in 'Charles Fedorko, Los Angeles'. Up popped a link to an L.A. Times article written on July 21, 1994.
The headline read: 'Golden State Freeway Tragedies Investigated : Truck: Why pipes fell off the trailer still isn't known. Victim was from Santa Clarita area.'
Oh, no, I thought. My god, no.
Then the next two paragraphs verified what I didn't want to be true.
"Charles Fedorko left work a little early Tuesday afternoon to get home to his teen-age son, who he had been raising on his own for the last two years. Through no fault of his own, Fedorko's anxiousness to get home cost him his life. Fedorko, 46, was traveling north on the Golden State Freeway near its intersection with the Foothill and Antelope Valley freeways at about 4:15 p.m. At the exact moment he drove under an entrance ramp, a load of 30-foot iron pipes, each weighing about a ton, fell from a big-rig truck on the ramp, according to police."
I continued to read about what happened that day, but also about Charlie's life.
Fedorko lived in the Stevenson Ranch area with his 14-year-old son, David. He was vice president and general manager for the western region of Keystone Communications, a Salt Lake City-based company providing satellite uplinks for television broadcasters, with an L.A. office on Sunset Boulevard. Fedorko had formerly been a radio broadcaster, according to a statement released by Keystone, before moving on to television positions. He had worked as a satellite system engineer for NBC and a satellite operations manager for Hughes Communications.
"He was a very elegant, successful man," said Priscilla Wright, who used to baby-sit David Fedorko while his father was traveling for business.
Fedorko loved airplanes, according to friends, and he collected gauges and other aviation equipment.
"The officer at the scene said he at first thought he was a pilot because of all the equipment in his car," said Rob Schwenker, a classmate of Fedorko's son.
I remember Charlie because he was so versatile and friendly. He had a great sense of humor, was outgoing. Always issuing a hello followed by an arm around your shoulder.
He courted a former broadcast TV journalist who had tired of that business and had joined Hughes Communications. Charlie was smitten, and charmed her quickly, and they were soon after married.
Charlie had said he thought this time, he'd get marriage right. He had been married before, had a couple of kids.
According to the article, Charlie was raising his 14-year-old son David alone for two years. At the end of the article, the reporter wrote that David's mother would be coming from Florda to see her son.
Why did the marriage dissolve?
What has happened to Charlie's son since that dreaded day in 1994?
And what about the man, Harold Haines, of Aumsville, Ore., who, back in 1994, was 56 years old, driving the truck that carried those lethal pipes? Did the CHP end up charging him or determining it was an accident that could not be prevented?
I started my early morning logging in to LinkedIn to get focused on business-related matters, only to allow my non-business-related curiosity steer me to an entirely different place.
LinkedIn isn't just a tool for business networking. For those of us with a curiosity that won't quit, LinkedIn can help you re-discover people you once worked with...and a whole lot more.
That's a shock. There have been one or two times that I have googled people only to find out that they have passed away. It's always a shock, but your story kind of surpasses most...
ReplyDelete