Tragedy on the Road Hits Home for Paramedic : Accident: Jake Schonert was en route to a fatality when he and his partners got the order to turn back.

STEVENSON RANCH — For an hour, the five paramedics sat in Fire Station 124, wondering why they had been dispatched to a traffic accident, then were suddenly ordered by radio to return to their station immediately.

“It was a ‘Twilight Zone’ sort of an hour,” Firefighter Stephen Neunhoffer said Thursday. “We didn’t know what was going on.”

They figured it out when they learned that a County Fire Department chaplain--whose job it is to notify firefighters of a death in the family--was headed to their station. Suddenly realizing that they must have been called off because the traffic accident had claimed a member of one of their families, the firefighters quickly telephoned their homes, desperately seeking to reassure themselves that their wives and children were safe.

While Neunhoffer and the others reached their wives, Firefighter Jake Schonert got only his answering machine.

Schonert was frantically dialing a local hospital when the chaplain came to him, delivering the news: His wife, Patricia, 35, had been killed in a crash with an allegedly drunk driver.

On Thursday, Schonert remained on bereavement leave while his co-workers at the station wondered how the six-year veteran would be able to care for the family’s four children, ages 3 to 14.

Fire Capt. Brian Hughes said the only solace he could find was that the department was able to reroute Schonert away from the scene.

“I think you can understand, if you brought a paramedic to a scene where his wife is . . . “ Hughes said, his voice shaking and trailing off. “I think [rerouting him] was a wise choice.”

Patricia Schonert, a Newhall resident, was driving north on San Fernando Road just past Circle J Ranch Road about 5:30 p.m. Tuesday when a pickup truck driven by Tyrone Stewart, 28, of Newhall, swerved from the southbound side of the road into her small car, Sheriff’s Deputy Mike Shapiro said.

Another auto then crashed into the rear of Schonert’s car, and she was pinned in the wreckage, he said.

An ambulance from another fire station reached the scene and radioed for help. At Station 124, Jake Schonert volunteered to go out on the call, because the firefighter who normally would have gone was cooking his dinner, Hughes said.

But a paramedic at the scene recognized Patricia Schonert and warned his captain that her husband was en route. The captain immediately called off Schonert’s ambulance, and the paramedics returned to Station 124 as a squad from another station replaced them.

Stewart remained in critical condition Thursday evening at Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital. Preliminary tests showed that Stewart, who has two prior drunk-driving convictions, was intoxicated at the time of the crash, Sheriff’s Sgt. Stephen Mulcahy said.

Should he recover, Stewart will be charged at least with vehicular manslaughter, and possibly with second-degree murder, Mulcahy said.

The driver of the third vehicle was treated for minor injuries and released.

Jake and Patricia Schonert met on the job, when he was a paramedic for a company in the Antelope Valley and Patricia was a sheriff’s deputy assigned to Lancaster, Neunhoffer said. She left the Sheriff’s Department in 1993 to care for their children because Schonert’s job with the Fire Department requires him to work 24-hour shifts.

“She was a very sensitive, caring mother who loved her career, but loved her marriage more,” Neunhoffer said.

Jake Schonert’s co-workers at Station 124 said Thursday they would accept donations to a trust fund they established for his family.

“Firefighters are a family,” Hughes said. “We sleep, eat, work together, and in this case, we’ve been crying together.”