Lawyer has a story to relate to his clients

A year after a drunk driver put him into a coma, Corona del Mar criminal defense lawyer Thomas Kroopf is walking, driving a car and speaking with perfect lucidity. It may have slowed him down, but 53-year-old Kroopf is back to taking clients — even a couple of DUI defendants.

He still avoids complex cases that require a trial, but he said at least he has a business again. Far from making it hard to face alleged drunk drivers, Kroopf said it makes him better at representing them. He tells the story to every one.

“The accident puts me in a position now where I have something to discuss with them,” he said. “I tell them, ‘Consider yourself lucky; if you had an accident, you could have seriously injured someone like me.’ ”

A year ago Saturday, Kroopf was stopped on the side of the road on Newport Coast Drive to help his son Bradley, 22, who was having problems with his BMW. A Hummer driven by a drunk driver smashed into his parked Mercedes, which then knocked Kroopf into the air and over a chain link fence. Kroopf broke numerous bones on his right side and suffered brain damage that sent him into a three-week coma.

“That’s what I’ve been told, anyway,” Kroopf said. He doesn’t remember the incident, or anything the week before it. His memory picks up in late February, though his wife Cathy said he was awake earlier in the month. Even now he has short-term memory problems.

The driver was convicted this year of driving under the influence and sentenced to two years in prison. Kroopf is suing the man as well as the car’s owner and the man’s employer.

It’s strange to think something like that happened to him, Kroopf said, and he remembers that it took weeks to sink in after he awoke.

“I’d like to go back just to see what I was thinking the day that happened,” he said.

It took a long time to get back to functionality.

“My neurologist told me to pretty much write off 2006,” he said. “Forget that year, and ease back into it slowly.”

Easing back in involved lots of physical therapy, which got him out of a wheelchair and walking again, though he still experiences pain in his right leg. It involved speech therapy, playing word games and solving puzzles. And on Jan. 2 it involved Kroopf’s first driving test in 38 years.

“There’s an irony there,” he said. “Part of my practice is to represent people who have medical license suspensions.”

Cathy Kroopf was amazed by the help her family received when people in the community heard about the accident. Her husband’s fellow lawyers took on his ongoing cases and billed them to him. Religious groups of all denominations started bringing the family food and aid. Someone loaned them a car for months when both their vehicles were out of commission. The attorney who held his office lease didn’t ask for money for nine months.

At the hospital, “we took over conference rooms,” she said. “People were catering meals for 30 and 40 people [visiting Tom]. It was amazing.”

The Kroopf family is so grateful to all those who helped that they had a kind of celebration Saturday, a year after the accident.

“Almost in a joking way, I started saying, ‘It’s my anniversary Saturday,’ ” Tom Kroopf said. “I figured we should get together the people that have been there for us.”

Kroopf still can’t raise his right arm over his head, and maybe never will, he said. He may need knee surgery to stop the pain that comes with walking. And though he plans to start a yoga class, he still can’t play tennis, a sport he loves deeply. But he knows it could have been far worse.

“I was so unlucky to be in this,” he said. “But I was so incredibly lucky to make it. I think I’m going to have a pretty good life.”