Nine Lives?

The belief that cats have nine lives is a widespread folk saying that originated in ancient times. It’s not a literal fact, but rather a way to describe cats’ resilience and ability to survive seemingly impossible situations. Well, the folks at the Marco YMCA and collectors of the popular Key Marco Cat are thankful that 84-year-old Peter Sottong is resilient. Sottong, who has created over 2,200 Key Marco Cat replicas, has recently recovered from a life-threatening truck accident to return to his YMCA family and to his business of creating Calusa replicas, including the famous cat.

It’s impossible to say whether the nine lives of the Key Marco Cat played a role in saving Sottong's life after he was run over and pinned by a truck just over a year ago. But what’s not open for the debate is how happy everyone is to see the amiable Sottong back in his part-time job of 20 years at the Y. His boss, YMCA President and CEO Cindy Love-Abounader, couldn’t be more delighted to see Sottong back.

“The first thing that comes to my mind when I think of Pete,” Love said, "is he's pretty witty, and he really just kind of keeps the whole group grounded with his kindness. Everybody's asking him to do things all the time. Can you move these boxes? The water fountain doesn't work, or the ice machines. Something's wrong with the tennis courts or whatever. And he does everything with grace and a smile on his face. He throws out a few jokes that make you laugh. He's just fantastic to be around at all times. It really speaks to the culture that he has helped create here at the Y. That caring. The members love him. The staff loves him. He’s just a popular person.”

The popular Sottong is also famous for his accurate replicas of the Key Marco Cat. He and his wife Melida run a home business creating replicas of the cat and other Calusa relics and ceremonial masks, a total of 30 in all. His accident put a hold on that activity, too.

“A year ago,” Sottong said, "I had my pickup truck, and we had a nice trailer. The trailer was parked over in the soccer field adjacent to the airnasium. I was almost ready to go home. And they said, ‘Do you have time to go pick up a donation?' So, I said, ‘Sure, I'll go pick up the donations.' So, I went over there and hooked up the trailer, and I was trying to hook it up, and I almost had it right, but I needed to go check the hitch and make sure it was lined up. And I thought I put it in park to get out. But no, it was in reverse. So, I got out of it, and I'm looking at it, and the thing is coming at me. And so I opened the door wider and stuck my foot in to try to put the brake on. But because the truck was moving, it knocked me over. I was laying on the ground, and my foot got caught under the dashboard, and I was doing this Olympic split under the truck. The truck ran up my leg and over my pelvis. I was hollering and yelling for people.”

The only thing that saved Sottong from further peril was the trailer jackknifing into the fence behind him and a caring neighbor.

"I think the fence and the trailer are what stopped the truck from going back any further,” he said, "because it was very close to the fence to start with. And if I had done it right and straight, everything would have been hunky dory. But it hit it wrong. I was laying there for a while."

Initially, there was no one around to help Sottong.

“I'm laying down,” Sottong said, "the sun is going down. And I was hollering. Eventually, I reached into my pocket and pulled out my phone, and I was trying to dial 911. All of a sudden, I'm looking up and there's this person there, and I said, ‘Oh, thank God.' Then I handed him the phone and I said, ‘Talk to 911.' And he did, and I said, ‘Now please move this truck off of me.' He said, ‘No, I'm not going to move this truck because I'll just drive over your legs again. I'm not going to do that.’

“So I'm laying there,” Sottong said, "and then pretty soon the firemen came and they jacked the darn thing up and then they took me away."

Sottong said he wasn’t in a lot of pain at the time.

"I don't really remember too much about it,” he said, "I might have been in shock. I think I was talking and stuff. I don't think it was excruciating, but it wasn't too comfortable."

“They told me that they couldn't help him,” said Melida Sottong, "and that he was going to go up to the trauma center in Fort Myers. So that's where he ended up. And he was in ICU for a month. His bladder was filleted, completely open, and his pelvis was crushed. They had to rebuild his whole pelvis."

"I was up there for a good long time,” Sottong recalls. "And then we came home and we did rehab and all that kind of stuff.”

When Sottong started getting back on his feet, he recalled the heroic act that saved him that day.

"I was home and we said, you know, we've got to try to find these people that helped us out. And Mel is pretty good on the computer and so forth. And we called the fire department and they said, ‘Yeah, it was somebody by the name of Shane that talked to us on the 911 call.' It turns out the house on the corner in back of the Y airnasium is an older couple and they have a son named Shane. So we ended up getting in touch with them and we went out to meet him. He lives out in Golden Gate. He's a kind of a contractor kind of a guy. He told us that he had gone to his folks' house to do some work that day. And he had a big old golden retriever. He said it's a very calm dog. And that when he was working, the dog started barking and he said, 'I couldn't get the dog to stop barking.' He said the dog was very agitated. He said this is not like this dog. So sure enough, he opens the door and boom, the dog takes off like a shot. Went right to me. He found me. We met him and I wanted to give him something, to tell him thank you so much. He has a nice family out there. So it was a nice meeting. I took a picture with him and stuff like that. It was great. And then I went down and we bought the fireman $100 worth of donuts."

He said Love-Abounader was a Godsend.

"Cindy was great,” he said. “We had a discussion over the phone. I said, 'I think I can come back to work.' We had a meeting and boom. She said, I was working three days before, so that's what I'm doing again, and it seems to be working out real good."

Sottong said his part-time gig with the Y is good for him.

“It's good you know,” he said, smiling. "And I think it's good because it makes you get out of bed in the morning, even though you don't feel like it too much. Get going. And once you're going, it's much better than just sitting around. That's for sure.”

Love-Abounader said Sottong’s been missed at the Y.

“He was not at work for several months,” Love said, "and it was like a gaping hole in our team. We were happy that he could come back and recover from that."

After a month back on the job, Sottong is building back his strength.

“Now at the end of the day,” he said, "when I'm done, after I punch out, I go and I exercise a little bit, try to build my strength back up a little bit.”

Sottong has a strong rehabilitation ally on the Y staff in the person of Manny Oroqui.

“He was having some issues with therapy,” Oroqui recalls. "I think they gave him therapy for about 15 days or so, and then all of a sudden, they cut him off. After that, I told him that I would go out and see him every day. So, what I did was I talked to one of the therapists, and she actually came over and showed me exactly everything that they would do. So, then we took it from there. And I don't know for how long, but it seems like it was every day we were working out.”

Sottong said Manny kept on top of him to work hard in his recovery.

"Oh, yeah,” Oroqui recalls, "I would call him up almost every day to make sure that he did all the exercises he had to do. There's a little clubhouse where he lives, and a little gym that we used to go to almost every day. I’d just have him sit on the bike, ride the bike, and do a couple of exercises that we did together. He got motivated for that. He was a little down, as you can imagine. He's 84 years old. And it was a serious, serious injury. And those injuries are life changing. Not too many people at that age recover from those injuries. And thank God he did. But he put his foot forward and he made sure that he exercised and took care of himself. But I'm definitely glad to have him back. What a lucky guy. Everybody around here loves him. We were heartbroken when that happened, we couldn't wait to get him back. He is a special guy."

Oroqui’s hand in Sottong’s recovery was not lost on Love-Abounader.

"Manny went up and worked with him with PT when he didn't have scheduled PT,” Love said. “And just kept him moving. And for his age and for that accident and what happened with his hips and his bladder and all that, that was really important. And then to have somebody willing to go up voluntarily, just be with you and do those activities with you, it was just fantastic. I didn't even know he was doing it for a long time because they just did it, you know, they just humbly do what they feel like they should. And having (his wife) Mara and Manny as a team here is fantastic."

"I tease him a lot,” Sottong says of Oroqui. “When we were going through our recovery here, we had the hospital bed in the living room and the whole nine yards. They didn't get the physical therapy started for a couple of months. So, he showed up at my front door and took me down to the workout center here in the development. He'd tell me what to do, what not to do. He was great. He didn't have to spend the time doing that. He just did it out of the goodness of his heart. Because that's the kind of person he is. What a nice man."

Part 2: “Healed.” Sottong returns to his artistic reproductions of Marco's historical Calusa artifacts.