It was June 7, 1995. Randy and Patti Crookshank were on a wild ride.
In morning traffic on I-5, they were in such a rush to get to Seattle that Randy Crookshank drove on the left shoulder. He zipped past carpool-lane commuters.
“People were angry. They didn’t recognize that maybe we ha
d an issue,” the Snohomish man said Monday.
Then came a sound most drivers dread.
“Woop, woop, woop — thank God, it was a policeman, a motorcycle cop,” Randy Crookshank said.
He didn’t even stop. Slowing way down, Crookshank rolled down a window as the motorcycle pulled up by the car’s passenger side. He and his wife clearly remember the Seattle police officer saying, “Hi folks. What’s going on?”
Patti Crookshank was about to give birth to the couple’s third child.
Officer John Abraham, still on motorcycle duty with the Seattle Police Department, on Monday shared his memories of that morning. Normally, he said, he would help stabilize someone with a medical emergency and wait for an ambulance. Because he spotted the Crookshanks near N. 175th Street in the Shoreline area, what was then Stevens Hospital — now Swedish in Edmonds — was also a possibility.
Those weren’t good options for Patti Crookshank.
The couple’s second child was born almost two months prematurely. Nathaniel Crookshank, now 19, spent his first 52 days at Seattle’s Swedish Medical Center, which has a Level III neonatal intensive care unit.
That day they were racing down the freeway, labor again had started early, by a couple weeks. There was also the risk of a breech birth. Randy Crookshank recalled Monday that his wife made it plain to the officer that “we’re going to Swedish.”
On Saturday, Abraham, 65, was joined by four members of the Crookshank family for a reunion lunch at Ivar’s Acres of Clams in Seattle. The officer spent much of their meal chatting with 16-year-old Annie Rose Crookshank, the girl born about 20 minutes after her mother arrived at Swedish Medical Center on June 7, 1995.
“It’s a story I’ve heard many times,” the teen said Monday. “Meeting him was an amazing experience. He’s such a great guy.”
A sophomore at Snohomish High School and a cheerleader, Annie Rose said her parents have often told her about the officer who rode his motorcycle in front of the couple’s car to clear the way to the hospital. “When they got to the hospital and mom and dad were getting in the elevator, he handed my dad a business card,” Annie Rose said.
When she was a few months old, the Crookshanks took their new baby and two young sons to Seattle. The family took a police station tour and a picture was taken of baby Annie Rose in Abraham’s arms.
The couple now have a fourth child, 14-year-old Maddie, who joined her parents and older sister at Saturday’s lunch. Sons Nathaniel and 20-year-old Nick Crookshank missed Saturday’s get-together.
A Seattle Police Department spokesman, Det. Mark Jamieson, said Tuesday that normal policy prohibits police escorts, but that Abraham quickly recognized a severe situation.
“Typically if we were flagged down when a woman was about to give birth, nine out of 10 times we would notify the fire department,” Jamieson said. “In this case, it was a high risk pregnancy and rush hour. There were lots of extenuating circumstances.” He said Abraham asked permission to go beyond department policy to help.
An online blotter entry about Saturday’s lunch was posted on the department’s website, with the headline: “It’s a girl! 16 years later…”
Abraham, who worked for the Clallam County Sheriff’s Department in Forks before his 25 years in Seattle, said he once helped with a birth in a car on the Olympic Peninsula years ago.
“Saturday was pretty cool,” Patti Crookshank said. “He had flowers for us, and gave her (Annie Rose) a big hug.”
To this day, Patti Crookshank remembers her relief when that motorcycle pulled up.
“He was really calm, really cool,” she said. “Everything was going to be OK.”
Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460, muhlstein@heraldnet.com.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
