This is the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
It's the story of how alcohol can make a loving, compassionate person who wouldn't intentionally hurt anyone alter the lives of three cyclists out on a Sunday afternoon ride.This is the story of Steven Ray Hudgens.
Hudgens is expected to be sentenced Monday morning in 2nd District Court for driving drunk and hitting three cyclists on U.S. 89 in May.
The accident left Brian Carlson without his left leg; Brookanne Mickelson with a torn knee ligament, a shattered pelvis and fractured vertebrae; and Maikel Wise with a collapsed lung.
Hudgens had nine prior DUI arrests and a blood alcohol level more than twice the legal limit the day he got into his pickup truck and drove down the highway on an expired license.
During his apology to the cyclists at a hearing in November, Hudgens said he never set out that day to hurt anyone.
Hudgens' case has received extraordinary amounts of media coverage -- newspapers and television stations have followed the court proceedings and the courageous recovery of the three cyclists at every turn. Cartoons have been drawn portraying Hudgens as a lawless monster, and groups such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving have used Hudgens' case as an example of all that is wrong with Utah's drunken driving laws.
Today we go back, several decades ago, long before anyone could foresee this life-altering incident for both Hudgens and the three cyclists. The story begins on a family farm in North Ogden.
The middle of five children, Hudgens was born into a working class family on Feb. 20, 1951. Times were hard. Hudgens' father worked nights as a brakeman for the railroad. By the time Hudgens' younger brother and sister came into the family, all five kids slept in one bedroom of the family's two-bedroom house on their grandfather's farm.
The Hudgenses worked hard and enjoyed the outdoors -- they milked cows, rode horses, hunted and fished. The fields and trees around the farm were their jungle gym.
Hudgens' mother describes her son as a quiet, contemplative child who loved the outdoors. Hudgens spent a lot of time riding horses and eventually competed on the Weber State rodeo club while earning his engineering and automotive mechanics degrees. He's spent countless hours teaching his nieces, nephews and other children how to ride and care for horses.
But somewhere between the rodeos, riding lessons and two failed marriages, Hudgens found another love -- alcohol.
How or why it happened is hard to say. No one in Hudgens' immediate family has a drinking problem, and no one could recall a history of alcoholism in the family.
Some family members point to an accident when Hudgens was 6 years old that left him with a glass eye. Hudgens and his older brother, Barry, were playing with a bow and arrow one day. Barry had the arrow notched in the bow when it slipped out of his fingers. There was just enough tension on the string that the bow released and hit Hudgens in his left eye. A doctor determined Hudgens' eye could not be salvaged and gave him the glass eye.
Kids being kids, Hudgens was ridiculed during his school years.
"Through school it was cruel, absolutely cruel," said Hudgens' older sister, Chris Midget. "Even in high school they were just rude, and I think that hurt Steve very deeply. I think to this day that's something he's never, ever dealt with."
That torment also pushed Hudgens professionally. Before he was put in jail for this last DUI, Hudgens worked as a team leader for L-3 Communications, an electronics manufacturing company in Salt Lake City that makes communications systems for the military. One co-worker described Hudgens as a good decision-maker who could always get to the bottom of a problem. That same co-worker said Hudgens' alcohol problem never affected his job performance.
But in the quiet hours, away from bosses, family and friends, those childhood memories still haunted Hudgens. He turned to the bottle during his teenage years and has struggled to put it down ever since.
"He doesn't do it for social reasons," Midget said. "He's not a party drinker. I think it's emotional -- it takes away a lot of the pain that he has."
"I just think Steve was lonely in his life," said Hudgens' youngest sister, Janna Sadler. "He spent a lot of time alone. We always called him our hermit. He was just one that you never saw much of.
"We knew when he was drinking more, because we saw him less."
The month before Hudgens' accident, Sadler tried in vain to meet her brother several times for lunch. It wasn't until two days after the accident that Hudgens called Sadler, who lives in West Jordan and has Hudgens' power of attorney, to tell the family what had happened.
"He just said, 'I hit three cyclists, and they're hurt bad,' " Sadler said. "He said, 'I remember seeing them (the cyclists), but it wasn't until the (truck's) mirror hit the window that I noticed what was happening. I didn't realize I'd clipped the cyclists.'
"He just cried for days," Sadler added.
Midget learned of the accident from the news.
"My daughter called me and said, 'Turn the news on,' " Midget said. "My heart just sank, and I just cried. . . . We knew sometime, something was going to happen. I can only be thankful that someone hadn't died."
Hudgens' parents and siblings haven't tried to minimize what has happened. They say they're sorry for the three cyclists and realize what Hudgens did was a terrible thing.
"We were as mad as anybody else," said Hudgens' brother-in-law, Rod Sadler. "We still don't understand what he did. We care about him as a person but we don't condone it.
"We didn't really know he was out drinking and driving again," he added, "and even if we could have (known), there's nothing we could have done."
Changing, family members say, is up to Hudgens.
During the roughly seven months he has spent in jail since a judge increased his bail in late May, family members say Hudgens has slowly come to terms with what he did. An avid reader, Hudgens has gone through just about every book in the Davis County Jail's library.
"Steve is a very fun, fun person," Midget said. "He is very quick-witted. . . . He is very fun to be around."
At the request of jail officials Hudgens even shared his story with a 25-year-old man who was recently arrested for his sixth DUI in two years.
"Steve talked to the kid and said, 'This is where you're headed,' " Janna Sadler said.
Counseling others against driving drunk is exactly what Carlson, who remained unconscious for almost a month after the accident, is hoping for.
"If he's making efforts to try to help other people, that's great," Carlson said. "I guess the proof will be in his actions. He's demonstrated that things that have happened in the past haven't really changed him a whole lot -- that's where the skepticism lies."
Carlson and the other five cyclists he was riding with will all have the opportunity to speak at Monday's sentencing.
"There's really nothing he can do for me at this point," Carlson said. "The best thing he can do is ensure he's not in the position to do that to anyone else and also be in a position to help others not to do what he did -- that would absolutely be the best outcome that we can get."
Where Hudgens goes now is up to him, family members say. They believe he should be incarcerated for a time, but even more important, get the proper treatment for his alcohol addiction.
"We've known from the beginning that he would serve time," Janna Sadler said. "I just want to see him get a fair shake.
"I think this has been a real awakening for him," she added. "He's never been in an accident or hurt anybody before. . . . I think he's seen now what (driving drunk) will do."