Jason Allen uses the word "miracle" often when talking about the night a gunman tried to kill him.

For one thing, it almost wasn't Allen who got shot. The Anchorage police officer was training a recruit, who would have been the one in the driver's seat in Fairview in the early morning hours of Jan. 9. By chance, the recruit had been called in for duty with the National Guard.

"Statistically, there are golden angels around him now," Allen, 47, said in a recent interview at his home. "You could say lightning doesn't strike twice."

For another thing, Allen was hit a half-dozen times in the arms and torso and, though he may never fully recover, he lived to talk about it.

Allen, an 8 1/2-year APD veteran who normally worked the night shift in Spenard, was on Medfra Street responding to a family dispute about 2 a.m. that day. He'd gone to his patrol car to grab a camera to photograph the victim when a vehicle pulled up beside his and opened fire, he said.

He agreed to sit down for an interview to talk about the shooting's aftermath. He's now up and moving around, appearing in good health but for the brace on his left arm.

He remains under orders not to discuss exactly what happened during the shooting.

Police have said it was a drive-by they believe was motivated by the fact that Allen is a police officer. Some of the rounds were stopped by the bulletproof vest Allen was wearing.

"There's no doubt that vest saved my life," Allen said. "That and some bad marksmanship at point-blank range."

Police spokesman Lt. Dave Parker said a task force that was assembled with members of the FBI, Alaska State Troopers and other police agencies is no longer active, but detectives, including those from the APD homicide unit, are continuing their investigation. Tips continue to come in and investigators continue to follow up on them, Parker said.

But no arrests have been made and police have not released information on any suspects.

'MY ARM WAS HANGING THERE'

After he was shot, Allen said, he got on the radio, calling for help and giving officers what information he could. In intense pain, he never blacked out, he said, and he kept thinking he couldn't give up.

"I had been shot and my arm was hanging there. I had been hit multiple times," he said. "It was a lot of pain and I couldn't breathe very well. I had a decision to make: I could get caught up in that and get excited about the condition of my body, or I could stay in the situation."

One bullet grazed his back and another grazed his right arm, he said. Two bullets cut through his torso, piercing his intestines, stomach, diaphragm and liver and collapsing a lung, he said.

"Talk about a miracle," Allen said. "That's the kind of thing that people die over, and within a week I felt like if that's all I had going on, I'd have been ready to go back to work."

The lingering problem is with his left arm, which was hit twice, Allen said. One of the bullets "disintegrated" his humerus bone in the upper arm and the other hit his ulna in the forearm. The complications began not long after the shooting.

Detective Brett Sarber, a friend of Allen's, said he'd been to visit Allen and found he wasn't in good spirits. The swelling in his arm wasn't going down and Allen was in a lot of pain. It was about a week after the shooting and Sarber was thinking something wasn't right, that Allen needed a second opinion.

Sarber attends ChangePoint church and, a few years ago, befriended a man who also goes there. The man happens to be an Air Force doctor, an orthopedic specialist who specializes in dealing with upper extremities. He has done three tours in Iraq and is keenly familiar with bullet and fragmentation injuries.

Sarber said he doesn't know any other doctors but he had this one's home number. He called and his friend was home. The doctor, who was certified to practice off base, said he had time to look at Allen.

HEROIC COINCIDENCES

"I did make a phone call and I did have these friends," Sarber said, "but the hero in this thing is the series of coincidences that even non-Christian people can hardly look at and say, 'God is not involved in that.' It's impossible. It's like lining up the stars and the moon."

The doctor went to see Allen and recognized that he was suffering from compartment syndrome, in which swelling compresses nerves, blood vessels and muscle, eventually leading to tissue death.

The doctor told Allen he was within a few hours of losing all the function in his arm, which because of the swelling was "Arnold Schwarzenegger sized," Allen said.

"He showed up at the hospital, introduced himself, said he was a friend of my friend and I said, 'Glad to meet you.' And he says, 'You need surgery,' " Allen said. "Nobody at the hospital knew him and I just met the guy. The next thing you know, they're bringing in a gurney. 'Now, what's your name again?' He threw me on the table (and) within a half hour of meeting him, I'm under his blade. It was a trust moment. It really was."

The doctor cut open his arm and put in a suction pump to relieve the pressure. The arm took a few weeks to get back down to size. Skins grafts from his leg to heal the wound took. Another miracle, Allen said.

But his radial nerve had died, Allen said. Allen, who is left-handed, can't raise his fingers, move his wrist or grip objects well.

"It's not a rehabilitative thing. I can work out and do physical therapy all day, which I do," Allen said. "But it's not going to come back unless the nerve regrows at the rate of one inch per month from here to here, which is two feet. So that's two years. If it's regrowing."

If it doesn't grow, doctors may attempt a nerve graft from his foot, he said.

Repairs to the broken bones also caused some problems. Allen said doctors used steel plates and screws to position the bones so they would grow back together.

"It did grow. Matter of fact, it kept growing," Allen said. "My arm is almost all bone now. The bone kept growing, and kept growing, and kept growing. It's actually about ready to poke through the skin here. It's called heterotopic ossification. In traumatic injuries, it happens a lot with gunshot wounds, we're finding out."

Allen was in the hospital for three weeks. He's now going to physical therapy for 90 minutes a day, five days a week.

WAITING FOR THE FUTURE

Meanwhile, there's a motorcycle at his home that he can no longer ride and a halibut pole that he can't reel. This was the time in his life he'd hoped to become a pilot, he said. Now he doesn't know if that will be possible.

"We may never catch the people that did this to me and I've already reasoned that out," Allen said. "I'm OK with that. I'm not the only victim of a serious crime where they never caught the offender. I know that. I'm just not going to let it be something that damages my life."

Doctors have told him they think there's a good chance he'll return to duty. If not, the injuries to his arm might mean Allen will need a new career, though it's also possible he could get back on light duty, he said. But Allen, a former probation officer and investigative child protective services officer, doesn't want that.

He became a cop because he liked working in the field and he'd had enough of office work. About a week before he joined in 2001, an officer, Justin Wollam, was killed in a head-on crash on the Glenn Highway. Allen didn't have second thoughts then and doesn't now, he said.

He has his first day back planned out. Allen wants to get back out on patrol in his old car on the graveyard shift, his favorite duty.

"And I want to work in the same neighborhood where this happened, even though that's not my place. Normally I work Spenard. My first shift will be right there in that neighborhood," Allen said. "I've got to do it. I've got to see myself through that. We don't give up in this family."