Anchorage Daily News

To whoever shot Darrin Huycke over the Fourth of July weekend two summers ago in Seward: Do you ever think about him? Wonder how he's doing?

He's doing OK, mostly. But he's a different guy now. It's hard to see things the same way when one moment you're asleep in a tent with your buddies and the next a .45-caliber bullet rips through your body.

On the down side, there's the back pain, the missing kidney and the sizable portion of digestive tract that's no longer with him.

On the upside, he has a deeper appreciation for friends and family since getting shot while camping up Exit Glacier Road on July 3, 2006. He takes better care of himself. And it's hard for him to get too worked up over things that rattle most people. Hey, he tells himself, he's alive.

Sometimes when he's in a crowd, he wonders if you're there too. Or maybe someone who knows you did it, someone who covered for you that day.

In case you're curious, your bullet passed between his gallbladder and liver, then did a bull's-eye in the middle of his right kidney before blasting its way through his large and small intestines.

If he hadn't been so alarmed by the KA-BANG of your first shot and rolled up on his side, the one that hit him would have gone through his chest sideways, and this could be an unsolved murder case.

Darrin has lots of unanswered questions about what happened that day. Like, did you shoot into the tent on purpose? Not that he thinks it was personal. It was a big tent with four people in it. But if you did aim at some random campsite, what could you possibly have been thinking?

He prefers to believe you didn't mean it, that you were shooting in some other direction, that the bullet ricocheted, came through the wall of the tent, into his back, out through his stomach, skidded across the tent floor, and nicked a tennis shoe before going out the far side of the tent, never to be found.

If that's true, if it really was an accident, how come you've never owned up?

Darrin has a hard time believing you didn't realize you'd hit somebody. As far as his surgeon could tell, you were awfully close, maybe only 50 feet away, so you would have heard him scream. And at 7:15 on a midsummer morning, it's not like you were shooting in the dark. You would have noticed all the commotion as his buddy Ryan Brugger tried to keep him from bleeding to death. Even if you were super drunk from partying all night, the ambulance and the cops should have been a clue.

If you'd come forward then, Darrin would have had no hard feelings. He knows accidents happen. But it's going on three years now and he's not feeling quite so charitable anymore.

Judging from the statements investigators gathered at the scene, it was hard to know who was telling the truth, who wasn't and who was too drunk or hung over to know the difference. One camper heard two shots. Another, three. Others heard five, eight and 10 shots. Some said it sounded like more than one gun being fired at the time.

The only part that's consistent and clear is that shooting a deadly weapon in a place people are partying and camping is about as stupid and reckless as it gets.

One woman claimed she heard a man shout from up by the road, where the investigation determined the bullet came from: "You need to get the hell out of here before the cops get here! You need to go now! Go, go, go, go, go!"

Would that have been one of your pals?

MEET DARRIN HUYCKE

Whoever you are, and whatever really happened, here's a little about the guy who came so close to dying that day.

He was 20 years old. He grew up in the Valley. His parents, David and Linda Huycke, are both teachers. He has a younger sister named Stephanie, who had to grow up real fast that summer, trying to keep everyone else from falling apart.

In high school, Darrin was a bit of a troublemaker, but not the drinker, druggy kind, he says. His antics were more along the lines of rolling down a set of school stairs in a garbage can. And barreling down a ski slope at Alyeska on a lunch tray.

Once on his own, starting college at the University of Alaska, it took him only one week to get popped for underage drinking. Not that he's proud. Nor is he proud that his parents were willing to pay for college, but he didn't appreciate the opportunity and bombed out.

He's a fun-loving guy with a crummy driving record who makes friends easier than most. He skis and plays golf. He loves to travel. His favorite hangout is Snow City Cafe.

He never did like guns all that much.

The day he was shot, his mother was planning to refinish the back deck. She'd just gotten out of the shower and was ready to hit it when the phone rang.

Darrin's dad was on a boat in Lower Cook Inlet picking salmon out of nets in restless waters. He either couldn't hear the skipper's cell phone ring and ring and ring, or he was in no position to answer it.

When the call finally got through, nearly five hours had gone by since Darrin heard that shot, felt the burn, lifted his shirt and looked down to see the hole in his gut ... since his buddy Ryan grabbed whatever he could find to wrap around him, put him in a bear hug and squeezed to stop the bleeding, which sent Darrin into orbit with pain.

At the emergency room in Seward, Darrin remembers shouting over and over for somebody to call his mom, to tell her he loved her. And then he had to put every ounce of energy he had into taking his next breath.

He nearly died on the medevac to Anchorage.

In addition to a salvage and repair job, the team that worked on him had to lift up his innards and clean out his entire intestinal cavity. When his mother first saw him in the recovery room all swollen and sprouting tubes, a nurse had to give her oxygen.

A CHANGED LIFE

Whoever shot Darrin Huycke, you might want to know he's doing the best he can these days. He still needs physical therapy. And even though the nightmares are behind him, he recently started seeing a therapist again.

He's 23 now. Since getting shot, everything looks, feels and smells different. Sometimes just the wind against his skin makes him feel blessed. He loves being alive.

But he got laid off recently from his job as a waiter at the Bear Tooth Grill, which is a bummer. That was the first job he's held for more than a few months since getting shot, and he really liked it.

Now and then, he hears things -- like somebody knows someone who knows someone who knows who you are. He gets his hopes up and then nothing comes of it.

He just wants some answers.

In an effort to get past it all, he and a couple buddies headed to Seward for the Fourth of July weekend last year, this time pitching a tent in a friend's yard in town. The morning of July 3, the alarm went off at 6.

By 7:15, Darrin had set up a camping chair at the same site off Exit Glacier Road where he'd camped two years before. He just sat there looking around, filling his senses with the place that came close to being the last he'd ever see.

So whoever shot Darrin Huycke, if you decide to come forward, to face what happened and tell him you're sorry, that's where he plans to be this July 3 at 7:15.

You know the spot.

Find Debra McKinney online at adn.com/contact/dmckinney or call 257-4465.

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