Trucker Found Joy On The Road

Patti Gilbert didn’t normally phone home from the road during short overnight runs.

But something made the Spokane trucker pull her 18-wheeler over before heading west up the steep incline of Snoqualmie Pass one week ago today.

Patti, 41, told her daughter, Shawna Harding, how much she loved her family.

She mentioned how proud she was that Shawna, 22, was back in college.

“Go give Heidi and Cyndra a kiss,” she told Shawna, referring to her own 16-year-old daughter and Shawna’s 18-month-old toddler.

It was Feb. 5, 10 p.m. Thirty minutes later, Patti was dead.

A seasoned truck driver, Patti had driven the wide, well-groomed stretch of Interstate 90 scores of times. This was just another routine trip delivering a load of soap products to a West Side warehouse.

Rounding a curve a few miles from the summit, the truck was slammed broadside by a freak rock slide, which quickly turned the familiar road into a moonscape.

The impact was tremendous. The giant truck’s wheels were snapped off its steel frame. The rig flipped over, crushing the cab.

Patti was the only driver on the road within a quarter mile in each direction, says Spokane’s Don Tinkham, who owned the truck she was driving and viewed the accident scene. “I’ve driven that road 30 years and never seen or heard anything like it.”

Patti never had a chance. Death was mercifully swift.

“The way I’m getting through this is by believing that she had made her peace with God,” says her husband, Hadley, his eyes filled with tears. “It has to be a God thing. He was taking her home.”

If the hereafter contains any long ribbons of asphalt - should heaven harbor an I-90 - there’s little question where Patti will be.

This is a woman who died doing something she loved: sitting in the command seat of a mechanical beast, maneuvering it skillfully down the highway.

“She was a great driver,” says Hadley, adding that the number of female truckers in the industry is still only a fraction. “She didn’t have a fear of the road that a lot of people have.”

Her CB handle was “High Roller.” Patti was a tall woman with bright blue eyes and auburn hair. She often broke up the monotony of driving by listening to country and gospel music.

But judging from the packed funeral Wednesday at Sunrise Church of Christ, this was something much more than the death of a long-haul trucker.

Surveying the sizable gathering, one of the woman’s casual friends exclaimed, “Did Patti do something I don’t know about?”

Patti was a hero to these people - not for her driving, but for how she lived her life after overcoming serious drug and alcohol addiction. One by one, members of Patti’s 12-step group sobbed as they told how she had helped them get their lives back with grace and humor.

Patti’s life was rougher than any rock-strewn road. She used to revel in telling the story about how she had stepped out to buy a loaf of bread one day and returned home three years later.

An ex-husband taught Patti to drive a truck. She took to it instantly, enjoying the sense of control and independence.

Late for a wedding one day, Patti roared her giant diesel rig through residential streets while wearing a frilly bridesmaid dress.

She gave up long-haul driving several years ago to be a full-time mom to her kids. The short runs she drove for Tinkham pacified her deep need to be on the road.

“She had the respect of all the other drivers,” says Tinkham, a sincere, plain-speaking man who came to the funeral in a red plaid shirt. “Patti was loved, and I don’t think anybody loved her more than I did.

“I lost a good friend.”

, DataTimes