Jerry Davich: Brother, sister share fallout from fatal roadside bomb attack

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Pfc. Douglas Rachowicz with his sister Teri Vankooten. Rachowicz, of Hammond, was injured by a road-side bomb that killed four of his fellow members of the Indiana National Guard Jan. 6 while serving in Afghanistan. He remains in a medically induced coma at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center after sustaining crushing injuries to his face, chest, back and pelvis. | Photo ourtesy Teri Vankooten

Updated: February 28, 2012 8:11AM

U.S. Army Pvt. Douglas Rachowicz was behind the steering wheel of the military vehicle that drove over a massive roadside bomb earlier this month, killing four fellow soldiers.

The 30-year-old Hammond father of two drove the third truck in a convoy travelling through southern Afghanistan on Jan. 6.

His unit’s mission that day was to clear improvised explosive devices, IEDs, along a supply route just north of Kandahar. But the radar in a truck ahead of his didn’t detect this type of makeshift bomb.

“It was a different kind of bomb,” said Rachowicz’s older sister, Teri Vankooten of Munster. “We were told that it wasn’t made with metal, but with other materials, buried 3 feet in the ground.”

Rachowicz’s truck went airborne from the explosion and split into three parts. Four of his comrades from the Valparaiso-based 713th Engineer Company died from the blast: Sgt. Brian Leonhardt, Spc. Christopher Patterson, Staff Sgt. Jonathan Metzger and Spc. Robert J. Tauteris Jr.

Only Rachowicz made it out alive. Barely.

“He crawled from the wreckage until he lost consciousness,” his sister said.

But not before asking a first responder, “What happened?”

One of the first responders on the scene was Rachowicz’s future brother-in-law, who was in the truck behind his. Rachowicz is engaged to be married to the soldier’s sister, a LaPorte woman who is pregnant with his third child, Vankooten told me.

Rachowicz, who was deployed in September, suffered numerous injuries, including a broken pelvis, cracked ribs, deflated lungs, cracked jaw and dental devastation. He was flown from Afghanistan to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Washington, D.C.

There, he has been dependent on a ventilator while in an induced coma. That is, until Wednesday when doctors began taking him off such heavy sedation. For the first time since the Jan. 6 explosion, Rachowicz is now semiconscious.

Come home or stay with brother?

“Doug, it’s Teri, you’re home, it’s OK,” Vankooten has been telling her little brother since she arrived at the medical center on Jan. 9.

Until this week, she and her father received no response from Rachowicz, who had to receive a splint in his nose to keep his face intact.

“We were told if the splint wasn’t there, his face would split into three,” said Vankooten, who had to leave her job in a hurry to be at her brother’s bedside.

Vankooten is an addiction technician at Regional Mental Health Center in East Chicago, working in a cutting-edge residential addiction program called Recovery Matters.

“Teri is a good, hard-working and kind person,” said her boss, Jim Berman. “She is a committed, responsible and dependable employee.”

This is why he had no problem approving her personal leave request to protect her job while she’s with her brother in D.C. But she isn’t eligible for any benefits covered under the Family Medical Leave Act, and her health insurance benefits also are not protected.

“Teri must decide between returning to work by Feb. 1 to keep her medical coverage in force or find some way to pay both the employer and employee premiums,” Berman said.

“While she is on personal leave, Teri has no income but her rent, utilities, car payment, car insurance, medical insurance premiums must still be paid,” he said.

Vankooten is staying at a military base that’s just a 10-minute walk from her brother’s bedside. She visits him daily from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. or later, along with her father, who has a heart condition and needs to return home for a doctor’s visit.

“I’m very conflicted what to do,” she told me after a long day at the hospital. “I pray every day for what to do that’s right.”

This is what it comes down to — stay at her brother’s bedside and be the good sister, or go home, return to work, pay her bills and resume her life. It’s not an envious decision to make. Sibling love versus social responsibility. Paying bills versus paying it forward for her brother. Being there versus being here.

“We meet people at the lowest point of their lives, and Teri is always there with a smile and words of encouragement for our clients,” Berman said. “I hope our community can be there for Teri at what has to be one of the lowest points in her life.”

To help her family’s situation, a fund has been opened at 1st Midwest Bank under the name, Terise Vankooten Benefit Account. Donations can be made at any branch, or call Jacob Sikora at 853-3265 for more information.

In the meantime, Rachowicz faces more surgeries and a long recovery after “celebrating” his 30th birthday in a coma on Jan. 17.

Worse yet, he still doesn’t know the fate of his four fellow soldiers — his friends — from the combat explosion. Don’t forget, he was behind the wheel.

Military officials have told his family that they will tell him when the time is right, not a moment before.

“I wouldn’t know how to tell him such a thing,” Vankooten said.

Listen to Jerry’s “Casual Fridays” radio show at noon on Fridays on WLPR 89.1-FM or www.thelakeshorefm.com.