by the time Parrish and his family set off. He’d hoped to get on the road to Seattle right after work, but felt it was important to attend the company’s annual grower appreciation picnic in Wenatchee that evening. Mike Parrish, manager of Stemilt Growers’s Olds Station plant, happened to be taking his wife and three children to Seattle that night, and flying out to Hawaii for a family vacation the next morning. After hitting the elk, his car hit the oncoming car head on. Police say that the 1,400-pound, 7-1/2 point bull elk that ran in front of his car was one of the largest they’ve seen. They were about five miles past Cle Elum, at about 9:30 p.m., when Len noticed the bright lights of another car coming towards him. Len and his wife had been driving back from Seattle, where their daughter is at college, to their home in East Wenatchee the night it happened. He had hit an elk, but not in a plane, his wife told him later. If the elk stood up….Īs he came in and out of his morphine-induced sleep, the story unfolded a piece at a time. And he often flew over the Colockum wildlife area where elk were bedded down. He’d land on dirt airstrips in eastern Washington, and if an elk ran out of the brush in front of him, he’d have no chance of missing it. His job was to ferry Stemilt personnel back and forth between orchards and facilities around the state. Len, a pilot for Stemilt Growers, Inc., Wenatchee, Washington, was flying about 1,000 hours a year-a huge number even for a commercial pilot. "You hit an elk," his wife, Lisa, told him.Īs he pondered it over, it made sense that he could have hit an elk while flying his airplane. His first hazy recollection is of waking up in a hospital bed at Harborview Medical Center, Seattle, and wondering why he was there, hurting all over. Len Pugsley still doesn’t remember the accident last August. But the most painful moment was yet to come. Len Pugsley walked miles, hurting with every step, in an effort to get fit again.
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