‘Alive Day'; 5 years since the Priebe's lives changed forever

Yahoo

2 days ago

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. — It's been five years since Springfield Police Officer Mark Priebe was run over and pinned under an SUV outside SPD's headquarters.
He says as each year passes, it gets easier to move forward.
'Things have been good. We're really settled into our new home that we've gotten and it's fully accessible. Settled into a new job, I've been doing that for a couple of years now, and we're just kind of rolling along and, dealing with things, but things have been really, really good,' Priebe said.
On June 9 of this year, his wife, Heather, posted on social media about the anniversary, calling it an 'Alive Day'.
'It's a term that you see all over when somebody faced a tragedy like what Mark faced in that they lived through it, and especially those that have been shot in the line of duty, that kind of thing. It's a day that you have to celebrate. It was called an 'alive-versary' but that's too hard to spell sometimes,' Heather said.
'I think it's almost far out enough for us or for me that it's truly a day that we celebrate. It's a day like any other for the most part, but we take note of it and celebrate that I'm still here, that I've been able to change and be a better person, a better husband and father, and a better friend to folks. It's definitely a positive thing,' Priebe said. 'We don't go back to the day, or the person involved that caused this and caused my injury. We really focus on the positive and just keep moving forward.'
Over the last five years, the Priebes have had time to reflect on their growth since the attack.
'I take every day as a positive, having a second and third chance of being here for my family and with my family and making hopefully an impact on others. We kind of took on to be peers for other first responder families, especially to help spouses and first responders that were injured or just been through a career that's been traumatic for them and so that's kind of what we focus on,' Priebe said. 'It's made that this five year stretch much, much easier, I guess, would be the best way to describe it.'
'You still have your days and frustrated. He can't get out of bed like you and I get out of bed. He has to slide out of bed. When it's raining, he can't just run inside. He has to take the time to roll fast inside. You know, those little things that you and I do quickly, a shower, changing our clothes, you know, those little things, it takes him twice as long to do something as it does, that's when we get frustrated or we get mad or we get irritated,' Heather said. 'The fact that he's here is a reminder that we can talk about all those negative things but we need to talk about the good things.'
As he continues to do as much as Mark can with a severed spine, the Priebes can look at the last five years and see the progress they've made.
'With the right mindset, with the right personality, with the right attitude, you can move forward, and how you choose to go forward is what sets your path for life,' Heather said. 'I went in with a positive attitude.'
'I think for us, it's brought me back to my faith and I'm closer to my faith. These things that have happened, the injury itself and how I was injured, I should not be alive, but I'm really taking the positive out of these out of a negative situation,' Mark said.
However, in order to see how far you've come, you have to take look at where you were.
For Mark, and Heather, where they were was a dark place.
'Like I said, I was in a pretty dark place. Heather and I's relationship was really bad, and if I would not have been injured, I said this not long after and I'll say this every time we talk about that day and in our lives together, is we were headed for divorce. She thought that I actually committed suicide on the front steps of headquarters because of a fight that we had been in just before that, a day or two before that. This happening, it took something drastic, unfortunately, to change me and bring me back to my family and to become a better person. So that's I think that's where we really focus on the positive, because things could have been completely different in our lives if this wouldn't have happened. We talk a lot about the perseverance, the strength of faith, and that no matter your tragedy, no matter how hard it is, you can make your way through, and there's people in far worse conditions,' Mark said.
He continued, 'Heather is the glue that held the whole thing together. She could have walked away. She probably should have walked away. She didn't walk away from me, and she held us together while she was still dealing with cancer. She was going through cancer treatments at the time. She is the one that helped keep me on the right path, especially in the in the hard times through these five years and even down the road when I'm having a bad day or I'm just hurt so bad. She and the kids helped keep me on that positive path.'
'[The word] suicide in the first responder world is big. I mean, that's a whole another story. That's a whole another thing that can be talked about, is mental health within the first responder community. In the last five years, with the path that we've taken within peer support that we've participated in and the stuff that we've done, the suicide, while it's not talked about, it's always been in the back of [many of their] minds,' Heather said. 'Mark was never a suicidal person. He was not the kind of person that you would think would ever be suicidal. So, you know, within our journey we shared about, our fight was pretty bad that Sunday. When I got my first call was that there had been a shooting at police headquarters, I really thought that's what he done because we were just in that place and I didn't want to believe that he had done that, but the chance that he did was there. When I found out what had happened, it was a whole different, different thing, but it played in my head and I knew by my text messages at work that day that I needed to get home because I really did not know what I was ready to be told and had no clue.'
The Priebes wouldn't change anything over the past five years.
'I wouldn't change what's happened because I know I know for a fact 100% in my mind, even with my faith, but at the time and in the mental state that I was in emotional state that I was in personally, that if it wouldn't have happened, we would end up divorced. The kids hated me, and didn't want me around. They wouldn't have been part of my life, and even though as bad as things were, it wasn't my job that kept me going. It was my family, as bad as it was. I probably would ended my life at that point. At that point where I would have kept going down that path and those things would have happened. So yeah, I wouldn't change it for a heartbeat,' Mark said.
For Mark, he says there's things he misses from daily policing, and was close to retirement before the attack forced that issue.
'I never thought I thought especially in a 20 plus year career, I thought if anything happened, I'd get shot or something and was literally on the downhill slide before retirement, you know, within five, four or five years and never, never thought I would be run over,' Mark said. '[My retirement] would have been 2024, that would have been 25 years. So in May of 2024 was 25 years for my academy class, and that would have been my plan was to retire. You see a lot of officers that are retiring and going back, and I don't know if that's something I would have done. I was kind of I was kind of fed up and just kind of tired of law enforcement, and in the stuff that I was involved with when it happened. So I was kind of like, that's like people asked me, do I miss the work and the job? I miss people and aspects of it. I was connected into community and neighborhood groups and stuff with the job that I was doing at that time, and so I miss a lot of that, but the day-to-day stuff I don't miss at all. It was that was pretty easy for me to kind of get past when because I didn't have a choice, obviously.'
Despite how the career ended, he doesn't hold any animosity towards law enforcement as a career, but rather actually says more should be done to help first responders deal with a dangerous line of work.
'I started at 21. That was something I wanted. I knew in high school I wanted to be in law enforcement, and I loved what I did. In every aspect, I worked in patrol our traffic unit and community services section within the department, and so over those 20-21 years, I got to do different things. I got to do the day-to-day patrol stuff on every shift. I got to work traffic and ride motors. I miss that. That's one of the biggest things I miss was riding motors and so now I don't hold any animosity. I love that job. We still need good people in that job. My son has talked about trying to go into that profession when he graduates college, and we're honestly a little apprehensive just because law enforcement especially was not like it was when I started in the mid-nineties, things are a lot worse,' Mark said.
Mark continued, 'Our officers are getting continue to get attacked and ambushed and killed. We've seen increases in that over the years since my injury, even during my years before. It's an important job. People call it a job, but it was a career for me. It was something I wanted to do, and it was something I felt like I could impact not only Springfield but also living in Republic, and but communities around us just for the different things. I don't hold any animosity at all to the job. Mental health. It's a huge deal. A huge deal. That's something that we hope to continue to be part of and maybe bring more light to do to help some of these officers and first responders if they don't feel comfortable going to their people.'
These days, Heather continues to run her own business, but Mark needed to get out of the house.
'I said, you have got to go. You have to get out of this house, and you have to go find something to do and you've got to get your mind active. You know, at the time we were, what, 47-ish, too young to be lose his mind when he didn't lose that with the injury,' Heather said. 'Being active and keeping your body moving and that's been a huge, huge thing, especially the last five years, is to just stay active and stay young and stay going because if you don't use it, you lose it.'
Mark currently works with the Republic School District, with the School Resource Officers.
'Obviously I couldn't be a police officer anymore and therefore couldn't be at the police department in that capacity. Once I started pushing to go ahead and push through my retirement, I had already started looking at jobs. My wife is self-employed, so we needed insurance as well. That was a big issue, obviously. Lucky enough, there was positions coming up in the school district where we live and our kids had grown up as a school safety coordinator and it's based under the school police and school resource officers,' Mark said. 'That was my goal when I retired, if I would have retired on my own, was to be an SRO, and that's something I really wanted to do because I thought I could still have an impact. I'm really enjoying it and I still have an impact, hopefully, on my community.'
The Priebes don't think too much of the spot at headquarters where it happened either.
And he name of the man who was convicted for the attack, Jon Routh?
Over the near-hour of conversation, his name wasn't even said out loud.
Not even once.
'The guy that ran me over, we don't give him or that incident specifically a lot of headspace,' Priebe said.
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