IRIS SMOOT/Acorn Newspapers STRENGTH AND RESILIENCE—Former California Highway Patrol officer Tony Pedeferri speaks to guests at the Camarillo Boys & Girls Club ONEClub breakfast at Spanish Hills Country Club on March 5. Pedeferri was on duty in 2007 when he was hit by a drunk driver and paralyzed. His rehabilitation is ongoing. The former Iron Man triathlete credits his strength and resilience to a good start in life, spending time at the Boys & Girls Club and getting involved in club programs. A hero.

That's what CHP Capt. Cliff Williams called Tony Pedeferri, the motorcycle officer who'd been hit while on duty by an impaired driver 15 months ago and left a paraplegic.

Williams was the keynote speaker at the Boys & Girls Club of Camarillo's annual ONEClub Breakfast fundraiser last week at Spanish Hills Country Club in Camarillo.

The commander of the Moorpark station spoke about Pedeferri's recovery from multiple life-threatening injuries, including a broken neck and back, severed spinal cord and brain damage.

"Tony's a hero by no accident," Williams said.

On a December afternoon in 2007, Jeremy White, a 21yearold Paso Robles resident high on marijuana and ecstasy, crashed his pickup truck into a vehicle Pedeferri had pulled over along the 101 Freeway just north of Ventura. The crash killed Andreas Parra, the driver of the vehicle, and flung Pedeferri about 20 yards from the car. More than a pound of marijuana was found in White's truck.

Although doctors gave Pedeferri, who has completed multiple Ironman triathlons, a 20 percent chance of living, many CHP officers who know him were convinced he would survive, Williams said.

Pedeferri has gained limited movement but is confined to a wheelchair. He can no longer perform functions most of us take for granted, Williams said.

Has the accident crushed his spirit?

No, Williams said, because Pedeferri has the power of forgiveness. In September at White's trial, Pedeferri told White he harbors no animosity toward him but that White had made a conscious choice that December day and was aware of the possible consequences.

White was sentenced to 15 years in prison. White will walk out of prison some day, Pedeferri told him, while he will never walk again.

Despite dramatic changes to his life, Pedeferri has embraced and welcomed the challenges of living with his abilities, Williams said.

"Tony's life is not a waste," Williams said. "He has much more to give to this world."

Pedeferri was in the audience and had been scheduled to give the keynote address, but his voice wasn't up to the challenge of speaking for an extended period, he said, although he wanted to say a few words about growing up as a Boys & Girls Club member.

Pedeferri said he joined the club at age 5, happy to wear the club T-shirt he'd imagined was a uniform. "That was the first time I felt like I belonged to something," Pedeferri said.

The nonprofit Camarillo youth club must raise more than 90 percent of its annual $1.1million budget, the amount not covered by government grants, to provide the services and programs—sports, fitness, arts, leadership skills and such—to about 540 members that come to the club on an average day, President Greg Stuart said.

The breakfast is part of the club's five-month fundraising campaign to raise $300,000 this year, Stuart said.

No child who wants to be a member is turned away, he said. If a family is unable to pay the $60 annual membership fee, the club will subsidize all or part of the fee for the child.

The Boys & Girls Club of Camarillo helps 55 percent of its members pay the annual fee, a mounting expense for the club because membership has doubled to more than 500 members in the past two years, Stuart said.

After the breakfast, Mayor Don Waunch credited the Boys & Girls Club with helping to keep Camarillo's crime rate low. He said the club provides activities to youths who might otherwise get into trouble.

"They do a great job," Waunch said.