---

"Ultimately, John Chavez is New Mexico's problem. It shouldn't be us there at his sentencing, it should be every citizen of Santa Fe, everyone who is going to be John Chavez's neighbor because he's going to be out there sooner rather than later. He's going to be back on Santa Fe's streets and he's going to be in your school zones. When you go to the market late at night, he's going to be there. He's going to be out there."

— Michael Cote as published in the Oct. 5, 2003, edition of The New Mexican 

---

 
Life forever changed for Michael and Helen "Elly" Cote on Sept. 28, 2002, when the Colorado couple took an evening stroll around Santa Fe's Plaza.

Despite spending the better part of the past eight years in prison, it doesn't appear anything changed for John Paul Chavez.

Chavez, who struck the couple with his pickup while they were crossing the street at the intersection of Lincoln and Palace avenues — and severely injured Elly Cote when he dragged her under his truck for several blocks — was arrested again Dec. 11 and charged with aggravated DWI — his 11th drinking and driving arrest.

Even his own lawyer in 2003 called him the "poster boy" for New Mexico's drunken-driving problem.

"It's hard to imagine he's still doing it," Michael Cote said Saturday when told of Chavez's recent arrest. "It's heartbreaking, really, to hear nothing has changed."

Chavez's 11th DWI arrest

According to a statement of probable cause for Chavez's Dec. 11 arrest, he was driving a 1988 Jeep pickup south on Cerrillos Road at 2:12 a.m. New Mexico State Police officer Carlos Salazar said the vehicle swerved out of its lane at least three times and was going 58 mph in a 45 mph zone.

When police stopped him, Chavez "immediately exited the vehicle" and "became argumentative," the report said.

Chavez "stated he had just left Cheeks Nightclub and was drunk." And while performing field-sobriety tests, he was "very uncooperative and repeatedly told me that he was drunk and requested that I not waste my time giving him field-sobriety tests," Salazar reported. Chavez then refused, twice, to take a Breathalyzer test.

He was booked into the Santa Fe County jail on charges of aggravated DWI, driving with a revoked license, failure to maintain traffic lanes and speeding.

This was actually Chavez's third arrest since leaving prison. On July 30 he was charged with driving with a revoked license after police say he was swerving on South Meadows Drive. He also was arrested in September on a warrant charging failure to pay fines.

The July 30 revoked-license case before Magistrate George Anaya Jr. is scheduled for a pretrial conference Jan. 20. The bond set by Magistrate Sandra K. Miera for the Dec. 11 DWI was $10,000. A notation on his "order setting conditions of release" indicates the court only had records showing this was his second DWI charge and second revoked-license charge.

'A bad drinking problem'

Motor Vehicle Division and court records show that the former Agua Fría Elementary School janitor spent a total of less than three weeks in jail for his first nine drunken-driving arrests — seven of which resulted in convictions — between 1982 and the 2002 hit-and-run near the Plaza.

Hopes that the legal system would finally punish the man were seemingly answered when state District Judge Michael Vigil imposed the maximum-year sentence — 8 1/2 years. With good behavior and credit for time served between the crash and his December 2003 sentencing, Chavez was released from prison in 2009.

Attempts to reach Chavez, who lives in the 2800 block of Plaza Verde in Santa Fe, were unsuccessful. Jail records show he was incarcerated from Dec. 11 through late Friday night.

At his sentencing in 2003, he acknowledged he needed help for his drinking problem.

"I'm not a monster like everyone thinks I am ... " Chavez said at his sentencing. "I just have a bad drinking problem."

Alternatives to incarceration

While it's hard to find anyone who would argue that Chavez's first nine DWI arrests didn't deserve more than a couple of weeks in jail, it's also obvious jail doesn't always do the trick.

Longtime DWI and ignition-interlock lobbyist Dick Roth on Saturday called Chavez the "poster boy" for why incarceration might not be the answer for some offenders. He instead suggests intensive treatment, possibly including mandatory devices that monitor blood-alcohol content multiple times per day.

He also said a lot of the focus for fighting DWI should be on preventing someone from drinking and driving the first time.

"Even if we executed all the guys like John Chavez, it wouldn't put a dent in our drunk-driving problem because there are so many first-time offenders," Roth said.

Roth, who was at the 2003 sentencing hearing of Chavez in support of the Cote family, cited statistics that indicate 10,865 of the 18,840 DWI citations — 58 percent — issued in New Mexico in 2009 were for first-time offenders.

Others think plugging away at continued enforcement and more maximum penalties is the way to go.

"All we can do sometimes is keep stepping up patrols and keep hoping the courts put these guys away as long as they can so they quit reoffending," said Santa Fe Deputy Police Chief Abram Anaya, who was on the department's DWI unit at the time of Chavez's 2002 arrest. "Some of these guys are incorrigible and need to be off the roads."

'The opportunity to hurt people again'

Elly Cote, who spent six weeks in a coma, suffered devastating brain injuries and had massive amounts of flesh ripped from her body while being dragged underneath Chavez's 1984 GMC pickup. She still does not remember the crash, but continues to have some physical and mental limitations.

Michael, meanwhile, suffered a broken ankle and spent the first couple of years after the crash devoting his life to his wife's recovery, before it caught up with him.

"I went through some serious bouts of post-traumatic stress disorder and had to be hospitalized myself for some time," he said Saturday in a telephone interview. "I couldn't understand how somebody could do this to us. I became very suicidal, and Elly was there every step of the way making sure I got through it.

"We continue to help each other get through what happened to us that day, but it's tough for us learning to live again. There are things for both of us that will never heal — things that are now a part of our lives."

The Cotes, who still live in Colorado, say they cannot forget about Chavez and how their lives are still affected every day.

Michael Cote spoke with a reporter Saturday while tucked away near the Wyoming and Idaho border in the Grand Tetons, where he is doing some ski instruction.

"It's so upsetting," he said. "The fact that this guy has the opportunity to hurt people again ... I think we all have the right to treat ourselves however we want. If you want to poison yourself at home, that's fine. But when you go back on the streets and do to people what he did to us, this guy does not deserve any more chances.

"Stop being lenient with this guy. Stop him. He obviously can't stop himself."

Contact Geoff Grammer at 986-3076 or ggrammer@sfnewmexican.com. Read his blog at SantaFeCrime.com.