Amazing recovery for wounded Fremont cop LAW ENFORCEMENT Officer wasn't expected to survive shooting

Fremont Police Officer Todd Young practices at the department's shooting range in Fremont, Calif on Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2012. Young has returned to full-time work after being critically wounded while chasing a suspect in Oakland 2010. less Fremont Police Officer Todd Young practices at the department's shooting range in Fremont, Calif on Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2012. Young has returned to full-time work after being critically wounded while chasing a ... more Photo: Mathew Sumner, Special To The Chronicle Photo: Mathew Sumner, Special To The Chronicle Image 1 of / 9 Caption Close Amazing recovery for wounded Fremont cop 1 / 9 Back to Gallery

Fremont police Officer Todd Young always knew he'd return to work someday.

But first he had to learn how to talk and to eat without choking. And then he had to learn how to walk. And then run.

He learned, and in the process pulled off an incredible comeback that defines tenaciousness.

Emergency room doctors had virtually given Young up for dead two years ago when the then-39-year-old undercover gang officer was rushed to a hospital after being shot in the pelvis by a Norteños gang member in East Oakland.

Now, after undergoing numerous surgeries and extensive physical therapy, the eight-year Fremont police veteran has returned to the streets in better shape than before, with his determination and sense of humor intact.

Not that it was easy.

"It's been a long, hard road," said Young, who previously worked for the Newark Police Department. "And some people were like, 'Hey, that was fast.' I'm thinking, 'For who?' "

Young was a plainclothes member of a Southern Alameda County gang task force when he tried to arrest Andrew Barrientos on Aug. 27, 2010, near the corner of Auseon Avenue and Olive Street. Barrientos, who was wanted on warrants, took off on foot but suddenly pulled out a 9mm semiautomatic pistol and fired 10 shots from 15 feet away.

"I'm hit!" Young shouted as one of the shots entered his right hip. Young and a second Fremont officer returned fire, but Barrientos escaped.

Hit - but still working

There was little time to waste. Officers put Young in the back of an Oakland police car that sped him to Highland Hospital in Oakland. Battling through the pain - and bumps in the road - Young rattled off Barrientos' name, date of birth, gang affiliation and description to other officers in the car, hoping his attacker would be quickly caught.

Young refused to be sedated at the hospital until he called his wife. He told her he'd been shot in the leg, and she thought it was just a minor injury.

But it turned out that Young was hemorrhaging internally. Doctors pumped in more than five times a normal person's circulating blood volume. Things were looking bleak. When his wife arrived at the hospital, doctors told her that the SWAT officer and father of her two children probably wouldn't make it off the operating table.

But Young survived that first night and beyond. He spent seven weeks at the hospital and endured many subsequent surgeries while trying to stave off the depths of despair. During one low point, Young recalled, he hurled himself out of his hospital bed in frustration, only to fall flat on his face.

"It was a question of when my body was going to come around," Young said. "My mind was normal."

He had his final operation in January, when a surgeon used mesh made from pigskin - which is highly resistant to infection - to help repair his abdomen.

"So you're going to put pig into a pig?" he said he joked to the surgeon. "The doctor didn't think that was too funny," Young said.

Proving his mettle

When he returned to work with the gang task force in late August, almost exactly two years after he was shot, any fears he harbored that his colleagues might see him as a liability quickly disappeared. During an intense workout with other detectives, they "hit the weights pretty hard and did some running. I think that put people at ease, because we're cops. We want to see for ourselves. We don't want to just say, 'Oh yeah, sure, he's better.' "

Young spent a couple of weeks catching up with some training, including qualifying with his weapons, undergoing SWAT drills and refreshing his pursuit driving skills. It was almost as if he had never left, colleagues said.

Fremont police Sgt. Gregg Crandall said, "It gives me the chills. Most folks would have retired and said, 'You know what? I think I'll do something else.' I asked him six to eight months ago if he was ever coming back. He just grinned. I knew the answer."

"He can do things that just an average person wouldn't be able to do," said his trainer Melanie Wade. "You would not be able to tell that he has bullet wounds by the way he works out."

Young said he longs to go snowboarding and mountain biking again but has avoided those activities because he doesn't want to risk getting hurt.

He finds solace in the fact that his attacker is behind bars at Salinas Valley State Prison in Soledad (Monterey County).

Barrientos, now 22, was arrested the day after the shooting near the Mexican border when a San Diego police sergeant happened to see Barrientos in his rearview mirror. The gang member was sentenced in Alameda County in December to two life terms in prison for attempted murder of a police officer and other charges.

Won't back down

Young said he won't be cowed by gang members and violent criminals like Barrientos, even though he came close to dying. While shooting his M-4 rifle at the Fremont police firing range recently, Young's badge was covered in a black band of mourning for California Highway Patrol Officer Kenyon Youngstrom, shot dead during a traffic stop this month near Alamo.

"This is my job," Young said. "This is what I do, and there's nothing that some felon in this world can do to change that."