I will never forget that tragic morning 40 years ago Tuesday when I was a young reporter driving west on State 94 toward my office in Mission Valley. Like a horror scene in some action suspense movie playing out on a giant screen of blue sky, a commercial airliner and a small plane collided.

As the crippled jet, belching fire and smoke careened downward, my hands froze on the steering wheel and my life flashed before me as if I were momentarily trading places with an unknown passenger. It was mind-numbing and traumatic, yet I knew I had to get to the crash site. I exited I-805 at North Park before law enforcement officers arrived to barricade the off-ramp.

The wreckage scene was Daliesque and the smell ghastly as bits of twisted metal, clothing, shoes and body parts transformed a formerly sleepy neighborhood into a smoldering graveyard. I tried to put myself on autopilot to focus on collecting reaction from witnesses and residents — until, that is, I got to one house. There, a husband and wife tearfully described the wonderful woman who lived across the street. Her house, in the destructive path of the PSA plane, no longer existed.

Tom Pekny, a pilot for Delta, chose that career path after his grandmother died in the PSA plane crash. (Courtesy photo)


She was beloved by her neighbors, they told me. Then they mentioned the woman’s daughter worked at The San Diego Union — she was the mother of our newsroom receptionist. The crash suddenly became personal.

That’s the way it was for Tom Pekny — personal.

So personal, in fact, that it changed the trajectory of his life.

The UC San Diego sophomore had just gotten to campus when he saw smoke billowing up in the distance. It appeared to be coming from his Serra Mesa neighborhood. He turned on his car radio and learned a plane had crashed in nearby North Park. He instinctively re-started his engine and drove home.


Tom Pekny was a student at UC San Diego when he saw smoke from the crash of PSA Flight 182 in the distance. He did not know at the time that his grandmother was on the plane. The catastrophe changed the course of his life. (Dennis Huls / San Diego Union-Tribune file)

“The radio reporting was so emotional, I was wiping away tears thinking about the loss of life and how tragic this was.”

His mother and uncle arrived shortly after he got home. “Did you hear about the PSA plane crash in North Park,” Pekny asked. His uncle exclaimed: “Oh, my God. Gaga was on that plane.” Gaga (pronounced Gay-gah) was the nickname of Pekny’s grandmother, Louise Martin, 74. She was returning from a vacation in Europe.

Tom Pekny provided this photo of his grandmother, Louise Martin, a San Diego passenger on PSA Flight 182 when it crashed on Sept. 25, 1978. (Courtesy photo)


Pekny’s life changed at that instant. He became haunted by the question: Why, on a crystal clear morning, had two planes collided? “I read every article I could find. I had no experience in flying but started looking for classes to get some answers.”

He dropped out of UCSD pre-med and enrolled in aviation classes at Mesa College. Then he transferred to San Diego State and took ROTC, eventually joining the Air Force. Pekny didn’t want to be a jet jockey. He wanted to fly a “heavy,” a troop transport plane.

“That became my big motivation. You have everybody’s lives in your hands up there. I wanted to be the guy looking out for everyone.” After 12 years, Pekny left the Air Force to follow his airline pilot dream. Now 59, he has been flying for Delta for 19 years.

On Tuesday, for the first time, he plans to go to the crash site where Gaga died exactly 40 years ago.


“If she’s looking down, she’ll be smiling from ear to ear, knowing that I went and did something with this. I had a brother-in-law who said, ‘I’m never getting on an airplane again.’ That wasn’t my reaction.” Pekny wanted to be the guy saying, “I’ve got your back.”

“My whole life is different because of that event,” Pekny adds, noting that he met his wife, Lisa, during an Air Force stint in South Dakota. “My wife and kids wouldn’t be here,” he says. “Something good came out of it.”


diane.bell@sduniontribune.com

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