Willow Glen Resident

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Photograph by Vicki Thompson

Life Saver: Willow Glen Goosetown lounge bartender John Mills (left) pulled Goosetown owner Gary Rovai out of his truck, after Rovai passed out and drove his vehicle through the lounge wall.

Goosetown customers, friends show lounge owner Rovai holiday spirit

By Mayra Flores De Marcotte

James Navarro was pouring his morning coffee as usual inside the Goosetown Cocktail Lounge on Nov. 10 before heading out to work when a car crashed through the wall.

"I thought there was an explosion," says Navarro, who dropped his coffee to see what had happened.

Gary Rovai, the lounge's owner, had passed out at the wheel and driven his new truck into the wall of the building.

"Gary had been complaining that he wasn't feeling well," Navarro says, "so he wanted to go home to get some pain medication."

Navarro and bartender John Mills offered to drive Rovai, but he insisted he could make the short drive back to his Willow Glen home.

The previous week Rovai had undergone an angioplasty, a surgical procedure that involved the insertion of a tube into his left leg to help improve his blood flow.

After the crash, Navarro reached for his cell phone and called 911.

Meanwhile, Mills ran to the truck, now inside the bar, and broke the window of the truck to get Rovai out.

Within minutes, firefighters from Fire Stations No. 3 and 6 and San Jose police officers arrived on the scene. When the ambulance arrived, the paramedics, thinking he had a stroke or heart attack, wanted to take Rovai to San Jose Valley Medical. Mills informed them of Rovai's condition, and he was taken to O'Connor Hospital, where the doctor who had performed the previous angioplasty was waiting.

"My surgeon was getting ready for surgery when I arrived," Rovai says. "He said I had only 40 minutes of life left in me."

While Rovai fought for his life, another fight was at hand.

San Jose Code Enforcement came out after the accident to survey the damage.

"The code inspector came down and obviously had to close the place since my truck was parked in the bar," Rovai says.

The accident left Rovai's truck surrounded by what was left of the wall, and exposed electrical wires and debris inside and outside of the bar.

Navarro, a certified electrician and owner of Wisemen Construction, disconnected the wiring and pointed out what was structurally sound and what needed to be replaced to the code enforcement inspector.

The inspector deemed the damage repairable and told Navarro paperwork was not needed to proceed with the necessary repairs. But until those repairs were completed, the business would remain closed.

"Goosetown is a community bar," Navarro says. "People from different walks of life all come here, and there's an unspoken respect among everyone. Gary always helps people out with what he can, so this was our chance to help him."

And that is exactly what the community did.

The firefighters stuck around and volunteered to do the demolition on the remaining wall, while Navarro started making calls to friends and loyal customers of the Willow Glen lounge.

"I called my crew that was at another job and told them to leave it and come here," he says. Then he contacted friends in the construction business.

That same morning Rovai's close friend Pat Ansuini Sr. called the lounge to see if Rovai was available for lunch.

"We have lunch together every week," Ansuini says. "When I called, they told me what had happened and asked if I could help."

Ansuini has known Rovai for six years and considers Rovai a brother.

"It was hard to believe. He was just in the hospital," says Ansuini, who owns AP Construction. He sent some of his crew out to help. Ansuini drove to Goosetown soon after and got to work patching the wall.

Another friend, Peter Richers, owner of P&A Electric, received a call from John Bothelia, a regular customer at the lounge who goes by the nickname of Captain.

"I didn't have a clue of what had happened and how bad the damage was," Richers says. "The bricks were gone, and there was a huge hole left."

Richers had also been working at another job site and left it to fix the electrical work at his friend's bar.

"We were sad because we didn't know how Gary was doing," Richers says. "He had lost two pints of blood, and we thought he was pretty much gone."

But the makeshift crew kept at it.

"Getting the job done kept my mind occupied," Ansuini says.

The friends finally breathed a sigh of relief when Rovai's wife called the lounge at noon to let well-wishers know Rovai was out of surgery and in stable condition. She and her daughters showed up an hour later.

"It was such a relief," Mills says. "He wasn't going to die on my shift."

People began to cry and hug one another, Mills says.

"It was overwhelming," he adds.

Nearly 40 people showed up throughout the day to help with the repair of the neighborhood business. Miraculously, at 5 p.m. that day, Fire Station No. 6 Capt. Kevan Banton signed off on the bar, and the lounge reopened.

"It was amazing," Mills says. "Everyone's busy with the hustle and bustle of their lives, but they got together so that Gary didn't lose money. It was like a big family coming together."

Rovai, recuperating from his brush with death, is touched by it all.

"They've been great," he says, "the phone calls, the cards--even a few tough guys sent me flowers."

He says this is just another example of what makes Willow Glen so great.

"Many people call them customers," he says. "I call them friends."