SAN DIEGO _ The drunk driver should have killed him. The brain tumor definitely should have killed him. Arnie Robinson, though, isn't much for other people's plans.
That's why, when Robinson was packed in ice inside an intensive care unit for more than a month after a wrong-way driver T-boned his car on the way home from a Mesa College track meet, the 40 pints of blood he needed became items on a remarkable life's remarkable checklist.
That's why, when the Aug. 19, 2000, accident turned his Lincoln into a pretzel of jagged metal and he had to be resuscitated during surgery, it was just another set of long odds hurdled.
That's why, when Robinson was told he might live for six months after being diagnosed with a Grade IV brain tumor in 2005, a cruel and relentless cancer known as glioblastoma that claimed Sen. John McCain, it proved that doctors and medicine and the cosmos had no clue who they were up against.
That's why the kid who grew up in Paradise Hills became one of the most accomplished athletes in San Diego history _ a two-time Olympic medalist in the long jump _ despite initially being armed with only a curb-side afterthought, untapped talent and a will like few others.
"The way it started, he would train himself," recalled his sister, Carolyn Johnson. "I remember one day specifically, he took an old mattress our mom had set out. He put it in the driveway by the garage. That's how he started the long jump. I thought it was crazy."
There was nothing unhinged about it, really. It was simply a glimpse into the uncommon resolve that has guided Robinson's life.
The more you learn about the 70-year-old, the more you come to understand that he's a find-a-way guy. When he didn't have enough money to buy a house near his childhood neighborhood, he built one from the ground up. When he picked up bowling, he polished his game in a Lemon Grove league until he recorded a 230 average with one of those devastating hooks the pros deliver.
When youth track in San Diego lacked a caretaker, he chalked the lines for the lanes himself. When the youngest in the sport needed timing equipment, Paul Robinson said his father spent more than $35,000 of his own money to make it happen.
And when he collected a bronze at the 1972 Olympics in Munich, he decided the work was only beginning. The former NCAA champion at San Diego State was ranked No. 1 in the world four times in the 1970s, winning a Pan American Games title, a record-tying six AAU titles and four consecutive USA Outdoor Championships.
Then in Montreal in 1976, he soared 27 feet, 4} inches to capture gold.
"I saw him one morning before I went to school, he had started to dig a hole for a wall we'd knocked down at his house," said Bryan Kyle, a close family friend. "When I got home that night, I didn't know where he was. I saw his car, but I couldn't find him. I looked in the hole and he was still digging. Arnie's 6-3 and he had to climb out of that hole. In one day, he dug a 7-foot hole by himself.
"The lesson I took from it, when he wants something he's focused. There are obstacles, but you get over them or you go through them. You don't take your eye off the prize. Back then, athletes rarely made two Olympic appearances. After one, your career would be over. But he did.
"He recovered from a major, major car accident. He trained and won medals at two Olympics. He recovered from a brain tumor and two surgeries. I told him, 'You've got a reputation for kicking ass, Arnie.'
"You can't be attached to someone like Arnie and be a quitter."
