After protecting Oregon’s forests for over three decades, Mario Lara had just beaten prostate cancer, got engaged and was preparing to retire. Instead, he spent his 58th birthday in a coma. On March 12, 2022, an intoxicated man drove his pickup truck into Lara’s path while the firefighter was riding his motorcycle in northeast Salem, leaving him with serious injuries. While Lara was being flown to a Portland hospital, his son sat at the crash scene. Rain dripped down his face as he stared at the twisted metal that was his father’s motorcycle.  “The realization of the severity of the situation set in. It was just like a wave of cold sweat, starting from the top of my head down to my feet. It’s a feeling that’s never left me since,” Jesse Lara later said in a court hearing. When he finally saw his dad in the hospital, he was unrecognizable. Machines were keeping him alive, breathing for him. “For the first time in my life, I couldn’t feel my father’s presence,” he recalled in court, his voice trembling as he spoke. “I couldn’t ask my dad what to do or what he needed me to do. He couldn’t give me any last wishes, no words of wisdom. I didn’t even know if he could hear me.” Lara, of Independence, died of his injuries on May 4, 2022. The man who killed him, Christopher S. Bolds, 41, pleaded guilty last month to criminally negligent homicide. He also pleaded no contest to driving under the influence of intoxicants, meaning he did not admit guilt but agreed that prosecutors had enough evidence to prove he was guilty. Marion County Circuit Court Judge Natasha Zimmerman sentenced Bolds on Sept. 17 to three years and nine months in prison. He may receive credit for time served, according to Marion County court records. The judge also sentenced him to three years of post-prison supervision and revoked his driver’s license for life. Charges of second-degree manslaughter and reckless driving were dismissed as part of his plea deal. At the sentencing, Jesse Lara said that Bolds had made his childhood nightmares come true. “I didn’t even get to say goodbye,” he said. “Everything that I held sacred is now gone, and because of that, I’ve lost my faith. People keep saying that it’ll get easier. Well, it hasn’t. I’ve had no closure. I’ve lost everything because of you. The world doesn’t even make sense anymore.” ‘The definition of integrity’ Mario G. Lara was born in 1964 in Edinburgh, Texas.  His family moved to Oregon when he was a child, and he graduated from Central High School in Independence, according to his obituary. Lara was a forester his entire life. He spent over 30 years with the Oregon Department of Forestry working various jobs, from growing trees to protecting them from wildfire.  Mario Lara (family photo) “He loved what he did and was very good at it,” his daughter, Alicia Lara, said during the sentencing hearing. “He was loved and respected deeply by his coworkers and crew workers. The knowledge he knew wasn’t something you could easily learn in just a book or your classroom. It was years of hard work, dedication, passion, that makes his knowledge so valuable.” Lara most recently led a crew of prison inmates who fought wildland fires.  Jesse, who eventually followed in his footsteps and became a wildland firefighter, said his father was likely the only positive role model for many of those inmates. Even after some of them were released from prison, Lara would reach out to see if they needed help and make sure they were doing well. He helped rehabilitate the inmates while treating them as he would any other firefighter, according to Alicia. “They loved each other like family,” she said. “I’m sad these people he worked with will no longer be receiving the good knowledge he was passing down and the positive impact he was making in so many lives.” Lara lived a sober life. He never drank alcohol, smoked or used drugs. “Even spending his whole life drug- and alcohol-free, drugs and alcohol still took him from us,” Jesse said, pausing as he cried. “I don’t understand that.” Lara was close to retiring from his state job and preparing to open a pizza food truck. His son recalled watching him come home from work and spend hours planning for his new business. Alicia said her dad also planned to start his own wildland firefighting crew. A few weeks before the crash, Lara called his son and told him that he had just gotten engaged. He said he wished they could talk in person but he was too excited to break the news.  “My dad still had so much to live for,” Jesse said. Deadly crash At 1:39 p.m. on March 12, 2022, the Salem Police Department responded to a crash at the intersection of Northeast Madison Street and Fairgrounds Road.  Bolds was driving east on Madison Street, which has two-way stop signs at the intersection. As Lara was riding his motorcycle south on Fairgrounds Road, Bolds pulled in front of him, according to a Salem police affidavit. The crash left Lara unconscious. His injuries included a herniated small intestine, a pelvic fracture, a brain bleed and facial fractures. He was taken to Salem Hospital and later flown to Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland for further treatment. At the time of the crash, officers found Bolds sitting in a parking lot where he had parked his truck. He was rocking back and forth, punching himself in the head and crying profusely, according to Marion County court records. Bolds told police that he was going home after scrapping metal, which he did for extra money, and that he drank a 24-ounce bottle of “pineapple hurricane,” according to the affidavit and court records. He said that he had been diagnosed with PTSD, depression and schizophrenia, and that self-medicated with marijuana multiple times per day. He also said he had smoked methamphetamine the day before.   Bolds was booked into the Marion County Jail, where he remained for about two and a half years until his sentencing. Lara was in the hospital for about seven and a half weeks before his death. A family loses its hero At the sentencing hearing, Alicia said it was important to her that her father doesn’t get filed through the court system as just a name. Mario Lara (family photo) She said her dad would call her multiple times a week just to say hello and remind her that he loved her. “I loved talking to him,” she said. “He always seemed to know what to do and what to say. We laughed a lot. We could talk for hours about plants and trees. He taught me so much about life.” Alicia said her dad always gave his advice with kindness, patience and understanding. “I’m faced with challenges and ugliness of life without his love to guide me through it. I often ask myself, ‘What would my dad say? What would he do if he were here right now?’” Alicia said that 14 grandchildren were robbed of the only grandfather they knew, according to Alicia. Some of the kids are blood-related to Lara and others are not, “which made no difference to him,” she said. At the time of the crash, Bolds was already on pretrial release for domestic assault. He was sentenced last month to 180 days in jail for that incident. “I will never forgive the court system for failing to keep a dangerous and reckless man off the streets. If he had simply stayed in custody for the disgusting act of domestic violence, my father would still be here today,” Alicia said at the hearing. “He has purposely dragged this court process for over two and a half years just trying to find ways to get the best deal for himself.” Mario Lara (family photo) Jesse said he only finds comfort in the stories everyone tells him about his father. Earlier this year when the forestry department responded to a wildfire, word got around that Mario Lara’s son was part of the crew.  Some people sought him out in the camp and others drove to the site just to tell him how his father had helped them in their lives. “Out on the fire line, men were crying,” he said. He said he hoped that Bolds had started to understand what kind of man he took from this world.  “In the beginning, I hoped that this was all just a really bad accident and that I could come in here and forgive you, because that’s what kind of people we are. But after hearing everything and finding out what kind of person you are, I will not forgive you,” he said. “Your soul was forever branded for what you took. So for as long as you walk this earth, I curse you to live a life of overwhelming feeling of hopelessness, strong feeling of dread, being detached from this world and being so overwhelmed by emptiness and anxiety that you don’t even know who you are, because that is what you have done to me.” Bolds’ defense attorney, Alex Spinks, said at the hearing that his client has said from the beginning that he didn’t want the case to go to trial.  “He did not want to put Mr. Lara’s family through a trial,” Spinks said. Before the judge handed down Bolds’ sentence, Bolds apologized to Lara’s family and said he would forever have to live with the fact that he took Lara’s life on his conscience. “If I could go back to that day, I would’ve stayed home and not went to work that day, this accident would’ve never happened,” he said. “I prayed and cried day and night for two months-plus that God would heal him and make him better so he could go home to his family and loved ones, or for God to take him home to heaven so he wouldn’t be suffering in pain anymore.” Bolds’ attorney and prosecutors agreed on the sentence he received. The judge said that she was “struggling a bit” with the sentence but was not going to reject the deal because she wanted the case to be done for Lara’s family.  In memory of her father, Alicia vowed not to leave the courtroom with hate in her heart. “As a very, very proud daughter of Mario Lara, I will honor him, and I will honor his memory by carrying the same love and patience he gave me,” she said. “I will share with the world the good and the love he shared with me to the best of my ability, until I leave this world to join him.” Mario Lara (family photo) Contact reporter Ardeshir Tabrizian: [email protected] or 503-929-3053. A MOMENT MORE, PLEASE– If you found this story useful, consider subscribing to Salem Reporter if you don’t already. Work such as this, done by local professionals, depends on community support from subscribers. Please take a moment and sign up now – easy and secure: SUBSCRIBE. The post Family honors firefighter’s life cut short by intoxicated driver appeared first on Salem Reporter.