DENVER — A month after a major car crash, most people would, and probably should not be working. But Dmitri Rumschlag, the owner Z Cycle Shop, is not most people. Just one week after being released from his ICU bed, he is cheerfully back on the job.
"Multiple times they had to put me on heavy sedatives because I think I was trying to get back here," said Rumschlag about his experience in the hospital. "That's like my thing. I just want to be here fixing bikes and working on stuff."
He sees his currently healing 16 cracked ribs, chipped vertibre, and broken pelvis as more of an inconvenience in his mission to fix every bike that comes through the door to his shop.
"They said I was gonna be in rehab for up to a year," he said, explaining what doctors told him a week before. "And I'm like, 'dude, you can't keep me out of this shop.'"
Rumschlag was hit by a stolen car on December 4th while driving home from his shop. Investigators estimate the driver was speeding upwards of 60 miles per hour. The crash nearly killed Rumschlag who was in critical condition for weeks.
"I was very close to dying," he said. "It hurts me a lot to think that there's someone out there that could do this to somebody else. If I was on a bicycle, I wouldn't be here right now. I would have been dead."
The driver and passenger fled the scene before police arrived. Rumschlag and his family are offering a $5,000 reward for any information leading to the arrest of a suspect in the crash.
"We really just hope that the community can come together and help solve this crime," he explained. "Wopefully, we can find them and they can be brought to justice."
Though Rumschlag wont be working a full schedule any time soon. He says he is learning from his bicycles and moving forward.
"Each day has been this like progression," he said with a smile. "Maybe in a week I'll be running marathons."