As news spread around the city that Don Schrader — an iconic local legend — was injured in a hit-and-run crash last week, people began asking how to help.
Someone even set up a GoFundMe page to solicit donations to “help in getting him up and roaming our city again.” By late morning the page, which bore a photoshopped image of Schrader clad in his classic jean shorts and straw hat striding over the city, had already raised $740.
But 77-year-old Schrader told the Journal on Tuesday that he did not authorize the site and does not know the man who organized it.
“That is fake,” he said, on the phone from his bed at the University of New Mexico Hospital. “It has nothing to do with me, that’s for sure.”
The organizer of the GoFundMe told the Journal he was a fan of Schrader and had met him a couple of times.
He said he “was just trying to help out a public icon in our city. If he doesn’t want it, I’ll shut it down and refund everyone.”
That’s what he ended up doing and he subsequently sent the Journal a screen shot showing he asked for donations to be refunded.
Schrader said he hopes insurance, Medicare and Medicaid will cover his bills — “which will be monstrous.”
“I definitely don’t at this point need any money,” he said. “I live simply below the U.S. poverty level and I enjoy living simply.”
As for offers of cards and flowers, he said no.
“If there are flowers from someone’s home garden, fine, but why pay big money for flowers?” Schrader asked. “I have a garden in the backyard where I live.”
Schrader was hit by a car last Tuesday while crossing the street near the South Broadway Library. The driver fled the scene.
No further updates are available and an Albuquerque Police Department spokeswoman said she cannot release a police report since it is still under investigation.
Schrader had surgery on his elbow and kneecap and will need rehab to recover.
Sara Grubb, a youth coordinator for the library, told the Journal she was getting in her car parked on Broadway when she saw Schrader — who she knows as an affable regular at the library, eager to greet everyone by name — start to cross the road.
Then she saw him lying down in her rearview mirror.
Grubb said a tow truck driver stopped in the road to block traffic and people rushed over to help. Neither she nor anyone else reported seeing the car that hit Schrader.
“It was quite heartwarming to see the number of people who stopped … especially as soon as they realized that it was Don,” Grubb said. “We probably had three to four people after that who had stopped just to make sure he is doing alright.”
