{"id":76770,"date":"2018-02-10T19:33:38","date_gmt":"2018-02-11T02:33:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/highway-worker-hit-by-car-suffered-severe-brain-damage\/"},"modified":"2018-02-11T02:33:38","modified_gmt":"2018-02-11T02:33:38","slug":"highway-worker-hit-by-car-suffered-severe-brain-damage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/highway-worker-hit-by-car-suffered-severe-brain-damage\/","title":{"rendered":"Highway worker hit by car suffered severe brain damage"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image naviga-align-left alignleft\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=9b52c923-0252-4339-80b9-b9982234552b&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"833\" height=\"1111\" alt=\"Colorado Department of Transportation employee Nolan Olson suffered irreversible brain damage after being hit by a vehicle Feb. 2 west of Pagosa Springs.\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">Colorado Department of Transportation employee Nolan Olson suffered irreversible brain damage after being hit by a vehicle Feb. 2 west of Pagosa Springs.<\/span><span class=\"credit\">Courtesy of Tonya Hamilton<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><p>A Colorado Department of Transportation worker who was struck by a vehicle last week west of Pagosa Springs suffered severe injuries to his legs and irreversible brain damage, according to a family member.<\/p>\n<p>Nolan Olson, 64, was filling potholes Feb. 2 on U.S. Highway 160 near mile marker 140 when he was hit by a passing car, said CDOT spokeswoman Lisa Schwantes.<\/p>\n<p>He was rushed to Pagosa Springs Medical Center before being flown to St. Anthony Hospital in Lakewood.<\/p>\n<p>Olson\u2019s stepdaughter, Tonya Hamilton, wrote in a journal entry on the website CaringBridge that the damage to his brain is \u201cbeyond repair and beyond healing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cRight now, machines are keeping his physical body alive, and the Nolan that we all knew and loved is no longer with us,\u201d she wrote Thursday night.<\/p>\n<p>Olson of Pagosa Springs has worked for CDOT for 14 years.<\/p>\n<p>The Pagosa Springs Sun identified the driver who hit Olson as 83-year-old Jerry Modisette of Pagosa Springs. He was cited with careless driving causing bodily injury, according to the newspaper.<\/p>\n<p>Pagosa Springs Police Department did not return phone calls this week seeking details about the crash.<\/p>\n<p><em class=\"mwc_shirttail\"><a href=\"mailto:mrupani@durangoherald.com\">mrupani@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Employee was filling potholes west of Pagosa Springs<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":76773,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[576,28,310,254,69],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-76770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-colorado-department-of-transportation","tag-headlines","tag-pagosa-springs","tag-road-crash","tag-u-s-highway-160"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76770"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76770\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76770"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=76770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}