Derrek Dickey, a former UC basketball star who later played for the Golden State Warriors. (Dick Swaim photo) | ZOOM |

        After they were sure he wouldn't die, doctors told Derrek Dickey he would never walk again. “Don't even think about it,” he recalls them saying.

        As he relates this story, Dickey stops talking and rises from his wheelchair. Though absent feeling in his left leg, he begins to trudge across the room, step by step.

        “If you imagine stepping into a creek that's cloudy, you don't know where the bottom is — I have no idea how far the floor is,” he said.

        His every step is a leap of faith. One of the greatest basketball players this city has ever produced, felled 4 1/2 years ago by a stroke, now moves more magically than he ever did as a high-flying athlete.

        “From Day One (after the stoke), there have been miracles after miracles after miracles,” said Dickey's wife, Sally Simonds. “He has already defied everything the doctors thought.”

        The 51-year-old Dickey, who lives in Sacramento, Calif., is back in town this weekend for the Humana Heart Mini-Marathon in his role as spokesman for the American Stroke Association, a division of the American Heart Association. He spoke at a fitness clinic Saturday and will lead the marathon's HeartWalk at noon today.

        His comeback from near death already has reached some surprising peaks.

        Dickey returned to his role as a Chicago Bulls broadcaster for four games and plans one day to resume that role full-time. He can drive a golf ball one-handed more than 200 yards. He can walk the length of a basketball court and back without a cane, and has walked on a treadmill nearly 20 minutes at a time.

        “And I will run again,” Dickey said. “Not hope to. Will.”

        Is he sure that's physically possible?

        “No, but I'll do it. Trust me, I will do it.”

        This is the life of small victories. With no use of his left arm and no feeling in his left leg, Dickey struggles with the most mundane tasks, many of which his specially trained golden retriever, Keleigh, helps him with. Keleigh can open doors, turn on lights, help him dress.

        The mind's eye still sees Dickey in his teens and 20s, a Purcell High School product who still ranks 15th on the UC scoring list with 1,328 points. Dickey played in the NBA for five seasons and was a key member of the Golden State Warriors' 1975 championship team, holding the record for highest field-goal percentage in an NBA Finals (73.9 percent).

        He became an announcer — first for UC, then the Sacramento Kings, then the Bulls. He was also doing numerous college games, broadcasting 150 games a year. “It was run, run, run, go, go,” Dickey said. Then on Nov. 5, 1997, he woke up in his Chicago apartment and couldn't move.

        Simonds rescued him. When he didn't call her in Sacramento around the time he usually did, she phoned Dickey's broadcast partner, Neil Funk, to ask if he knew where he was. She asked Funk's wife to call 911.

        The EMTs were let into Dickey's apartment by a maintenance man, and they scooped him off the bed and rushed him to a hospital. His brain was swelling dangerously.

        Doctors later told his family that for people who have a stroke and are unconscious for an hour, the chances of survival aren't good, and they estimated Dickey was unconscious for 16-18 hours.

        Every year there are 600,000 strokes in America, and 160,000 people don't survive them. How could a healthy, 46-year-old suffer one? His doctors have a theory.

        In 1993, Dickey was stricken with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. The doctors believe the radiation treatments damaged his arteries, which in turn caused the stroke.

        “Things like a stroke either bring out the bad or the good in people,” Simonds said. “It brought out wonderful qualities in Derrek I never saw before.”

        Dickey had said before he wasn't ready for marriage. In the ICU, he squeezed Simonds' hand and asked her to marry him, and they wed the following summer.

        Simonds became the breadwinner and had to physically help the 6-foot-8 Dickey in his rehabilitation.

        “When you need to get stronger, you get stronger,” she said. “If you love somebody, you sure don't leave them when they need you.”

        Dickey attacked rehab daily and still has therapy sessions three times a week. Walking isn't easy; he remains quiet so he can focus the undamaged part of his brain on the task. Three times when he hasn't, he has crashed to the floor.

        Dickey volunteers two days a week at the AHA office and works on the Disability Advisory Committee in Sacramento. He goes fishing. He drives a motorized scooter on errands. He tends his garden.

        “Now I can stop and take the time to smell the roses,” he said. “There are days when I just go in the back yard and sit, just listen to the wind blowing and watch the trees moving.”

        When Dickey entered the Bulls' locker room for his first Bulls broadcast months after his stroke, the players stood and applauded, and Michael Jordan hugged him. When they won the 1998 title, the players awarded him a championship ring.

        The Bulls have a standing offer for him to return, but Dickey doesn't want to broadcast again until he can do a full season. He said he can't do that until he has rid himself of his wheelchair.

        For now, his listening audience is smaller: stroke victims whom he tries to coax from their hospital rooms, one at a time.

        “I just try to tell people, "Get out and be with people. Don't just sit around and give up,'” he said.

        Dickey cites one of his favorite books, Stephen King's The Shawshank Redemption, in which a central character says, “You can either get busy living or you can get busy dying.”

        Said Dickey: “I choose to live — and improve my quality of life.”

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