This just in from reporter Larry Altman, who still is not allowed on the Pipeline:
Former San Pedro resident Victoria Frazier works in downtown Los Angeles and lives in Simi Valley.
She rides the Metrolink every day.
Frazier, 40, was very lucky last week when she stayed late at a work luncheon and decided to take a later train home.
Former San Pedro resident Victoria Frazier works in downtown Los Angeles and lives in Simi Valley.
She rides the Metrolink every day.
Frazier, 40, was very lucky last week when she stayed late at a work luncheon and decided to take a later train home.
Her regular train, the 3:35 p.m., crashed into a freight train. Twenty-five people died, including Donna Remata, a fellow Simi Valley resident who grew up in Carson and went to Banning High School.
Frazier and Remata were friends. They rode the train together each day.
While it isn't unusual to hear stories about people who are lucky to miss disasters like the Chatsworth train crash, Frazier already was a victim of such a crash.
Then known as Victoria Olguin (she is now married), Frazier was aboard the Metrolink train on her way to work at Merrill Lynch on Jan. 26, 2006 when a suicidal man parked on the tracks in Glendale.
"The train sounded like it was hitting a bunch of rocks and debris," she told a Copley News Service reporter in an article published in the Daily Breeze at the time. "I knew something wasn't right when the train started rocking back and forth and then I noticed there were sparks outside the window."
The crash threw her to the floor. Passengers flew overhead.
"The lights started flashing and then they went out," she said that day. "There was just a bunch of smoke and there was a fire on our side of the train , so I went out the other side."
Frazier should have been on the Metrolink train last week, but was at a work function at a restaurant instead.
"When I was at the event I did look at my watch and said, 'I can make my train.' But something inside my head said, 'No, you are having a good time, take the next train,'" she said.
Frazier's friend, Remata, died in the first car, along with former Torrance resident Chuck Peck.
Frazier usually sits in the second car. She resumed her train rides this week and was on the train Tuesday when it returned to normal service and passed through the Chatsworth area.
It helped to ride with so many other regulars.
"Some of my family members don't want me to ride anymore," she said. "I thought I would feel that way, but I still want to ride. I think it's safer than being on the 405."
Frazier, who has family members still in San Pedro, said she considers herself very lucky.
"I get up at 4 every day to go to work and you want to get home as soon as possible, especially on a Friday," Frazier said. "Fortunately that day I happened to miss the train. Thank God I did."
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