One year after a near-fatal shooting, former B.C. Cycling Association president to be recognized with award

Looking back on the shooting that almost killed him, Paul Dragan doesn’t remember much. It’s almost been a full year since the June 2014 incident, when Dragan, a former international cycling competitor, past-president of the B.C. Cycling Association, and Vancouver-area businessman, was gunned down by an ex-employee outside Dragan’s Yaletown bike shop. The last thing Dragan remembered, he told the Vancouver Observer, was chatting with one of his shop’s managers on Davie Street. The next thing he knew—more than a week later—he was in a hospital room, fighting for his life.

“The bullet went in here,” he told the Observer, pointing to his chest, “and exited next to my spine.” A huge, 70-cm scar extends from one armpit to the other, the result of his surgeon’s successful—if risky—efforts to maintain bloodflow by manually pumping Dragan’s heart. His blood pressure all but flatlined seven times. Eighty per cent of his blood volume was lost en route to the hospital. Comatose and precipitously near death, doctors called his eventual survival a “miracle.”

“When I talk to the medical people,” Dragan said, “that’s when I go: Holy smokes, none of these guys thought I was going to be alive. The type of injury, the usual outcome for a trauma as severe as mine, coupled with blood loss, is death.”

Dragan, a lifelong cyclist with more than a few kilometres in the saddle, credits his personal fitness with the incredible, against-all-odds recovery he’s made—even if, as he is careful to state, he’s about “60 per cent” of the way to being fully mended. More than just his ordeal has caught a wealth of attention, though. Before the shooting, Dragan was establishing an e-bike shop, the latest in his 29-year legacy of introducing new, progressive cycling outlets to the Vancouver area. This, the Retail Council of Canada has noted, is part of what makes his work “an innovative, visionary and an integral part of the community,” to quote the Observer’s article. Recognizing this and his nearly three decades of supporting Vancouver cycling—not to mention the literal bruises gained in the process—the RCC named Dragan the 2015 retail ambassador of the year.

Dragan will attend the RCC’s gala on June 2, while a June 17 event will commemorate the first anniversary of last year’s blood drive that helped save Dragan’s life. The highlight of the event for Dragan, the Observer quotes him as saying, is that he will “get to attend it.”