One More For The Road

"Get in the tire and roll down the hill. It'll be fun," they said.

One more for 9 4 24

Cowboy State Daily is Wyoming’s largest newspaper with Wyoming’s most experienced journalists. 

<title>One More For The Road: Wednesday, September 4, 2024 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

One More For The Road: Wednesday, September 4, 2024

 "Get in the tire and roll down the hill. It'll be fun," they said.

Kerry Drake

Wyoming Life

John Adolfi, a creationist in Syracuse, New York, searched for many years for Noah’s Ark and a race of giants who supposedly walked the Earth. But until he died last November, the elusive Pedro Mountain Mummy found in Wyoming in 1932 still clearly haunted him.

In 2005, Adolfi posted a $10,000 reward for the tiny mummified remains of the 

” as he came to be known in the region. Pedro hasn’t been seen in public since 1950, but in the past 76 years the mummy has been the source of extraordinary speculation about its origin.

Adolfi’s goal was to have the mummy tested through DNA samples, magnetic resonance imaging, and improved X-ray technology to establish exactly what it was so he could disprove the theory of evolution.

Countless newspaper and magazine articles have been written about Pedro, who is also the subject of a host of videos on YouTube and was featured on an episode of “Unsolved Mysteries” in 1994. 

Some of the videos make sensational claims, including that he was a member of a tribe of 

But was the human-like Pedro an example of the Nimerigar, a mythical tribe of savage pygmies with sharp teeth that Native Americans thought were hiding in the mountains? 

Nimerigar is literally translated as “people eaters,” and it’s said they shot their Indian prey with tiny bows and poisoned arrows. 

In 1941, the Milwaukee Journal asked in a headline, “Did a Race of Pygmies Once Live in America?” According to this account, the preserved mummy was a 65-year-old man.

Most disturbing was the article’s claim that X-rays showed “food in the stomach appears to have been raw meat. The teeth in the front of the mouth are pointed and of the flesh-eating variety.”

Or was the mummy an example of a benign race of humanoid pranksters? 

One aspect of the legend is that people who go near the San Pedro Mountains in southern Wyoming should carry something shiny to offer the Little People as a gift, so they knew no harm would come to them.

Perhaps all the fascination is due to the fact that while so little is known about the mummy, including its whereabouts, there is no doubt that it existed, that it looked freakish, and there are still copies of X-rays — but not the X-rays themselves — that have led to scientific speculation that Pedro was either a full-grown adult or an infant with an abnormality called anencephalus, in which only the brain stem develops. 

Complicating matters was the appearance of a large wound on top of its head.

There is just enough photographic and other evidence left for people to claim Pedro was anything they want it to be.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Wanted To Disprove Evolution"}]

Two decades ago, Adolphi told then-Casper Star-Tribune reporter Brendan Burke — who became so curious about the mummy that he added Pedro to his unofficial beat — that he realized proof of a previously unknown prehistoric relative of man would not disprove evolution.

But Adolphi maintained that a new humanoid species would poke holes in the paradigm evolutionists have created regarding human origins.

Six months later he was interviewed again by Burke, who reported that while Adolfi said he received many leads, none had panned out.

A Wyoming woman told him the mummy was in the possession of an Indian tribe not based in Wyoming. But Adolfi investigated and determined that tip was a dead end.

So was another person who reported seeing Pedro at a garage sale in New Jersey. And an 86-year-old Wyoming man who had what appeared to be a hominoid mummy that could fit in the palm of one’s hand.

But the man was not willing to have the artifact X-rayed, Adolfi said, because he didn’t want to know if it was an authentic Nimerigar corpse or a vegetable carving. And the man wanted to continue believing that his mummy was “the real deal.”

Adolfi said he was willing to pay less money for evidence of other pygmy mummies, but he apparently never got his hands on one.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"A Middle Eastern Cousin?"}]

 on his YouTube channel Lost World Museum, though, is fascinating. 

Adolfi interviews a man with a Middle Eastern accent and wearing clear plastic gloves who wants to show him his own find. The man speaks in a foreign language to someone off camera, and relays the answers in English.

The man unwraps what looks much like Pedro from Wyoming, but in a slightly different pose and with a lot more hair. He says the artifact was discovered about a half-meter underground by accident.

“Unfortunately, we can’t share too much with (viewers) about location or what’s going to happen with this little fella,” Adolfi says. “But I wanted you to see this for yourself, examine it, and ask yourself, ‘Is this a full-grown human? Or is it just a mummified fetus?’"

“The doctor here says it is fully human,” the man volunteers. “It’s estimated to be 1,500 years old.”

“They do have plans for it,” Adolfi says when the man is gone. “I know there are some questions about the legalities of it. I know if this was in the United States, such as the Pedro Mountain Mummy, there’s Native American rights there, and obviously there's archaeological rights there, there are human rights there.

“But over in the Middle East, Far East, there are laws and whatnot that you have to follow. But they’re big boys, and they’re going to do whatever they’re going to do, I guess.”

Adolfi speculates that the mummy “is going to be put in someone’s private collection, and it’s never going to be seen again.”

Wherever Pedro is, or whether he still even exists, George Gill, a University of Wyoming anthropology professor, has seen the medical research and he said it’s definitely an anencephalic infant. 

He said in 2013 that further testing on a female pygmy mummy later brought to Gill and sent to Children’s Hospital in Denver to obtain X-rays, a DNA sample and a radiocarbon date yielded the same result.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Pedro’s Strange Journey"}]

The Pedro Mountain Mummy was discovered in 1932 by two gold prospectors, Cecil Main and Frank Carr, who detonated some explosives near the Pathfinder Reservoir and opened up a cave, according to an article in the Oct. 21, 1932, Casper Tribune-Herald.

Inside on a ledge by itself was Pedro, sitting with his feet tucked under him and his arms crossed. 

In 2013, the website Atlas Obscura described Pedro: “His skin was brown and dried by the arid Wyoming climate, his mouth was drawn into a placid scowl — a lean Buddha with a misshapen head.”

It was estimated that if the mummy had been standing, it would be about 17 inches tall. It weighed less than a pound.

The prospectors brought their find to Casper, where some were sure it was a hoax and others didn’t know what they were looking at. The pair sold it for the not-too-princely sum of $25.

The mummy apparently exchanged hands several times and was seen at various sideshow exhibits in the region. 

It wound up at the Jones Drug Store in Meeteetse for several years before a curious Casper car salesman named Ivan Goodman paid several thousands of dollars for it and brought it back to his showroom, where it acted as a mascot for the dealership.

It was also a place guaranteed to attract business, and Goodman was a showman of sorts. The most well-known photo of the Pedro Mountain Mummy depicts Goodman holding it in a glass case.

Main once signed an affidavit in 1941 that said the mummy was brought to the Chicago Field Museum, but there was no record of it ever being seen there. 

It’s known that Goodman did have the artifact analyzed on one of at least two trips he made with it to New York City, where it was X-rayed and examined by scientists.

“After an exhaustive study by the scientists it was agreed that it was the only specimen known of a human race of that type which perhaps dated back a million years,” Goodman told the Tribune-Herald on March 5, 1950.

The car dealer didn’t leave New York City with Pedro. It’s not clear whether he was swindled by a con man, as one story purported, or he sold it to a man named Leonard Wadler, who according to a 1979 Casper Star-Tribune article took it to Florida.

Only two things are certain: Goodman died in 1950, and Adolfi’s research showed Wadler died in the Sunshine State in the 1980s. The creationist told reporters he always expected Pedro to show up somewhere in Florida.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"True Believer In Montana"}]

Interest in the mummy has remained high in the Rocky Mountains. 

One of the foremost true believers in the region in the existence of the Little People was Shirley Smith, who owned the Little Cowboy Bar and Museum in Fromberg, Montana, for decades before it burned down in 2013.

Smith had many exhibits in her museum related to Little People of the Pryor Mountains, but apparently none survived the flames.

Her longtime partner, John Hanson of Bridger, said school children would visit the museum, and Smith had a popcorn machine. 

“She would make sure that every kid got a bag of popcorn so they could give it to the little people,” Hanson told Cowboy State Daily with a laugh.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Hanson said it was all a myth. "}]

“I think every civilization … the people of Hawaii have their little people, the Irish have their little people. I think it’s a worldwide phenomenon in that sense," he said. "Everyone seems to have some kind of little people.”

Smith grew up near Byron, in the boondocks, Hanson said.

“She spent all her life calling to (the Little People] and going up and down the mountains,” he said. “She would get some of the Crows to come over, and some of the older ones were true believers. Shirley and them would be thick as thieves talking about them. She was a true believer too.”

Diana Shaffer of Thermopolis was one of Smith’s daughters. 

“She told me that when she was young, someone brought a mummy of one to school,” Shaffer told Cowboy State Daily. 

That was an experience Adolfi couldn’t claim. Nobody ever claimed his $10,000 reward, either, though many people tried to get in on his treasure hunt but never passed his truthfulness test. 

Then again, he never met Smith, who died in Thermopolis in 2022. If her finds hadn’t been destroyed in the fire that claimed virtually everything in her museum, one can bet they would have found plenty to talk about.

Pedro Mountains and mummy 8 16 26

<title>Nobody Will Ever Claim $10K Reward For Wyoming's Missing Pedro Mountain Mummy | Cowboy State Daily</title>

In 2005 New York creationist John Adolfi offered a $10,000 reward if someone brought him the "Pedro Mountain Mummy" found in Wyoming in 1932 but never seen in public after 1950. With Adolfi's death in November, no one will ever claim the reward.

Nobody Will Ever Claim $10K Reward For Wyoming's Missing Pedro Mountain Mummy

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily reporter, Dale Killingbeck

Dale Killingbeck

Around Wyoming

He rescued two wounded men under heavy enemy fire, took a bullet to his leg, and the next day was blown into the air as a rocket-propelled grenade hit a half-track vehicle he was standing beside, sending shrapnel into his legs and back.

Capt. Barry Gasdek kept leading his men in September 1968 while countering a heavy North Vietnamese Army attack. During other action in Vietnam, he was shot out of the air twice while riding in helicopters.

Gasdek's philosophy then and now as a retired lieutenant colonel who closed his career at the University of Wyoming teaching ROTC students is that officers “lead from the front.”

“If you’re closer to the front, then you’re in whatever’s going on,” Gasdek said. “I never asked my men to do anything that I would not personally do, including being a tunnel rat or point, whatever.”

He left Vietnam after two consecutive tours with the Distinguished Service Cross, Legion of Merit, Soldiers Medal as well as a Silver Star, Bronze Star with a “V” for valor and four oak leaf clusters, and the Purple Heart with an oak leaf cluster for wounds received on the battlefield.

Growing up, Gasdek said he never considered the military as a career. He was born the day before Memorial Day on May 29, 1942, as the nation tried to respond on two fronts in the early days of World War II.

Born and raised in Loyalhanna, Pennsylvania, southeast of Pittsburgh, in a Czechoslovakian neighborhood, Gasdek’s grandparents had left the old country and moved to the U.S. to find a better life. His grandfather was a coal miner and his father also worked in the coal mines and steel mills around Pittsburgh.

An Eagle Scout and multi-sport athlete in high school, Gasdek was a three-sport college athlete at Indiana State College in Indiana, Pennsylvania. He played guard on the football team, wrestled in the heavyweight class and ran the two-mile on the track team.

Entering college, he chose to join the Army ROTC rather than do two years of required physical education because his sports commitments already meant he would have a lot of gym time. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"He found he enjoyed the military order. "}]

During his junior year, he committed to advanced ROTC training and graduated in 1964 with a degree in art education and due to his superior academic performance received a commission as a second lieutenant in the regular U.S. Army instead of a reserve commission.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Germany To Vietnam"}]

Gasdek said initial assignments took him to Fort Benning, Georgia, and then three years in Germany during the Cold War with the 4th Armored Division, where he had roles as a platoon leader, company executive officer and then company commander with the 1st Battalion, 54th Infantry Mechanized in the 3rd Brigade of the 4th Armored Division.

In 1967, he received orders to join the 1st Infantry Division, the Big Red One, in Vietnam. Gasdek said he convinced the army to send him to Ranger school before he went into combat. The Army gave him a slot in the school, but a month through the training he injured his knee and spent three months recuperating.

After the knee was good to go, he was reassigned to Hawaii and a new battalion being formed for Vietnam, the “Jungle Warriors.” They were deployed to Vietnam in February and March of 1968.

A short time after entering the country and being sent to 11th Light Infantry Brigade headquarters, Gasdek was promoted to a company commander role.

During his first six months in Vietnam, Gasdek was involved in directing search and destroy missions in the northern part of South Vietnam. He said they mostly were dealing with Viet Cong fighters. However, in September 1968, his unit, Company D, 4th Battalion, 21st Infantry, 11th Brigade Americal Division, was sent farther north, where North Vietnamese Army troops were active.

On Sept. 22, his unit was conducting a combat assault into the new area and one of the 40-soldier platoons became engaged with North Vietnamese forces.

Gasdek recalls sending in another platoon to reinforce them and both were pinned down.

With two radio operators, Gasdek moved to where the action was occurring. He called for help from an armored cavalry unit but the M-113 track with a .50-caliber machine gun and two M-60 machine guns could not make it through a narrow pass.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"AK-47 Fire"}]

As Gasdek spoke via radio with a platoon leader, his two radio operators were on either side of him. A North Vietnamese soldier sprayed AK-47 fire on their position. Both radio men were hit in the head, Gasdek was untouched. One of the operators was dead and the other wounded.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Gasdek applied first-aid to the fallen."}]

“The one that was wounded, he calls me once in a while,” Gasdek said. “He was a police captain, I think in the New York Police Department. He said after Vietnam he healed and all that and went from one war to another in New York.”

Gasdek’s Distinguished Service Cross citation states he was wounded in the leg during the firefight. After learning two other men in one of his company’s platoons were wounded and laying in front of a defensive position, Gasdek crawled out and pulled them back into the defensive perimeter.

Other soldiers had hesitated due to the withering enemy fire.

The next morning, despite the leg wound, he led an attack through hedgerows and little villages and carried the radio himself due to the loss of his radio operators. As he crossed a rice paddy into a village, the enemy opened up with AK-47s, machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades.

Armored tracked vehicles accompanying Gasdek’s troops were hit and he was blown off his feet, taking shrapnel in his legs and back. He led the counterattack and “ended up just going bunker to bunker” killing the enemy. 

Gasdek said headquarters informed him they wanted prisoners to interrogate, so he had a tank drive on top of an enemy bunker until it collapsed. They then dug North Vietnamese troops out and sent them to headquarters for questioning.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Casualties"}]

“I ended up with six soldiers killed and 15 wounded,” he said. “I was wounded myself a couple of times.”

The North Vietnamese suffered 67 killed as well as the loss of rocket-propelled grenade launchers, ammunition, AK-47s, and other weapons.

During the battle, Gasdek continued to communicate via the radio and help get air support for his troops as well as engage the enemy. The chaos of war from helicopter gunships, rocket-propelled grenades, machine guns and other small-arms fire somehow brought him to a place where “in your mind it goes quiet.”

“I thought that if this is the day I die, at least I’m where I should be up front with my men,” he said.

His actions that day resulted in his being awarded the Distinguished Service Cross by Gen. Creighton Abrams, for whom the Abrams Tank is named. Gasdek said he had no clue who Abrams was until after the presentation. 

Abrams later become the Army Chief of Staff.

Gasdek remained in Vietnam for two tours and served for six months flying Visual Reconnaissance Missions as a base defense commander with a pilot on a light observation helicopter. He had at his disposal a mini-gun with 2,000rounds of ammunition and a case of grenades at his feet.

His responsibility was to protect a brigade-size firebase at night.

“We got attacked a couple of times. One night we killed 19 at the wire, and another time 21,” he said.

On other missions, Gasdek was shot down twice while flying as a passenger in Huey helicopters. In one instance they were flying over a village and took 21 bullets and fortunately were able to radio for support.

“It was about 5 or 10 minutes before we had gunships come out,” he said. The pilot found an old French airstrip to make a skid landing and a large Chinook helicopter was sent to lift what was left of the helicopter and take it back to base.

After Vietnam, Gasdek returned to the states through Hawaii, where he spent a week scuba diving, and then San Francisco and back to Pennsylvania. He said he never experienced personally the anti-war sentiment that many Vietnam veterans received. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"His Welcome Home"}]

In Pennsylvania, he said the miners and steelworkers made sure he did not have to pay for anything.

However, his own payment for the many battles he experienced involved post-traumatic stress and a traumatic brain injury. He said he believes staying in the service and talking with other Vietnam vets helped him cope and kept him from becoming socially isolated like other buddies from Vietnam who wanted to be a hermit and “wind up in the hills.”

“Sooner or later you’ve got to deal with your issues, your demons, and you know, life goes on,” Gasdek said. “So, for about 40 years, I never even mentioned Vietnam actually. I never wore my medals until we got invited to a couple of things at the national cemetery at Arlington and the secretary of veterans affairs said ‘How come you guys aren’t wearing your medals?’ That’s when I started wearing my medals.”

Assignments after Vietnam included Ranger school ,where he finished first in his class. He became not only a Ranger but a Pathfinder, qualified for setting up helicopter landing zones and drop zones. His experience in Vietnam led to his decision to stay in the military rather than pursue his original plans of teaching art in school classrooms.

Gasdek went on to serve as a leadership instructor at the U.S. Army Infantry School at Fort Benning, and through assignments as part of the Army Training Board traveled the world.

He was in Panama during riots that occurred a few blocks from his hotel and in South Korea in 1979 when a two-star general triggered a coup d’etat resulting in a shootout at the nation’s Ministry of Defense.

“Our compound was right on the other side of their Ministry of Defense,” Gasdek said. “They were shooting that up, and bullets were flying through our barracks. I was spread-eagled on the floor, but you know I didn’t get any combat pay for that. I was in the wrong spot at the wrong time.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Protocol Role"}]

His career also included a stint as deputy chief of protocol for the Pacific in Honolulu, Hawaii, working for four-star U.S. Navy admirals at Pearl Harbor. His job was to handle all the VIPs, from presidents, heads of state, congressional delegations, and others who came through Honolulu.

Gasdek and members of the team took care of VIP itineraries and made sure their accommodations and experience matched their expectations and status.

That job allowed him to meet the king and queen of Spain, Reagan administration Secretary of State George Schultz, several cabinet and congressional officials, and play basketball with George H. W. Bush’s vice president, Dan Quayle. Quayle was traveling back from the Philippines and arrived about 3 a.m.

He had a 30-minute meeting with an admiral and then wanted to play basketball — at 4 a.m.

“My boss told me, Barry, you pick up a team,” he said. “We played the Secret Service and Danny Quayle. I can say part of my job was to guard the vice president, he was dribbling the ball of course.”

Gasdek ended his Army career teaching ROTC at the University of Wyoming. He said his role as a professor of military science allowed him to meet many people, including state leaders and governors.

He became an advocate for veterans being appointed to serve on the Wyoming Veterans Commission and also for several years as the first Wyoming veteran services officer. Gasdek said he took on the role to help veterans because he “knew what they were going through.”

Gasdek said he also wanted to make sure Wyoming Guard members on deployment were taken care of.

“We would make all the homecomings and yellow-ribbon events where they would brief the troops and the families (about) what was going on, making sure you had somebody look after the family while they were deployed,” he said.

After his Army career, Gasdek joined the exclusive Legion of Valor veterans’ organization that is open to veterans with the Medal of Honor, Distinguished Service Cross, Navy Cross or Air Force Cross. He was its national commander from 2008 to 2009.

Gasdek also belongs to the Military Order of the Purple Heart and has had leadership positions with the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars.

While he never pursued his art education career, Gasdek said a three-story log house he built in the mountains northwest of Pikes Peak while he was stationed at Fort Carson, Colorado, decades ago became an outlet for his artistic side.

He has hung onto the house but characterizes Laramie as his final home.

“Three or four weather systems would be up there,” he said. “I got a view of Pike’s Peak, which is really neat.”

Gasdek’s lifelong efforts have been honored by his alma mater with a Doctor of Public Service Degree and in the past by U.S. Sen. John Barrasso in the Congressional Record for his service and advocacy for veterans.

“He embodies the cowboy ethics and what it means to be a citizen of Wyoming,” Barrasso said in remarks published in the Congressional Record in 2012. “It is certain that the legacy of his leadership will inspire new generations of brave soldiers.”

Contact Dale Killingbeck at dale@cowboystatedaily.com

Barry Gazdeck Barry Now and Then 8 16 26

<title>Laramie Vietnam Vet Led From The Front And Has The Scars And Medals To Prove It | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Retired Vietnam Veteran Lt. Col. Barry Gasdek had a leadership philosophy that kept him in front of his men. He has the scars and medals, including a Distinguished Service Cross, to prove he lived out that ideal during two tours of combat at the height of the war.

Laramie Vietnam Vet Led From The Front And Has The Scars And Medals To Prove It

Kolby fedore

Kolby Fedore

After the engines shut down and 19-year-old Jerahleigh Johnson climbs out of her demolition derby car, people finally get a good look at the person who has been smashing them into oblivion.

[{"type":"text","text":"Off comes the helmet and out falls her long blonde hair."}]

“I've had grown men say, ‘I haven't been hit that hard in years, let alone to have it be some little girl,’” said her dad, Jeremiah Johnson.

Jerahleigh lives in Saratoga and spends her summers fixing up old cars for the express purpose of busting the crap out of them in dirt arenas around the West.

Her latest machine is a hulking early-1980s Cadillac painted red, white and blue, with white stars scattered across its rear quarter panels and two exhaust stacks punching through the hood.

[{"type":"text","text":"It started the season looking downright patriotic."}]

Today, the hood is buckled, the doors are cratered and the front end looks like it has been worked over with a giant sledgehammer, which is the whole point.

[{"type":"text","text":"“You're going into a purposeful car wreck,” she said."}]

Then she grinned, because for Jerahleigh, the part most people would consider horrifying is the funnest.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"She Wanted In"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Jerahleigh grew up in the garage."}]

Her dad got into demolition derby about 20 years ago, so her childhood was surrounded by tools and old cars waiting to be torn apart and rebuilt, with nights and weekends spent turning ordinary automobiles into Mad Max machines.

One of her younger brothers started driving before she did, climbing behind the wheel around age 11 or 12. By about 15, Jerahleigh had watched enough.

[{"type":"text","text":"She wanted in."}]

There was no grand rebellion involved, no moment when the sweet Saratoga girl shocked her horrified parents by announcing she wanted to smash automobiles for fun.

Her dad was already smashing automobiles for fun. Her brother was smashing automobiles for fun.

[{"type":"text","text":"Some families play golf."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"The Johnsons “do derby.”"}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Not Holding The Flashlight"}]

Spend enough time talking to Jerahleigh about derby and it becomes clear the crashing is only half of it.

Long before No. 15 rolls onto the dirt, hundreds of hours of labor are invested in making sure it can survive once the smashing starts.

[{"type":"text","text":"The Cadillac had to be gutted. "}]

Glass came out. Seats came out. The dashboard and much of the interior disappeared. 

A steel cage went in around the driver's compartment, and the car was rebuilt according to the rules of Jerahleigh's class.

[{"type":"text","text":"The family has put about $15,000 into the smasher."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"And Jerahleigh isn't just standing around holding the flashlight for Dad."}]

“The motor that she runs, she put it together herself,” Jeremiah said. “She can do it all.”

She can grind and prepare metal, change her own oil and spark plugs, do a tuneup, install an engine and weld in the roll cage that might ultimately be responsible for keeping her alive.

Jeremiah said her mechanical ability is “above most of the guys, guaranteed.”

That makes the sight of Jerahleigh standing beside No. 15 slightly deceptive. The young woman with the long blonde hair and easy smile didn't just climb into the monster.

[{"type":"text","text":"She helped build it."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Peach Rings "}]

For somebody preparing to intentionally wreck a car, Jerahleigh has a remarkably gentle pregame ritual.

She drinks water, eats gummy peach rings and would appreciate it if everybody left her alone for a little while.

[{"type":"text","text":"Then the fire suit and helmet go on."}]

When Jerahleigh climbs through the gutted shell of the cab and settles into the driver's seat, she might have a strategy, but she knows it won't last.

“It changes the second you strap in the car and they say go,” she said.

[{"type":"text","text":"Everything becomes noise, mud, smoke and split-second decisions."}]

Jerahleigh watches the other cars and looks for openings, trying to protect the parts of the Cadillac she needs to keep moving while searching for opportunities to deliver a hard shot with the parts she can afford to lose.

[{"type":"text","text":"Steve “Grumpy” Diorio noticed that the first time he watched her."}]

The owner of The Grumpy Italian pizzeria in Saratoga, and now one of Jerahleigh's sponsors, knew almost nothing about demolition derby when he met her. The Johnsons had become regulars at his restaurant, and eventually conversation wandered into what their families did for fun.

He went to watch her compete, discovering demolition derby was louder and crazier than anything he had expected. But underneath the chaos, he noticed Jerahleigh wasn't simply barreling blindly around the arena. She waited for her opportunities and picked her shots.

[{"type":"text","text":"Now he's one of her biggest fans."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"“I want to see her become a star,” Diorio said."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Blood On Her Face"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Jerahleigh knows exactly what can go wrong."}]

Her biggest fear in the arena was getting hurt, but she's already checked that box.

At a derby in Utah, another car hit her hard enough that she bit through her lip.

Saratoga 19-year-old Jerahleigh Johnson can weld a roll cage, rebuild an engine and smash a Cadillac with the best of them. “I’ve had grown men say, ‘I haven’t been hit that hard in years,’” her dad says of Jarahleigh's demolition derby domination.

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