Pedro Perez 11 Story Fall & A Year On

Pedro Perez speaks exclusively to ABC7's Lyanne Melendez about his fall from an 11-story building in San Francisco while he was washing windows.

Exclusive: Window washer who fell 11 stories talks about his life now (San Leandro, Calif.): On November 21, 2014 people in the Bay Area were shocked to hear a window washer, who fell from an 11-story building in San Francisco, survived. The man's name is Pedro Perez. ABC7 News has spoken exclusively to Perez about his astonishing ordeal.

The reaction I get from everyone is it is impossible to survive a fall like that. I've been in contact with the Perez family since the accident. It has been the most trying year of their lives and as you can imagine his recovery has been long and tedious. After more than a year, I finally met the man who was supposed to be dead.

In November 2014 at the corner of California and Montgomery streets, emergency crews rushed to the scene of an accident. At the time a police spokesperson explained, "One individual fell off the window washing apparatus." A witness on that day said, "He's definitely unconscious." Another witness said she took off her jacket and put it over him.

Perez is an experienced window washer who lost his balance and fell from the top of an 11-story building down 120 feet and landed on a moving car. When we spoke to him recently, he said, "I don't remember [anything from] my accident."

That's common with people who suffer serious brain trauma. He remembers waking up in the hospital three days later. He had broken his pelvis, lost all feeling in his right leg, and severed an artery in his right arm, which today he has troubling lifting. He explained he can't lift his arm straight up.

Melendez: "So what do you think happened up there?"

Perez: "I felt very sure of myself. I felt I had a lot of experience."

We saw a demonstration of what Cal/OSHA concluded following its investigation. The lanyard attached to his safety harness was connected to an anchor point, but Perez briefly disconnected that lanyard to position himself on the edge of the roof. He was in the process of moving the extension cord of the suspended scaffold, when he lost his balance.

"Many times when I was up there, I would think if I ever fell, I'd be nothing but broken pieces," Perez said.

A passing Toyota Camry helped break his fall. Perez would not have survived had the car gone by there a split second later. "Nobody survives a fall from that high up," Perez said.

Melendez: "Have you seen the car, a picture of the car?"

Perez: "Just a little bit, but not for long because I don't want to see it and I don't want to remember nothing about that."

The driver, Mohammad Alcozai of Dublin, had his share of luck that day. It would have been a different outcome had Perez landed on his windshield. Because the accident still haunts him, he refuses to drive into Downtown San Francisco. He told ABC7 News, "Especially, when I was making left turns, so I was always thinking something is going to fall or something is going to hit me." The two have never met, but Alcozai was glad to know that Perez was slowly recovering.

Still, something as easy as putting on a pair of socks is a struggle. He thinks he's improving more each day. Perez is 59 years old and spends many hours a week doing physical therapy to relearn how to walk and strengthen his body. He's never going back to being a window washer; his family won't let him.

Melendez: "Some people think, 'Wow, I got a second chance. Now I'm going to do this...' So finish the sentence for me."

Perez: "I want to help other people. Thank God I'm alive and if I live a year or two, that's extra time."

The company Perez worked for, Century Window Washing of Concord, was cited for a number of violations including not having fall protection equipment. They were fined more than $12,000. All the medical bills have been paid for by worker's comp, but of course, the family doesn't have that extra income. Still, he is so thankful to be alive.

Also see:

Breaking - Window Washer Falls 11 Stories In San Francisco

Theory On How Window Cleaner Survived

Employer Fined $12,000 In Window Washer’s Fall

Pedro Perez Still Critical After SF Fall

Opening Our Hearts & Wallets

Pedro Perez Rehabilitation

People Donate Thousands For Pedro Perez

Pedro Perez Still Critical After SF Fall

A pair of San Francisco police officers look over the scene where Pedro Perez fell 11 stories onto a moving car.

Window Washer's family speaks to ABC7 news after fall (San Leandro, California) : - ABC7 News followed up on the condition of the window washer who fell on a car from an 11-story building in San Francisco. It happened nearly two weeks ago and he is still in critical condition at San Francisco General Hospital, but talking. His 19-year-old daughter, Monica Perez spoke only to ABC7 News.

The window washer is 58-year-old Pedro Perez and he is still in the intensive care unit at the hospital. His family said they see him improving a little every day and they too are amazed that he survived that fall. The San Leandro resident had 15 years under his belt as a window washer. That's why his family doesn't know how he managed to fall from the roof of a building on Montgomery Street, landing on a moving car. "He knows how equipment has to be set up. He knows how one little thing not being set up right, can cause an accident," Monica said.

After the fall, Perez (pictured) was helped by several pedestrians. Minutes later, a confused co-worker who mistakenly thought Perez was dead called the family to say he had passed. For about an hour the family didn't know he was alive. Monica said they didn't know "until the hospital called us and told us he was alive." The moving car he landed on helped break his fall. Since the November 21 Street accident, Perez had several operations. "He fractured his pelvic area, so it's completely shattered, and then had had internal bleeding," Monica said.

While Perez broke his right arm in several places, he legs and back were not broken. And according to the family, he suffered no major head injury. "He's not on the breathing machine anymore. He can breathe on his own. He's talking," Monica said.

The family reached out to ABC7 News because they need help. While his has medical insurance, his union, SEIU United Service Workers West, had not contacted the family directly, until Wednesday when we called the union. During our interview a union representative called to offer help. "We're probably going to put him on disability. It's in progress," Monica to the representative.

Perez has a wife and three daughters. The family remembers watching the accident on TV, in disbelief. "It's a really big fall. How does one fall from that survive and survive?" Monica said. People who witnessed the fall are still asking themselves the same question.

Street Bidder - Flyers Are Dead

Street Bidder - the biggest thing since flyers.

Hate Flyers? Street Bidder has the Solution

Street Bidder has a new application that will finally solve the problems of service companies who want to market their services to the public. One big problem local businesses face is making flyers. They are costly and drain business finances. Street Bidder’s new application is less expensive and more effective than flyers. Lower costs and becoming more effective is every business’s goal. If you want to learn more about this exciting application keep reading below.

What is this application and how does it work?

Street Bidder has an application for iPad and Android devices that help you advertise your services to potential customers by the click of a few buttons. Street Bidder’s app allows you to send beautiful personalized postcards to the customers of your choice. Like most businesses you want to showcase your services but hate spending a lot of money on flyers, tarpaulins and posters just to advertise. Not only do these things cost money they also take time. Year after year you have employees passing out flyers, pasting posters on walls, putting up tarpaulins. This not only wastes valuable time, you could also have neighborhoods complaining about scattered flyers in their streets. It is illegal in the US to put flyers in mailboxes. That’s where Street Bidder steps in and changes the way you do business. The Street Bidder app lets you take pictures and save the addresses of the home you may service in the future. After capturing the neighborhoods you plan to “bid” on, you simply choose the customizable template that will produce a beautiful postcard that is customized with your pricing and a picture of the customer’s home. The Street Bidder app sends a postcard that the customer will remember because their home is on it and the pricing is specific to them. You will have a higher chance of call backs with this personalized mailer not to mention, lots of extra time. The Street Bidder app helps you send a better product and stores your data forever. That means the next time you want to market to a target area all you need to do is click a few buttons and you are done. The Street Bidder app sends direct mail that is more affordable, professional and customized than any other option out there. With Street Bidder you are saving money and time.  

Street Bidder has two types of plans. The first one is the Free Plan which lets you sends Street Bidder postcards as low as $.79 each. The data is stored temporarily though in the servers for 90 days. There is the Platinum Plan though which lets send postcards as low as $.47 each. You have a monthly charge of $65 but your data is stored in their services FOREVER.

• Got questions? Go here. 
• Facebook group? Go here. 
• Flyers Are Dead 
• Street Bidder

"Street Bidder is an app’ for the little guy.  Direct mail is a super expensive option for a lot of small businesses.  So how can these guys get new customers?  How can they get their phone to ring?  Until now the only option was to drive around shoving flyers into peoples mailboxes.  Its time consuming and unprofessional ....not to mention that your flyers are jammed in to the mailbox with 10 other flyers.  Street Bidder solves this problem.  It allows users to send laser focused, highly personalized postcards to prospects with no minimums. You can literally send one card or 10,000.

There are a few different phases to Street Bidder.  

Phase 1: "Capture New StreetBids"  

Phase 2: "Mail real postcards to your StreetBids"  

Phase 3:  "Field The Calls" Once you have downloaded the app’ and have registered a new account you are ready to "Capture New StreetBids". So at this point the user will drive around to all of those subdivisions where he used to put flyers except now he has Street Bidder.  

He simply uses the app to take a picture of a home from the street, enter the address, and enter a price for their service. That’s it.  He has just captured one new StreetBid.  Over the rest of the day, this guy can capture hundreds of these things.  The good news is this; Once you capture a StreetBid.. you have it forever.  Now he is ready for phase 2.  Now this user will send Street Bidder postcards to all of those houses he just captured.  He simply selects the ones he wants to send a card to, picks a template, and BOOM!  Every one of those homeowners will receive a full color, high gloss, double-sided postcard in about a week.  But the kicker is this; each postcard has a picture of the persons home on the front and a real price on the back!  

Street Bidder is the ultimate solution to sending laser focused, highly personalized direct mail to your future customers.  Imagine sending 1,000 of these cards to that exclusive subdivision in your town that doesn't allow flyers.  Street Bidder takes seconds to use and costs pennies to send.

"Street Bidder is an app’ for the little guy.  Direct mail is a super expensive option for a lot of small businesses.  So how can these guys get new customers?  How can they get their phone to ring?  Until now the only option was to drive around shoving flyers into peoples mailboxes.  Its time consuming and unprofessional ....not to mention that your flyers are jammed in to the mailbox with 10 other flyers.  Street Bidder solves this problem.  It allows users to send laser focused, highly personalized postcards to prospects with no minimums. You can literally send one card or 10,000.

Interview with Josh, creator of "Street Bidder"...

So what does a window cleaner do to come up with an idea like ‘Street Bidder?’  

I was frustrated with traditional advertising and marketing methods.

When did the whole idea occur to you? When was that Epiphany?

My company sends out a lot of postcards and we get a low but consistent response rate. We also have a very unique bid sheet where we put a picture of each residential bid's home on the front with a mobile printer in our sales guys truck… Street Bidder merges these two ideas. It came to me last August during our summer slow down.

How did you find the time to make ‘Street Bidder’ happen?  

Well, thank God I have an amazing business partner who has stepped up and taken over our window cleaning business while I dove head first into this venture.  Also, since we are in Michigan, that we run seasonally, we have very little window cleaning work from Dec-Feb.

How much time have you spent so far on ‘Street Bidder?’  

Street Bidder has morphed into something much bigger and harder than I originally thought it would be.  lol  I thought at first…"Oh yeah, no problem, I'll knock this out in a couple months….. Yeah right!  This has been all day every day for 9 straight months now.

How did you come up with the initial workings & ideas?  

Street Bidder started as hand drawn sketches on blank sheets of paper.  Lots of scribbles and lots of do-overs.

Did you hire a programmer to put all this together?  

I hired a developer to write all the code for the app’ and a graphic designer to help with the wireframes (nerd term for screen design).

I suppose that your return will be much higher than the normal 1 or 2% response of normal mailed flyers?  

We always got a consistent .75% to 1% return on our traditional postcards. Street Bidder cards are WAY more personalized and more targeted than "normal" direct mail.

To read the full interview... go here.