ARLINGTON — Jourdan Bradley loved her life, her job, her family and her car.
She died Friday in an accident when her 1969 Corvette Stingray ran off I-5 near Everett Mall and struck a tree. She was 24.
Her passenger, Phillip Chumley, 31, of Everett, was injured and taken to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle. He was listed in serious condition Monday.
An initial report about the accident cited racing as a possible factor, which Bradley’s father, Mark Bradley of Arlington, said is simply not possible.
“I was behind her — there was no racing involved,” Mark Bradley said through tears Monday. They had just bought a leather couch for Jourdan Bradley’s newly acquired Everett home on Friday and were bringing it back to the house. Jourdan Bradley and Chumley were in the Corvette, and her father was in another vehicle.
“The whole freeway was going 60, 62 mph,” Mark Bradley said.
Bradley was following his daughter about eight cars back when he lost sight of her near the Everett Mall. “I thought maybe she’d taken that exit rather than waiting to go to the Pacific (Avenue) exit,” he said.
“I saw a blue piece of fiberglass in the road, and I thought, ‘Did somebody clip her?’”
When he arrived at the house and she wasn’t there, he started to realize the awful truth.
“I got where I thought the piece was and I saw all the cops there,” he said.
Jourdan Bradley worked as a critical care nurse at Providence Regional Medical Center and was always urging people to drive carefully.
“She’s seen so many accident victims,” her father said. “She drove her Corvette like an old lady.”
People have been judging Jourdan because she drove a classic muscle car, he said.
“She told me, ‘All these idiots want to come up and race me,’ and she just laughed,” Mark Bradley said.
He said that his wife, Marti, also drives a Corvette and gets the same treatment from other drivers.
Washington State Patrol Trooper Mark Francis said the investigation into the crash is ongoing and that there could be many things to explain why the car left the road.
“Witnesses said the vehicles were either speeding together or racing together,” he said. “All of this is initial, some witnesses are accurate, some are inaccurate.”
Detectives have not interviewed Chumley yet, Francis said, and police were still looking for the other vehicle, believed to be a white pickup or SUV. A witness told police that the other vehicle backed up and the driver looked at the crash scene before taking off.
Jourdan Bailey had two older brothers, Derek and Garret. But it was Jourdan who inherited her father’s love of classic cars.
“Here she is, little petite 5-foot-1 and 100 pounds and she just liked to work on cars,” he said.
At Arlington High School, her senior project was to restore a Pontiac Trans Am. She saved up and in May 2013 bought the 1969 Corvette with cash, posting a picture of the new purchase on her Facebook page.
“It was her dream car,” he said.
Growing up, father and daughter were very close.
“I always called her Dotty, because she was my only daughter,” he said.
They went to car shows and sang karaoke together. They sang a lot of Dixie Chicks songs when she was younger, but lately her tastes ran more toward Gwen Stefani, he said.
She took Running Start classes for two years before enrolling at Everett Community College. She completed her degree in nursing at the University of Washington at Bothell.
“She considered going into auto body work and painting, and I said no, a nursing program would be so much better,” Bradley said.
She loved her work, he said, and in general Jourdan Bradley was a kind and caring person who smiled all the time and never had an unkind word for anyone.
“She was so happy right now. She was just tickled with life,” he said.
Two months ago she bought a beautifully restored 1910 home on Grand Avenue in Everett. She enjoyed going antiquing with her mother to buy furniture and decorations for the house. Her cousin had just moved in with her.
She also recently met Phillip Chumley.
“She was falling in love with this guy. She said he was the first guy she couldn’t stop thinking about 24 hours a day,” Bradley said.
The morning after the crash, a man stopped by the house with his son to offer their sympathies, Bradley said. He didn’t know them.
“Back when she worked at Jack-in-the-Box years ago, he said, she was such a wonderful person he always looked forward to going back there,” Bradley said.
“She was just loved by so many people and I miss her so bad,” he said.
Chris Winters: 425-374-4165 or cwinters@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @Chris_At_Herald.
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