Mike Mullan

On Tuesday, January 20th, Laura Stich wrote us:

Dear Friends,

Michael Mullan, Spec Miata & ITX driver, was tragically killed in an automobile accident Saturday, January 17th, in Napa.

Joyce, his wife, worked with Registration a bit this year.

Services are Saturday, January 24th, at 9:30 a.m. at All Souls Catholic Church, 315 Walnut Ave, South San Francisco, 650 871 8944.

Funeral arrangements are being handled by The Garden Chapel. (650-583-2510)

Laura

I just checked in and was shocked to read about my friend Mike.

Mike and I shared a race car shop in Millbrae,Ca for a year or two. I went with him to pick up his first race car, a Huffaker E prod MGB. Spent many fun hours with Mike in that shop. We had a vacant lot next door and Mike supplied 2 Yamaha dirt bikes that we would race at lunch time.

I remember the day he was married in South SF. He always had that smile and was ready to help.

God speed, Mike
-- Bob McGrew

Contra Costa Times - January 22, Beloved Husband, Dad Mourned

Posted on Thursday, Jan. 22, 2004

Beloved husband, dad mourned

By Kristi Belcamino
CONTRA COSTA TIMES

One Father's Day a few years back, San Ramon resident Joyce Mullan asked her husband what he wanted for the special day. Michael J. Mullan said he wanted to race cars again like he had in the 1960s.

"Absolutely," she answered.

The two joined a national racing club, Mullan bought a 1990 SPEC Miata, and the couple became working members: registering racers at the crack of dawn on race days before Mullan would start his own race.

To help him follow his dream, Joyce became a self-described "grease monkey," even getting down in the pit once to change tires in the mud.

Although she never worried about him on the racetrack -- he was a considerate and careful driver, she has said -- she told him if he were killed, at least he would die doing something he loved.

Now she says she had no idea the racetrack would be a safer place for him than the highway.

Michael Mullan, 57, died Saturday night in a car crash on Highway 29.

The California Highway Patrol said the crash occurred around 8 p.m. Saturday, shortly after a minor noninjury crash involving Mullan's vehicle and another car. He was standing outside his car when two other vehicles crashed into the first wreck.

Mullan was killed in the resulting crash, which the CHP is still investigating.

The Mullans were returning from Napa, where they attended an 80th birthday celebration for his mother. After the minor crash, Mullan and his father, Bill, looked in the trunk for flares to warn other motorists, but didn't find any because Bill Mullan had used them recently to help another driver, Joyce Mullan said.

"That's just the kind of people they are," she said.

As the two men were preparing to exchange information with the other driver, Joyce Mullan said she realized she wasn't sure where her husband was standing. She yelled over her shoulder, "Mike, get out from behind the back of the car."

"Just as I finished saying 'car,' we were hit," she said.

Mullan recently began working as a plumber for a San Francisco firm, but had worked at Western Plumbing for 28 years before that. He also was a Vietnam veteran who was injured serving in the Navy.

His wife of nearly seven years described him as a fair, caring, trustworthy and dependable person with a sharp wit.

"He had an incredible sense of humor," Joyce Mullan said.

She recalled the time Michael was driving the lead car in a procession to her daughter's wedding rehearsal dinner. He thought it would be funny to lead the cars in circles around the parking lot and through wrong turns.

"Everybody was in stitches. I think we did 17 U-turns in one day ... with 12 cars following him. He was laughing. Everyone was laughing. By the time we got to the restaurant, we were almost crying we were laughing so hard."

Kristi Belcamino covers police, crime and public safety. Reach her at 925-945-4782 or kbelcamino@cctimes.com.

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