Inside the Day That Nearly Took a Deputy's Life & the Long Road to Recovery

On the morning of January 8, 2025, a Wednesday, the assignment for the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office (MDSO) Motors Unit was straightforward: meet the Penn State Nittany Lions football team at the JW Marriott Turnberry Resort & Spa in Aventura and escort them to and from practice. The team was in town for the Orange Bowl, where they’d face Notre Dame on Thursday night at Hard Rock Stadium.

Deputy Joseph Vallejos started the day like any other. He got up, brushed his teeth, and helped get his two children, his 4-year-old daughter and 11-year-old son, ready for school. After drop-off, he returned home to eat breakfast with his wife, a police complaint officer with MDSO. Tuesdays and Wednesdays are the only mornings their schedules align, something they don’t take for granted.

Then it was time to get ready for work. The 35-year-old deputy showered and dressed in his uniform. He pulled on his leather boots and fastened his helmet. At 5 feet 8 inches, he’s compact and solidly built, with tattoos running the length of his left arm and most of his right. He carries himself with the quiet confidence of a man who’s seen enough to know what really matters. Deputy Vallejos has been with MDSO for eight years, and during his time with the Motors Unit, he’s taken on a range of duties from monitoring school zones to conducting DUI enforcement operations. The unit’s most visible work is escorting dignitaries and sports teams. Two days earlier, he’d helped escort the Nittany Lions from Miami International Airport to their hotel.

Before rolling out of his driveway, Deputy Vallejos checked his motorcycle’s tire pressure. In the street in front of his house, he made several slow loops—figure eights and circles—to warm up the bike. At 10 a.m., he headed toward the hotel.

The football team emerged from the hotel in practice gear, and the Motors Unit led their buses to Ronald L. Book Athletic Stadium, about five miles away. After practice, the deputies escorted the team back to the hotel. With their assignment complete, the unit departed as a group. The slow roll of the motorcycles produced a baritone thunder. As each deputy reached their exit, they peeled off one by one. Deputy Vallejos exited at Southwest 152nd Street and headed westbound. It was 1:30 p.m., and traffic was moderate.

He thought about picking up his son at 3 p.m. and figured he had ample time to go home, change, and maybe knock out a few chores before school dismissal. He stopped at a red light at the intersection of Southwest 152nd Street and Southwest 137th Avenue, where a man on a blue motorcycle pulled up beside him. “Hey man, what’s up? That’s a nice bike,” the rider said. They chatted until the light turned green. Deputy Vallejos moved forward to the next intersection—Southwest 138th Avenue and Southwest 152nd Street. Another red light. When it turned green, he scanned left, then right. Heightened awareness is second nature for anyone who’s ridden long enough. “You gotta drive defensive, always,” he said.

According to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, four motorcycle officers were killed in line-of-duty crashes in 2023. And from 2015 through 2019, there were a total of 28 fatal law enforcement motorcycle crashes. Three years ago, a member of the Miami-Dade Police Department’s (now known as MDSO) Motors Unit was struck by an SUV that crossed into his path at Northwest 36th Street and 53rd Avenue in Miami Springs. The impact sent the officer’s body somersaulting through the air and resulted in numerous injuries that left him in critical condition, barely clinging to life. The deputy underwent 13 surgeries and months of rehabilitation before he was able to recover and return to work.

Deputy Vallejos began his left turn. Suddenly, something flashed into his peripheral vision. A gray sedan—close. By the time he saw it fully, it was just seven inches away.

What happened next, Deputy Vallejos remembers as if watching himself in slow motion—high definition, frame by frame. The sedan’s front passenger side struck his left leg, which went instantly numb. His left hand punched through the car’s windshield as his body was launched across the hood. He watched as his hand came out of the glass, lacerated, then lost track of it as his body spun violently. He tried to cross his arms over his chest to brace for landing, but the force was too great. His back slammed against the pavement. The air rushed from his lungs. He felt his pelvis expand unnaturally.

When he came to rest on his back, he tried to move his legs. Nothing. He tried to sit up. He couldn’t. The pain was blinding. People rushed toward him, urging him not to move. A woman’s voice cut through the chaos. “I never saw him! I never saw him!” she cried.

Vallejos felt warmth rushing down his right leg. He feared the worst—that his femoral artery had been severed. “I thought I would be dead in a minute,” he said. Then came the sirens. And then familiar voices—fellow deputies from earlier that day. One from the Hammocks District arrived too. “Joey, we’re here, we got you,” they repeated. Deputy Vallejos reached for Deputy Johnnie Crawford’s hand. “I need help. I need help,” he said. They gripped hands tightly. “I needed it—for security, for comfort,” Vallejos later recalled.

Paramedics arrived, followed by a wave of deputies, dozens of them, securing the scene and the route to the hospital. Deputy Vallejos was placed on a stretcher and loaded into an ambulance. The Motors Unit provided escort to Jackson South Medical Center. Each bump in the road sent new waves of agony through his body. At the hospital, the doors of the ambulance swung open, and his supervisor, Lieutenant Jorge Montero, stood there. “I remember telling my lieutenant it wasn’t my fault, and he told me not to worry about it,” Vallejos said.

Another member of the unit asked him for his wife’s phone number. She needed to be told what had happened. The deputy’s wife, Selany Machado, rushed to the hospital. She was off from work that day. Deputy Vallejos was prepped for surgery. Even as the anesthesia set in, he said he could still hear his wife’s voice.

Deputy Vallejos was in critical condition. His injuries were extensive: a fractured pelvis, two fractured vertebrae, a broken knee and tibia, and a fractured wrist—though the wrist didn’t require surgery. He woke up two days later, groggy and drifting in and out of sleep. That entire weekend is a blur. His fellow deputies never left his side—officers from Kendall and Hammocks, his own unit, and others from across MDSO. Plates and screws were inserted into his pelvis and leg. Rods and screws were placed in his back. As Deputy Vallejos underwent surgery, Sheriff Rosie Cordero-Stutz stood in front of the hospital and asked the community for prayers and also to be attentive to motorcycle officers or anyone on a motorcycle. “They clearly do not have an advantage, and so it is really important that as drivers, we are aware, please if you can, put down the telephone, put down the texting, it can wait.”

Doctors told Deputy Vallejos that he wouldn’t be able to walk until August at the earliest. The rehab has been grueling. Deputy Vallejos set goals for himself, leaning on his family, his coworkers, and his own resolve. After nearly a week in the hospital, he was transferred to Encompass Health Rehabilitation Hospital of Miami, in Cutler Bay, where he stayed for a month. Still wheelchair-bound, he couldn’t bear weight on his body. Physical therapy was three times a day, up to four hours total. The pain was constant.

“There were days when I couldn’t get out of bed, so rehab had to happen in bed,” he said. Even simple exercises—leg lifts, knee bends—were excruciating. Sometimes, without painkillers, the effort brought him to tears. But he pushed through. His therapists were stunned by his endurance.

On February 13, just over a month after the crash, Deputy Vallejos told the staff he was ready to go home. But first, he had to prove he could complete a checklist: get into his wheelchair unassisted, brush his teeth—small tasks, but ones that now required intense effort and focus.

He completed the list. He called his wife. “Happy Valentine’s Day,” he told her. “I’ll be home tomorrow.”

When he arrived home, a crowd was waiting. The entrance to their home had been fitted with a temporary ramp. Therapy continued five days a week. After a month, he was strong enough to begin outpatient treatment. On March 28, he started weight-bearing therapy—standing, walking, re-learning strength.

A “fitness guy” before the crash, he felt like he was starting over. He had lost 50 pounds, dropping from 235 to 185. Gradually, some muscle returned.

What kept him going, he said, were his children.

“My daughter would see me in the wheelchair and say, ‘Daddy, I want you to feel better,’” Deputy Vallejos said. “I was tired of her seeing me like that.” At church recently, his son shared a prayer he’d made. “He said he prayed for me to start walking again,” Deputy Vallejos said, his voice breaking and tears welling in his eyes. “As a father, that hit hard. I had to stand up. And that’s what I did. I told myself, I’m done with this wheelchair.”

There’s a window at the front of his house, where he recently caught a glimpse of his reflection in a mirror inside. “I was looking at myself—I was walking straight, I wasn’t limping,” he said. “I thought, I can do this. I can do this.” On May 12, he returned to work on light duty, and on May 13, the Miami-Dade Board of County Commissioners recognized Deputy Vallejos, with an official proclamation recognizing his bravery and dedication to his work. On May 21, he was out at Amelia Earhart Park in Hialeah, assisting with dive training exercises.

He recently rode his personal motorcycle—a chopper-style Harley-Davidson—for the first time since the crash. The route took him through the intersection where it all happened.

“I had to mentally tell myself I can do this,” he said. “Because it wasn’t my fault.”