As it turns out, this was no date.
She started to realize all that when the group ended up at a mechanic’s garage on Bluewater Road on Albuquerque’s West Side, nowhere near the crest.
“I asked my friend to take me home,” Lechalk recalled. “She handed me a Fresca instead.”
The next thing Lechalk remembers is waking up in a hospital, bloodied and broken and confused. Whatever had been in that Fresca had knocked her out cold.
Slowly, she pieced together fragments of the night that changed her life. At some point, she learned, she was stuffed into a car and driven away. Near Coors and Central SW, she tumbled out of the car, and the car ran over her, injuring her arm and pelvis. A worker at a Shell gas station nearby saw it happen and helped the others get her back into the vehicle.
Jun. 6—On a warm August night in 1966, Linda Lechalk got dressed for a blind date. She was 18, a recent high school graduate, and she was thrilled to get out of the house and away from her stern, sour mother, especially since her date was taking her to dinner at the swanky, newly remodeled Summit House atop Sandia Crest. Other couples were going, too, though she didn't know any of them save .