Steve Ford, during his Blue Bottle days (taken from Steve's flickr ablum).

Some time ago, we met Steve Ford, who, among other things pulls a great shot of espresso. We met him during his tenure with the stalkerriffic Blue Bottle Coffee Company; since our encounter, he's moved onto another coffee-related venture as a roaster at Ecco Caffe in Santa Rosa.

Steve recently had a not-so-pleasant experience--he fell out the third-story window of the Burlington Hotel in Port Costa, Calif. You can read about it in his own words on his blog, which also contains links to some related flickr photos and the like. The story in a nutshell, as he relayed it to us, was that after spending some time at the bar:

. . . I got back to my room, I blacked out . . . . What I did during that time is unknown. I probably fell asleep in a chair. Anyway, about an hour later, I opened up the window on the third story, and mysteriously fell out. Luckily some tweakers saw me fall, and, thinking I was their friend "Jody", called the paramedics. I was unconscious until the EMTs arrived. The let me know that I was too intoxicated to make the decision about going to the hospital or not, so they loaded me up, put me on a helicopter, and shipped me off to John Muir Medical Center in Walnut Creek.

The hospital doctors told Steve that he'd fractured his back and ankle. He's currently recovering at his apartment in Oakland. What helps to make this a noteworthy story (besides the whole haunted hotels angle, yeah?) is the generosity that the coffee community, both local and, well, international, has shown to Steve.

Blue Bottle, his former employer, has committed to donating a Sunday to his recovery. His current employer, Ecco, has set up a Paypal account--read about that and what his boss, Andrew Barnett, has to say about him here, on a CoffeeGeek thread. There's also a damned funny T-shirt that another friend of Steve's has made available for purchase here. All funds from these efforts are strictly going to be used for Steve's medical care.

In the meantime, Steve's doing what he can to help out at the office from home -- along with coffee, Barnett's been sending him "various 'non-roasting' projects" to help keep him busy.

If your are one of the many thousands of Bay Area denizens that Steve's helped caffeinate, we'd encourage you to think about buying a shirt or making a donation. And we'd like to recognize the efforts that Ecco Caffe's making to do right by an employee. Kudos! If you agree, you can support them by buying their products in Sonoma, or by going online (and keep checking there; according to Steve, Ecco is launching a Web store soon).

And, to Steve, we'll reiterate: get well soon!