Baton man remembered for compassion

Jun. 19--When Jessica Shuffler met her husband, Steve, while working at J. Iverson Riddle Developmental Center in 1999 helping care for people with intellectual disabilities, the two quickly became fast friends.

Steve was then 26, and Jessica was 19.

"He told me he loved me in one of the residents' bedrooms. I'll never forget that," she said. "And we've been together ever since. We got married February 25, 2003, in Las Vegas."

The two continued working together for years, and they were rarely apart. But on May 22between 2:30 and 3 p.m., Steve was driving on Connelly Springs Road near Castle Bridge when an oncoming pickup swerved into his lane. Steve veered off the road to avoid a head-on collision and wrecked.

The pickup driver, a man who had been looking down, did not stop.

Firefighters had to cut Steve out of his car, and he was flown to Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, where he spent four days, three of them in the intensive care unit. He had five breaks in his back, and all of the ribs on his left side were broken.

Still, after four days in Wake Forest, Steve insisted on coming home, although doctors said he would have a long road to recovery.

Two weeks later, on June 8, he got up in the morning, enjoyed a cup of coffee and a piece of cake, and went to take a shower to let the warm water run over his back -- he thought it might ease the pain. He was in the bathroom, having just finished his shower, when Jessica called out to him, and he didn't respond.

"He always dries his hair, even though he didn't have a lot, because it had to be in place. And I heard the hair dryer cut off and I asked him if he was OK, and he didn't answer me," she said.

Then she heard him fall.

"I ran in there and Steve was laying on the floor," she said. "I immediately called 911 and started CPR."

It took the ambulance 15 minutes to arrive, she said, but it felt like an eternity.

Steve had suffered

a pulmonary embolism, a condition in which one or more arteries in the lungs become blocked by a blood clot, and his heart stopped. The paramedics were unable to revive him.

Now, Jessica Shuffler is remembering him for his compassion -- he was kind and gentle. He put others before himself. He had adored his late Chihuahua, Baby, and he loved his job at J. Iverson Riddle, where he worked until last year.

"He's just a kindhearted person. He just had that sense about him. Steve could befriend anybody and help anybody," she said.

Steve's older brother, Jeremy Shuffler, said that strangers warmed to Steve quickly, "and he did them also."

Steve loved hunting and fishing, and he liked to stay busy, working in his yard outside their home in the Baton area.

He was very meticulous and wanted things to look nice -- "everything had to be just right," Jessica said.

Jessica had her son, Dalton Huffman, before she and Steve became a couple. Dalton was 2.

Steve raised Dalton, and they didn't refer to each other as stepdad and stepson. Steve was his dad, Jessica said.

"Steve's always been very particular about Dalton. Dalton was his pride and joy," she said.

Steve was resilient. He had struggled through many physical difficulties before the wreck in May, Jessica said.

He was in a wreck in 1999 that broke his back, and he had suffered from back trouble since then. In 2016, he injured his back again, and he had osteoarthritis in his spine, she said. He also had skin cancer removed from both his face and his elbow in 2017.

"He's had a lot the last several years. He had a whole lot that had happened," she said.

Last year Steve left

J. Iverson Riddle because the physical demands of the job were too much for

him, "and it broke his heart to leave," she said. "He had a huge impact on the people that lived there. ... He was just so good

to them, so kind-hearted."

Jessica said that her mother, Susan Cranford, has been staying with her since the wreck.

"She's been staying with me every night. I've not really been by myself since it happened," she said.

She said that when they brought him home from the hospital two weeks before his death, she and Dalton were thrilled to see him again, as they had not been allowed to visit while he was in the hospital.

"Dalton and I was just so excited to see him and have him back in the car with us. We was all so happy to have him home. We thought the worst part was over," she said.

A little more than two weeks later, they buried Steve in a mausoleum in Burke Memorial Park -- he didn't want to be in the ground.

"It hurts, and it's going to hurt for a long time," she said. "I don't know how I'm going to go on without him."

Reporter Kara Fohner can be reached at 828-610-8721.

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