Connect CEO Remains Critical, Family Expects a Prolonged Recovery

Connect CEO Duane Roth remains in critical condition in the intensive care unit at UC San Diego Medical Center following a biking accident Sunday morning, according to a statement his wife Renee released yesterday through a hospital spokeswoman.

“Many thanks to all of you for your kind notes and wishes for Duane as he recovers,” the statement says. “His condition is currently listed as critical. Duane is in the great hands of the university’s doctors and nurses and we are very happy with the outstanding care he is receiving. We do ask that our privacy be respected as Duane heals. We will be in touch to share more.”

Roth’s brother Ted Roth, president of Roth Capital Partners in Newport Beach, CA, told U-T San Diego yesterday that his brother is expected to make a slow recovery from the accident. Ted Roth said the doctors sounded somewhat optimistic, according to the online report.

Duane Roth was on a 57-mile training ride with the Challenged Athletes Foundation, a San Diego nonprofit that supports competitive activities for athletes with physical disabilities, when he apparently lost control and slammed into a rocky embankment or outcropping. He bicycle helmet broke in the impact, and Roth was rushed by helicopter to the university hospital, where he underwent surgery Sunday afternoon to relieve pressure on his brain.

“It was a head injury,” Ted Roth told Brad Fikes of U-T San Diego. “They’re not going to promise anything. We’re prepared that it will be a recovery over weeks and not days.”

Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.