Screams echoed across Bernal Heights Park in San Francisco, interrupting an otherwise peaceful morning back in April. “Coyote!”
Distance made this young man difficult to peg. Diminutive. Dressed like a farmer. Surrounded by TV cameras.
!
This didn’t surprise Sara Donchey, a news anchor at KPIX, who lived nearby and often walked her dog, a Doberman rescue, at that park. Coyotes also roamed there frequently. She saw or heard them, howling late into the night at fire trucks or ambulances speeding by, sirens blaring. She still walked her Doberman without affixing leashes. These coyotes weren’t attackers. And, scary as they , her Pinscher towered over them.
!
She stared at this man, the famous agronomist or rancher or whatever. Noticed he didn’t panic. Seemed almost shy. His voice surprise her. It , as if detached from that puny body and attached to a powerful amplifier.
! !
Was he … pointing? At? Maybe? Her?
Donchey turned around. And when she turned, she saw not just a coyote but a “massive” one. Bigger than any she had seen before. “This guy had been eating well for a long time,” she told months later.
She leashed the Pinscher and hurried backward, Doberman in tow. Security guards charged toward them, up a hill.
Story gets stranger. Turns out, this man, the farmer whose voice echoed, wasn’t a farmer at all. He had partnered with John Deere that spring. The company made him its first Chief Tractor Officer, creating a promotional position that had not previously existed. Their partnership meant he would create content and influence, thus shining a brighter spotlight on hot topics such as farming and construction. He would do both with the same methodical anti-flair that powered unexpected success at his actual job, the one few expected he would have.
Donchey cannot recall the precise distance between coyote and self/Doberman. covers it. Maybe 20 feet away. Typically, when coyotes howl, they emit a hissing sound. This coyote didn’t hiss. Didn’t move. Eventually, confrontation avoided, off it went.
Hadn’t a friend who also used that park mentioned a commercial would be filmed there? Didn’t the spot feature football players? San Francisco … diminutive … famous enough to become a Chief Tractor Officer.
Of course. Wonderboy quarterback. Statistics that twinkle. Career that gleams, mostly, three seasons in. Noodle Boy body. Might do tax returns in his spare time.
Brock Purdy!
As with all elements that form the dilemma regarding his football future in San Francisco, even the coyote rescue would be twisted and reframed in subsequent months. Purdy had exaggerated the tale. Which wasn’t true. Purdy had saved Donchey’s life. Which also wasn’t true.
That’s the Brock Purdy Dilemma, or BPD, where extreme takes drown out nuance, discouraging more thoughtful debates, especially around the contract extension he’s due this spring. The actual coyote-story takeaway was far simpler. “I saved Brock Purdy from three days of having to answer questions about football,” Donchey says.
(For the record: Pay him, she says.)
