I don't know how many people will write about Chris Trickle this week. Maybe too many. Maybe not enough. I wasn't sure I was going to until I talked to his father, Chuck, on Monday afternoon.

It was 10 years ago last month, Feb. 9, 1997, that up-and-coming racer Chris Trickle, the nephew of NASCAR legend Dick Trickle, was shot in the head, late at night, while driving his car to play tennis in his hometown of Las Vegas. Road rage is a possibility. Authorities never found a suspect. The case was never solved. Some ridiculous law in the state of Nevada says the statute of limitations on the crime has expired. Chris Trickle died March 25, 1998. He was alive for more than 400 days after getting shot, but after knowing him before the attack, it is hard to say he truly "lived" those days.

Severe brain damage left Chris completely dependent upon others. He spent months in hospitals and care facilities. Just before Thanksgiving in 1997, Chuck and Barbara Trickle brought their only son home. He received physical and speech therapy several days a week. He was fed through a straw.

Bill Weber

"They told us they were seeing 'something,' something positive," Chuck Trickle told me.

"I love the Packers. Chris was a Dolphins fan. He loved Dan Marino. One day they held up two pictures, one of Brett Favre, one of Dan Marino and asked him which one was Marino. He picked the right one."

Chris Trickle died after being taken to the hospital because of irregular breathing. He was just 25 years old.

His racing career began on two wheels, with all kinds of success. In 1990 he made the turn to pursue his dream, and follow his uncle to what was then the NASCAR Winston Cup Series.

He started slowly -- Hobby Stock, Sportsman Light and Sportsman division. He ran tracks in neighboring California and Arizona. Success didn't come quickly, but by 1994, if Trickle was in the race, he was probably going to finish in the top five.

He worked his way up to the Southwest Tour Series in 1996. He had nine top-10 finishes and won the season finale in November ... at the old Las Vegas Speedway Park. Fellow drivers voted him the most popular driver.

I try to stay away from the cliches, but he was such a nice kid. Just like his dad. It's hard to believe Chris has been gone so long, harder to believe if you are Chuck Trickle.

"We haven't changed a thing in his room," Chuck said Monday. "The pictures are still the same. Everything is the same. We leave the TV on ESPN. He loved sports. All sports.

"Everyone handles something like this differently."

Chuck's idea of handing it was to sell the family printing business, sell the house and "go hide in the hills" of rural Nevada.

"I didn't want to see anyone," he said to me. "I didn't want to talk to anyone. You remember how it was. I couldn't even talk to you and Benny [Parsons].

"But when I told Barbara I didn't want the business anymore, she said, 'Let me take it over.'"

And she did. She has tripled the number of employees and Western Mailing Services is racing along just fine, thank you.

"She's a very wonderful woman," Chuck said. "She was much stronger through all of this than I was. There is something marvelous about women, the way they manage that type of situation. I really don't know what it is."

It wasn't easy for Barbara. I can tell you first hand, it was, and at times still is, extremely difficult for Chuck.

"Even though I knew he was dead, I would sit in my chair, waiting for him to come up the walk and into the house and say 'Hi dad!' in that familiar voice of his," Chuck said. "The pressure on me just kept building and building. Just two years ago I turned to Barbara and finally said, 'He's not coming home.' That lifted a little bit of the weight off of my shoulders."

While Barbara went to work -- "She's works way too hard," Chuck said -- Chuck went racing.

"She let me do whatever I wanted," he said. "Buy another racecar. Do this or that. She said go ahead."

Most fathers and sons are close. That's the way it is suppose to be. It seems to me that racing fathers and their racing sons are even closer. In my opinion, Chuck and Chris were among the closest.

"You're just sitting there, dreaming your dream," Chuck said. "He was so good at everything he did."

Then he was gone.

Something had to be done. So Chuck, came out of retirement and took over the wheel, and went back to the bullring, in his mid-50s (he is 62 now). He went racing. In 2003 he won the Las Vegas Motor Speedway Bullring track championship driving the same No. 70 that Chris drove. He finally retired after driving 12 Super Late Model races in 2005.

"I did it for Chris," he said. "It was his car, his track. I was just doing it because he wasn't here to do it."

Chuck and Barbara never stop thinking about Chris.

"There are those moments ... driving down the highway and just seeing the 70 mph sign, or just seeing the number 70 on the wall," Chuck said. "Those can be tough moments."

With Chuck retired, again, it looked like the Trickle racing family might be finished. Not so fast.

Chuck and Barbara have raised their daughter's 6-year-old son since birth. He is named for his uncle, Christopher Charles. They are also raising a 3-year-old grandson, Tommy.

Young Chris calls Chuck "dad," and to hear this proud "dad" tell the story, Chris is following in the family tire tracks.

"I know you didn't call to hear me brag about my grandson, but Bill, he's really got it," Chuck said to me.

Now that's the Chuck Trickle I remember. Bubbling with enthusiasm. Brimming with family pride. Believe me when I tell you, it has never been about Chuck. It has always been about someone else. And now, that someone is 6-year-old Chris, out there on the track, racing go-karts, charging from 30th to fifth in the final the other day at Buffalo Bills near State Line, Nev. He passed 20 karts and set the second- and fourth-fastest times in the main.

"He's a little aggressive out there, a little greedy. You can see that out there on the track. He likes to rub a little in the turns," Chuck said with a snicker.

"He'll say to me, 'Dad, when I catch these guys I can nudge them out of the way and make the pass.' I told him he had to stop doing that. I'm 62 years-old. These other parents are threatening to kick my butt.

"Funny thing about these kids today, they don't know how to lift off the throttle."

Chuck began laughing.

"But I just can't stop talking about him," he continued. "I'm telling you, you're going to see another one."

And if you can't catch young Chris on the track, well, Chuck is coming out of retirement, again, for one day. It happens every Father's Day weekend, naturally, at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway Bullring in the Chris Trickle Father's Day doubleheader.

"I had a little health scare in December but as long as I can fit in the car, I'll be racing," Chuck said. "I know I need to drop a few pounds and once you hit 60 it gets even tougher. But I know I can do it. I think there have been 18 of them, two a year for nine years, and I think I've won five of them."

Before the doubleheader last June, Chuck told the Las Vegas Review-Journal, "I'm coming out to have a little fun with the boys and to push some guys around. I won't be back, so they can't get even with me. This will be the only time I'll race this year. And I'll drive in Chris' race every year for as long as I can."

Chuck wants to keep the memory of his son Chris alive. He also wants to help others who experience the same hell he and Barbara went through.

"I think we've been able to do that a little bit," Chuck said. "I tell people you have to cry when you want to cry; you have to scream when you want to scream; when you just need to go play in the garage, go play in the garage."

"One thing that really helped me is this town. I know it's Las Vegas, but everybody here wants to help you. They are kind people."

Chuck told me he hasn't been out to the Las Vegas Motor Speedway the last few races, but he plans to be there this weekend when NASCAR returns to town.

"I'm looking forward to it," he said. "I'm just going to walk around and enjoy myself. I like being out there. I'll try to say hi to Harvick, Biffle, the Busch boys, Hornaday and some of the others. I'll take Chris out there one day. Hopefully he'll get to meet some of the guys. It'll be nice to be back."

"Chuck is just a super guy," two-time Craftsman Truck Series champion Ron Hornaday said on Tuesday. "And what happened to Chris is one of the stupidest things ever.

"I only raced against Chris maybe five or six times, but I know Chuck always made sure he had good cars, the best equipment. I remember talking to [his uncle] Dick about Chris. At Daytona or somewhere we would sit on the wall and Dick would tell us about him, how hard he was working, hoping to get the big break at a young age that Dick never really got.

"Chuck has stayed with the sport. He was living his life through Chris and he still continues to support the sport, support the kids in the area. We'll do anything we can do to help him."

When Chris was shot, former Nextel Cup Series champion Kurt Busch was tabbed to replace him in his Southwest Tour ride. When Trickle passed away in 1998, it was just days before the Tour race in Las Vegas.

"When Chris died, it was a tough time," Busch said. "We used the car as part of the funeral, the whole crew was there. It was a long week. Fortunately, we capped it off by winning the race. It was emotional. It was huge. The whole town embraced the team."

And if Chris Trickle's life had not been interrupted by such a savage event?

"Where I would have been, I don't know," Busch said in the summer of 2003. "But Chris would have made it right where he needed to go, and that's [Nextel] Cup.

Men cry. Real men admit they cry. Chuck Trickle says he still cries. But he didn't go hide in the hills, he didn't let people forget about his son, or forget the laws on the books that have helped an attempted killer or attempted killers go free.

When things were at their worst, Chuck Trickle grabbed the wheel, probably thanks to a swift kick in the butt from Barb, got back on the track and ended up with a Trickle family championship.

Chuck says he'll trim down in time for Father's Day weekend -- the Chris Trickle Father's Day doubleheader is June 16. If you're lucky enough to go, keep an eye on No. 70 ... he likes to rub a little in the turns.

The opinions expressed are solely of the writer.