Nikki Apodaca wants the person who hit her husband Alex and left him lying in a snow-filled ditch for hours to come forward.

At about 7:30 p.m. Monday, Alex Apodaca was returning to Brinnon after dropping off his two children with their mother in Discovery Bay.

Two miles outside of Quilcene, his truck got a flat. He made a call to his wife, Nikki, but she never got it.

That’s the last thing Alex remembered after regaining consciousness in a snowy ditch an hour-and-a-half later.

“He woke up in a ditch at about 9 p.m.,” Apodaca said.

“I don’t know what happened,” Alex told her. “I don’t know where I am.”

His truck was untouched; it appeared when Alex got out of his vehicle to change his tire, he was struck by a passing vehicle that just kept going.

Apodaca had taken a nap after work and became concerned after she woke up and Alex still wasn’t home.

But now that she knew where he was, she was powerless to do anything, as the only vehicle on hand didn’t have taillights. She put in a call to a mutual friend to see if he could go to Alex.

Just then, her husband said a snowplow truck driver stopped and called 911.

Port Ludlow first-responders were on the scene initially, Apodaca said, but she knew more people from other districts showed up, too.

“They tried to tell him to go to the hospital, but he’s a man,” she said matter-of-factly.

In fact, she said, he was sleeping at home as she spoke with The Leader Tuesday afternoon.

“He definitely had a concussion,” Apodaca said, but no broken bones. He refused transport to the hospital.

“We don’t have money for that,” Apodaca said.

“We don’t have health insurance,” she said. “We pay everything out-of-pocket.”

EMTs were most concerned about Alex suffering from bleeding on his brain, and sent Alex home with must-watch warning signs.

Apodaca is a dog groomer in Kitsap County, and Alex is a house painter who is in between jobs. The family of four live on a farm near Mount Jupiter.

The two are both 33, born just two hours apart, and have known each other since fifth grade. To say they’re close is an understatement.

“I don’t know how to go about finding the person who did this,” Apodaca said, still incredulous.

“If I was that person, I couldn’t live with myself.”

“Accident or not, they need to come forward,” she added. “They endangered a life.”

Between the frigid weather and the hit-and-run, Apodaca knows how lucky she is that Alex is alive.

“Nobody’s looking for a body lying in the snow at the side of the road,” she said.

Still, she has hope the hit-and-run driver will be found.

“Nobody goes through something like that, gets home and doesn’t say anything,” she added. “If they were a passenger in the car that hit him, they should come forward, too.”