‘I’m going to die on Ninth Street.’ Shot 7 times, store owner makes miraculous recovery

When Martin Olive saw a random man point a pistol at his face, he thought it was a water gun.

“I thought it was the beginning of a stupid TikTok prank,” the 47-year-old cannabis shop owner told The Standard in an interview Wednesday. “I couldn’t conceive of why anyone would want to shoot me.”

Seconds later, he was on the ground, screaming in pain after being struck by bullets in the cheek, chest, and back, asking, “Why me?” as a coworker called 911 and others ran to his aid.

Since his life was turned upside down during a Jan. 27 smoke break outside his dispensary, the Vapor Room at Ninth and Mission streets, Olive still hasn’t come up with a good answer as to why he was targeted or how he survived.

But many of his friends who spoke to The Standard said that if anyone were to be shot seven times, only to miraculously survive and be cracking jokes about it days later, it would be Olive. Being riddled with bullets may not have even been his closest brush with mortality: He nearly died of a brain aneurysm 12 years ago.

“Martin is a nine-lives kind of guy,” said Ferris Plock, who has known him for more than two decades. 

Plock remembers meeting Olive in the early 2000s when the Vapor Room was just starting out at its original Lower Haight location. (It’s now the city’s longest continually operating pot shop.) Back then, the dispensary wasn’t just a place to buy marijuana; it was for hanging with friends and relaxing with like-minded artists and musicians.

Indeed, many of Olive’s close friendships have come through the art scene or through meeting people around town. A friend quickly set up a GoFundMe campaign to cover his medical bills, while others made the trek from out of town to be by his side after the shooting.

When Tiffany Medrano heard the news, she raced up north from her home in Los Angeles. She’s staying at Olive’s apartment to help him get back on his feet, making sure that his wounds are clean and he’s taking his medication.

“It’s a frickin’ miracle,” Medrano said, noting that the three bullets to Olive’s chest and back could’ve easily hit a vital organ. “I don’t even know if Jack Reacher could’ve [survived] this.”

As for his other injuries: There’s a split ear, nerve damage, a fractured scapula and jaw, and so many stitches in his cheek that the doctors stopped counting. And yet, just nine days after the shooting, Olive’s taking walks around his apartment near Dolores Park.

Olive told The Standard he tried to run after the first bullet struck, even though he is aware that he didn’t actually go anywhere. 

“It felt like I got a ball of hot metal shoved into my cheek,” he said. “It just was so hot, and I just wanted to get away from the pain. I think, metaphysically, my soul was running away from my body. I was in another world.”

Surveillance video of the shooting shows the assailant, Cheasarak Chong, 34, pulling up to the curb on a black e-bike, dismounting, and parking. Chong casually walks toward Olive, who is standing on the sidewalk outside the shop, holding his phone and leaning against a bike rack. Chong pulls a gun out of his pants pocket, grips it with both hands, points, and fires multiple rounds. Olive drops his phone, covers his head, and falls to the ground. As Olive lies on his back on the sidewalk, Chong fires at his head. He then walks into the building next to the cannabis shop, where police tracked him to an apartment on the sixth floor. The Standard is choosing not to publish the video of the shooting due to Olive’s ongoing trauma.

Olive said that while on the ground, he stayed as still as possible in an attempt to keep bullets from moving and avoid further injury. While coworkers and passersby tried to stop the bleeding, his arms spasmed on the concrete. He now has nightmares in which his arms spasm in the same way.

When medics arrived, they took off his clothes, which were drenched in blood.

“I kept thinking to myself, ‘I can’t believe I’m gonna die on Ninth Street,’ like, holy shit, I’m dying on Ninth Street,” he recalled, adding that there are nicer parts of the city in which to take your last breath.

Olive said he’s holding up well in the daytime, when friends are there to keep him company, but at night, he’s much more emotional. Even as the shock of what happened lessens, the trauma remains.

“I cry a lot,” said Olive, adding that he is seeking treatment for PTSD. “I get nightmares. I get flashbacks. The scene sort of expands, with cinema vision around it all.”

Olive’s attorney Patrick Goggin said he was told by the San Francisco Police Department that Chong had purchased his cache of weapons legally. The SFPD declined to comment, noting the ongoing investigation.

Hours after shooting Olive, Chong fired at police during a lengthy standoff at his apartment. Officers shot him from a rooftop; he was pronounced dead at the scene.

In his interview with The Standard, Olive expressed frustration at the fact that Chong was able to legally obtain firearms after facing charges of attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon for stabbing a man. Chong was acquitted in that case in 2018 after a jury found him not guilty of attempted murder and hung on the assault charge. The public defender’s office, which represented him at trial, argued that Chong acted in self-defense.

A man named Tee Chong, who claimed to be his brother, told The Standard via email that Cheasarack had dealt with mental health issues for years. Though they lost contact more than eight years ago, Tee Chong said the family thought he was doing well, and the city “took care of him” after the 2018 trial.

“All he wanted was a better life and to free himself,” Tee Chong wrote. “I’m saddened that SFPD didn’t let us talk him out of it and … get him help.”

The Standard was unable to verify Tee Chong’s relationship to the shooter.

Olive said he believes that Chong was given an ill-advised second chance.

“I’m a liberal person,” Olive said. “I believe in social services. I believe in helping the people that need help. I believe in everyone’s right to live and breathe free, but that includes my right to live and breathe free, and this person clearly tried to stop my right to live and breathe free.”

Before learning that Chong had died, Olive said he was worried that the shooter would be let go by police and that he would have to move out of San Francisco for fear of being targeted again. 

“Garnering any sympathy for him [because of his mental health] is very insulting and disrespectful to people that have mental health issues and don’t commit violence,” said Olive, who has suffered from depression.

In the last few years, Olive and his business partner have struggled to keep their shop afloat and pondered whether to take “a pause” and temporarily close. After the shooting, they decided to go through with it. The Vapor Room on Saturday will host a “goodbye” party as it ceases operations at its only location in SoMa.

“I need to regroup,” Olive said. “Our goal is to reopen bigger, better, stronger, and more awesome, with the help of the community.”

Asked whether he buys into the idea that God or some mystical force saved his life, as many of his friends have suggested, Olive said he isn’t buying it.

“I think I’m very lucky within unlucky circumstances,” Olive said. “I’m not a tough guy. I just want to be a squishy, soft dude. … I’m just a guy that was standing there and got shot.”

Garrett Leahy and Stephanie K. Baer contributed reporting.