Carl Mize might want to think about asking for hazard pay. The OU Physical Plant employee has been hospitalized three times for injuries sustained in the line of duty, twice when he was struck by lighting and then again April 8 when a utility truck collapsed on him while he was doing landscaping work at Boyd House.

Then there are the four other times he was struck by lighting, bringing his personal injury total to six lighting strikes and a truck accident.

“Some people say I’m unlucky, but I think I’m kind of lucky to be alive,” Mize said.

The first lightning strike came in 1978, when Mize was riding bulls at a rodeo. The rodeo was temporarily shut down because storms were coming in. Lightning hit his truck as he was touching it. It knocked him back about five feet, but no serious damage was done.

The second incident was in 1994, when Mize helped a friend move a playhouse. Mize said he was holding a crowbar when lightning struck a telephone pole next to him. The lightning went through the pole into the crowbar, which blew out of his hands and jolted him, Mize said.

The third event was in 1996, when he was working on street-light cables on the South Oval. He was lying on his stomach repairing the cables when lightning split open a Cyprus tree on the east side of the oval. The lightning current went down the tree, through the cable wires, and came out his chest.

“I thought somebody had hit me with a club,” Mize said. “It hurt like heck.”

Mize was hospitalized for three days and had a large burn mark on his chest.

Strike No. 4 occurred on May 3, 1999, at his home. Mize said his wife rushed the family to the cellar because tornadoes were nearing Norman. While his family was in the cellar, Mize was outside holding onto a swing chain when lightning hit a nearby tree and went into the chain.

Mize admits it wasn’t the smartest decision to be outside, but he didn’t think it would be possible to get struck again.

The fifth hit came in 2005 while Mize was on the north side of campus repairing a water main break during a storm. Water had saturated the ground, and one of his shoes had a hole in it.

Lightning struck where the workers were, traveled through the water on the ground and up through the hole in his shoe. He spent four days in the hospital because he had an abnormal heart rate following the incident.

“I’ve been struck twice in the same pair of tennis shoes,” Mize said.

In August 2006, Mize went outside as a storm was approaching to cover his hay. As he was throwing tires on top of a tarp to hold it down, lightning struck again.

“All I saw was a real bright light,” Mize said.

In 2007, professor John Friedman from Long Island State College came to interview Mize as part of his research for his study on lightning victims.

Friedman believes there is something in a person’s body that attracts lightning to them, Mize said.

“At this point, I believe it does like me for some reason,” he said.

While his circumstances are strange, Mize said he is not interested in learning why lightning keeps hitting him.

Johns Hopkins University wanted to do a study on Mize, but he declined the offer because it would have kept him away from work for too long.

Mize has attracted the attention of reporters as well as researchers. After the 2005 strike, he received offers to appear on CBS, ABC, CNN, FOX, “Ellen,” “The Oprah Winfrey Show” and most recently, “Are You Smarter than A Fifth Grader?”

But the attention got old fast.

“They would have liked to have driven us insane,” said his wife, Robin Mize.

Robin Mize said she tries not to worry about her husband too much, even when he gets hurt.

“Since this is not the first time, I don’t get all hysterical,” she said.

Mize had another accident April 8, but this one wasn’t lightning-related. He was landscaping at Boyd House, where workers were moving a tree via a truck to OU President David Boren’s backyard.

The truck lifting the tree over the fence fell onto the truck Mize was standing on, hitting Mize and sending him to the hospital for a few hours.

Despite all the accidents, Mize refuses to be afraid. He said his line of work keeps him constantly outside and he wouldn’t have it any other way.

“He doesn’t live his day like, ‘Oh there is a storm coming, I have to go inside,’” Robin Mize said.

Mize’s families and friends have a different reaction to his repeated encounters with bolts of lightning.

“I have lots of people who will call or e-mail me if there is a storm or lightning,” Mize said.

His three daughters, who are all nurses, are the most concerned members of the family, he said.

“They become unglued,” his wife said.

Co-worker Mike Petross said what puzzles him about Mize’s lightning strike encounters is that lightning is suppose to hit the tallest object in the area, but Mize is relatively short.

Physical Plant workers know to watch out for him, though.

“I was standing right next to him. I’ll never get that close to him again during that weather,” Petross said.

While Mize continues to work outdoors, he admits the last few strikes have caused him to think more seriously when lightning strikes.

“Now it affects me more,” Mize said. “I would thoroughly enjoy getting to retire instead of getting killed by lightning.”

What are the odds... ?

• Odds of being struck by lightning in a given year: 1 in 700,000

• Odds of being struck in your lifetime: 1 in 5,000

• Number of deaths from lightning reported annually: 60

• Number of lightning-related injuries reported annually: 340

-Source: National Weather Service