AS SOON AS his wife and daughter had left for The Nutcracker, downtown at the Mechanic Theatre, Rene Florendo grabbed an aluminum extension ladder, several 50-foot strings of Christmas lights and a neighbor named Brian Sabo. It was Saturday afternoon, Dec. 9, 2001. The mission: Decorate that big, old pine tree on the front lawn, the one as tall as Florendo's house.

In previous years, Rene Florendo had settled for lighting up the shrubs. But the pine, a burly evergreen that had been spared pruning for years, blocked the view of his decorations from the street. As tempting as it might have been to cut the tree down, Florendo decided to dress it up -- in lights, "like the Washington Monument in downtown Baltimore." And he wanted his wife, Glinda, and daughter, Melissa, to be surprised by the sight when they returned to their house on Greenridge Court in Lutherville.

So Florendo and Sabo got the ladder in place, sturdy against the branches, and Florendo climbed to the top of the tree -- about 25 feet above his small front lawn.

A mechanical engineer who keeps building systems functioning at Towson University, Florendo had formulated a simple and practical plan. He would take each strand of lights to the top of the tree, hang it over a branch and drop it to Sabo on the ground, draping the tree in colorful vertical lines. And he would keep the ladder on the side of the tree facing his house, staying clear of the power line that ran along the street about 10 feet beyond the tree. Florendo understood the danger in the power line; he had no intention of going near it.

There was one rogue branch that jutted high to his left. Florendo had trouble getting the lights over it and down to Sabo.

So he gathered the strand and tossed it high over the branch.

But it unraveled in a way Florendo hadn't expected.

And it went higher and farther in a way he hadn't expected.

It went high over the power line.

In the next instant, between 9,000 and 13,000 volts of electricity hummed like a million angry hornets through the string of Christmas lights and into Rene Florendo's hand, and up his arms, and through his legs where they rested against the ladder. His tennis shoes blew off his feet. There was a flash and the crackling sound of dozens of light bulbs popping. Florendo fell back and landed near the shrubs in front of his house, breaking ribs, crushing vertebrae, puncturing a lung.

But he was alive.

Somehow he was alive.

Sabo was with him, and soon another neighbor, Tim Davis, then the Lutherville Volunteer Fire Company, and soon a helicopter crew flew him to the Baltimore Regional Burn Center at the Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center.

He stayed there for a couple of months, undergoing treatment for third-degree burns to his arms and legs. The worst of the injuries was to Florendo's left hand and forearm. Two weeks after the accident, they had to be amputated.

A year has gone by, and Rene Florendo has a prosthesis where that forearm used to be. His right wrist, enhanced with muscle tissue from one of Florendo's legs, is starting to come around. The weekly therapy helps, and the fingers have become more sensitive and flexible again. He has been back at work at Towson since June.

"It's a miracle I'm alive," Florendo, 39, says. "I lost my left arm and hand, but I'm the same person I was before. The best thing is I didn't lose that -- my personality or my memory."

He's a gentle man, friendly, quick with a joke.

And, as you might imagine, more grateful than ever.

It has been an extraordinary year. Within a month of the accident, friends and co-workers at Towson had organized a fund-raiser and put $10,000 in a bank account for Florendo. The Towsontowne rec lacrosse league in which he had been a coach came up with another $8,000. Katipunan, the Filipino-American society to which his family belongs, came up with more. There is a long, long list of people to whom he feels indebted -- doctors and nurse practitioners, friends and old neighbors from the time he and his wife lived in Roland Park.

And then there's the rock band.

I should tell you about that.

Before his terrible accident, Rene Florendo was in a band called Attractive Nuisance. About three years ago, some Lutherville-Timonium soccer parents announced the need for a drummer to complete their modest ensemble -- Rick Griffiths on lead guitar, Jennifer Griffiths on bass and Sonny Luebben on rhythm guitar -- and Florendo, who had been nothing but a dashboard drummer, signed on. He learned how to handle the sticks and has had a blast covering tunes by the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, CCR, the Doors and "even a little Deep Purple."

The accident and amputation did not stop him, either.

Rene Florendo still plays the drums, and as a rusty rock-band drummer from way back, I say with confidence that he plays pretty well.

Drawing from his training and instincts for mechanical engineering, Florendo took some Velcro, some tape, a weightlifter's glove and engineered a way to make the drumsticks stay put in his damaged right hand and in the steel hooks of his left. It works. The man commands his kit. We had a brief battle of the drummers in his knotty pine basement the other night, banging away to the BoDeans and some Edgar Winter, and Florendo was the clear victor -- and not just because of my rust, but because of his determination to roll on.

"I just want to have fun," he says.

So he's back with the band. In fact, they have a gig tonight -- at the annual holiday party of the Bayview burn center.