GILROY
– She used to go by Veronica, now she responds to Miracle
Girl.
She used to go to college, work full-time as a medical assistant
and wrestle with her 6-year-old daughter Angelica at their Gilroy
home, now she doesn’t leave the house much and struggles to get
through each day.
GILROY – She used to go by Veronica, now she responds to Miracle Girl.
She used to go to college, work full-time as a medical assistant and wrestle with her 6-year-old daughter Angelica at their Gilroy home, now she doesn’t leave the house much and struggles to get through each day.
She used to effortlessly control the steering wheel of her life – controlling every move with an admirable precision, but that all changed with one left turn on Feb. 22, 2002.
“I remember getting on the (U.S. 101) and that’s it,” said Veronica Plaza, who celebrated her 25th birthday Tuesday. “The next thing I know I’m in the hospital with a hundred tubes in me, thinking this is a horrible dream.”
Actually, three-and-a-half weeks passed between the time Plaza got broadsided by a drunk driver and when she opened her eyes in San Jose Medical Center. But to Plaza and many who know her, it might as well have been a lifetime and almost was.
“I was dead,” Plaza said. “There was no hope, that’s what the doctors told my family. My lungs weren’t responding to the ventilator and my brain was too swollen. I had internal bleeding everywhere. They were getting ready to drill a hole in my head; that’s when I woke up.”
Those painful memories and the thousands of others that have come with every breath of Plaza’s during the last 10 months will come to a head Tuesday when she witnesses the sentencing of Augustin Costa Benitez – the man who stole her life.
Benitez, 34, never even gave Plaza a chance. The illegal Mexican national ran a red light on Old Oakland Road in San Jose driving 55 miles per hour – never braking – before he hit Plaza’s 1999 Dodge Stratus. It was 8:30 p.m., Benitez was already drunk, and it wasn’t the first time he had done this.
On Jan. 18 Benitez plead guilty to being drunk when he collided with Plaza – his second DUI conviction in the last five years – and a county judge on Tuesday is expected to give him five years incarceration.
“When I saw him at the trial it was hard, I felt like saying something to him, letting him know how he took my life,” Plaza said of Benitez’ Jan. 18 court appearance. “But when I looked at him, he just stared at the ground. To me there could never be enough jail time for this, so I just hope when he gets out he doesn’t hurt anybody else ever again.”
Plaza’s injuries should have killed her. She suffered severe brain trauma, punctured lungs, multiple pelvic fractures and several other injuries in the accident. Because her lungs were full of fluid, a ventilator was used to keep her alive during her three-and-a-half-week coma. But when the ventilator began to fail, the doctors lost hope, telling her family and friends she’s lived with in Gilroy all of her life that she wouldn’t ever leave the hospital.
“When I went to the hospital to see her, I didn’t believe it was her because the swelling was so intense,” said Jeanette Mulleda, Plaza’s good friend and coworker for two years at Kaiser Hospital in Santa Clara. “It was just devastating to see such a beautiful and energetic young woman paralyzed and helpless. I’ve worked in hospitals for seven and a half years and never seen anything like it. The doctor said she wasn’t going to make it and I started balling.”
Thanks to a special ventilator flown in from Washington, Plaza slowly began recovering, and she proved the doctors wrong when she left the hospital four months later, although she still had very limited use of her body and mind.
Now, after almost 11 months, countless hours of rehab – learning how to walk again and regain control of her body – and a lifetime full of tears, Plaza’s healing is far from over. In fact, everyday it seems like the recovery is just beginning, she said. But she’s learning the only way to go is up.
“Obviously the hardest part was worrying about my daughter and being able to take care of her,” said Plaza, who lives at home in Gilroy with her parents, Pedro and Melanie Plaza. “But everything is hard. I have a hard time concentrating on things and I’ve lost a lot of memories. My reactions are slow and my balance isn’t very good.
“I was advancing in life and work and school and it just stopped because of somebody else. That’s hard to grasp. Now I can’t drive because they won’t give me a license yet.”
Obviously not one to give up, Plaza believes she can get her life back. She plans to be back in school at San Jose City College by summer and working back at Kaiser in Santa Clara as well.
Kara Sinwell, another friend of Plaza’s and coworker at Kaiser thinks Plaza can do it, but she admits it will be a rough road.
“Honestly, she’s different now, she’s lost her self-confidence,” Sinwell said. “I mean there are some things now she really struggles with, even just holding a conversation. She’s lost her independence. She’s gone through depression. But she’s strong, she’ll come back.”
Plaza agrees.
“I had some family members who were not speaking for years. After my accident, they apologized and my family is much closer now,” she said. “There’s a reason why things happen, I just need to keep trying to get back to who I was before.”
