Morgan Hill resident Scott Green, 57, said God saved the life of Olivia Zelony, 15, moments after she was ejected from a go-kart that crashed into a parked vehicle in their east Morgan Hill neighborhood on Thanksgiving day.
Mayor Steve Tate gives credit to Green, an off-duty nurse who was one of the first to respond to the accident that left Zelony’s lifeless body sprawled on the yard of Green’s neighbor before paramedics arrived. Tate recognized Green with a proclamation commending his efforts at the Jan. 15 City Council meeting.
“She was lying right here,” Green said, pointing to an ice plant on the corner of his neighbor’s yard on Katybeth Way last week. “She was dead. Her eyes were partially open with a fixed stare. Her head was in a position that your head does not go in. She was bleeding out of the carotid,” a major artery that supplies blood to the head and neck.
Holding Zelony, Green turned the girls’ head in the direction he thought it was supposed to go, and pressed his hand on a cut on her throat that was gushing blood. He quickly observed a bone sticking out of her leg, among other obvious injuries.
Green, who has been a nurse for more than 20 years and works at the emergency room of Kaiser San Jose, could feel Zelony’s body losing its life.
“That’s when my heart broke and I started crying out to Jesus to touch this girl, and He touched her. He gave her back to us from the dead,” said Green, who did not know Zelony or her family before the accident.
By the time Zelony made it to the hospital and was stabilized, her family and neighbors learned that the Presentation High School freshman suffered no spinal or head injuries, and no damage to her carotid artery.
That’s a miracle, according to Green and Olivia’s mother Dotty Zelony.
Olivia still has a long road to recovery, according to her mother. She suffered numerous broken bones – including a compound fracture to her right femur, a broken tibia that was sticking out of her skin, ribs, collar bone, jaw, hand and wrist – as well as a dislocated elbow, punctured lung, cuts and bruises.
She was unable to return home until Dec. 20, and has endured seven surgeries including skin and muscle grafts since the Nov. 28 accident, Dotty said. In one of the surgeries, doctors removed a muscle from her back and attached it to her right leg, to replace a destroyed leg muscle. She cannot walk yet – or even move her right leg – but doctors think she will regain the ability to walk.
Her next surgery will consist of removing bone from her healthy left side and grafting it to her right leg in order to connect her femur to her knee, Dotty explained last Friday, while seated in the living room of the Zelony’s Heatherwood Way home.
The teen who played on Presentation High’s Junior Varsity singles tennis team before the accident has four teams of doctors, Dotty added.
Olivia – a slight young girl with long brown hair who wants to be a doctor – managed to crack a few smiles while talking about the Thanksgiving Day trauma. She has already started daily physical therapy at home. She and her parents think the throttle on the go-kart malfunctioned when she starting driving it just before her accident.
“I kept pressing the brake and nothing happened,” Olivia said. “I just wanted to go five miles per hour up and down the street.”
After the accident, Olivia was transported by ambulance to DePaul Medical Center in Morgan Hill, where a waiting Calstar helicopter flew her to Santa Clara Valley Medical Center. “She lost six-and-a-half liters of blood,” Dotty added. “It was touch and go” on the way to the hospital.
The accident happened under clear blue skies while families were preparing Thanksgiving feasts throughout Morgan Hill. Residents of the neighborhood had been taking turns riding another neighbor’s “racing go-kart” up and down the block near where Katybeth and Heatherwood ways meet, Green said.
His brother, who was visiting for the holiday, happened to be looking out the window when he saw the vehicle with Olivia at the wheel speed quickly toward the next-door home.
The brothers ran outside and saw Olivia lying in an ice plant near where the neighbor’s driveway meets the sidewalk. The go-kart crashed – clearly at a high rate of speed – into a parked 5-series BMW, damaging the car and causing its rear end to move about 18 inches over, Scott Green said.
Green noted that another neighbor on Katybeth Way – Pam Teddleton, also a nurse with nearly 25 years experience – ran out to the scene just seconds after he got there. Other neighbors, including Olivia’s parents, ran over once they realized what happened.
“I truly thank God that we were there,” Teddleton said. “There were definitely two people who knew what to do at the right time because, considering the length of response time it would be pretty frightening to imagine what could have happened if (Scott) and I weren’t there.”
Science can’t explain miracles, but Green unabashedly proclaims his Christian faith and his belief in the power of prayer. He has been active in Crossroads Christian Center in Morgan Hill for about 13 years, and has led a prayer ministry at the church for about 10 years.
The Zelonys are members of St. Catherine Parish in Morgan Hill. Olivia attended the church’s K-through-8 school, where her younger brother now attends.
The proclamation awarded to Green at the Jan. 15 Council meeting reads in part, “Mr. Green’s training and experience as an emergency room nurse helped him make quick and decisive actions which played a key role in the survival of the patient.”
But Green told the Council that Olivia’s survival is a “demonstration of the love of God, and His love for (Olivia).”
“It matters how you live your life – live for God, live a lifestyle of fasting and prayer,” Green added at the Jan. 15 meeting. “It makes a difference because you don’t know when you’re going to be holding a dying little girl in your arms.”
Dotty Zelony added, “It’s a miracle that she’s alive and doing as well as she is.”
