A wet plastic plate in her hands, Helen Richardson stands in a makeshift kitchen, looking for a dish towel.
It is in a drawer; that much she knows. But for several minutes, she pulls open various drawers, sometimes the same one repeatedly, and scours every cabinet. She checks the empty countertops and finally — success — finds what she is looking for.
Two months ago, the task would have been completed in seconds and the bouncy 16-year-old would have moved on. Now, even the most mundane, routine chores — which she has spent three weeks practicing at a live-in rehabilitation center before she can return home — take extra time and help.
But the fact she is able to do them at all has left doctors, family members and even Helen herself amazed.
Helen sustained a permanent brain injury when she was hit by a pickup outside Hemet High School on May 30. CHP investigators have said a fellow student speeding along Stetson Avenue ran a stoplight and plowed through a crowded crosswalk. Eight students were hospitalized, Helen in the most serious condition.
She spent more than a week in a coma. Since then, she has progressed from immobile to functional, relearning to walk and talk and, her mother says, returning to being a normal teenager.
The road ahead will be rough. At times, she seems like any other teenager. But good and bad moments come and go. Helen easily forgets the smallest things. She still struggles to fully open and focus her right eye, and her long-term prognosis may not be known for years.
But for those around her, simply hearing her laugh has been nothing short of a miracle.
“I know I’ve come a long way in a month,” she says. “I’ve gone from a coma to standing. I will get better.”
EXHAUSTIVE REHAB
As a visitor walks into a physical therapy room at a rehab center in Pomona on July 5, Helen offers a hint of a smile as she pedals methodically on an exercise bike. This place has become a second home for her and her mother.
The physical marks from the crash are still visible.
Deep gashes reach up her leg from when she skidded along the pavement after being run over by the 1994 Ford Ranger driven by Daniel Carrillo. The wounds peek out from under bandages that must be replaced daily, which still causes Helen to wince.
As she moves her hair back behind her ear — she curled it mostly by herself on this day, something she proudly points out — the most obvious of the physical damage is accentuated. A damaged nerve prevents the muscles around her right eye from opening completely.
Problems with her airway that doctors are still trying to figure out leave her gasping for breath, her quiet voice barely audible above the constant wheezing.
Hopping off the bike, she crosses the room, slowly climbing a few steps as part of an exercise, deeply focused as she steps up and down. She then makes her way to a table where she balances on one knee and the opposite arm.
And then, she slowly starts to tip.
Vincent Hernaez, her physical therapist, grabs her and holds her upright. The process is repeated several times, and he looks over and warns Helen’s mother, Trisha Telezinski, that Helen must be careful out in public.
Her balance from side-to-side is fine. But if she got bumped from behind, Hernaez says, she would likely fall. A look comes over Helen’s face; it’s not what she wants to hear.
For a girl who spent her afternoons playing with her dog in a dry riverbed and her weekends riding horses, it’s obvious that she doesn’t like the thought of slowing down.
The two move to the next exercise, where Helen learns to stand up from the ground, at times looking bored of the repetition of the exercises. The blurred vision in her right eye makes it all the more difficult to focus and balance.
But eventually, the rail-thin girl with a steel resolve stands on her own.
Sipping water, she offers a look that hints at both pride and exhaustion. For weeks, it’s been the same routine, and she’s ready to go home. She’ll get her wish soon.
“I don’t think Helen realizes how far she has come,” Telezinski says, staring at her daughter in the distance with a look of amazement. “But she doesn’t have to realize that.
“On the outside, she’s not 100 percent of what she was. But that doesn’t mean she’s not OK.”
LEARNING TO FUNCTION
A … 1. B … 2. C … 3.
With tape covering the right side of a pair of glasses, Helen connects lines from letters to numbers. Each takes a moment, as Helen stares, sometimes pursing her lips as she thinks hard, and must complete the correct answer.
Then, occupational therapist Wendy Chiu has her flip the glasses over so the tape covers Helen’s good eye. Forcing her sagging right eye to do the majority of the work becomes more of a challenge.
For more than 10 minutes, Helen works on homework assignments to test cognitive abilities. In one, she must circle the letter “A” in lines of random letters. She finds them all, earning praise from her therapist before the two move across the room to a makeshift apartment that is part of the rehab center.
Inside is a small kitchen, a bedroom and a laundry and bath area. In here, patients work on life skills they will need to function on their own.
Helen’s daily chores prior to the accident included dishes and cleaning — but not laundry, given her penchant for overstuffing the machine. Upon her return home, she will resume the same duties so she can contribute around the house and keep moving forward.
Chiu takes Helen into the kitchen and asks, “What do we need to make a sandwich?”
A long, blank stare.
Finally, in a voice that asks as much as it responds, Helen quietly says, “A plate.”
A minute and several cabinets later, a plate is found. The same is repeated with a glass for a drink, and Chiu has Helen wash both, a process that is slow and deliberate. When it is time to dry the dishes, Helen begins to struggle.
“She’s getting better,” Chiu said. “Before, she needed a lot of cueing from us. She would ask what she is supposed to do next. The more she does it, the more natural it will become.”
Minutes later, back in her room, Chiu asks Helen what exercises they did. She lists several. Chiu asks about the homework assignments, but Helen can’t remember doing it.
Her eyes shift to the floor, disappointment and frustration on her face.
SLOW PROGRESS
Sitting on her bed, Helen’s knees are to her chest, propping up a tube for breathing treatment that emits vapors. She texts rapidly on the cellphone that looks like it is permanently attached to her hands. ITexting came back easily after she came out of the coma.
When others in the room laugh at her pose, she giggles, trying to keep the breathing tube in her mouth. As she does, more vapors spray out the end, causing her to laugh more.
The moment offers a stark contrast of a normal teenage girl and one whose life was permanently damaged as she crossed a street to play in a powder puff football game. But that contrast is Helen’s life for the foreseeable future.
Eventually, a speech therapist comes in and sits in front of Helen, whose daily view from her room includes flowers outside the window and an assortment of cards and photos taped to the wall in front of her. There are drawings of horses — when she awoke from her coma, her first thought was wanting to go horseback riding. A quilt with get-well wishes scribbled on it sits at her feet.
In front of her, Helen reads words from a card the speech therapist has given her. She must make two sentences with the words she is given.
“The kitten … is … in … the chair.”
Trying to think of a second sentence, she asks, “I can’t add other words?”
She is told no, then offers, “Is the kitten in the chair?”
Her progress is slow, therapist Lisa Keinert said. The therapy is not so much to fix a speech problem, but part of cognitive testing.
Eventually, their therapy wraps up — the third session of the day — and Keinert praises Helen for her work, jotting down notes to add to her file.
After three long weeks, it also marks the end of Helen’s file. The following day, July 6, she will be released and return home to tackle these challenges on her own.
JOYFUL HOMECOMING
Helen says she has no memory of the accident. No memory of that entire day. She simply remembers waking more than a week later, tubes in her body, and her mother’s voice as she slowly emerged from the coma.
As Helen lay in a coma, her plight helped galvanize a community. Tens of thousands of dollars were raised. Donations poured in so quickly, Telezinski asked that no more be given.
The outpouring became overwhelming, and in the process, the family that had for so long gotten by on its faith had its own faith in humanity strengthened.
“To know people cared that much,” her grandfather, Mark Young, said, offering a long pause for reflection and wiping away a tear, “it reinforced my faith.”
Through this all, Telezinski has held a nearly constant vigil by her daughter’s bedside. They joke that they need a vacation from each other, and Helen begs to have a sleepover with her friends when she gets home. After a long sigh, Telezinski says they will talk about it later.
The conversation shifts to the journey her mother has gone through. Telezinski nods when asked if there have been nights she walked out of the hospital room to cry.
Helen looks over, as though she were unaware of those moments.
“I love you,” she tells her mother.
The day of her homecoming, Helen is greeted by dozens of family, friends and neighbors, with balloons and a celebration.
For days afterward, she is tired, and Telezinski later admits the party may have been too much, too soon.
From home, days are filled with doctors’ appointments and more exercises. The family has hired a legal team.
Helen says she harbors no anger toward Carrillo, the driver — even if his actions have altered her life forever. Since the crash, they have become Facebook friends.
On her final day of rehab, as she looked down at the scars on her leg stretched out on the hospital bed, she considered the question of what happens if her body can’t heal itself. She shrugged and offered a smile.
“I’m not worried at all,” she said. “Even if I don’t get better, I don’t care. This is who I am. I’m Helen.”
Follow Kevin Pearson on Twitter @pe_kevinpearson or online at blog.pe.com/Hemet