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January 5, 2012 in Washington Voices
Family is grateful for help after life-changing accident
Relatives, friends and strangers helped the Santos family after their minivan was hit by a drunken driver in August. From left, they are Isabella, 17; mother, Alyssa; Zachary, 14; Nikko, 7; father, Angelo; and Annalia, 9.
(Full-size photo)
On Aug. 14, a fun-filled day at Loon Lake ended in near tragedy for the Santos family.
As Angelo Santos; his wife, Alyssa; and children Isabella, Zachary, Annalia, and Nikko, traveled south on U.S. Highway 395, a drunken driver blew through the stop sign at Crawford Road.
“I saw him coming,” Angelo Santos said, of the seconds before the crash. “I tried to veer right to avoid him.”
But the collision proved inescapable. Alyssa Santos thinks her husband’s 15 years as a UPS driver mitigated the damages. “I believe if anyone else had been behind the wheel, it would have been so much worse,” she said.
The accident was horrifying, but for the Santos family the real story is the unexpected outpouring of care and support they received from the community in the months that followed.
Within days a friend had set up a blog to post health updates, needs and prayer requests, and a benefit fund was created at Spokane Teacher’s Credit Union.
As the minivan came to a rest that day, an eerie silence fell. “It was very quiet – a silence that seemed to last forever,” Alyssa Santos said. And then she heard the children crying.
Shattered glass from the broken windows filled the van. Trapped against the steering wheel, Angelo Santos struggled to free himself. Alyssa Santos’ leg rested on the dash. “It looked really odd,” she recalled. “My foot was totally flat.”
Zach asked, “Mom, what should we do? How can we help you?”
Isabella had her cellphone in her hand, so Alyssa Santos told her to call 911 and also call her aunt who was still at Loon Lake. Then she asked Zach to pray – and he did.
“We asked for help and God brought it to us,” Alyssa Santos said.
Angelo Santos agreed. “The people who pulled over were amazingly selected by God. The first three people who stopped were all EMTs.”
In addition, a couple stopped and helped get the kids out of the van. “They prayed with them and reassured them, and picked the glass out of their hair,” Angelo said.
Alyssa Santos was the most seriously injured. While the rest of her family was loaded into ambulances, she was air-lifted to the hospital. “I passed out when they pulled me out of the car and woke up in the helicopter,” she said.
The force of the impact had shoved her stomach up into her lung cavity; her diaphragm was torn and her spleen ruptured. She also had multiple breaks in her left leg.
Angelo Santos suffered a broken right ankle and ligament damage. Thankfully, the children’s injuries were confined to bumps and bruises.
Alyssa Santos underwent immediate surgery to repair her diaphragm and spleen. When her condition stabilized, a surgeon pieced her shattered leg back together.
Angelo Santos had surgery on his ankle the same day. Later he was wheeled down the hall for his first glimpse of his wife since the accident.
“She whispered, ‘I almost died, huh?’ ” he recalled. “I said, ‘But you’re not dead and I think God has a plan for us.’ ”
While family and friends rallied to clean the house, buy groceries and care for the children, what most touched Alyssa and Angelo Santos was the kindness of strangers.
Folks brought meals, did yard work, finished a backyard fence and rearranged furniture to accommodate two people using walkers.
Before the accident, Alyssa Santos had been readying Zach’s room for a new paint job. Friends and family stepped in to finish it.
When word got out that Alyssa Santos would be coming home after an 11-day stay in the hospital, friend Eric Lyons designed a ramp leading from the garage to the house. Ziggy’s Building Materials donated supplies, and a small group of volunteers completed the ramp in just one day.
As the start of school loomed, people pitched in and took care of the back-to-school shopping.
Annalia and Nikko attend Lincoln Heights Elementary, and the school also reached out to the family. “The principal and counselor came to our house and offered to give the kids rides to activities – the staff brought us meals. They’ve been amazing,” Alyssa Santos said.
Friends held a car wash staffed by volunteers from UPS and employees of Applied Healthcare Associates. The fundraiser netted $1,575.
The support left the Santos family feeling stunned and grateful. Alyssa Santos said, “No one is really prepared for four to five months off work.”
With his doctor’s permission, Angelo Santos hopes to resume his UPS route this month.
Though Alyssa Santos has graduated from a walker to a cane, she faces intensive physical therapy, and possibly another surgery. “Every step hurts,” she admitted.
The family expressed amazement that though the accident happened in August, they are still inundated with support and care. Alyssa said, “A group of people offered to do Christmas for us. They asked for our Christmas list and went out shopping on Black Friday.”
They attend Life Center Church and said the church has been especially helpful. A man Angelo Santos knew from Bible study bakes cookies for the family every week. “It’s his gift to us,” Angelo Santos said.
“It’s a good gift!” Zach said.
Isabella laughed. “They are the best cookies I’ve ever had!”
The experience has profoundly affected the family. “We can’t really remember what life was like before,” Alyssa Santos said. “Our kids are changed. When you look at not having your mom, everything is a gift.”
“They look at the world differently. It’s brought us closer, but it’s also broadened our ideas of helping others,” Angelo Santos said.
One thing is certain: Each member of the Santos family believes in the power of prayer. “We prayed and God met us from the very first minutes of the accident,” Alyssa said. “It was an awful experience, but so much good came out of it.”
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greenlibertarian on January 05 at 8:51 p.m.
Powerful story, Cindy, thanks.
Let go, let God.
tylerr on January 06 at 4:03 p.m.
What an amazing story and testimony! This is a great example of what communities should be like. Helping others in need. God says, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. We never know when that could be any one of us in a situation like that, and how we may need the help and love of others.
Blessings to all those who helped this wonderful family during their hardship and time of need. You’ve not only touched the hearts of this family but many many other people in the community as well. Thanks for leading by example!
RedCedar on January 06 at 9:58 p.m.
That must have been an absolutely terrifying wreck. I’m glad everyone survived. What became of the drunk driver?
I’ve never been able to understand the role of God in things like this, though. Something horrible happens to people, and they thank God that it wasn’t worse, that some good come of it, that some good people helped them out. If God sent all the good people to help out after the wreck, why did He send a drunk driver to cause the wreck? I’m not trying to be snide here. There was a time when I believed that Satan made all the bad things happen to people, and God made the good things happen, and then there was a time when I believed that God did both, as he did to Job, in order to test people’s faith. Neither of those explanations makes any sense any more, though. What kind of loving, personal God would intentionally inflict pain on people just to win what was essentially a bar bet with the Devil? Or, how omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent can God be if He can’t stop a drunk driver from crashing into a family, and can’t keep the people from getting hurt when he does, but can only do a few little things afterward to make the damage less than it might have been? And then we have all the other people of equal faith, presumably equally loved by God, who did die when a different drunk driver ran into them, or they fell asleep at the wheel, or they got cancer or had a heart attack.
Sorry, but if I’m to believe the hand of God was involved in tidying up some of the carnage after the wreck, I have to believe that hand would also have been capable of preventing the wreck to begin with.