Miracle makers

Miracles can be expensive, so Army Spc. Wes Hixon’s friends want to pitch in.

They’re planning a benefit auction and dinner Oct. 3 for the 23-year-old Spokane Valley resident, who was paralyzed by a 500-pound roadside bomb Feb. 8 near Baghdad.

Four other soldiers were killed by the bomb that destroyed the eight-wheeled Stryker armored vehicle in which Hixon had been riding. Hixon was so gravely injured that rescuers at first thought he also had died.

Hixon later recalled hearing someone say, “Hixon is dead,” while he hung upside down in the wreckage, held by his seat belt.

Family friend Teri Fisher believes Hixon’s survival was a miracle, considering that doctors twice brought him back from apparent death while he was being evacuated to Kuwait.

Hixon’s neck and spine were broken in more than 50 places, and three vertebrae were missing. He also suffered a lacerated kidney, 10 broken ribs and “blast lung,” a condition in which the lungs are ripped away from the chest lining.

By the time he reached the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., Hixon had developed severe pneumonia. But doctors couldn’t treat the pneumonia until they had performed eight hours of emergency surgery to stabilize his spinal column with titanium cages and rods.

The young infantryman celebrated his 23rd birthday in the hospital’s intensive care unit, paralyzed from the chest down.

Hixon was flown to the Veterans Affairs hospital in Seattle in March for further treatment and therapy to help him resume his life. He was bedridden for months, but recently wheeled his chair through Seattle’s Pike Place Market.

“I got to go downtown a few times, catch a movie,” Hixon said. “It was excellent. It was fun to get to go shopping and do some real-life stuff.”

Although fighting fever from a bacterial infection, Hixon was determined last week to attend next month’s benefit auction.

“I’m doing good right now,” he said. “I’ve got a little sickness going on, but that’s being treated and I should be there on time and everything should be good. … I’ll make sure of it.”

That may be optimistic, but Fisher said Hixon already has done much with his “can-do attitude.”

“He showed me how he can flex his muscle and move his foot a little bit,” she said. Although doctors initially doubted Hixon would survive, Fisher said “he has kind of written his own book.”

Hixon will be living with his mother, Spokane Valley resident Tammy Hixon, and her fiancé, Scott Walker, after his release from the hospital and discharge from the Army.

Before his 2003 high school graduation in Cody, Wyo., Hixon spent summers with his mother in Spokane Valley and the school year with his father, John Hixon, in Cody. Earlier, though, he attended junior high school in Post Falls.

Tammy Hixon said she was nervous when Hixon joined the Army in August 2006.

“I knew he’d be going over to Iraq,” she said. “I didn’t want him to do it. … but I was very supportive of him.”

Tammy Hixon said her son “wanted to go in to get somewhere in life and to get his college money.”

Fisher also took a motherly interest in the young man who briefly dated and remains a friend of her daughter, Jade Fisher.

“I have known Wes since he was 19,” Teri Fisher said. “He is a part of our family.”

She describes him as an “incredibly kind-hearted” person who is “always open to help others.”

Now, with the help of friends, Fisher hopes to return the kindness. With co-chairwoman Dianna Brown and others, she hopes to raise $25,000 for Hixon and his family with a spaghetti dinner and benefit auction.

The Oct. 3 event at the Mirabeau Park Hotel will begin with a no-host social hour at 6 p.m. Dinner will be served at 7, and the auction will follow at 8. It costs $15 to attend.

Fisher said more donations are needed, but the volunteers already have collected thousands of dollars worth of contributions, beginning with the hotel ballroom.

Albertsons stores promised food for 600 guests while General Dynamics gave $1,000 in cash. Mountain Gear gave $600 worth of gift certificates for the auction; Red Lobster, $500 worth.

Numerous other businesses have contributed prizes worth hundreds of dollars, and individuals have offered everything from an Afghan to a pair of courtside Gonzaga University basketball tickets.

Thanks to Operation Spokane Heroes, a subcommittee of Greater Spokane Inc., donations are tax-deductible. The nonprofit business organization has brought the benefit drive under its umbrella.

Fisher’s friend Misty Griffith put Hixon’s story on the Internet with a Web site that had more than 1,300 hits last week.

People – including a soldier’s wife in South Korea – are using the site to send Hixon greetings and encouragement.

“It’s phenomenal,” Fisher said.

The Army is paying for Hixon’s treatment and many of his family’s expenses as well. Still, unreimbursed costs are mounting.

Since March, Tammy Hixon has flown to Seattle every week to spend three or four days – typically Thursday through Sunday – with her son.

The Dunn and Black law firm, where office manager Tammy Hixon has worked for 10 years, has accommodated her with flexible hours. And the government provides a hotel room for Hixon’s trips, but she must pay for transportation, parking and food.

Airfare has run about $200 a week; parking, about $240 a month.

One of the biggest expenses is the loss Hixon and Walker sustained in the sale of their split-level home to acquire a house with an attached, handicapped-accessible apartment for Wes.

Tammy Hixon said she hoped to complete the sale this week. The couple had already taken possession of their new home.

“Hopefully, we have sold the house,” she said. “We had to drop it to rock bottom.”

“They’re walking away with literally no equity,” Fisher said.

Other pending needs include furniture for Wes’ apartment and a vehicle. If Hixon provides a vehicle, the government will pay for modifications so he can drive it.

Tammy Hixon hopes a Veterans Affairs grant will help pay for the vehicle.

“It’s still kind of a blur,” she said. “We’re just going day by day. This is all new to us.”