Posted on 06/22/2003 7:36:55 PM PDT by liberalnot
Immigrant smugglers' forgotten victims
Compassion, aid lacking for the crash survivors who face physical, financial and emotional trauma
By Marisa Taylor STAFF WRITER
June 22, 2003
The Dodge van loaded with illegal immigrants appeared on the horizon of Interstate 8 as a black shadow heading straight for Maria Amaya's old Toyota.
Moments earlier, the van's driver, panicked by the sight of a patrol car, had turned off his headlights and swerved across the median near Pine Valley. The van careened west into the eastbound lanes at 75 mph.
Amaya had only seconds to make her choice. Swerve left, and the van would hit the passenger side of her car, where her 17-year-old son sat. Turn right, and she would absorb the blow herself.
"It's going to be OK!" Amaya called out to her son as she yanked the steering wheel to the right.
The van slammed into her door. As her car skidded across the highway, she clung to the wheel with all her strength.
Amaya and her son, Mario Jr., survived the June 24, 2002, collision. So did Michael Hove, Gaia Little and 25 others injured in the five-car pileup. Six people were killed – the van's driver, four of the 26 immigrants packed inside and Little's fiance, Larry Baca.
The survivors know they're fortunate. At least 72 people have been killed and 472 injured in smuggling-related traffic accidents in San Diego and Imperial counties since 1993, according to a Union-Tribune analysis. Less than two weeks ago, five immigrants died when a car skidded across I-8 into an embankment.
The long-running debate about how to prevent such tragedies is unlikely to be resolved any time soon. Immigrant advocates blame law enforcement efforts for pushing smugglers into rural areas. Border authorities blame smugglers for taking deadly risks.
Left out of the discussions are the crash survivors, whose stories tend to fade into the background when the deaths are tallied. Many face astronomical medical bills, lost work time and emotional trauma, yet they have no organized advocates to push for psychological or financial help.
As the first anniversary of the accident approaches this week, Amaya, Hove and Little are still struggling to recover from the moment the van barrelled into them.
"It's on my mind every day," said Amaya, 48. "I can be working, I can be doing whatever I'm doing, and it's like a movie, like little pieces of a movie. It comes flashing back."
Doctor's questions Amaya remembers waking up in the hospital to the blurry image of a man grilling her about her identity. "Where are you from?" asked the man, who turned out to be a doctor. "Are you from Mexico?"
Amaya had glass in her eye, a broken left leg and a concussion, yet she was still insulted.
"I'm from the United States!" she spat back.
But the doctor persisted.
"You're from Mexico. Where in Mexico are you from?" she recalls him asking.
Amaya didn't have the energy to answer. It was a long story that the doctor didn't deserve to know.
The doctor moved on to other patients lying on stretchers in the corridor. Amaya realized they were immigrants who had been pulled from the van.
"Are you from Mexico?" Amaya heard him asking them.
They didn't answer, either. As she lost consciousness, she heard them moaning in pain.
Longtime American Amaya did come from Mexico, but that was a long time ago. Now she thinks of herself as American, not Mexican. She was born in Mexico to a poor family of 12, but was raised by an aunt, mostly in San Diego. She graduated from high school in Tijuana, got married at 20 and she and her husband, Mario, became U.S. citizens and bought a dusty, 10-acre plot in Boulevard, a tiny community four miles from the border and 67 miles from San Diego.
Amaya was proud of what she had done with her life. Her husband was an X-ray technician, and she managed a beauty salon. Mario Jr. had just graduated from high school and was getting ready to go to Mesa College. She was going to school, too, to become a registered nurse.
They had a fair amount of debt, but they paid their bills. They bought a two-bedroom, two-bath mobile home and dreamed of someday building a house.
Their quiet life was disrupted nine years ago when the U.S. Border Patrol started Operation Gatekeeper, a crackdown on illegal immigration in San Diego's urban areas. Desperate immigrants began crossing in the eastern part of the county, and dozens ran through Amaya's property every day.
Smugglers arrived at her door demanding food and water. One group broke into the family's storage shed and stole clothes, leaving behind wet shirts and pants.
The family didn't like what was happening to their neighborhood, but Amaya felt sorry for the immigrants.
One day, a man collapsed on her property, and when a Border Patrol agent arrived to detain him, Amaya forced the agent to call paramedics first.
But that was before the accident. When her life was a struggle but not a misfortune. When she didn't blame the illegal immigrants for ruining her life.
A day at the beach Michael Hove, 16, was riding home with his aunt from the beach in La Jolla when the van slammed into her 1989 Honda.
Glass from the windshield sprayed his face, and his body was bruised and battered. Although Hove didn't smoke, he took one look at the scene around him and asked for a cigarette. His aunt was taken away in an ambulance, mute with shock, her face dripping blood.
Hove's parents' insurance covered his medical bills, but he said his aunt was financially ruined. She lost her job as a pharmacist, he said, and moved in with her mother to be able to pay off her debts.
Hove said the accident changed him in ways other people can't understand.
He moved out of his mother's house in Boulevard because he wanted to avoid passing by the accident site. He now lives with his father in Lakeside.
Once sociable, he no longer goes out with friends. The scars on his face embarrass him. He avoids driving or riding in cars.
The one positive change in his life is the A's and B's he began making at El Capitan High School because he was spending so much time at home alone. Once a poor student, he's now considering going to college.
Hove has stopped trying to talk to his parents or friends about what happened.
"They said, 'You're going to be afraid for a little while, but nothing's changed,' " Hove said.
The way he sees it, "The fear will stay with me forever."
Losing her fiance The last thing Gaia Little remembers about the weekend trip she and Larry Baca made to Los Angeles was looking out the window of Baca's Ford Explorer and seeing a full moon before she drifted off to sleep.
According to police reports, the Explorer was the third vehicle hit by the speeding van. The SUV plunged 40 feet down a hill and rolled five times before landing on its roof.
Little, 43, woke up in the hospital seven days later with a metal plate in her cheek, a concussion and a broken leg. She had internal bleeding and her jaw was wired shut. That's when she learned that Baca, who had just turned 50, was dead.
"I wanted to kill myself," she said. "I felt like: Why should I go on living without him?"
Little, who lived in Albuquerque, N.M., had been working two jobs, but she didn't have health insurance. She had no idea how she would pay the $90,000 bill for her two-week hospital stay.
When she was released, Little couldn't walk or feed herself, but she couldn't afford any more medical care. It was her 21-year-old daughter, Miyoko, who nursed her back to health over the next five months, helping her learn to talk, write and read again.
In February, Little went back to work at an Albuquerque health-food store. She still has memory problems and trouble concentrating, and her depression lingers. She thinks she needs counseling, but she can't pay for it.
Every day she worries about what might happen next.
"My nightmare is that the hospital is going to start garnishing my wages," she said.
Hounded by creditors Similar fears haunt Maria Amaya, who was hospitalized for three months. As soon as she got home, the creditors started calling, some days leaving 50 messages. The mortgage payment, the credit-card payments, the mobile-home payment – everything was overdue because she had lost so much work time. Her insurance covered 80 percent of her hospital stay, so she owed thousands of dollars in medical bills, too.
She had lost her beauty-shop job, so she went back to school and completed enough courses to become a nurse's assistant. Over her husband's objections, she got two full-time jobs. She had worked her way out of poverty as a girl; she didn't want to go skidding back now.
As the months passed, however, the flashbacks of the accident didn't go away, and the creditors didn't either.
At one point, so much money was going toward the debt that the family didn't have money for food and had to turn to the San Diego Food Bank for help. The family sold their mobile home and moved into their 1988 motor home.
Amaya began sleeping in her car between jobs. She was always exhausted, but she was desperate to get each paycheck.
Every night her husband and son left a note on her windshield, telling her they loved her. They urged her to cut back on her hours.
One night her son began sobbing in frustration. "What are you trying to do, kill yourself?" he yelled.
"Yes!" she screamed back.
One day it seemed like they would lose it all. The creditors threatened to seize the family's land, the motor home and a car Amaya had borrowed from her brother.
Without the motor home, the Amayas would be homeless. Without their land, they would also be out on the street.
Money, food donations Eleven months after the accident, when the Union-Tribune began making calls about the survivors, Amaya got help.
Advocates with the Victim Assistance Program, run by the District Attorney's Office, got money from a state fund to pay her medical bills. They also bought her some food.
The Nice Guys, a nonprofit organization in San Diego, came up with $1,000 to cover a month's mortgage, and a $970 payment on the motor home.
Jeff Schreiber, a lawyer with Pacific Law Center in La Jolla, heard about her case from the Nice Guys and donated his time to negotiate better interest rates and payments with the family's creditors.
Despite these generosities, Amaya doesn't see how she will ever pay off the bills that piled up while she was out of work.
"In a way, things are worse than ever," she said. "I have migraines. I don't have the same energy I had before. Sometimes I feel like giving up.
"But in a way, things are better. I visualize myself working, paying the bills and someday being a family again."
No accountability Amaya, Hove and Little are grateful they survived, but they wonder if they will ever have normal lives again.
Sometimes it's only their anger that keeps them going, their fury that no one can really be held accountable for their pain.
The van's driver, Jorge Garcia, was killed in the crash. Alfredo Alvarez Coronado, a 25-year-old immigrant who helped guide the group to the van, pleaded guilty to smuggling and is serving three years and 10 months in prison. But authorities believe he was just a minor player who was working off his own $300 smuggling fee.
On the night of the accident, another van – apparently leading the one that crashed – also sped the wrong way on I-8. Border Patrol agents later found that van near a Chula Vista motel and saw people being loaded inside. One of the illegal immigrants told agents the group was headed to Los Angeles.
Authorities believe the leaders of the smuggling group are probably in Mexico, beyond the reach of the U.S. justice system.
"I'm angry that something can change your life so much and nobody can be held responsible – at least responsible for helping us," Little said. "At the same time, I don't know what anyone could do for me."
Little understands why immigrants keep trying to come to the United States, but she wants something done to prevent the crashes, like installing guardrails to stop wrong-way drivers.
Amaya feels no such compassion.
At her request, the Border Patrol has installed sensors to try to keep illegal immigrants away from her home. Recently, her husband saw a group of 40 passing through, perhaps headed toward another van ready to hurtle down a rural highway.
At times, the three survivors find their anger is mixed with sadness. They are at a loss over how to stop the flow of illegal immigrants through San Diego County.
"I really don't know who to blame," Hove said. "From what I hear, it's really horrible where they're from. If I were them, I would probably do the same thing."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Union-Tribune researcher Danielle Cervantes contributed to this report. Marisa Taylor: (619) 293-1020; marisa.taylor@uniontrib.com
Copyright 2003 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.
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