Miracle Girl

She used to go to college, work full-time as a medical assistant
and wrestle with her 6-year-old daughter Angelica at their Gilroy
home. Now she doesn’t leave the house much and struggles to get
through each day.
She used to go by Veronica. Now she responds to Miracle Girl.

She used to go to college, work full-time as a medical assistant and wrestle with her 6-year-old daughter Angelica at their Gilroy home. Now she doesn’t leave the house much and struggles to get through each day.

She used to control her every move with an admirable precision. But that all changed with one left turn on Feb. 22, 2002.

“I remember getting on the (U.S. 101) and that’s it,” said Veronica Plaza, who celebrated her 25th birthday Jan. 7. “The next thing I know I’m in the hospital with a hundred tubes in me, thinking this is a horrible dream.”

Three and a half weeks passed between the time Plaza got broadsided by a drunk driver and when she opened her eyes in San Jose Medical Center. But to Plaza and many who know her, it might as well have been a lifetime – and almost was.

“I was dead,” Plaza said. “There was no hope. That’s what the doctors told my family. My lungs weren’t responding to the ventilator and my brain was too swollen. I had internal bleeding everywhere. They were getting ready to drill a hole in my head. That’s when I woke up.”

Those painful memories and the thousands of others that have come with every breath Plaza has taken in the last 10 months will come to a head Tuesday when she witnesses the sentencing of Augustin Costa Benitez – the man who stole the life she once had.

Benitez, 34, never braked as he ran a red light on Old Oakland Road in San Jose at 55 mph and hit Plaza’s 1999 Dodge Stratus. It was 8:30 p.m., Benitez was already drunk and it wasn’t the first time he had done this.

Benitez plead guilty to being drunk when he hit Plaza’s car – his second DUI conviction in the last five years – and a judge is expected to give him five years incarceration Tuesday.

“When I saw him at the trial it was hard. I felt like saying something to him, letting him know how he took my life,” Plaza said. “But when I looked at him, he just stared at the ground. To me, there could never be enough jail time for this, so I just hope when he gets out he doesn’t hurt anybody else ever again.”

Plaza’s injuries should have killed her. She suffered severe brain trauma, punctured lungs, multiple pelvic fractures and several other injuries in the accident. Because her lungs were full of fluid, a ventilator was used to keep her alive during her 3 1/2-week coma. But when the ventilator began to fail, her doctors lost hope and told family and friends she’s lived with in Gilroy all her life that she would never leave the hospital.

“When I went to the hospital to see her, I didn’t believe it was her because the swelling was so intense,” said Jeanette Mulleda, Plaza’s friend and co-worker at Kaiser Hospital in Santa Clara. “It was just devastating to see such a beautiful and energetic young woman paralyzed and helpless. I’ve worked in hospitals for seven and a half years and never seen anything like it. The doctor said she wasn’t going to make it and I started bawling.”

Thanks to a special ventilator flown in from Washington, Plaza slowly began to recover. She left the hospital four months later, although she still had very limited use of her body and mind.

Now, after almost 11 months, countless hours of learning how to walk again and regain control of her body and a lifetime of tears, Plaza’s healing is far from over. In fact, every day it seems like the recovery is just beginning, she said. But she’s learning the only way to go is up.

“Obviously, the hardest part was worrying about my daughter and being able to take care of her,” said Plaza, who lives in Gilroy with her parents, Pedro and Melanie Plaza. “But everything is hard. I have a hard time concentrating on things and I’ve lost a lot of memories. My reactions are slow and my balance isn’t very good.”

Obviously not one to give up, Plaza believes she can get her life back. She plans to be back in school at San Jose City College by summer and working back at Kaiser Hospital in Santa Clara.

“Honestly, she’s different now. She’s lost her self-confidence,” said Kara Sinwell, another of Plaza’s friends and a co-worker at Kaiser. “I mean, there are some things now she really struggles with, even just holding a conversation. She’s lost her independence. She’s gone through depression. But she’s strong. She’ll come back.”

Plaza agrees.

“I had some family members who were not speaking for years. After my accident, they apologized and my family is much closer now,” she said. “There’s a reason why things happen. I just need to keep trying to get back to who I was before.”