Most of us think we will never be involved with a drunk driver, it always happens to someone else. In fact, a couple months before my daughter was struck, I was behind a car who had a bumper sitcker which read "A Drunk Driver Killed My Daughter." I remember saying "OH My God!, that poor mother." Little did I know that it would soon be me.
We were involved with a drunk driver twice in one week. On Tuesday, I was taking my children, Brad and Tiffany, sled riding. As I pulled out of my parents street a car made a left hand turn out of a bar and hit our car broadside. I remember Tiffany yelling "OH My Gosh! my face, and she covered her face with her hands. The car stopped in a parking lot of a convenience store. The car was not drivable, but the children and I were Okay. Tiffany went to a pay phone and called her Grandma and they towed the car away. Tiffany's leg hurt because the door came in on her leg. The drunk driver gave his name and drove away before any ppolice could show up or make a report.
On that Friday of the same week, I took Tiffany and Brad to their Father's house. They would visit every other weekend. As Tiffany got out of the car she gave me a kiss and said she loved me and headed for the back door. She then put her suitcase down and ran back to the car. I thought she had forgotten something, but she said she just wanted to tell me she loved me again and give me another kiss. After that she went in the back door. The next time I saw her she was in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit on life support.
Saturday afternoon, Tiffany and her stepsister went across the street from her Father's to run an errand at K-Mart. As they came back across the street, her stepsister and a boy from the neighborhood ran across the street. Tiffany was walking. Witnesses said that she stopped at the center line and continued into the curb lane where she hesitated and was looking at a police car going in the opposite direction. It was then that she was struck by the drunk driver, traveling 40 to 45 MPH. The witnesses said she was thrown onto the hood of the car, rolled up over the windshield, flipped into the air and landed in the luggage rack of his station wagon. He continued driving down the street not even knowing he hit someone. In the trial they asked him when he finally realized that he had hit someone and he said when the police car pulled up behind him and he put on his brakes, her leg came down over the windshield. His girlfriend who was also drunk did not know they hit anyone either.
To make things worse, my 10 year old son, Brad, was watching out the front window of the house. You see, Tiffany was only 3, "3" steps from her Father's driveway. Brad yelled that Tiffany had been hit. He and his Father ran down the street after the car. When the ambulance arrived Tiffany was in cardiac arrest. After they removed her from the roof of the car they started CPR and got her heart beating. They took her to the local hospital which is where I first saw her. It was 2 1/2 hours after she was hit. A Doctor came in the waiting room and said I could see her for one minute. They had to lifeflight her to another hospital. There she laid on a stretcher in a wallway with the helicopter outside the doors. She was unconscious with needles and tubes everywhere. She had a cast on her leg and a neck brace on. I told her I loved her and they took her away.
We then went to Rainbow University Hospital, where then it was another couple of hours until a Doctor came in the waiting room again and asked who Tiffany's Mother was. I stood up and said I was her Mother. She then stated that Tiffany would probably not live through the night. She said she was very critically injured. She had a broken neck, broken leg and plevis, damage to her lungs and very severe brain damage. If she did live she would be a quadraplegic and a vegetable. I could not believe she was telling me this.
Tiffany did live through the night, in fact she lived for 26 days. She never regained consciousness. I stayed with her at the hospital for the entire 26 days. We did everything we could, but they finally declared her brain dead and disconnected her life support on February 21, 1991 at 3:05 P.M.
The Crash
Remembering Tiffany
Tiffany and her Family
I’ll Lend You a Little Time
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