Paralyzed in Mexico : Plea for Help Brings Home Injured Man

Moved by a stranger’s plea, three San Clemente residents flew 350 miles to a Mexican farming town, picked up a fellow townsman who had been paralyzed in a south-of-the-border traffic accident and flew him home Thursday at their own expense.

On Thursday morning, pilot Richard Vic, 56, Vic’s wife, Carol, 54, and San Clemente firefighter Jack Stubbs, 54, completed the 700-mile round trip from Orange County to the Sonora farming town of Caborca.

In their journey, which stretched from Wednesday afternoon until the next morning, the trio said they had picked up the injured man, Edward Axton, 30, a heavy equipment operator, cut through red tape to get him out of Mexico quickly and ferried him home to Orange County and to his grateful fiancee, Marta Michaux, 27, also of San Clemente.

It was hard work--but it was nothing, Stubbs and the Vics stressed.

Used Emergency Skills

“Neither one of us are hero kind of people, I promise you,” said Stubbs, an emergency planner for the San Clemente Fire Department, who used his emergency medical technician skills to tend to the injured man on the plane ride to Orange County.

It was just a case of hearing Michaux’s plea for help, as reported in a San Clemente newspaper earlier this week, and then responding, Stubbs said.

“What Richard said was, it could have been one of his kids (injured and alone in Mexico). I share that feeling,” Stubbs said. So the trip was just a case of one San Clemente neighbor helping another, he said, adding, “I try very hard to be a good neighbor.”

Axton was injured last Saturday while returning from a fishing trip in the Gulf of California. Just outside of the farming town of Caborca, a tire blew on a tractor-trailer rig ahead of Axton, Stubbs said, and the rig jackknifed in front of Axton’s pickup truck.

When Axton swerved to avoid the collision, his truck hit two cars head on. Axton suffered a ruptured spleen and severe lower back injuries that left his lower body paralyzed. He was taken to Caborca’s small hospital, where he received good care, Stubbs said. But Michaux became increasingly concerned about his condition.

Sketchy Information

She said that Mexican officials notified her Saturday about Axton’s injuries but that she received only sketchy information. With the help of a girlfriend who spoke Spanish, Michaux said, she tried desperately to get details on the seriousness of Axton’s injuries and to find a way to bring her injured fiance back to the United States.

“Everyone wanted cash up front,” said Michaux, who works as a telephone operator for a south county refuse collector. “And everything cost an arm and leg.”

On Sunday, between a series of frustrating calls to local hospitals, Lifeflight--a medical organization that transports injured patients by air--and the Mexican consulate, Michaux said, she got a call from a San Clemente newspaper. When the paper, the Daily Sun-Post, printed an account of her trials on the front page, the Vics and Stubbs offered their help.

From the time they left Wednesday afternoon for Mexico and returned at 11 a.m. Thursday, it was a volunteer effort all the way, Vic and Stubbs said.

Vic donated the cost of flying his single-engine Cessna and the San Clemente Fire Department lent a stretcher, backboard and some emergency medical equipment. When the plane landed at John Wayne Airport in Orange County on Thursday morning, it was met by Morgan Ambulance Co., which transported the injured man to Mission Community Hospital in Mission Viejo free of charge, Vic said. (Axton was reported in fair and stable condition Thursday night.)

The good Samaritan spirit extended across the border to Mexican officials, as well, said Vic and Stubbs. The Mexican Red Cross provided the trio with an interpreter and helped cut red tape to get Axton out of the country, they said.

In addition, Caborca does not have a blood bank, so “it was the police and firemen in Caborca who contributed the blood to Mr. Axton” for his surgery on Saturday, Stubbs said. Also, right after the accident, passers-by pulled Axton through the rear window of his pickup truck moments before the truck exploded, Stubbs said.

Amazed and Thankful

Axton was sedated Thursday and so did not understand the details of his rescue and return home, Michaux said. But Michaux said she did--and was amazed and thankful.

“I’m overwhelmed to think that a small town like this could pull together for one human being in trouble,” she said.

Stubbs and Vic said they weren’t sure they would perform such a mission again. Still, they were glad to have done it.

Stubbs said: “What we really are trying to retain is that lost attitude of people helping people, which has lately given way to those willing to take the charge, those willing to assign the liability. We just knew this guy needed help.”