SLOW ROAD BACK : Following a Freak Accident, Laguna Beach Rider Betsy Breen Is Working to Restore Her Memory and Life

For the last 13 years as a horse show competitor, Betsy Breen has ridden over 6-foot fences and water barriers with grace and ease, building a national reputation on the Grand Prix equestrian circuit.

As one of the top West Coast riders, the 24-year-old Laguna Beach resident has won hundreds of blue ribbons, was named best rider at the Santa Anita Grand Prix, and won the Grand Prix events at both Del Mar and Santa Barbara.

Today, however, Betsy Breen is a patient in the rehabilitation unit at UC Irvine Medical Center in Orange, the victim of a freak horse accident. She underwent two operations and was in a coma for nine days.

On July 20, at Estes Park, Colo., the day before a horse show, Breen was sitting on her French thoroughbred, Loaded Dice, nicknamed Frenchie, talking to her trainer when the horse swung his head around to snap at a fly.

Somehow, the horse’s bit or rein got caught in Breen’s stirrup. The horse panicked and reared. Breen was thrown. She landed on her head and, despite the padded riding helmet she was wearing, suffered a skull fracture.

The slim, sandy-haired rider was taken to Estes Park Medical Center, where she was stabilized, then was flown by helicopter to Boulder Community Hospital.

There, she had operations to remove blood clots on both sides of her brain.

After nine days in a coma and four weeks in the hospital, Breen was flown back to Orange County, where she will undergo therapy for several weeks.

“She’s doing much better than five weeks ago,” said Breen’s mother, Carol, a registered nurse who owns Stoneridge Riding Club in Laguna Beach, where Betsy served as an unpaid assistant manager and instructor.

Betsy, who experienced partial paralysis on her right side after the surgery, has regained full movement of her arm and leg. But although her long-term memory is good, her short-term memory “is still fragile,” Carol Breen said.

“With a head injury, they say it takes at least two years to have rehabilitation in all areas: physical and cognitive function. Her cognitive skills are where we’re going to need some work: speech and abstract thinking.”

Mrs. Breen said that Betsy still speaks slowly and has difficulty coming up with the word she wants.

She is expected to undergo out-patient rehabilitation therapy for as long as two years, but her doctors say the prognosis is good.

And Betsy, whose visitors are restricted to family and close friends, is eager to get back to the riding club.

“I have been in a hospital for seven weeks and I want to go home,” Betsy told a friend, Joanne Reynolds of Newport Beach. “I want to see Frenchie. He’s such a good boy. I had an accident on him and I can’t ride for a long time, but I want to go home.”

Reynolds, a fellow rider who was in Colorado with Breen, said that to give Carol Breen some time away from the hospital, women from the Stoneridge Riding Club are taking turns spending the night with Betsy, so that she is not disoriented when she awakens.

Betsy Breen’s friends also are helping her financially. Reynolds said that about eight club riders have organized a fund called the Rehabilitation Help Fund, to help pay Betsy’s medical expenses. So far, they have raised $16,000 in individual donations and have contacted several Grand Prix corporate sponsors.

Although Stoneridge Riding Club sponsored the 11 local riders, who were competing in Colorado, the riders travel and ride as individuals and must carry their own insurance, Carol Breen said. Betsy, who had been included in her father’s coverage until she was 23, was uninsured.

“She just didn’t pick up her own insurance, and when you’re young, you think nothing is going to happen to you,” Carol Breen said. “She has fallen innumerable times but never got hurt.”

The purpose of the fund, Reynolds said, is to aid injured riders. “We hope to raise enough money for Betsy’s expenses and then turn (the fund) over to the American Horse Show Assn. and let them administer it . . . to anybody who is a member of the association and who has a need.”

Reynolds said that 1987 has not been a good year for riders.

“Some of the best riders in the country have suffered incredible injuries,” she said, citing George Morris, the 1984 Olympic equestrian team trainer, who broke a vertebra in a riding accident, and Conrad Homfeld, the 1984 Olympic Silver medalist in stadium jumping, who broke his hip.

Although Carol Breen started the club 10 years ago because of Betsy’s talent, she had another motive.

“Jumping was something I wanted to do as a little girl and I never got to do,” she said. “So I’ve had a very vicarious living experience through Betsy the past 13 years. I love to be around horses.”

So does Betsy, whose specialty is “hunter-jumper riding.” In the hunter riding events, she and her horse are judged on their form and grace as they go around a course of jumps. In the jumper events, they compete against the clock.

Betsy is known as a determined competitor and a patient trainer.

“She wants to see her horses and she wants to get back to the shows and the whole thing, but she also knows it’s going to be awhile,” Carol Breen said. “Her hardest thing is going to be being patient with herself as far as getting well.”