Diving Mishap Won’t Keep This Boy Down

His breath was all David Lupash could control as his body floated to the surface of the briny waves off Long Beach--so he held it, and waited.

As the men who were saving his life pulled his limp body from the water, the 13-year-old Seal Beach junior lifeguard flashed to the day before, when he had gone through a dress rehearsal for this moment.

But that had only been role-playing, part of a life-saving exercise. First he had practiced being the boy who dived into a sand bar and crushed his spinal cord; then he played the lifeguard who would gently secure a neck brace on a paralyzed victim.

So David Lupash--son of Romanian immigrants, budding violinist, fluent in two languages, straight-A student at McAuliffe Middle School--was smart enough to know in a split second what had happened on that brilliant July 15 afternoon.

“I saw them coming with the neck brace, and I knew I was probably paralyzed,” he says now, his tone matter-of-fact. “It was everything I had learned the day before, right down to the same cervical being broken.”

Even as he lies immobile in a Long Beach hospital room, a “halo vest” bolted to his skull, David Lupash is making plans to do volunteer work next summer. He expects that he will eventually return to his Los Alamitos school, where he would have begun eighth grade next month.

Bills Could Reach $500,000

Doctors say it is still not clear how much mobility David, a quadriplegic, will regain through intensive daily therapy at the hospital. They anticipate that it will require at least five months, maybe nine months, maybe more--at about $1,000 a day. The family has been told that the bills could easily reach $500,000. Their insurance will pay only for two months of the hospital rehabilitation--or $60,000. They are not sure how they will raise the remainder.

But in a town still small enough that word of mouth spreads news of the tragedy in less than a week, prayers and fasts, moral support and fund-raisers have come from David’s swimming pals and lifeguard buddies, Sunday school classmates and family.

In recent weeks, as many as 100 young people canvassed their Seal Beach neighborhoods, knocking door to door for donations for David, who lives on the edge of Westminster but whose family has for more than a decade participated in Seal Beach activities.

On Aug. 5, the members of the Seal Beach Junior Lifeguards program swam around the Seal Beach Pier and raised $5,000. Members of the Seal Beach Swim Team--about 100 children ages 5 through 18--are already collecting pledges for their 200-lap swim-a-thon next month. A raffle also is planned, with prizes already donated by local business owners.

Why?

“Cuz we like him,” said Troy Davis, 10, who knows the Lupash brothers from the junior lifeguard and swim team. “He’s our friend.”

Added Troy’s mother, Karlean Davis, who has collected the donations: “The whole town is just buzzing about this. People who didn’t even know him. . . . All of us realize it could have been one of our kids.”

It was the kind of dazzling summer day that earns California its reputation--dry and warm, a faint breeze blowing--and the Seal Beach Junior Lifeguards were ready for the competition with their Long Beach and Newport Beach counterparts. David Lupash was taking his turn in a relay, running from the shore into the waves. He remembers doing a “dolphin kick,” which would propel him more rapidly into the water.

Although he does not recall precisely what happened next, his brother and other witnesses said David, always intensely competitive and one of the top swimmers on his team, plunged into a wave without first arcing his hands together over his head in the proper diving position.

“His forehead hit a sand bar,” explained David’s twin brother Daniel, “then he floated to the top. He didn’t even swallow any water because he held his breath.”

David’s father, Tiberius, a supervisor in the public works engineering division at the Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station, and his mother, Cornelia, a Long Beach City College chemistry professor, were summoned to the hospital. David would undergo a 5 1/2-hour operation that night in which doctors working from the front and back of his neck would reconstruct the fourth cervical out of a piece of his hip bone.

Four days later, David was fitted with an aluminum-framed halo vest, which holds his head and neck motionless while the compressed spinal cord heals. From the screws in the metal crown of the device, “there’s a needle that goes a half a centimeter, maybe a centimeter, into my head,” David explained.

As he spoke, nurses, doctors and friends streamed in and out of his sunny room at Memorial Medical Center of Long Beach. Decorating the room are surf posters, a T-shirt signed by a pro surfer, handwritten get-well cards and balloons, inspirational posters, framed photographs of his family and of fellow Junior Lifeguards.

Every hour he must be lifted and rolled into a new position to prevent bedsores and skin infections. He wears knee-high support stockings to encourage circulation. A hand is bent around a coiled washcloth, and he wears toeless high-top tennis shoes to ward off atrophy. For the time being, he must use his smile and his dark brown eyes to convey emphasis of a point. He rolls them when his father mentions violin lessons, shuts them as he reflects on a serious question.

They had a run-swim for me,” he said, his face softening. “My brother got second overall, first place in his (age) division. It’s really hard on him. He’s usually here every day, but my mom needed to spend some time with my brother and sister.”

He finds comfort in the almost imperceptible movements most take for granted, such as the ability to flex the muscles of his chest and shoulders. He still has sensation, feeling heat and pressure from his shoulders to his elbows, and occasionally elsewhere on his body.

It will be another month--and perhaps as many as three--before the vest comes off. It is not known when he will finally return home.

The enormity of the accident is only beginning to be felt by the Lupash family. Daniel, an articulate youngster who plays the cello, has taken it especially hard. He has had “sympathetic” pains in his neck, his father said. All three of the children--Ruth, 16, and the twins--are extremely close.

“These kids seem to really, really love each other for real,” said Karlean Davis. “It says a lot about how they have been raised.”

Since there is a parade of medical experts treating David, his father sleeps each night on a roll-away bed in his son’s room, trying to provide some security and continuity.

“Suddenly something happens like this!” Ti Lupash said, snapping his fingers. “And suddenly you become an invalid. David is doing way better than I ever expected, even when he has headaches and heartburn and things.

“His favorite nurse . . . said to him, ‘You may have to live in a wheelchair.’ And he said, ‘My dad is already fixing my bike so I can do volunteer work at the hospital next summer.’ He is not dejected or upset. He wants to catch up.”

Both parents are proud of their children, whom adults and children alike rave about as natural leaders, well-mannered and compassionate.

“They started one semester at McAuliffe and those two boys made their mark,” Sally Champlin, whose daughter swam with the twins, said during a hospital visit. “They are nice boys, creative, intelligent--they’re just exceptional. And very popular.”

But Mom and Dad also fret for their son. He is only a child, they remind themselves.

Each family member wants desperately to help. Monday, Cornelia Lupash began full-time teaching again, shuttling daily from the college to her son’s bedside. Ti continues to work and commute. Next year, sister Ruth will attend school until noon, then spend afternoons working with David.

“The problem will be Daniel,” Ti said. “He wants to stay home from school and take care of his brother. . . . They are inseparable. Always have been. Since they were little they communicated, and none of us could understand them.”

One day last week, four boys and a girl from David’s Sunday school class at Romanian Baptist Church in Bellflower dropped by to visit.

Lying face down, the edges of the metal halo frame propping him up about 3 inches from the bed, David looked at the scads of baseball cards the children, eager to cheer him, slide under his nose. “We’ve been praying and fasting,” said one.

“We get bulletins each week about how he is doing,” said another.

When they leave, David was alone, briefly.

“I know everyone wants to help for my good, but I sort of feel bad when people feel sorry for me, because I don’t feel sorry for myself. This is just like a mountain I have to climb; it’s just something I’m going to have to work through.”

And work it will be. Soon, perhaps this week, David will begin six-hour daily physical therapy sessions. He hopes that after a few months he will feel stable enough for occasional weekend visits home. He even manages to see a bright side to his injury: It gets him out of violin lessons.

Some of his Seal Beach supporters understand what he is going through. Sally Champlin’s daughter, Nancy, 13, was on the Seal Beach Swim Team when a bout with encephalitis two years ago left her temporarily unable to speak or move.

“You realize your own vulnerability, and you wake up and realize everything is not as it was. Everything is different,” Sally Champlin said. “We will be here to help over the long haul, because with spinal cord injuries you are talking about years.”

David’s swim coach, Scott Weir, said the accident has “had a tremendous impact on the team.”

“It was a sad, tragic event, but it’s been beautiful to see the large outpouring of caring and support for David,” Weir said. “People are calling us to ask how to help. . . . I’d love to have a happy ending to this story, with David walking. So that’s what we’re pulling for.”

DIVING ACCIDENTS (1976 THROUGH 86)

Accidents Beach Annual No. of Per Mile Length Attendance Beach Accidents Each Year (in miles) (in millions) 1-Newport Beach 40 0.60 6.1 10.7 2-Laguna Beach 11 0.19 6.0 -- 3-Venice Beach 10 0.40 2.8 -- 4-Bolsa Chica Beach 10 0.18 5.2 3.55 5-Huntington Beach 9 0.46 1.8 5.8 6-Huntington (state) 8 0.35 2.1 -- 7-San Clemente 7 0.32 2.0 -- 8-Hermosa Beach 4 0.27 1.7 6.06 9-Manhattan Beach 4 0.22 2.1 4.08 10-City of San Diego 3 0.12 17.0 -- 11-Corral Beach 2 0.32 0.7 -- 12-Redondo Beach 2 0.13 1.7 4.42 13-Santa Monica 2 0.08 2.9 20.76 14-Zuma Beach 2 0.13 1.8 7.79 15-Dockweiler Beach 1 0.03 3.7 3.14 16-Manhattan (state) 1 0.04 2.1 -- 17-Moonlight Beach 1 0.31 0.3 1.03 18-Topanga Beach 1 0.10 1.1 6.93 19-Will Rogers 1 0.03 3.2 5.27

Source: University of Southern California, Sea Grant Program, 1987