A TIME FOR GIVING THANKS : For many, the meaning of Thanksgiving sometimes gets lost in the shuffle of families and feasting. But unexpected dramatic turns in the lives of four Orange County people--and their kin--have given them particular reason to be thankful this year.

David Lupash

From a traditional viewpoint, they don’t make much of a Thanksgiving meal, but this year David Lupash is thinking of chips and salsa as quite a feast.

“I think it’s getting stronger,” he said, glancing down at his right arm and moving it an inch or two. “I’ve been picking up chips and dipping them in salsa.”

He smiled. “I’m doing pretty good.”

Since July, 1988, David Lupash’s life has been punctuated by such seemingly modest milestones. Moving the hand. Breathing comfortably. Having a lighter “halo vest” bolted to his skull. Coming home from the hospital for a visit.

Since the beautiful summer day when Lupash, now 14, struck his forehead on a sand bar and crushed his spinal cord after diving into the surf in Long Beach, he has striven for the small victories that are the rewards for the daily persistence, determination and cheerfulness that have inspired his family and friends.

In adapting to a turn of fate that most would call cruel at best, the young former competitive swimmer, violinist and A student from Westminster has built a life in which his immobile limbs are less important than friendship, and the pure love of life more precious than walking.

“He’s the most extraordinary human I know,” said Barbie Meyers, a family friend. “He never has a bad day, never has a bad attitude. When he wakes up, every day is a new day and a great day. He expects good things to happen. And he never, ever, ever focuses on himself.”

Since the accident, David has lived in a succession of hospitals (currently Loma Linda University Medical Center); has been fitted with a succession of halo vests to keep his head immobile; has undergone three spinal cord operations and another to repair a blood clot in his left leg; has been subjected to consistent therapy, and has been fitted in a $15,000 computerized wheelchair that he controls with his breath through a strawlike “puff-and-sip” device in place near his head.

Yet on a recent visit home, surrounded by family, friends and well-wishers, David was seldom without a broad smile on his face, kidding and being kidded, talking swimming with his twin brother, Daniel, and tennis with his doctor, Mark Wheaton.

That afternoon, he had gone with his family to see his brother play water polo at the Belmont Plaza Olympic Pool in Long Beach, near where he suffered his injury the year before.

“Seeing my brother play was almost like seeing myself out there,” David said.

And, he added, returning to the scene of his accident “made me feel better. I was really calm. It was like the peace of God.”

His unfailingly positive attitude “doesn’t seem strange at all,” said David’s father, Tiberius, a Romanian immigrant who works as a supervisor in the public works engineering division of the Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station.

“He was obviously ready for it in a kind of supernatural way. He’ll say, ‘Daddy, sometimes I look around at these kids (in the hospital), and they don’t even know what’s going on. That’s so sad. I’m really lucky.’ At the hospital, he’s like a social worker, like a baby-sitter.”

David’s reputation as a patient who can be relied upon to cheer up others is well known at Loma Linda, said Wheaton, a specialist in physical medicine and rehabilitation.

“He’s such a special kid,” Wheaton said. “He’s the best patient I ever had. He never wants to inconvenience anyone, and he has no thought for himself. He’s always looking out for other people. And he knows more medicine at age 14 than I knew after one year of medical school. He’d be a great asset to the medical profession.”

David said he doesn’t know whether medical studies are in his future or not but, thanks to a full scholarship from USC, designed to be awarded to athletes who suffer disabling injuries, his college education is assured.

His hospital bills are another matter. Family insurance paid for only part of them. However, Meyers and other family friends have formed the David and Goliath Project, a grass-roots organization to raise money for David’s rehabilitation, through the sale of sweat shirts and other fund-raising schemes.

Meyers said she hopes that the organization can raise enough money to allow David to be treated at a specialized facility such as the Miami Project, “a coalition of doctors who are working on a paralysis cure for spinal injury victims.”

In the meantime, however, David is--above all--glad to be around to see it all.

“I’m just happy that I’m in a good hospital and a good environment and my family and my friends support me,” he said. “I’m in good shape. I’d like to walk someday, but that’s not something I’m going to dwell on all the time. I haven’t taken it as a burden or as a problem. I’m going to be fine.”

Still smiling broadly, he turned his eyes to a photographer in the room.

“I’m not just smiling for the camera,” he said. “I’m smiling because I’m happy.”

Jason Pinches

Jason Pinches, 16, shows not the slightest hint of self-consciousness as he holds his left hand up for examination, bringing the thumb and forefinger weakly together to show that they work, that he is still on the mend.

The entire little finger is missing, but that is not the most remarkable feature. Rather, the eye is drawn to the long diagonal scar that entirely encircles the hand, the only visual evidence that shows that Pinches’ hand was once entirely severed.

It happened slightly less than a year ago. While helping his father remodel a house in Newport Beach, the power saw Pinches was using on a door frame got away from him, and the blade sliced through his hand from the base of the thumb to the little finger.

He didn’t panic. While his father tied his shirt around his son’s upper arm and held it high to control the bleeding, Pinches, an Eagle Scout candidate, calmly explained that the severed hand needed to be kept cool. It was placed in a plastic bag and, when paramedics arrived five minutes later, it was put on ice.

Pinches was flown by helicopter to UCI Medical Center, where three reconstructive surgeons, using microsurgery techniques and sutures thinner than a human hair, reattached the hand, grafting in a new vein from the young man’s forearm and implanting an artificial joint in the ring finger.

A month later, in a separate operation, nerves were taken from Pinches’ lower right leg and grafted into the hand. And in May, tendons were taken from the side of his left arm and implanted in his left middle and ring finger.

Today, Pinches is ready to go skiing.

“There are these new handles on ski poles now that should work really well,” he said. “So, hopefully, I’ll be going skiing soon. I’ve found that you can work around just about everything.”

He has had to relearn such elementary tasks as dressing himself in the morning (it is now second nature), tying his shoelaces (he can do it with one hand) and carrying packages (he uses the palm and heel of his left hand, rather than the fingers).

He has also had to accept the fact that doctors’ original estimates of recovery were too high. Originally, he said, there was hope that he would recover 90% of the function of the hand. That figure has since been revised to 30% to 40%.

But, Pinches said, in the last 11 months he has felt less and less limited.

“It took me a while to realize it didn’t matter that much,” he said. “During the first few days, I didn’t want to think about it, but then I thought it wasn’t so bad. I’d seen people in the hospital who were a lot worse off than I was. I was frustrated sometimes, but not usually. It doesn’t limit me at all mentally and not much physically. Studying doesn’t take two hands.”

A junior at University High School in Irvine, Pinches said he intends to finish the final requirements to become an Eagle Scout and wants to study biochemistry in college. Through therapy, the hand continues to improve.

“Dr. (Robert) Bledsoe, one of the doctors who worked on me, said, ‘I put your hand back on, but God does the work,’ ” Pinches said. “It’s taught me what life’s about. It really opens your eyes to what life is worth.”

Livia Groza

Livia Groza hasn’t stopped being overwhelmed since she arrived in Westminster early last month.

And her son-in-law, Vasile Sofroni, still has moments when he thinks his eyes are playing tricks on him.

But there are his mother-in-law and wife, in his kitchen, baking cakes for a friend’s wedding, smiling and chatting in Romanian.

“I come home from work sometimes,” Sofroni said, “and I see her here, and I think maybe I am dreaming.”

Part of him still sees Groza, 55, as living in her native Romania, without family, suffering from a heart condition and unable to work after the Romanian government refused to let her work when she applied for a travel visa.

But largely because of the Sofronis’ determination to get Groza out of Romania and into the United States to live with them, the Immigration and Naturalization Service allowed Groza to emigrate and begin a new life in Orange County.

Her long journey actually began in 1984, when Sofroni, now 31, eluded armed border guards and sneaked through trenches to escape Romania and come to live in the West. He was later able to send for his wife and two children.

But when attention turned to Groza, the INS said no. Despite three years of pleas from the Sofronis and assistance from Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove), the agency rejected Groza’s visa application in May, saying she was still young enough to support herself and therefore did not need to be with her family.

The Sofronis decided that more direct action was necessary. In July, Sofroni and his wife, Lia, camped outside the federal immigration office in Westminster and went on what was to be an 80-hour hunger strike to call attention to Groza’s plight.

The strike worked. Because of media coverage, renewed help from Dornan and an appeal by an outgoing INS Western regional commissioner, the INS reversed its ruling and granted Groza her visa.

“She met all our neighbors the second day she was here,” Sofroni said. “They were very happy to see her. I have good neighbors here.”

For her part, Groza saw Orange County as one big Disneyland.

“Last Monday we went to Westminster Mall,” Sofroni said. “She didn’t believe in her life she would see anything like that. All the stores surprise her with their low prices. In Romania, you pay 10 times more. And the bright lights at night: Over there, it’s dark. Here, she can’t believe how bright everything is.

“Before, it was like she was lost in this world with nothing.”

Groza smiled and shook her head when asked whether she gets homesick for her native country.

“Here, everything is new,” she said in Romanian, with her son-in-law interpreting. “The things I’ve seen here I’ve never seen in any other place. I thank God that I’m with my family.”

Charles Ridgeway

Late in March, in the middle of his first trip away from home since being placed on regular kidney dialysis in January, Charles Ridgeway awoke at 4 a.m. to the beat of nearby helicopter blades and the sound of his son pounding on the door of his motor home.

Ridgeway, his wife and daughter had driven to a remote desert area in Imperial County to camp and ride all-terrain vehicles, a welcome treat for the Rockwell International accountant, who had recently been forced to undergo four hours of dialysis a week to combat a hereditary degenerative kidney disease.

He had been placed on a list of kidney transplant candidates at United Western Medical Center-Santa Ana, but he knew that finding a suitable donor often takes one to two years or more. Also, Ridgeway’s blood type, B-positive, occurs in just 15% of the population. A donor kidney with the same type was needed.

But, while Ridgeway was camping in the desolate, high sand dunes near the town of Glamis, a kidney was found. But it would become unusable in a matter of hours. And a beeper that Ridgeway wore to alert him if a kidney had been found had a range of about 50 miles; Ridgeway was about 200 miles away. A frantic search began.

The hospital alerted the Orange County Search and Rescue Team, which in turn called the Imperial County Sheriff’s Department and a local radio station. KNX Radio, whose signal is strong enough to reach Baja California, broadcast messages every 10 minutes but got no reply. A ranger from the Bureau of Land Management searched the area where the Ridgeways were thought to be, without result.

By that time, Ridgeway’s son, Matt, was already driving to the desert to search for his father. Before leaving, the younger Ridgeway had talked to KNX reporter-helicopter pilot Bob Tur, who decided to fly down to Glamis with a Los Angeles police officer co-pilot and two Orange County rescue crew members to cover the story and search for Ridgeway.

Instead, they spotted Matt Ridgeway, frantically waving. Running low on fuel, they picked him up. The son directed them to his father’s campsite.

Within a minute of landing, the elder Ridgeway was hustled into the helicopter and flown to Brawley’s airport, where he was picked up by a private plane and flown to Orange County.

The successful surgery was performed on Easter Sunday, with about four hours to spare.

Eight months later, Ridgeway is euphoric.

“Things have gone so great, I can’t believe it,” he said. “I went back to work June 6, and I’ve been working full time since. I’ve got so many things to be thankful for.”

His energy and appetite, both at low ebb while he was undergoing dialysis, have returned. The extensive menu of drugs he must take regularly to keep his body from rejecting the kidney have not produced side effects. The kidney is functioning perfectly.

“I had one little rejection session (early in the recovery) where I had to go back to the hospital for four days of drug treatment,” Ridgeway said. “But that’s not uncommon. Right now, everything is on the good side of the ledger.”

Ridgeway, 47, has even become something of a TV star. His story was dramatized--with actors playing the roles of Ridgeway, his family and his rescuers--on the series, “Rescue 911.”

Still, it is the real-life saviors he remembers, and they make him smile broadly. “The support I’ve received . . . I’ve got such a list of heroes, you wouldn’t believe.”