Jogger, Attacked and Left to Die, Is Back at Work

The 29-year-old jogger who became a symbol of personal fear and urban violence after she was brutally beaten, raped and left to die by a gang of teen-agers in Central Park, has returned to her job as an investment banker in a top Wall Street firm.

Her remarkable seven-month recovery is the latest chapter in a compelling drama that thrust the chilling word “wilding” into the national vocabulary of criminal behavior.

Law enforcement sources said Wednesday that the jogger, who even has resumed her hobby of running, went back to her job full-time at Salomon Bros. this week.

A spokesman for Salomon Bros. refused comment. But her arrival was greeted with glee by co-workers who had encouraged her through her long ordeal that had become for New Yorkers and the nation a triumph over evil and a demonstration of the toughness of the human spirit.

She was unconscious and covered with mud and blood when she was rushed to the emergency room of Metropolitan Hospital in the early hours of last April 20. She had lost three quarters of her blood and was in a coma. Physicians told detectives they expected her to soon die from the massive trauma inflicted by fists, bricks and a metal pipe.

But as she began to miraculously rally, the doctors said the chill temperatures on the night she was assaulted by the gang, plus the fact her skull was encased in cold mud as she was sprawled unconscious in the park, reduced the amount of brain swelling that normally would have killed her.

Physicians said the jogger does not remember her attack at 10 p.m. on April 19 on an isolated transverse at the northern edge of the park. Six defendants, 15 to 17 years old, have been charged in her rape and in assaults on two male runners the same night. The case is expected to go to trial in January.

Sources said the woman, whose name has not been published because of the nature of the crime, went back to work Monday. She was released Nov. 14 from Gaylord Hospital in Wallingford, Conn., after physicians at the rehabilitation center announced she had made a “miraculous” recovery.

Her physicians said the investment banker “continues to have post-traumatic amnesia, but has made good progress in her recovery and rehabilitation.” She is being treated as an outpatient.

After she was transferred from Metropolitan Hospital to the center specializing in brain injuries, she relearned math skills, regained the ability to walk unassisted and used a word processor. Eventually, she went on outings and began regularly telephoning her friends and her family.

Sources said the investment banker, a Wellesley College graduate, had returned to Salomon Bros. as an associate in corporate finance. Her current duties are similar to the responsibilities she held before her trauma. At that time, they included working in the firm’s energy group, which among other things, advises petroleum companies on financing.

“I am sure they are not going to overload her,” a law enforcement official said Wednesday after confirming the jogger went back to work at the beginning of the week.

The woman has moved from her apartment on Manhattan’s Upper East Side to an apartment closer to the office and has resumed jogging with family and friends.

Because of her amnesia, it is uncertain what, if any testimony, she will present at the trial.

The senselessness of the crime shocked the nation. More than 30 teen-agers swept out of Harlem into the park on a spree of “wilding”--attacking anyone who looked vulnerable in their path.

And as the jogger struggled for survival in the hospital, newspapers, news magazines and television programs as disparate as “This Week With David Brinkley” and “Phil Donahue” discussed the crime’s racial overtones and searched for deeper meaning.

Financier Donald Trump even took out full page advertisements in New York’s newspapers charging the jogger’s rape and beating symbolized “the complete breakdown of life as we knew it” and urging a return to the death penalty in New York state.

Seven months later, the jogger still remains the subject of intense interest. One prime-time television news program for months has assigned an assistant to the unmarried jogger and her family in hopes they may someday appear.