DANA POINT : City Opens Heart to Teen Who Lost Legs

Stay in school, don’t leave Mexico, Mrs. Martinez begged her 18-year-old son, Juan.

For months the battle went on between mother and son. But with the woman supporting three other children on her meager pay as a fruit vendor in the streets of Mexico City, the teen-ager won his mother’s reluctant blessing to look for a job in the United States.

Juan Carlos Martinez and his brother, Alvaro Cruz Martinez, wound up in the Capistrano Beach neighborhood of Dana Point, where many newly relocated Latinos pursue a dream of better, higher paying jobs in California.

For Juan, it turned out to be a nightmare last week when he slipped trying to catch a freight train and fell under its wheels, losing both his legs.

Today he rests in a hospital room at Mission Hospital Regional Medical Center in Mission Viejo as a sympathetic community rallies around him.

Several churches are trying to raise money to fit Juan with artificial limbs and pay for accompanying therapy and the brothers’ living expenses.

And local residents, led by Patricia Lopez, are holding fund-raisers through local Little Leagues and visiting the despondent young man in the hospital.

“I read about this tragic thing,” said Lopez, who volunteers time at Dana Point’s job hot lines for unemployed Latinos. “I had to be there and see him and touch him and tell him we cared.”

Although grateful for the support, 20-year-old Alvaro Martinez said both he and his brother are still trying to erase the nightmare of last Thursday.

The brothers had hitched a ride on a Santa Fe freight train in Oceanside in hopes of reaching Los Angeles.

When the train stopped in San Juan Capistrano, the two men hopped off to stretch their legs. When the train began to move again, they both leaped for a boxcar.

“But the train started off very fast, and Juan lost his grip and fell,” Alvaro said softly in Spanish. “It is still very vivid in my mind.”

Men working nearby heard Alvaro’s cries and called paramedics to the scene.

Juan was rushed to the hospital where he survived the shock and loss of blood from his injuries. But his new friends say Juan has been slow to recover emotionally from the loss of his limbs. Lopez is hoping to find a Spanish-speaking psychologist to treat the youth.

The brothers have also been unable to tell their mother about the accident.

“She has a heart condition,” Alvaro said. “That is why we don’t want her to find out now.”

Juan wants to become accustomed to his new legs before arranging to see his mother, Alvaro said.

“The plan is to tell her when Juan can walk, so she can see he is all right,” he said.

Alvaro said his brother was a happy, energetic youth who played in organized soccer leagues before his graduation from high school last June.

Now, besides depression, his worst enemy is “boredom. He was very active. He needs something to entertain him,” said Alvaro.

Juan’s long-range goal, his older brother said, is to meet his mother standing on his own two legs.

“What he really wants is to be able to walk again,” Alvaro said.

Contributions can be made to the Friends of Alvaro Martinez at Farmers and Merchants Bank, P.O. Box 1675, San Juan Capistrano, Calif. 92675. For more information, call the Sisters of St. Elizabeth of Hungary at (714) 248-0443.