Mickey Grants Tiny Victim’s Wish : Follow-Up: A paramedic keeps in touch with a Santa Ana 9-year-old nearly killed by a gang member’s bullet. He figures that a trip to Disneyland is just what the doctor ordered.

Aidan Maguire, a Santa Ana paramedic, knows that it would be difficult to do his job well if he became personally involved in every case he handled. But the five-year veteran could not shake the image of a 9-year-old boy he treated in April, nearly killed by a gang member’s bullet.

So Maguire has replaced that vision by befriending Carlos Alvarez. On Saturday, Maguire fulfilled one of Carlos’ dreams by taking the Santa Ana youngster and his family to Disneyland.

Maguire was one of the paramedics who found the boy bleeding and “very, very weak” from an inch-wide wound near his left shoulder. The bullet, fired from a passing car, had ripped through the wall of the Alvarez home on West Lingan Lane and struck the boy while he watched TV on the sofa.

The bullet entered his right shoulder and exited just left of his navel, then passed through another wall of the home and bruised the shoulder of his aunt.

Maguire said: “He was barely breathing, completely unconscious. I thought it was a strong possibility” that Carlos would die.

“We were able to save him, so it’s hard not to get attached,” he said. “I thought perhaps my visiting him would make him think that the whole world was not terrible.”

Maguire spent time with Carlos during a few visits at the Alvarez home. During one visit, he gave Carlos a toy fire engine, a gift from the Santa Ana Fire Department. Carlos will not allow anyone else to play with his treasured truck, the family said.

A second-grader at Jackson Elementary School, Carlos showed up for his first visit to the amusement park wearing a blue shirt, gray pants, sneakers and a pair of burgundy sunshades.

“I’m happy to be here,” he said, sticking close to his parents and Maguire when questioned by reporters. “We go to school all the time and hear the other kids talking about Disneyland.”

The boy’s eyes lit up as Mickey Mouse appeared in the courtyard of Disneyland’s City Hall and presented him with a personalized Mouseketeer hat and a Mickey Mouse watch. After posing with Mickey for photographers with family members, Carlos settled down for a brief chat with reporters.

The youth, recalling the night he was shot, was still noticeably shaken by the incident. “I still feel nervous about it. I sleep a couple of hours and wake up,” he said.

Maguire quickly intervened when he thought the questions focused too much on the shooting. “Maybe we shouldn’t talk so much about the incident,” he said, “since we’re trying to forget about it. This is Carlos’ day.”

Reyna Alvarez, Carlos’ mother, said her son will begin seeing a psychiatrist because he often wakes up crying in the middle of the night.

Carlos, she said, is still afraid of going into his room alone and makes sure that everyone else goes to sleep when he does.

She said Carlos sometimes complains of pain in the shoulder in which he was shot, although the doctor has said that it is fully healed.

According to school psychologists and others who work with gang prevention programs, the scars of gang violence can remain forever. Tony Borbon, director of the gang prevention program operated by Turning Point’s family services, has said: “It’s not like the bullet that pierced the child and entered and exited his body right away. The harm is spiritual. Only time and attention will heal that.”

Family members have said they have been victims of several incidents of gang violence in the last year. Two other family members have been wounded by gunfire in separate incidents, and a few months ago a homemade bomb was thrown through a sliding glass door. It did not explode.

Carlitos, as he is known to the family, came to the United States two years ago with his grandmother, joining his mother, who has lived here for several years. Alvarez said her son has been eager to visit Disneyland for more than a year, but the family could not afford the trip.

“They couldn’t sleep last night because they were so excited,” Alvarez said, referring to Carlos, his 3-year-old brother, Gabriel, 2-year-old sister, Isabel, and 5-year-old cousin, Carla.

Carlos “wanted to meet Mickey Mouse,” she said.

Maguire said he first got the idea to take Carlos to Disneyland after reading a Los Angeles Times article in which the boy expressed a desire to go to the amusement park.

“Everybody I just mentioned it to wanted to help,” he said. The Firemen’s Benevolence Assn. immediately offered him $300 to take the family, Disneyland arranged a private meeting with Mickey Mouse and several other friends offered to help.

Maguire’s wife, Jacki, said her husband had been worried that publicity about the event would prevent the youth and his family from having a good time.

“He’s not a hero,” she said. “This incident just touched him a bit more because it was an innocent child involved.”

Staff writer Maria Newman contributed to this story.