Ross Pushing Her Recovery ‘Way Ahead of Schedule’ : Basketball: Positive attitude is key to speedy rehabilitation by Newport Harbor graduate.

There’s a nasty, four-inch scar covering the steel plate in her right ankle and a smaller scar on her right wrist, but Michaela Ross hardly looks like a woman who suffered serious multiple injuries in an automobile accident only three months ago.

Doctors told the former Newport Harbor High School basketball/track standout she’d be in a wheelchair at least two months after the Oct. 11 accident, which occurred near Cal Poly Pomona.

Ross was out of the wheelchair the first week of November.

Ross was told she wouldn’t be able to walk for three months.

She was walking Nov. 10 and expects to be running next week.

Ross feels good, she’s moving around quite well, and she seems every bit as effervescent as she was before that October night, when the car in which she was a passenger jumped a curb and smashed into a tree.

“She looks fantastic, considering three months ago she was lying in a bed with casts on her feet and tubes all over her,” said Shannon Jakosky, Newport Harbor girls’ basketball coach. “She’s obviously way ahead of schedule medically.

“But she has tremendous internal fortitude and a positive spiritual outlook on life. I wouldn’t have expected anything less than what’s happening, to be honest.”

One moment Ross was on her way home from dinner, laughing and talking and having a good time with Pomona basketball teammates Tiffany and Taffany Maxwell and Lori Talley. The next moment, at least as far as Ross can recall, the Jaws of Life were churning through the wreckage in an effort to free her.

The car Talley was driving had hit a curb sometime after 9 p.m., spun out of control and crashed into a tree off Valley Boulevard, south of Temple Avenue in Pomona. University officials said no alcohol was involved in the one-car crash.

Talley suffered a sprained arm and wrist, Tiffany Maxwell’s arm was broken in six places, and Taffany Maxwell suffered a fractured facial bone below her eye.

But Ross, who was in the passenger seat, got the worst of it. The right side of her body bore the brunt of the collision and her head smashed through the windshield.

Ross, who was knocked unconscious on impact, suffered a partially collapsed lung, fractured pelvis, fractured lower vertebrae, broken right wrist and right thumb, dislocated and broken right ankle, dislocated and broken toes on her right foot, and cuts around her right eye.

She spent the next few hours drifting in and out of consciousness. Ross remembers paramedics at the scene saying her vital signs were low. She remembers being put on a stretcher and carried into an ambulance.

Her next memory is of waking up in the intensive care unit of Pomona Valley Hospital.

“I remember feeling pretty good,” said Ross, a Times All-Orange County selection in basketball and track in 1992-93. “My coaches were there, I was laughing. I was obviously pretty drugged up.”

The sight of Ross was pretty sobering for Ross’ mother, though.

When Valarie Ross received “the phone call a parent never wants to get,” she knew her daughter had suffered serious injuries in the crash, and she had the entire drive from her home in Costa Mesa to the Pomona hospital to brace herself for what she was about to see.

But she was still shocked.

“When I walked in she was just covered in blood,” Valarie said. “It was not a pretty sight. I took a quick look at her and started crying. Michaela made some wisecrack--I knew she’d do that--and then the doctors started putting her back together.”

Those doctors considered Ross lucky. They told her the seat belt she was wearing saved her life.

“My first reaction was of grief and sadness--I thought, ‘Why her?’ ” Jakosky said. “As the hours ticked by and I realized the extent of her injuries, I was thankful she was alive. That was a severe wreck. She was very lucky.”

Ross was transferred from Pomona Valley Hospital to Hoag Memorial Hospital in Newport Beach the day after the crash, and her room soon resembled a Hallmark store, as the cards, balloons and flowers began flooding in.

“Each balloon was signed by a different student at Newport Harbor,” said Ross. “All my friends’ mothers came in and brought me candy. My boyfriend came every day. The nurses were really friendly.

“Everyone was real supportive. It made me feel like I can do it, that I’m not alone, that it’s not going to be as much a struggle as I thought it would be.”

Deep down, though, Ross had her doubts. The first few days of her two-week hospital stay, Ross liked the attention. She was under heavy medication and didn’t feel a lot of pain. But as time wore on and the pain-killers wore off, Ross found herself thinking more and more about her plight.

“I broke down a few times,” said Ross. “People, at first, thought I should be more emotional, but I didn’t feel I needed to be. But after I thought about the situation for a while, I got scared. I had faced adversity before, but nothing like this.”

It wasn’t until Ross returned home that she began to snap out of that negative mind set.

“I began to put things in perspective,” Ross said. “I said, ‘OK, this is what my goals are. I want to play basketball and I want to be an All-American.’ I wasn’t going to do that if I just sat here. I had to think about what I can do, not what I can’t do.”

That attitude helped expedite the rehabilitation process. Ross attended therapy sessions in Irvine three times a week for two months, and each week, it seemed her doctor would knock another item off the lists of things Ross shouldn’t do.

Ross was able to walk briskly on a treadmill machine two weeks ago and expects to be running next week. A 4.0 student in high school, Ross resumed classes Monday at Pomona, where she will have a double major in psychology and liberal studies.

“Basically, I feel I’m back to normal,” said Ross, who averaged 22 points to lead Newport Harbor to the Southern Section III-AA basketball semifinals last winter and placed fourth in the high jump at the 1993 State track and field championships. “I’ll be playing next year. The doctors are all pretty amazed at the progress I’ve shown. I’m pretty amazed, too.”