Crash Victim Will Get Intensive Therapy : Provider: Two O.C. rehabilitation services have offered complete care at no cost to the patient, an illegal immigrant.

Owners of a nursing home and two rehabilitation services have come to the rescue of Roberto Sanchez Morales, the 24-year-old Mexican national who requires intensive therapy after a car crash in August.

Morales was transferred on Friday from Tustin Hospital Medical Center to Park Tustin Rehabilitation and Health Care Center in Santa Ana owned by Regency Health Services, a Newport Beach-based chain of nursing and rehabilitation homes.

The wheelchair-bound patient, who is an illegal immigrant from Mexico, suffered massive head and other injuries in the crash. Without help, he was in danger of becoming home-bound, unable to support the wife and three children who await him in Guerrero, Mexico.

Now, however, he will receive physical, occupational and speech therapy at Park Tustin. Officials for the facility said two rehabilitation care companies, Team Rehab of Huntington Beach and South Coast Rehabilitation Services of Laguna Hills, will offer complete care for Sanchez at no cost.

Rachel Bennett, Park Tustin administrator, said Medi-Cal will pay for his room and board there. Morales does not, however, qualify for state aid for rehabilitation.

Tustin Hospital Medical Center, under its state license, may only treat patients needing acute care, and Morales has improved beyond that.

On Friday, as family and acquaintances awaited Sanchez’s arrival at Park Tustin, his brother, Socorro, expressed his deep gratitude to the Orange County community and especially to the health-care providers helping his brother.

“I have no words to express what I feel right now,” he said. “I am so grateful. Tell everyone out there, ‘Thank you very much.’ ”

Jose Aponte, an acquaintance of the family, said the health-care providers expect that Sanchez will stay at Park Tustin for four to six months.

Sanchez, who came to the county in June from a small agricultural village near Acapulco, Mexico, was involved in the two-vehicle crash in August in Lake Forest. Border Patrol agents said they had been following the car in which Sanchez was a passenger, suspecting its five occupants were illegal, when the vehicle hit another car, then a curb and went down a ravine.

The driver of the other car suffered injuries, but they were not life-threatening.

Sanchez underwent brain surgery, after which he lapsed into a coma for four months. Two months ago, he recovered consciousness.

Unable to provide him with the therapy he required, Tustin Hospital had been searching desperately for a facility that could provide such care, to no avail. As an illegal immigrant, he did not qualify for the help he needed and his indigent family could do little to help. Sanchez was condemned to a life of mental shadows and dependency, said hospital officials.