Teacher Passes Test : Students Rejoice at Her Recovery From a Heart Attack Suffered in Classroom

No celebrity staging a comeback can claim a more loyal following than Marjorie Jane Blasjo, an El Modena High School English teacher felled by cardiac arrest a year ago as she worked in her classroom.

Just three weeks short of retirement after 33 years of teaching, the 65-year-old woman was saved from death by the fast action of her students, only to face seemingly insurmountable obstacles to recovery.

“It was tragic for us,” said Gail Richards, then the principal at El Modena High, where Blasjo had worked for 26 years. “We were going to have a party for her retirement. We were so happy for her. Then it seemed in a moment it was all taken away.”

Without warning, Blasjo’s heart stopped beating the morning of May 24, 1993, as she graded papers in an advanced English class.

“Her lips were blue and she hunched over,” said Philip Le, a student in the class who began cardiopulmonary resuscitation, a skill he had learned in the Army Reserve. Le said he was assisted later by a teacher who breathed into Blasjo’s mouth while Le compressed her chest.

The students also summoned paramedics and watched in horror as their teacher was taken from the classroom on a stretcher.

After 72 hours in a coma, Blasjo’s prognosis was grim. Her husband, Wes, who retired last June from his job as an industrial arts teacher at El Modena High, recalls that a neurologist who examined her at Chapman General Hospital in Orange “said there was not much hope for her being anything more than a vegetable.”

But Blasjo’s recovery has surprised her physicians. She struggled first to merely open her eyes and move her fingers, then to speak, eat and take her first steps as she clung to parallel bars. She learned to use a wheelchair, walk haltingly with assistance, dress herself and apply make-up.

She also has taken up her favorite hobby, oil painting, again. One of her landscapes was chosen as the cover of the 1994 calendar published by Tustin Rehabilitation Hospital.

“We have seen a miracle before our very eyes,” Wes Blasjo said of his wife’s gains.

On Monday, Blasjo ended a year of treatment in hospitals and rehabilitation facilities and went home. It was a landmark day for her, as well as the Santa Ana rehabilitation home--Meridian Neuro Care Center--where she has been living since September. A spokeswoman for the home, which specializes in nursing victims of severe brain injuries, said the staff rarely sees a patient recover so dramatically. In celebration, the staff last week threw Blasjo a going-home party attended by more than 100 of her friends, including many former students.

Blasjo still has severe physical and mental limitations. She is fed in part through a stomach tube. And although she seems to understand what is said to her, she has no memory of what has happened since her attack.

Brain damage has also destroyed Blasjo’s ability to recall events immediately after they occur, although much of the past is still clear to her. For example, she cried in appreciation when she saw a huge cake with her picture on it at the party. A few minutes later, she denied she had ever seen the cake, although she was still grasping in her hand the tissue with which she had wiped her tears.

But she remembers her students well, especially the ones who had a special flair for English composition. “I have had many successes,” she said, referring to former students who have entered top universities.

And she can still find on a map of Africa the town near Nairobi where she served as a young missionary in the 1950s. “Do you remember when you killed an elephant with a rifle?” coaxed her eldest son, Alan, 44. “Where was he?”

“He was in the yard,” said Blasjo.

“And what was he doing?”

“He was chasing your brother,” she said.

Upon returning to the United States from Africa, Blasjo earned a teaching credential from Cal State Long Beach in 1960 and began teaching for the Orange Unified School District. Later she received a master’s degree in education administration at the University of La Verne. She chaired the English department at El Modena High for five years and headed the school district’s English department for two years.

Along the way, Blasjo raised a family of eight children, three of whom were adopted. After a divorce from her first husband, she married Wes Blasjo, who had four children. Wes Blasjo said she would also welcome into their house children “who for one reason or another needed a home. Some people take home cats and dogs. She took home kids.” And she has raised from birth one of her grandsons, who is now 12.

Blasjo’s former students said they were delighted and impressed by Blasjo’s past, especially when she would spice up a lesson in American literature by talking about her friendship with Ernest Hemingway while both were in Africa.

Former student Stephanie Asche said she and her classmates were in awe of Blasjo.

“I think she is one of those Renaissance people who has done everything,” said Asche, a junior at Pepperdine University. “I wanted her to write a book about her life, she had lived so well.”

Richards, who is now principal of Irvine High School, said Blasjo was “beloved” by her students, many of whom continued to attend Blasjo’s annual Christmas week open house long after they graduated.

Richards said Blasjo had “mastered the art of teaching,” using “every minute to keep her students thinking. It was almost exhausting to be in her classroom. She had very high expectations and pushed the kids to reach their maximum. She was so good at it, it was fun.”

Some relatives and colleagues believe Blasjo’s rigorous work schedule--which included a long commute to her home in Riverside and four nights each week of teaching adult education--finally caught up with her.

“She cared about everybody and she cared too much,” said Richards. “She was pushing herself too hard.”

Wes Blasjo said his wife had begun to fear gang activity in the community surrounding El Modena High. She was concerned about reports of some students carrying knives and guns. She was looking forward to retiring to a lakeside home they had bought in Arkansas, he said, “to get away from guns and graffiti and the threat of violence in California.”

But at her going-home party, Blasjo said she had no regrets. Dressed in a multicolored pantsuit, she smiled and hugged former students, some of whom hadn’t seen her since she was in intensive care.

Asked if she wished she had slowed down during her career, she shot back, “No. I’ve enjoyed every bit of it.”