Memories of Tragedy at Tournament Time : Accident: Survivors rebuilding lives after post-game crash that killed an O.C. couple last year.

As his Bobby Sox team prepares for another summer tournament this weekend, Russ Little can’t help thinking back to July 11, 1993, a day that began as “one of the best days of my life. But it went from the best to the worst in a couple or three hours.”

On that warm Sunday evening, the coach had returned triumphant from a playoff game in Anaheim Hills and had just stretched out in bed when his wife answered the telephone and gasped. A Laguna Beach doctor’s car had careened out of control and struck a carload of Little’s friends and players returning from the game in a crushing head-on collision on Santiago Canyon Road.

The crash killed two of the Littles’ best friends, Mark and Noreen Minzey, and critically injured the Minzeys’ 11-year-old daughter Karie, who was an all-star outfielder. Another all-star, 11-year-old Danielle Rodriguez, and her sister Jackie, then 24, were hurt.

Like the Littles, the others involved in the tragedy have spent the past year piecing their lives together. But the shock of that summer night will never leave them, said Rebecca Rodriguez, Danielle’s and Jackie’s mother.

“This was the last thing we ever thought would happen,” Rebecca Rodriguez said. “We were happy that afternoon. We stopped on the way home to buy some red shorts to celebrate. Now, not a day goes by when I don’t think of Mark and Noreen. We had been hanging together all summer, like one big family.”

Karie Minzey, now 12, is still recovering from severe head injuries and several reconstructive surgeries and is living in Georgia with her aunt and uncle and older sister.

Danielle Rodriguez has regained the use of her left arm, which was fractured in several places in the crash, and is again an all-star and again a member of the cast of the Pageant of the Masters in Laguna Beach. Her sister Jackie has also healed, although her left leg is permanently scarred by burns from hot oil.

As for Dr. Ronald Joseph Allen, who prosecutors say was drunk and under the influence of drugs when his rented Chevrolet collided with the Minzeys’ Dodge, he sits in Orange County Jail, stripped of his medical license and facing trial this fall on charges of second-degree murder.

“There are no winners in this incident; this is truly a tragic situation,” said Kevin E. Monson, a Newport Beach attorney representing Allen. “Here is a brilliant young internist, whose entire life had been predicated on giving to others, who now finds himself accused of murder, the very antithesis of everything he wanted in life.”

The year has brought a host of civil lawsuits by the survivors against Allen and others. The Minzey and Rodriguez families have sued Allen, and on Friday the Minzeys sued the state Department of Motor Vehicles and the Medical Board of California, claiming the agencies should have acted sooner to revoke his licenses to drive and to practice medicine. The Minzeys also sued South Coast Medical Center, where Allen had received psychological treatment shortly before the crash, and Chrysler Corp., which manufactured the Dodge the family was driving. The Rodriguezes are expected to file similar suits against the DMV and Medical Board on Monday.

Allen, 33, declined to be interviewed. But his attorneys say he still suffers from the severe depression that had begun even before the crash.

Allen had a history of alcohol and drug problems and had attempted suicide several times, according to police reports. And on the day of the crash, just before beginning to drive for a still undisclosed reason, toward rural Santiago Canyon, Allen had learned of his father’s death.

“Dr. Allen is still in extreme remorse,” said Deputy Public Defender Alan Crivaro. “What he does is mull over this a lot. . . . He seems to be physically healthy, but he has his bad days.”

Allen’s mental state draws little sympathy among the Mission Viejo families affected by the crash, or even from his Laguna Beach patients. Allen had been working with a group of severely ill AIDS patients who were left in the lurch when he began his down slide, said Richard Ammon, a Laguna Beach psychologist who knew Allen and treated many of the same people.

“My patients feel a lot of betrayal,” Ammon said. “When you have a terminal illness, the relationship with your doctor is one of the primary ones you have. These guys are dealing with their diseases, and to have your doctor abandon you. . . . There’s not a lot of pity.”

There is absolutely no sympathy for Allen in the tightknit Rodriguez household in Mission Viejo. The Rodriguez, Little and Minzey families had grown close because of softball. Ed Rodriguez, Noreen Minzey, Russ Little and Jackie Rodriguez were the coaches of the all-star team that played at Canyon Hills Park that Sunday.

Everyone was elated that afternoon after the Mission de Oro team beat an Anaheim Hills squad, 8-0. Little’s daughter, Jennifer, had pitched a no-hitter, Karie Minzey had contributed a triple, and Noreen Minzey had recorded the game on a video camera.

“We were on cloud nine,” said Little, 40, the owner of a metal refinishing shop. “We were all talking about playing Cerritos the next night and the chance to continue on to the nationals. . . . When we drove home, we took the freeway and they took Santiago Canyon.”

Before leaving, they had a brief discussion about who would ride with whom, said Rebecca Rodriguez. Danielle wanted to ride with the Minzeys, which she and Jackie finally did.

After a stop for Mexican food, the five of them began the drive home, choosing to take picturesque Santiago Canyon Road because there was still light. Noreen Minzey, 33, drove. Jackie sat in the front seat with Danielle directly behind her. Karie was in the middle of the back seat, and Mark Minzey, 37, sat behind his wife.

Danielle Rodriguez didn’t see the Chevy until it was just about to hit the front left side of the Minzeys’ Dodge about 7:30 p.m.

It is believed that Noreen Minzey died instantly. Paramedics had to cut through the car to free her body.

A dying Mark Minzey, bleeding profusely from a severed artery, is credited with a heroic effort, directing paramedics to his critically injured daughter and the Rodriguez girls.

“Mark’s last words were ‘I’m fine, take the girls first,’ ” said Jackie Rodriguez, now 25.

It was after 9 p.m. when the phone rang at the Rodriguez home.

“My son answered, grabbed his shoes and said, ‘Mom, you’ve got to take this phone call,’ ” Rebecca Rodriguez said.

Adrenaline pumping, the Rodriguez family rushed to UCI Medical Center in Orange, where they found Danielle and Jackie in the emergency room. Jackie’s feet had been burned by hot engine oil and “were like charcoal,” and Danielle was drugged and nearly unconscious, bits of glass and some red clay from the baseball diamond still in her curly, blond-streaked hair.

A comatose Karie Minzey, suffering from extreme head, leg and knee injuries, was taken to Western Medical Center-Santa Ana. The early prognosis was not good; it was not known if she would survive.

In the year since the accident she has been in and out of hospitals and now rests in one again, recovering from reconstructive surgery to her face and forehead, her aunt, Jeanine Posey, said from their Marietta, Ga., home.

The surgeries have been tough and scary for the seventh-grader. The subsequent recoveries are just as difficult, with accompanying pain, nausea and swelling. Sometimes she is unable to see for several days.

“She does pretty good. But it’s not really easy,” Posey said.

Although softball is still only a dream, Karie swims and rides her bike in her small Georgia town and has managed to attend church summer camps between surgeries, Posey said.

Karie and her 16-year-old sister, Shelbie, are doing well with their close-knit religious family, but miss their parents, Posey said.

“We just play it by ear,” Posey said. “We just see how they’re doing and let them tell us how they’re feeling.”

In most ways, Karie is “just like any other 12-year-old,” her aunt said.

“She’s really done great. But she’s a lot wiser than most people. A lot more grateful. She has a different perspective on life than most.”

It’s a perspective shared by Danielle Rodriguez, Danielle’s mother said.

“Danielle told me, ‘Mom, I’m like a living angel because I was spared. I know I’m going to do good things with my life because that’s what God wants me to do now,”’ Rebecca Rodriguez said.

With tournament season here again, the crash and its aftermath became the talk of some circles of softball-crazy Mission Viejo. The talk peaked two weeks ago when Karie Minzey and her family returned to California for the first time and attended her sixth-grade graduation from Stoneybrooke Christian School in San Juan Capistrano.

Karie also met up again with her favorite ballplayer, California Angels pitcher Chuck Finley, during a game. She hadn’t remembered Finley’s first visit at the hospital in the days after the crash.

A touching moment came when she attended closing ceremonies for the Mission de Oro Bobby Sox league recently and had a chance to see the Rodriguez and Little families. Russ Little said he found her to be slightly taller than before, her hair darker. He said that “basically she is doing remarkably well, considering the extent of her injuries.”

“She has a lot of problems with an eye that was severely damaged, and arm and leg injuries,” Little said. “But mentally she is the same smiling kid she was before. It’s a miracle story, really.”

Times correspondent George Frank contributed to this report.