Chasing His Own Shadow : Ibarra Makes Great Strides After Near-Fatal Auto Accident

Miguel Ibarra had it all planned out.

After being No. 2 runner on the Fillmore High cross-country team in 1992 and ‘93, Ibarra was counting on a successful junior track season before becoming the Flashes’ top performer in cross-country as a senior.

Those plans were shattered the night of March 5, however, when Ibarra sustained massive head injuries in a car accident that left him in a coma for three weeks. Even after he regained consciousness, it took nearly three weeks for him to learn to walk, talk and eat again.

His recovery from near death has been called miraculous by doctors at Ventura County Medical Center, but perhaps characteristic of an impatient teen-ager, the 17-year-old Ibarra talks nonchalantly of his recuperation and is frustrated by his times this season.

“I still have a long way to go,” he said. “I still don’t feel that good when I’m running. I still don’t feel strong like I did last year.”

After finishing eighth in last year’s Southern Section Division IV cross-country championships, Ibarra placed 16th--seventh on his team--in last week’s Tri-Valley League meet. His time of 18 minutes 11 seconds over the three-mile course is his best of the season, but pales in comparison to his 1993 performances, when he ran 15:46 over a comparable course.

“I think Miguel will eventually get back to where he was, but it might take him a year or so,” Fillmore Coach Epi Torres said. “Right now, running is not that easy for him. He’s feeling heavy, he’s feeling achy and he’s feeling tired. But that’s to be expected considering everything that he’s been through.”

Although Ibarra has no memory of the first three weeks after he emerged from the coma, his family and friends told him that he came to with a nasty disposition. He tried to yank out of his stomach a tube that was used to feed him during the coma, and even spit at and tried to bite those around him.

“They tell me that I had to be strapped down at times because I was wild and because I kept trying to pull the tube out of my stomach,” Ibarra said. “But I don’t remember any of that.”

Ibarra’s first memories are from “around” April 15 when he was washing his face in a hospital bathroom.

“I remember looking in the mirror and I saw the scars on my face,” he said. “I was wondering how they got there. I had no idea what had happened.”

The two-car accident occurred on Highway 23, a winding two-lane road that connects Highway 126 in Fillmore to the 118 Freeway in Moorpark.

Ibarra and Jaime Luna--his sister Rosa’s boyfriend--were driving south toward Moorpark when a car in the north-bound lane crossed the center line coming around a curve. When Luna, the driver, swerved, the other car slammed into the passenger side of his car where Ibarra was seated.

The car was so badly mangled that Ibarra had to be cut from the wreckage with the so-called jaws of life. He was rushed to Ventura County Medical Center, where he underwent surgery.

Although he survived the operation, Ibarra was not given much chance for recovery, according to his mother, Virginia, a native of Irapuato, Guanajuato, Mexico. “They said it was a miracle when (he) came out of the coma,” she said.

Doctors associated with Ibarra’s case say that his distance-running background played a part in his recovery. “Running really was the thing that helped me come out of the accident alive,” Ibarra said. “If I hadn’t been in such good shape, I don’t know if I would have made it.”

After leaving the hospital in April, Ibarra has continued his rehabilitation at St. John’s Regional Medical Center in Oxnard. His mother took it upon herself to put some meat back on the bones of her hijito --little son.

Problem was, Virginia’s home cooking did too good a job.

The 5-foot-11 Ibarra weighed 160 pounds--21 more than before the accident--when he was given clearance to start running again in mid-July. Though his weight is down to 149, he figures he will shed several more pounds before the end of the season. A drop in race times should coincide with the continued drop in weight. Still, Ibarra is frustrated with the pace of his progress despite his remarkable recovery.

“There have been times when he has said, ‘Hey, I was helping to coach these guys last year and now they’re beating me,’ ” Torres said. “And I just tell him, ‘Well Miguel, that’s what happens when you stick your head through a windshield.’ ”

Those might seem like insensitive words, but it typifies the Torres-Ibarra relationship in which they often trade good-natured barbs.

“He’s kind of quiet around people he doesn’t know,” Torres said. “But if he knows you and he likes you, he jokes around a lot. He has a real good sense of humor. . . . He jokes about my (thinning hairline) and my chubbiness and I’ll get on him about other things.”

Underneath Ibarra’s wisecracks lies a commitment to running.

“I never thought about not coming back,” he said. “I knew that I liked running and I couldn’t be without running. So I knew I had to come back for cross-country.”

During the spring, Ibarra will try to improve his personal best of 4:28.67 in the 1,600 meters.

He plans to run cross-country and track for Ventura College before transferring to Cal State Stanislaus.