Healing a Mangled Leg and a Shattered Life

An unusual thing happened to Mary Jane Franck on her way through a wasted life. She found a reason to live.

Then, over the last month, as she struggled to survive a horrifying motorcycle accident, she discovered that others also think she is valuable--and worth giving their time to save.

“It’s a total miracle, what’s happened,” the 35-year-old Franck said Wednesday before checking out of a Thousand Oaks hospital and going home to Ojai. “These sorts of things just don’t happen. You don’t see them in my world, ever.”

Homeless until 1993 and a recovering drug and alcohol abuser, Franck had already turned her life around through the help of new friends at an Ojai church. But it was not until she turned her Yamaha 650 in front of a car in Thousand Oaks on July 28 that she began to realize that the world considered her to be much more than one of life’s throwaways.

Her right leg shattered along with her emotions, Franck’s well-being was completely in the hands of others. And the good Samaritans turned out in many shapes to form a nongovernmental safety net that caught her and pulled her from the abyss.

A medical community spent an estimated $200,000 to $300,000 to mend her shattered body, surgeon Lawrence Borelli operating six times without a guarantee of payment. And Franck’s community of church, family and friends came every day to shower her with handmade cards, flowers and intimate gifts of love and respect.

“I just never knew in my whole life that I made a difference in this world,” said Franck from a hospital bed, her reconstructed right leg and toeless right foot mending under a black exterior frame and hinged inside by an elaborate series of pins. “I’ve never known that I made an impression anywhere I have gone. Now I know.”

Officials at Columbia Los Robles Hospital, which will absorb costs of more than $100,000 unless Franck’s case qualifies for partial reimbursement under Medi-Cal, say they have rarely seen such support.

“She’s not married and doesn’t have any children,” said hospital spokeswoman Kris Carraway. “But the outpouring of love and support was constant. And it came from non-family members. That’s very unusual, and I think that is what really pulled her through.”

That Franck would end up the focus of such care and attention could hardly have been predicted four years ago, when she was still sleeping on Santa Cruz’s streets.

“I was on the streets in third grade,” she said of her childhood in a troubled home in Santa Barbara. “I started doing drugs when I was about 11 years old. I just didn’t want to be on this planet.”

But by 1993 she was desperate for a change, and she asked her sister if she could live temporarily with her in Ojai. About the same time, Franck’s mother called Anne Whitelock, wife of the pastor at Ojai Presbyterian Church, to plead for help for Mary Jane. The parents of both women had known each other decades before.

Franck came to church reluctantly at first, encouraged by the winks of the minister’s wife during the service.

“It was my way to show her that she did belong, that she did fit in,” Whitelock said. “She felt like the lost sheep, or the puppy beside the road.”

In the years since, Franck has fit remarkably well into the 500-member congregation, Whitelock said, “showing people how to love someone different. She’s taught us in a way she isn’t even aware of; she’s taught us how to respond to someone like her and not be afraid.”

Franck has become the church’s part-time janitor, a host of its Tuesday night homeless shelter in the winter and a participant in Wednesday night activities for children, with whom she has formed a special bond.

“I’d take them on rides in my cart,” Franck said. “And I could interact with them in ways other adults wouldn’t. I’m not a normal adult, because I play with them. . . . I’ve had a child ask their mother, ‘Is Mary Jane an adult or is she a teenager?’ ”

During her stay in the hospital, Franck has been moved by drawings, paintings and cards from the young children and by 3-by-5 cards inscribed with scripture from the older ones.

Franck is perhaps best known in Ojai because of her job Sunday mornings. After making coffee and lemonade for the congregation, she ascends the tower to ring the huge church bell.

“I don’t think she realized until the accident how much of an influence she’s had on people here,” Whitelock said.

As the church and a cluster of friends from Alcoholics Anonymous rallied to Franck’s support, the medical community in Thousand Oaks was making its own decisions about how to respond to her injuries.

Since Franck was employed only part time and had no medical insurance, she probably could have been transferred to the county hospital in Ventura after her life was no longer in danger and she was medically stable, officials said.

But hospital representatives and Franck’s doctors decided not to move her--and to absorb the time and cost of her care.

“Her thighbone was in traction, and she’d have been in pain and had some bleeding if she had gone,” said surgeon Borelli. “In this case it just wouldn’t have been the humane decision. . . . This was a very frightened woman.”

So a team of physicians--including Elliott Schaffzin, Barry Thall, Mark Mazur, Miguel Gonzalez, Tjerk Bury, Candy Lane and Rick Colvin--ministered to Franck. They can file claims for their work once government medical insurance is approved, if it is. But Los Robles officials said that is still up in the air, and government insurance may not be approved for several months.

In the meantime, a group of visiting nurses has agreed to care for Franck in a friend’s Ojai home.

As Franck prepared to go home Wednesday, she said quietly to Borelli: “I can’t wait to come down and see you when I can walk.”

“I get the first dance,” he replied.

After the doctor had gone, Franck was overcome:

“He didn’t have to do this, and he may never be paid a cent,” she said to Carraway, beginning to cry. “It’s been beyond the call, way beyond. I’ll miss you guys.”