Teaching From a Hospital Bed

Though he is no longer in the classroom, Alfredo Perez is still teaching. During his recovery from a wound that doctors feared would kill him, he has given us lessons on perseverance, patience and hope.

Perez, one of 30,000 teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District, was doing his job--one of the most important in Southern California or anywhere else--when he was struck down. The instructor, 30, was hit in the head by a stray bullet last February as he stood in front of his fifth-grade class in the library at Figueroa Elementary School in South-Central Los Angeles.

The shooter, according to police, was off the campus when he fired at a car carrying rival gang members.

Perez, a public servant, is alive because of the efforts of other public servants: the paramedics who transported him to Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center, the doctors and nurses who treated him then and those who operated on his brain again last week after his long recuperation at a private rehabilitation center at Long Beach Memorial Hospital.

Perez can now speak clearly, and he did so Tuesday, meeting the press for the first time since the shooting. He can walk with the help of a special cane, although his left side remains weak. He still faces many challenges, but his near-miraculous recovery serves to inspire us all.