For Two Victims of Electrical Burns: ‘Great to Be Alive’

Adrienne Alpert, left arm gone, right leg gone, turns her head on the pillow of her hospital bed and extends what remains of her right hand.

“Here,” she says, “shake my splint.”

It is the eve of freedom for the KABC-TV news reporter, who is scheduled to be discharged at noon today from a Sherman Oaks burn ward, 65 days after being nearly electrocuted in an on-the-job accident.

About to be wheeled away for physical therapy, she isn’t able to speak for too long at a time. But at least the 48-year-old newswoman is finally getting to communicate face to face with the outside world again.

“So, welcome to Camp Alpert,” she says, waving with a purplish stump at her surroundings, with astonishingly good cheer.

On a window sill sits a large box, overflowing with mail.

“I’m going to get around to answering most of that, somehow,” says Alpert, who is being released, not to her home, but to a Northridge rehab center. “I know people aren’t expecting a reply, because they aren’t even sure if I’m able to write. But one of these days, I’ll see what I can do.

“First, though, I have to start getting some of my old life back.”

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On a wall down the hall is a get-well banner from local firefighters, dedicated personally to Alpert and collectively to other patients in the burn unit.

Terry Green, left and right arms gone, sits on the edge of his bed in a gray T-shirt, about to rejoin the real world himself.

Green has been hospitalized a few days longer than Alpert. A 36-year-old electrical worker from New Mexico, he was almost electrocuted May 18 in a Long Beach power-line accident.

Now here he is, being sprung two days ahead of her, a double amputee with a life-affirming smile.

“It just feels great to be alive,” he says.

As with his neighbor a room away, for weeks Green’s lifeline was hanging by a thread.

Now he’s regained much of his strength, though not all of his memory. Green recalls nothing of the accident.

“He remembers the helicopter,” says Green’s fiancee, Lorraine Helmick, seated beside him before his discharge Monday. “Don’t you?”

“I do have a memory of being up in the air,” he says, referring to a medical airlift, “but I can’t remember a thing about being in Long Beach. I don’t even remember doing the job.”

Medical expenses have been defrayed by his electrical workers union, and Green is also grateful to local members who took up donations. The company for which he was working at the time of the accident made some overtures but hasn’t followed through with much in the way of help, according to Green’s fiancee.

At the highly regarded Casa Colina rehab facility in Pomona, he will undergo therapy and be fitted for prosthetic limbs, while maintaining a hope to resume his livelihood in some fashion. He also would like to speak with young apprentices and advise them on the perils of the business.

“Terry is a simple man, and by that I mean what he needs in life in order to feel fulfilled,” Helmick says. “All he ever wanted was to work in the trade that he was so proud to be a part of, have a couple of cocktails at the end of a hard day and be loved and love someone. Terry had all of that when his accident occurred.

“This accident has changed nothing. Our world doesn’t end as a result of the loss of his arms.”

Meantime, they will miss the friendly woman from the next room, with whom Terry sometimes traded video movies.

Because of her status as a television reporter, Alpert inspired the donation of more than 400 pints of blood. “The terrible thing that happened to her,” Helmick says, “turned out to be a blessing for us. Terry got a lot of that blood. Adrienne Alpert is one of the reasons he’s alive.”

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Life goes on for Alpert as well. For her emergence into sunlight today, she’s cut her hair short. She isn’t home free yet, but she’s getting there.

And work?

“Hey, I don’t even know if they’d want me back,” she says, gesturing toward her ravaged torso. “But yes, I’d love if that could happen.”

Alpert and an engineer on May 22 were inside a TV van when its antenna came too close to a power line. The second woman, Heather Mckenzie, was not severely hurt but has not worked since.

In time, Alpert will be reliving that experience, in interviews or perhaps in litigation. For the moment, though, just living is enough.

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Mike Downey’s column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Write to: L.A. Times, 202 W. 1st St., Los Angeles, CA 90012. E-mail: mike.downey@latimes.com