Rescuers Still There for Maimed 9-Year-Old

The faces of her rescuers are seared in the memory of 9-year-old Genesis Avila.

On a Friday afternoon in June, Genesis was waiting for her mother in her aunt’s butcher shop in South-Central Los Angeles when she became curious.

Her aunt, who was looking after her that day, had warned her repeatedly to stay away from the meat grinder. But, Genesis said later, she decided she could be helpful and make hamburger.

When her aunt wasn’t looking, Genesis climbed on a bench and put meat into the chute. It didn’t go down, so she tried to push it in with her hand. The machine grabbed her arm.

She remembers screaming and a platoon of firefighters descending on the scene.

There was the tall, blond, brown-eyed one “with the pokey nose.” He gave her morphine for the pain and fed her oxygen with a “masky thingie.” There was the bald one who told her to be calm, not to cry, and who laid her on the ambulance bed.

And there was the firefighter who told her in Spanish as they sped to the hospital that everything would be OK.

“He was nice, and he was cute.

“They were all around me. They were all running around to help me.”

Genesis lost her arm below the elbow that afternoon two months ago.

The fourth-grader who had shagged balls in the outfield for her softball team, endured shin kicks for her soccer team and knocked pins for a bowling team lay in a hospital for 10 days.

The firefighters who had rescued her visited several times, bringing books and a stuffed Dalmatian named Lucky.

“You’re a very strong girl, and lucky too,” she remembers one firefighter told her. Among the frequent visitors was fire Capt. Marc Segal, 49, who saw the stress in Genesis’ mother. Maria Zepeda, 30, who is single, has an autistic son, a 7-month-old girl and no insurance. She worried about her daughter’s recovery and about her future--even if Genesis is determined to be upbeat.

Weeks later, at home in Artesia, Genesis entertained her mother and a visitor, pretending to be a snake charmer and swaying her arms as she hummed. She showed her mom she could scratch her head with the bandaged arm.

“I am more worried about her future than she would be,” Zepeda said. “She’s just a child. She doesn’t know what’s coming.... What kind of future will it be?

“I know she’s trying to cheer everybody up, and she hates to see me cry, but I feel bad for my baby.”

Segal and the rest of the South-Central-based firefighters wanted to help.

“I decided to make some calls,” Segal said. He contacted Shriners Hospital in Los Angeles, which agreed to accept Genesis into its Child Amputee Prosthetic Program. The medical care, counseling and physical therapy will be free and will last until Genesis turns 18, said Cecilia Barrios, director of patient care services.

Genesis “can’t wait to get her hand,” her mother said, although she worries how it will look, that it will be too mechanical.

“I thought it was going to be like a robot hand,” Genesis said.

Once, she asked: “Mom, am I going to have nails I can paint in my new hand like in the other one?”

Dr. Yoshio Setoguchi, medical director of Shriners’ child amputee clinic, said that while some children grieve over the loss of a limb, others act with a kind of bravado, even joking about it. But when the prosthesis is fitted “and it doesn’t look anything like what they were hoping for, reality sets in,” he said, emphasizing the importance of counseling.

“Within reason, we try to make a child believe they can live a normal, enjoyable, fruitful life and have the same aspirations any other child would have,” Setoguchi said.

Genesis remains frustrated that she can’t hang from her favorite monkey bars at the park. Or hold her baby sister very well. She cries at night from the pain. And she worries about going back to school “because kids make fun of handicapped kids,” she said.

But Genesis is trying to learn to do things with her left hand. She can dress herself and maneuver her bike deftly, a point of pride.

“She has a lot of inner strength,” Zepeda said. “ I guess she’s trying to make herself, not just others, feel better. I just hope she hasn’t built up expectations about her hand. But she’s strong.”

Firefighters generally try not to become emotionally involved with victims, Segal said, because cases that end badly could sap morale. But they are rooting for Genesis.

“She’s a really beautiful child, an independent thinker,” he said. “From what I’ve seen, she seems to be settled in for the long haul to overcome this.”