Schools rally to the rescue

Jane Silverstein didn’t know Kenza Kadmiry and hadn’t heard about the high school senior’s tragedy. Neither did most of the two dozen other parents at the Cleveland High magnet school’s monthly meeting.

But when Mike Kadmiry took the mike and told them about his daughter -- the accident that left her paralyzed, the months his family spent beside her hospital bed, the experimental treatment that might help her walk again -- the tears flowed and the checkbooks came out.

By the meeting’s end, “there was not a dry eye in the house,” Silverstein recalled. And they had collected $3,000.

Kadmiry was grateful and amazed. But it was what came next that refueled his exhausted family.

In the six weeks since, those parents have shared Kenza’s story with their church groups and yoga classes, in the office and the beauty salon, while they were buying groceries and pumping gas. They scoured the Internet for treatment options. Some called in chits from high-powered friends.

“All these women, doing things I can’t imagine anybody -- even my family -- doing,” Kadmiry told me. “Every day, every week, they call, they e-mail, they send me literature. They have doctors call me from all over the world.

“It is shocking to me. But in a very good way. She is not their daughter. . . . But they say, ‘We will not stop. We will do whatever you need.’ Like we are their own family.”

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In an era when extended families are scattered, neighbors hardly know one another and churches tend toward the large and impersonal, school is the new community.

When Donna Ruiz’s 35-year-old husband, Mauricio, died in April, Fullbright Avenue Elementary raised $1,700 selling cupcakes and pizza at its open house to help the family with living expenses. When Taft High freshman Jennifer Perla was killed in a car accident on her way to the prom last weekend, the school collected more than $5,000 to help pay for her funeral.

But it was not just the money these families mentioned when I called to ask about their tragedies.

For the Perla family, it was the sense that so many cared: The assistant principal who showed up in her prom dress at the emergency room. The students who spent the weekend making pink-ribbon pins to sell on campus. The teachers who helped make a video to show at her funeral.

“Our house has been full of people,” said Mike Perla, Jennifer’s older brother. “Even her middle school teachers came. People brought photos, videos, posters. . . . To see all these pictures of her dancing, so happy. That’s been good for us. And we’re so grateful for the things they’ve done for my sister.”

Jennifer’s prom-night death was a shock to the school’s psyche, said Assistant Principal Debra Bryant.

“We couldn’t fathom what we were hearing at first,” she said. “Then everybody just rallied together -- kids, teachers, staff, spouses, friends. . . . There was no big corporate help or anything. Everybody just did what they could to help the family get through this.”

When Ruiz was widowed unexpectedly, her first call was to her children’s Canoga Park elementary school.

“I didn’t know what to do,” she told me. “I needed some help, to know how to tell my kids that their dad had passed away.”

Within 10 minutes, a grief counselor had called and was walking her through the process.

She and her husband were raising seven children, including three they adopted from her sister. She has one in almost every grade at Fullbright, and two who have graduated.

“The teachers came over and we had rosaries for my husband. The parents, they brought me food for the kids,” Ruiz said. “The teacher my junior high son had in pre-K, she is still always there when I need someone to talk to. The school has done that for me, when I needed them most.”

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When I met Kenza at the family’s cramped North Hollywood apartment -- where the living room furniture has been shoved into corners to accommodate her wheelchair and hospital bed -- she told me how lucky she feels to have friends who have kept her spirits up since that night in February when she was struck by a car while walking her bike in a Sherman Oaks crosswalk.

During her three months in hospitals, her room was constantly crowded with buddies, who played the guitar and sang with her, smuggled in sushi, polished her nails, shared stories from their peace rallies and details of their fundraisers.

But she didn’t know about the adults until the day she got a four-hour pass from the hospital.

“I’d been in the hospital for two months and I was in such a hurry to get out,” she recalled. “But my dad kept me waiting while he was down in the lobby.” When he finally came and wheeled her down, she said, “there was this big crowd of women having a meeting about me.”

“Random mothers,” her friend Courtney Rawlings called them when they began showing up at the teen’s fundraising sessions. “No one even knew Kenza, but they all wanted to help. It was so cool. We’d never seen anything like it.”

They expected the kids to rally around Kenza, who was a standout at the humanities magnet and will graduate with her class this month. “This really brought all the different groups at school together,” said senior Nick Rubino, “because everyone loved her, if they’d even met her once.”

Now parents, students and teachers are trying to raise $20,000 to help pay treatment bills and living expenses. Kenza has a 9-year-old brother with Down’s syndrome, and her father has stopped working as a flooring installer.

“I’m not leaving my daughter’s side,” Mike Kadmiry said. “I want Kenza to walk again.”

But the mothers realize this is about more than money. “What we’re giving him, in the middle of this nightmare, is a place to vent when he’s frustrated, angry, confused, afraid,” Silverstein said. “What’s most important is giving hope.”

And their efforts have united the parents as well. They used to grumble about “SAT scores and college tours and AP exams,” Silverstein said. “Now we look at our kids and count our blessings.”

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sandy.banks@latimes.com

A “comedy night” fundraiser for Kenza, hosted by Rainn Wilson, co-star of the television show “The Office,” will be held at 7 p.m. Monday at Cleveland High in Reseda. Tickets are available for $15 at the door. The Kenza Kadmiry Fund has been set up for donations at Bank of America, 13700 Riverside Drive, Sherman Oaks, CA 91423.