Reporter: Ted Vollmer

"…Eleven persons were injured, at least one critically… when a San Diego fire truck…collided with a pickup truck at a University City intersection… . The other five persons were taken to Scripps Memorial Hospital where one 16-year-old girl was in critical condition with multiple injuries… ." – News item, Oct. 20, 1980

Monica Michele Ginger has no recollection of the fleeting moment when she was nearly crushed in that Sunday afternoon collision at La Jolla Village Drive and Genesee Avenue nearly three years ago.

In fact, Monica has extreme difficulty recalling events that may have occurred only moments ago.

That is not surprising, considering that one doctor had virtually given up any hope that the teenager ever would regain consciousness during two months she lay in a coma. At one point the doctor had told Monica’s mother that on at least six different occasions he had felt Monica was clinically dead.

Tuesday, a smiling Monica posed for pictures with her mother at a picnic for the San Diego Head Injury Foundation – a support group for families like the Gingers affected by a serious accident. There were no outward signs that the pretty young woman, who occasionally during the photo session joked with her mother, had once been on the brink of death.

She also apparently was only vaguely aware that her inward fight for life and independence had been given a significant boost this week by the City of San Diego’s agreement to make a $1.5 million personal injury settlement with the Ginger family. The money will help Monica find the sophisticated brain rehabilitation her parents feel she needs.

The out-of-court settlement, tentatively reached last month, was approved Monday by the City Council – two weeks after the case was scheduled to go to trial in San Diego Superior Court. It was believed to be the largest personal injury settlement ever made by the city.

Attorney David S. Casey Jr., who represented the Gingers, said the money will be used by Monica’s parents, Lydia and Michael Ginger, to find a "top-notch" rehabilitation center to help Monica redevelop the memory and judgment skills that were severely damaged in the 1980 accident.

"The goal ultimately is to try to get her back to a state of independence," Casey said. "She cannot carry on a conversation with any complexity. You can’t leave her alone."

Goal Is Independence

Lydia Ginger has no illusions that her daughter will ever become completely normal, but she refuses to abandon hope that Monica will find the limited amount of independence that she craves.

"She’d like to have an apartment of her own; she’d like to work," Ginger said.

That there is even that kind of future possible for Monica would have taxed the credibility of most doctors when Monica was rushed to Scripps Hospital after the University City accident.

According to Casey, Monica was in the passenger seat of a pickup as it was traveling at about 45 miles per hour west on La Jolla Village Drive on the afternoon of Oct. 19, 1980. Three children were riding in the bed of the pickup.

The light was green as the pickup approached the intersection. Suddenly, a city fire truck, with its lights flashing and siren sounding, entered the intersection after briefly slowing down to check for oncoming traffic. The firefighters were responding to a mobile home blaze in Poway.

Casey said a blind spot in the road blocked the driver’s view of the pickup, which slammed into the fire truck. In all, 11 people, including four firefighters, were injured. Monica was the most seriously hurt.

For 71 days, Monica lay in a coma, kept alive, according to her mother, by "all sorts of tubes leading everywhere.’ Later, Ginger said, a doctor at Children’s Hospital confided the bleak prognosis that her daughter would not awaken.

Eventually, Monica’s eyes opened, but she was either unwilling or unable to adjust to her traumatic situation.

"She didn’t eat for a year. She didn’t talk for a year," Ginger said. "She wanted to die."

Gradually, however, with the aid of doctors and the unfaltering support of her parents, Monica’s sense of self-esteem began to return.

"You tend to learn to block out the past, the bad parts, as you go along because the tears are very close to the surface," Ginger said of the family’s ordeal. "You take so much joy in any little progress.

"Here you are with a perfectly normal child who is happy and intelligent one day, and you’re looking at a broken doll the next."

Monica has been undergoing some rehabilitation locally and has even taken some special education classes at Poway High School, where she was in her junior year at the time of the accident. Her mother said that, although Monica is making progress, her occasional memory lapses have at times caused her to get lost at school.

The settlement was reached after six conferences involving the city’s attorneys, Casey and Superior Court Judge Gilbert Harelson. Casey based the personal injury suit – which originally had sought $5 million – on California law and the San Diego Fire Department’s own code requiring fire trucks to proceed through red lights only with "extreme caution."

Since the accident, the Fire Department has equipped all of its emergency vehicles with a device called an "opticom" that permits a truck responding to an emergency to trigger an intersection’s red light to green if necessary upon approach. At the time of the accident involving Monica, only a half-dozen trucks had been equipped with the device.

Monica’s mother credited a number of doctors for helping her daughter reach the point she has in her rehabilitation. Among those singled out for praise were Drs. Thomas Waltz and Brad Peterson of Children’s Hospital, neurologist Dr. David Paa, psychologist Dr. Jean Ross, neuropsychologist Dr. Ronald Ruff and Dr. Harold Sterling, a rehabilitationist.