PORTLAND, Ore. — In the new year, Jennifer Johnson-Ramos hopes her son won’t have to face the multitude of surgeries he had in 2010.
Johnson-Ramos, her son, George Johnson, and her daughter, Alysha Johnson, are all native to Port Angeles but moved to Portland, Ore., after the children and a friend were hit by a car while crossing a street at a crosswalk while visiting their father there.
Alysha, now 11, suffered minor injuries in the Dec. 20, 2009, wreck, but George, now 15, was thrown into the windshield and has undergone so many surgeries that the family has lost count.
Both Alysha and George attended the Lower Elwha Klallam Headstart and Hamilton Elementary School until they moved to Portland to be closer to the medical specialists caring for George.
Johnson-Ramos and the children were visiting her husband and their father, Eleazar Ramos, when the children were hit. He had found work in the Portland area, so the family was splitting time between the Port Angeles and Oregon homes.
“They were going to get some ingredient we were missing for cookies — I don’t even remember what it was — when it happened,” Johnson-Ramos said.
The three children were walking on a crosswalk on the Tualatin Valley Highway in Aloha, Ore., near Portland.
Vehicles in three out of the four lanes of traffic stopped, according to reports by KGW-TV news at the time of the wreck.
Cecilio Venegas of Gresham, Ore., moved out of his lane of traffic to pass the other cars as the children were crossing, and his Ford Taurus struck all three of them, KGW reported.
He was cited for passing a stopped vehicle in a crosswalk.
As a result of the wreck, the Oregon Transportation Commission added a pedestrian-activated traffic signal at the crosswalk in 2011, KATU-TV News reported.
Construction of the signal, originally planned for 2012, was moved up after the wreck.
Because the crosswalk is not at an intersection, there is no traffic light in that area.
KATU reported that that area of the highway is in Oregon state’s top 5 percent for frequency of reported crashes.
“George was in [the intensive care unit] for 10 days,” Johnson-Ramos said.
Alysha was kept overnight and released with minor injuries.
Because Venegas had only limited liability insurance and the children are insured through Oregon’s state insurance program, the family has racked up medical bills in the thousands, Johnson-Ramos said.
“The bills are still coming in,” she said.
But beyond the bills for the life-saving surgeries, she has also been trying to find support for two surgeries that are considered cosmetic, so they won’t be covered at all.
Costing in the tens of thousands — but she doesn’t know exactly how much — she hopes to one day help her son have dental work for his teeth, which were chipped during the wreck, and a facial surgery for some fractures in his skull, she said.
“He is 15, and he is self-conscious about it,” she said.
“But they are not considered necessary, so they won’t be paid for at all.”
The facial surgery would correct a fracture just above his eyebrow, she said.
The family had purchased a new car just two days before the wreck and had not yet signed the papers on the insurance, she said.
“It was really, really bad timing because we found out that even though our car wasn’t involved, that if we had had insurance, our insurance would have helped out, too,” she said.
Because of the multitude of surgeries — not to mention the cast he has worn on his left arm for nearly the whole year — George was not able to play sports this year, but he did help coach younger-age teams.
“He was really glad that he got to do that,” Johnson-Ramos said.
Johnson-Ramos has set up an account at Wells Fargo under her son’s name, George Johnson. Any branch of the bank can accept donations in his name.