49ers come to student's aid

By Ana Tintocalis, Online Forty-Niner

Monday, November 16, 1998

Although the first game of the season was a loss for the Long Beach State men's basketball team on Saturday at The Pyramid, it was considered a victory for Sara Hougard and her family.

In front of 49er fans during half time, the athletic and nursing departments presented Hougard's family with a check for $1,200. The money will help pay the cost of reconstructive surgery and medical treatment for injuries she sustained after she was violently struck by a car two months ago.

Hougard, a nursing major at Cal State Long Beach, is now confined to a hospital bed where she slowly and painfully recovers from unimaginable wounds that initially left doctors questioning whether she would live again.

"The doctors were very pessimistic," said Hougard's best friend Tatiana Ramirez, a sociology major at CSULB. "By the time her parents got to the hospital, the doctor literally said, 'Look, I'm sorry but it's just a matter of time before she's dead.'"

Ramirez, Hougard's friend of 11 years, could not believe the news when she answered her phone the morning after Hougard's accident.

"My girlfriend called me from the hospital and said she had some bad news to tell me," Ramirez recalled. "After I hung up, I was in shock. I was running around my house and I kept on screaming, 'Oh my God, Sara got hit. Oh my God.'"

After rushing to the hospital, Ramirez was told by doctors that Hougard was unconscious and suffered a multitude of injuries, which included a broken back that was fractured in three places, punctured lungs and a left leg that was severed below the knee.

"I was just praying that she would make it," Ramirez said. "Her family and friends were all praying that she wasn't going to die, and she didn't."

Family and friends were told later that Hougard was hit by a car while she sat on a sidewalk outside her apartment in Costa Mesa waiting for a ride to work.

"Sara didn't even know what was coming," Ramirez said. "She was looking down at her purse when she was hit."

Known as the "Miracle Girl" by the hospital staff, Hougard gradually hurdled each physically debilitating injury and regained consciousness after a month.

"The doctors say she's a fighter," Ramirez said. "They say they've never seen a patient recover so rapidly after being in such a traumatic accident. It's amazing, she's amazing."

The check presented during Saturday's basketball game, which was devoted to Hougard, will help in Ramirez's tireless effort to raise money for her friend's medical expenses.

"What the athletic department is doing is just trying to inform our campus about what happened to one of their students," the athletic department's assistant marketing manager Steve Eidle said. "We're giving them a venue if they would like to help her out."

The CSULB athletic department first heard about Hougard's terrible accident from a staff member who knew the 27-year-old sophomore when she was a waitress at a restaurant in Santa Ana, Eidle said.

Members of the department were touched when they heard of Hougard's unbelievable story and soon joined forces with the nursing department to help ease her family's emotional struggles by raising money for the Sara Hougard Fund.

Both departments decided to donate 50 percent of each ticket they sold for the LBSU men's basketball home opener to help pay for Hougard's medical bills.

"It's overwhelming," Sara's mother Barbara Hougard said after she received the check. "I'm very grateful and I would just like to thank everyone who has opened their heart to Sara. She's looking forward to coming back to school."

It will take a maximum of two years for Hougard to fully recover from the accident, her doctors said.

Ramirez continues to find more ways to raise money involving the campus community.

"I'm always trying to think of more ideas to raise money," Ramirez said. "I just want people to know that there's a girl out there who's very loving and who is going through a very hard time."