When Malina Richardson looks at her sister, Maya, she sees an angel.
And a life-saver, too.
Maya played a key role in keeping Malina alive when the sisters were in a car wreck last spring, but there are dozens of other angels, too: passersby, other family members, and a host of emergency care providers, therapists, hospital staff, friends, family and others who have helped Malina in her recovery over the past year.
They will be honored on April 28 at VCU Health’s 10th annual Shining Knight Gala, a celebration of the extensive network of professionals and lay people who work to save a trauma patient’s life.
The sisters were on the home stretch of the long drive home from Radford University to Ashland, eastbound on I-64 and in heavy traffic. It was a Thursday afternoon early last spring, and Malina was driving the Chevrolet Cavalier.
“We were trying to get around this 18-wheeler that was driving us crazy,” Malina says.
The truck was swerving, weaving in and out of traffic. Malina prepared to pass, but about midway around the truck, it came over into her lane and pushed her into an embankment. Airborne, the Cavalier soared as high as the treetops.
Maya unbuckled their seat belts, and the sisters were thrown out the back, which was fortunate for Malina, since the driver’s side was flattened and crushed upon impact. But the car rolled atop Malina. Again, Maya played a crucial role in saving her sister, somehow finding superhuman strength to life the car off her sister.
“People literally get supernatural powers, and that’s adrenaline," says Michel Aboutanos, part of the team that later treated the sisters at VCU Medical Center.
Oil and fluids burned Malina, but her sister was able to brush the fluids away from her eyes.
Malina had passed out, but briefly woke up to find that Maya was holding her in her arms.
“She was definitely my saving angel that day,” Malina says.
The girls were talking on the phone with their mother, Dona Richardson, when the wreck occurred. Dona says she was cautioning them to avoid the truck when she heard a small scream and a sound akin to the crumbling of industrial-strength tinfoil.
Instinct kicked in. Mom prayed, and also took a track coach’s authority, telling her youngest daughter, Alycia, to keep calm, keep her mind on the meet, and call Goochland Fire and Rescue as Dona tried to assess the situation.
She was Coach Richardson, and this was a meet where every point was needed for the win.
“We completely removed ourselves as mother and sister,” she says.
The truck kept going, possibly unaware that the wreck had occurred, but other motorists stopped to give assistance., including two registered nurses. Dona could hear everything and was yelling, trying to get someone to pick up the phone.
First, a man at the scene talked to her, then one of the nurses. Dona asked the nurse if she should have the girls taken to a certain hospital, but the nurse said Malina needed the trauma center at VCU.
Dona now had a sense of the extent of her daughter’s injuries, and that it was time for prayer and trust.
“You realize how small you are as a parent; you’re really small in this big world we live in,” she says. “And you really realize how big God is at that point in your life.”
EMTs arrived to find Malina with injuries including second- and third-degree burns, fractured ribs, and internal injuries.
The girls were taken to VCU Medical Center’s Level 1 trauma center. Aboutanos, the medical director of the trauma center, says his unit was in Delta response when Malina arrived: All hands on deck, from doctors and nurses to pharmacists and chaplains.
“A lot of people across the board underestimate what it takes to save one life,” he says.
Malina characterizes the care she received as phenomenal. She says she was told she’d be hospitalized three months, but she was discharged after a month. She was a track athlete and strong, but she was left unable to walk and wheelchair-bound from her injuries. She didn’t miss college graduation, though: Goochland emergency workers took her to and from the ceremony.
“As weak as I was, I couldn’t handle a ride in a regular car,” she says.
She was in a wheelchair two months, then started rehabilitation through VCU. She couldn’t walk to start with, but now, a year on, she’s able to run and jump, and her knee is more stable.
For Malina, who has participated in track events since sixth grade, the goal now is to run a 5K. “It’s a huge part of my life,” she says.
She also wants to return to school. She earned degrees in health education and psychology at Radford, but has applied to the nursing program at VCU. It’s a field she says she was always interested in, but was inspired to consider it as a profession because of the care she has received in her recuperation.
“I would really like just to give back,” she says.
Aboutanos is a guiding force behind the Shining Knight event. He sees it as a way to raise public awareness about what goes on in a Level 1 trauma center, and the number of people and resources needed to save just one life, to put one person back into society.
It starts with the first people on the scene, who find a person in distress, stops the bleeding and make the call for the rescue squad. Then there are the paramedics, the trauma unit team, the intensive care unit, then the regular hospital staff, rehabilitation specialists, friends and family.
“It’s not really [just] a survivor story, it’s about the people that made the person survive,” he says.
Shining Knight seeks to gather all those people in one place. Aboutanos notes that can be an emotional, powerful experience for the trauma patient whose life was saved.
“Most of the people, the main patient, are taken aback,” he says. “They had no idea how much it took.”
At VCU, about 100,000 people are seen each year in the emergency room. About 4,500 are admitted to the trauma unit. For the 10th-anniversary gala, they were looking for a special case to place in the spotlight, and Malina’s story exemplified the concept. People involved in her treatment and recovery will share the story of their part in the process, and Malina will have a chance to thank them all.
“It’s really a phenomenal story of life,” says Aboutanos. “It’s a celebration of life, of an amazing story, but also of every character in that story.”
The gala will be held at 6 p.m. on April 28 at the Greater Richmond Convention Center.
Money raised through the event goes into funding programs to prevent injuries that would land someone in a trauma center. Aboutanos cites one program, Project IMPACT (Impacting Minors Perceptions and Cognizant Attitudes Toward Trauma), which seeks to teach teens about the dangers of distracted driving. It reached about 5,000 high schoolers in the past year.
“The impact is bigger than just one night,” he says.
Malina at her graduation from Radford University