San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
LA JOLLA WOMAN THANKS THOSE WHO RESCUED HER IN SURF
Bearing cookies and smiles, Margie Lord walked into San Diego Fire Station 9 on Ardath Lane in La Jolla on Wednesday to thank the lifeguards and paramedics who she says are the reason she can walk at all.
Lord also presented a check for $4,700 to the San Diego Fire Rescue Foundation — money raised by her friends to be split among the stations responsible for her rescue after a surfing accident off La Jolla.
About a dozen employees of the San Diego Fire-rescue Department gathered to hear Lord’s account of her recovery and respond to her questions about her accident and rescue — a day she doesn’t remember much about.
On Jan. 10, Lord, a longtime La Jolla resident and Realtor who has been surfing for 20 years, rode the “last wave in” of her usual surfing session just north of Scripps Pier at La Jolla Shores.
It was low tide, and Lord said the shallow water “pushed me over the front of the nose of the board and I hit head first in about two feet of water.”
“I knew immediately something very serious had happened,” Lord said; she wasn’t able to walk or drag herself out of the water.
She waved to another surfer for help, and that person called another to help him get Lord out of the water and help her lie down.
“I was in an extreme amount of pain,” Lord said.
One of the surfers alerted Ashleigh Palinkas, diving program technician at Scripps Dive Locker, to call 911. Lifeguards from a tower further south at The Shores arrived in their truck to immobilize Lord and transfer her to a waiting ambulance.
“We knew it was serious right away,” lifeguard Sgt. John Maher said.
Paramedics took Lord to Scripps Memorial Hospital La Jolla, where she received MRI and CT scans and soon went into surgery.
“She broke numerous vertebrae,” said her husband, Tom Lord.
The surgeon opened Margie’s trapezius muscle to fuse together five vertebrae in her neck and back with eight screws.
She was in the hospital just under a week and is waiting to start physical therapy so she can resume upperbody exercises and driving.
“I can’t really move my neck,” Margie said, and she still has some minor paralysis in her right hand.
She hasn’t been back on a surfboard yet, though she said that’s coming: “I want to get back in the water, obviously.”
In late January, she received a large floral bouquet from about 20 friends dating to her elementary school years who had learned about her accident on social media.
Along with the flowers, Margie learned her friends had raised $4,700 for the local lifeguards and Fire Station 9.
In coordinating the donation with San Diego Fire Rescue Foundation Executive Director Wendy Robinson, Margie asked for help in arranging a time to thank those who helped her.