To the End, She Put Her Students First

WOODLAND HILLS —  Twenty-three-year-old Amiee Johnson was so dedicated to her fifth-grade students at Serrania Avenue Elementary School that she delayed a crucial surgery to be with them on back-to-school night last month.

Wednesday night, her students mourned her death, the end to a promising career for one of the Woodland Hills school’s brightest talents.

“She was young and nice,” said Sam Fathi, 11, after a memorial service at Forest Lawn in the Hollywood Hills. “I really loved her.”

More than 150 mourners--including childhood friends, teachers and principals--gathered in the cemetery’s Church of the Hills to recall Johnson’s thirst for life, her love of learning and her unyielding self-confidence.

One at a time, speakers stepped up to a podium flanked by 23 candles, a bouquet of lavender roses--in honor of her favorite color--a picture of Johnson, and the marble urn with three gold dolphins that will hold her ashes. She is to be cremated Friday.

“You brought such excitement, enthusiasm, wonderment and whole array of experiences that I could never have imagined,” said Reisa Aran, who supervised Johnson when she was a teaching assistant at Burton Elementary in Panorama City.

Aran recalled how Johnson had turned her classroom into a virtual rain forest, to the envy of other teachers at Burton.

“How sorry I feel for that faculty [at Serrania] to not have had the chance to know the Amiee I knew, the beautiful, talented Amiee who ultimately became Amiee the teacher,” Aran said.

Johnson, who grew up in Pacoima and died Nov. 12 at UCLA Medical Center, suffered from lupoid auto immune liver disease, in which the liver--the body’s largest organ--attacks itself, causing cirrhosis and weakening other organs such as the gall bladder.

She was diagnosed at age 5, and the disease wreaked havoc with her life. Steroid pills intended to suppress the disease left her tired and nauseated and produced razor stubble on her smooth face. She cried over the facial hair and endured weekly electrolysis treatments to remove it.

She had to forgo jet skiing, and on holidays and at weddings, when the rest of the family toasted with champagne, Johnson settled for soda.

Yet despite the limitations and pain, Johnson’s disease failed to weaken her spirit.

As an anthropology major at UCLA, she studied Swahili and African American studies, dreamed of traveling to Africa and still found time to volunteer at Haddon Elementary School in Pacoima, where she painted two murals.

As a novice teacher at Serrania, she threw herself into the job--giving up her lunch hours and breaks to help students with their schoolwork. Even when she became gravely ill, she refused to stay away from her school.

Two days before back-to-school night last month, Johnson passed out at a Westwood restaurant. She was rushed to UCLA Medical Center but refused to stay, over the objections of her parents and doctors, who wanted to remove her damaged gall bladder.

“She said, ‘I’m not staying here,’ ” recalled her mother, Cathie Johnson, 45, a veteran teacher at Haddon. “She lied about her pain so she could be at her school.”

Amiee Johnson signed a waiver relieving the hospital of responsibility and returned to school the next day--Oct. 7, her 23rd birthday.

She taught part of the day and enjoyed a surprise party given by her students at recess, even though she couldn’t eat the cake because she felt so ill. She returned that evening to greet parents for back-to-school night.

Other teachers could see that Johnson was in pain.

“I saw her holding her stomach,” recalled Vicki Hodge, a fifth-grade instructor. “I said, ‘Are you OK? Have you seen a doctor?’

“She said, ‘Vicki, I have back-to-school night and about five other things to do. How would I find the time to go to the doctor?’ ”

All along, Johnson’s doctors had objected to her returning to work. Johnson’s mother promised to bring her for a checkup. They arrived about 7 a.m., and soon after, Johnson was rushed to emergency surgery at Huntington Memorial Medical Center in Pasadena.

Gangrene had invaded her gall bladder.

Johnson’s recovery proceeded on pace for a week, and she had even spoken of returning to school for Halloween. Then she passed out in her mother’s arms in the hospital. On Oct. 15, doctors operated again and found a gallstone in a bile duct.

But the second surgery proved too hard on Johnson’s body. Her already weakened liver began to shut down. She began to shake. Her eyes grew yellow. Doctors stepped up her blood transfusions. All the while, Johnson kept telling her mother that she wanted to return home. And that is precisely what she did one Saturday morning--asking her mother to get her a soda, grabbing the keys to the family’s black Toyota Camry, removing her IV and driving 35 miles in her hospital gown home to Santa Clarita.

There she replaced the gown with her own black-and-white striped house dress, played with the cats, and relaxed on the couch and her bed before telling her father, “I guess I have to go back there.”

Soon after, Johnson was transferred back to UCLA Medical Center to be evaluated for a liver transplant. As doctors reviewed her case, her condition continued to deteriorate. She could barely walk. She couldn’t hold a pen. “She said, ‘I’m never going home,’ ” recalled her mother. “I said, ‘Yes, you are.’ ”

Then came the news: A liver had arrived. Euphoric, Johnson told her mother to call Serrania. “Tell them I’m getting my liver and I’m going to be back.”

But the transplant would never occur. Johnson was prepped for surgery, anesthesia was administered, but she died on the operating table before the surgeons could begin their work.

Doctors offered their own antiseptic explanation: A blood clot may have lodged in Johnson’s lung. Her mother, who isn’t sure whether skipping back-to-school night would have saved her daughter, has another explanation: “I think she was just tired of all that pain. I think she just wanted to go home.”

In Room 5 at Serrania, Johnson’s presence still shrouds the walls she adorned with her artwork. On one bulletin board is a colorful montage titled “What’s In a Name?” with student autobiographies and pieces of yarn she strung from their essays to points on a map of the world.

On a chalkboard, one student has scrawled a message only a child could pen: “Come back to life Miss Johnson, Please!”