A Date With Destiny on the Mountain

WOLF CREEK, Colo. —  The car hurtled through the air and into the moonlit night, soaring over the mountain ridge, high above the ravine.

For a moment, it seemed suspended in air. Then the white Ford LTD plunged down the mountain, crashing from boulder to boulder, tossed about like a battered tin can as it was swallowed by the rocks and the snow and the dark.

Inside, three children screamed in terror. Their mother gripped the wheel.

In the front passenger seat, Roxanna Vega clutched the little boy in one hand and her puppy in the other.

She doesn’t remember crying out. She doesn’t remember fear. She just remembers the sickening screech of metal against rock, and one overwhelming sensation as she clung to the child: that at 16 she wasn’t ready to die. Not now. Not on this remote mountain pass, not without doing everything in her power to save these children and herself.

Roxanna tried to shield the boy as the car crashed to a halt, but she lost her grip. Glass and ice and rocks shattered all around.

Then everything went black.

*

“Roxy, wake up. Roxy, I’m scared.”

Roxanna blinked, trying to adjust to the dark, the cold, the sticky mess of blood on her face and the pains shooting through her back and legs and arm. She had no idea where she was or how long she had been lying there.

Four-year-old Christopher was crying, tugging her jacket, stumbling around in the snow.

“Pick me up, Roxy,” he wailed. “I’m cold. I don’t have any shoes.”

It took a moment to remember the crash. It took a moment to remember her horror as she realized what was happening seconds before they went over the edge. And it took every ounce of strength not to simply close her eyes and lie in the snow and forget everything.

Later, doctors would marvel that she didn’t simply die then. Her injuries were massive: broken back, broken left ankle and broken left arm.

Christopher’s cries kept her from drifting off.

“Don’t cry, Tofer,” she whispered. “It’s OK. Roxy’s here.”

The moon cast a dusky glow against the snow, and she could vaguely make out shapes, the vast silhouette of the mountain above, dark clumps of trees and rocks, the hulk of the crashed car a few feet away.

It was sunk in the snow, half tilted onto the passenger side, but still upright. The front was crushed. All the windows, with the exception of the rear, had been blown out. Inside, Roxanna could hear 8-year-old Carlos whimpering and 3-year-old Kayla crying.

Thank God, she thought. At least they’re alive.

About 15 feet from the car, she could make out another silhouette, of a huge boulder and of someone pinned underneath. She heard a soft moaning.

“Ally!” Roxanna cried, stumbling toward the sound.

“Ally!”

Desperately, Roxanna tried to push the boulder, but it wouldn’t budge. She reached for Alison’s hands, but her cousin screamed in agony, pushing her away.

Roxanna didn’t have time to say goodbye or even pause to pray.

She had to focus on the children. They mustn’t see their mom like this, she thought, groping her way back to the car.

Christopher was still sobbing, so she picked him up and bundled him into the front seat, fishing a blanket from the back and wrapping it around him. Kayla had grown silent. Carlos was whimpering.

“I’m down here, Roxy,” he said, his voice shaking, his brown eyes staring from under the crushed steering wheel. “My feet are stuck.”

Kayla was lying almost on top of him, in her yellow turtleneck and pink pants, face pressed into the dashboard. She didn’t seem to be moving.

“Why did Mommy do it?” Carlos asked.

“I don’t know,” was all Roxanna could say.

“How will we get out of here?” Carlos asked.

“I don’t know, Bubba; Roxy will find a way.”

But she wondered, how could they ever survive the night in this wilderness, this cold?

*

It had started as the first big adventure of the New Year, a couple of days away with the kids, an escape of sorts -- Alison Mitchell from problems in her marriage, Roxanna from the stifling smallness of her hometown.

Despite an 11-year difference in age, the two were more like sisters than cousins, constantly back and forth to each other’s houses although they lived 55 miles apart, Alison in the city of Alamosa and Roxanna in the hamlet of Saguache.

They spent summers together and holidays. Alison, 27, blond and down-to-earth, ever the doting mom. Roxanna the tongue-pierced rebel, with her jet-black hair, dark expressive eyes, and her brooding poems about life and love.

Roxanna confided in Alison about boyfriends and school. Alison confided in Roxanna about strains in her marriage -- problems over money, the stress of juggling her job as a Head Start teacher and three small children, the depression that led her to take medication and seek counseling.

And so, after a fight with her husband, Chad, on New Year’s Eve, it was natural that Alison called Roxanna. And when Alison decided to take off for a few days to visit a friend across the mountains in New Mexico, it was natural that Roxanna go too.

The fight had been bad. The police had been called and Chad had been jailed. A restraining order now prevented him from going near his wife.

Roxanna had never seen Alison so upset, so questioning of life, marriage and motherhood. A few days away would be good for everyone.

And that is how they ended up on Wolf Creek Pass, bouncing along in the dark with the kids -- giggly towheaded Kayla with her diamond heart earrings, happy-go-lucky Christopher with his impish smile and Carlos, the serious one.

The kids had kicked off their shoes and clambered into the front, and were squashed between Alison and Roxanna, singing along to Britney Spears, petting the puppy. In the cozy chaos of the car, it seemed that Alison had left her fears behind.

They had just passed the ski resort and were starting their descent, tearing down the mountain at 50 mph. Suddenly, Alison veered to the left, crossing the traffic lane, accelerating, heading straight for the cliff.

In a flash, Roxanna understood.

Alison had picked her place to leave this world. And she was taking the people she most loved with her.

*

Wolf Creek Pass is a desolate place, where a twisting mountain road rises to almost 11,000 feet before descending in a series of hairpin turns to the San Juan River. The beauty is breathtaking, especially in winter, when the icy peaks seem to stretch forever, and life itself seems to hang on the edge of the sheer granite drop to the canyon.

The mountain has many deadly stories, locals say -- including suicides.

The night passed in a blur of pain and cold and dark. The boys dozed fitfully, every now and then complaining about the cold and crying for their mother. Roxanna tried to comfort them, tried to pray.

At one point, she thought that she heard a truck far above. She thought that she saw headlights. Dragging herself through one of the window spaces, she peered up the slopes. “Help,” she shouted. “Please help us. Down here.” But her cries were swallowed by the night.

By dawn, Roxanna was sure.

No one was ever going to find them.

Roxanna prides herself on her toughness. Among her friends, she is known as the one who never cries, never shows emotion whether she is getting her bellybutton pierced or her heart broken.

She knew that she was badly injured. It seemed like her whole left side was broken, and the pain in her back was excruciating. Carlos was hurt too -- his face swollen and bruised, his legs trapped. She wondered about Kayla, but didn’t dare touch her.

Roxanna was wearing a tank top, thin black jacket and leggings. On her feet were clunky boots with 3-inch heels. She stared at the cliff of ice and rock. How could she possibly drag her battered body up there?

How could she not?

She told the children to stay in the car, to huddle together for warmth, not to look out -- for any reason. She didn’t want them seeing their mother’s contorted body a short distance away.

But Roxanna could only protect them so much.

“Where’s Mommy?” Carlos asked. From his wedge beneath the steering wheel, he couldn’t see anything except Kayla’s face above him.

“Momma’s dead,” Christopher replied.

Roxanna had no more words of comfort as she crawled out of the car.

*

Roxanna’s left foot buckled and her left arm wouldn’t work either. So she leaned on her right side and, using her one good hand, started hauling herself up the rocks, dragging her bad side behind her.

She climbed a few feet this way, half-crawling, half-clawing at the rock. It hurt to breathe. At 24 degrees, the air was so cold it stung her lungs. But she knew if she dwelt on the pain, it would kill her.

“Just keep moving,” she told herself. “You have to keep moving.”

She dragged herself up another few feet, pausing to catch her breath. Then another few feet. And a few more.

Every now and then, the cliff would give way and send her sliding back down, ice-coated rocks jabbing her back like razor blades.

Hang in there, Roxy, said the voice in her head.

She could hear the rumble of occasional trucks 160 feet above. Just keep climbing, she told herself. You can do this.

But her body was closing down; she could feel it. Her legs had grown numb, and she no longer had any feeling in her feet.

Come on, Roxy. Not too much longer.

*

A couple from Texas found her, bloodied and ragged, stumbling along the road as though in a trance. It was about 8:30 a.m., and they were driving to the ski resort.

Roxanna turned to them, blood and dirt streaming down her face.

“Our car went off the cliff last night,” she said. “Please help my cousins. They’re still down there.”

Peering over the edge, Dan Bentley gasped. He could see the car far below, although there was no sign of movement. How on earth had this injured girl in her flimsy clothes and high-heeled boots climbed all that way?

He began edging down the slope. His wife flagged down some other cars and asked the drivers to get help. Then she turned to Roxanna, covering her with a blanket in the front seat, asking question after question, trying to keep her awake, trying to get information before the girl passed out.

“I was afraid that we were going to lose her,” Susan Bentley said later.

Roxanna answered in a monotone, eyes closed, body shuddering.

Her mind was numb except for one thought.

“Do you know?” she whispered. “Did Kayla make it?”

At the bottom of the cliff, little Carlos was asking Dan Bentley the same question.

“Your sister is in heaven,” Bentley said, placing a pillow over the girl’s head.

“You don’t need to worry about her anymore.”

It took more than an hour for rescuers to rappel down the cliff and winch Carlos free. Roxanna lay in the Bentleys’ car. When she was finally airlifted off Wolf Creek Pass in a helicopter with Carlos, rescuers cheered.

Carlos broke his jaw; his brother escaped with cuts. The puppy died.

But many wondered: Would the young woman who had defied all the odds to save two little boys survive herself?

*

“Pain is something that we all go through, it could be physical pain or emotional pain, but it’s still pain,” Roxanna wrote a few weeks after the crash. “Some people try to rush you into getting over it. They say time is everything. But time isn’t everything; it’s what you accomplish or what you do during that time.”

Doctors say what Roxanna accomplished in 12 hours on the mountain on Jan. 2 was miraculous. Investigators and rescuers call her a heroine.

Roxanna shrugs off the label, saying she just did what she had to. A month later, Roxanna wears a back brace. She has had two steel pins inserted into her left leg. Her left arm was broken and chunks of skin were ripped off her body.

She knows that she couldn’t have saved Alison, whose death was ruled a suicide. She has nightmares about not being able to save Kayla. And she worries about what the boys saw and heard: Christopher told investigators that his mommy was taking them to see Jesus.

Roxanna believes that she had an appointment of sorts on the mountain that night -- with God, with fate. She sensed it even as the car was soaring over the edge. In those first few days in the hospital, she thought that she had lived purely in order to save the boys.

But lately she has wondered.

As her mother wheels her from one doctor’s office to another, as she fights blood clots and heart complications in the hospital, as she struggles with her memories of the horror on Wolf Creek Pass, Roxanna wonders. Maybe she was spared for some other reason. Maybe her life is destined for something even greater.