| Steve Blow: Teenager's recovery in the wind 02/02/2001 By / The Dallas Morning News
We tend to think of miracles as big, booming gusts of good fortune.
The truth is that most miracles probably come in far less dramatic fashion – more like cool breezes in the midst of plain old hard work.
Those are the kind of miracles that Wilkin Mejia has seen.
A team of Dallas doctors, nurses and other volunteers went to the Dominican Republic last spring. They go to the poor Caribbean country twice a year on mercy missions to repair cleft palates and other facial deformities among children there.
But when they arrived last spring, Dominican doctors presented a special challenge – 16-year-old Wilkin.
Devastating injuries
"They said, 'He's in really bad shape. Is there anything you can do?'" recalled volunteer Sherry Colburn.
Wilkin was clinging to life in a hospital bed, simply refusing to meet everyone's expectation that he'd die.
Two weeks before, Wilkin and some buddies had climbed atop a farm train loaded with sugar cane. And somehow, when the train started to move, Wilkin fell between the cars.
His left arm was cut off just below the shoulder. His right arm was mangled so badly that it had to be amputated at the elbow. His left leg was severed just below the hip.
That doesn't sound like a very pretty picture, but the Dallas folks fell in love with Wilkin.
"He was very close to dying," Sherry said. "But there was also this strength there. He was so brave."
Sherry's devotion to Wilkin was cemented by a single tear.
"One day, Wilkin was on a stretcher in the hospital hallway, waiting for another surgery. There was also a little girl in the hallway who had been badly burned. She was screaming with pain," Sherry said.
"Wilkin was really upset by that. He was lying there with no arms and one leg, and I never saw him cry for himself. But that day a single tear rolled down his cheek."
As she was telling me the story in her Far North Dallas home this week, Sherry glanced over at Wilkin. He understands no English, but he sure understands when Sherry is bragging on him.
He ducked his head and flashed a shy smile.
Fake limbs, real chance
Wilkin's recovery continues through a mixture of small miracles and hard work. Plucked from his poor town, he's now in the lap of North Dallas luxury.
The same volunteers who saved his life brought him here for three weeks to receive prosthetic arms and a leg.
Wilkin, now 17, is staying with Sherry, and she apologized for the unusual clutter in her house. "We've got limbs everywhere," she said.
Sherry is one of many volunteers working with LEAP, a medical-care program started by Dallas plastic surgeon Craig Hobar.
Dulce Parker, president of Dallas' Dominican Society, volunteered to translate for my visit with Wilkin. But there wasn't a lot to translate. Wilkin is a man of great charm but few words.
I asked him, through Dulce, what he thinks when he looks to the future.
Wilkin thought and thought, scratched his nose with the nub of his left arm, smiled sheepishly and finally said, "No sé " – "I don't know."
He's much better at describing how he feels today about learning to use the new arms and leg.
"I'm so happy to be able to walk again," he said. "I'm happy to be able to carry things and feed myself."
Imagine the joy in that – feeding yourself for the first time in almost a year!
Made possible by the sweat of hard work and the cool breeze of small miracles.
Steve Blow can be reached at 214-977-8374 and at .
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