ARTICLES
December 1997 ARTICLES
LETTERS
Contents © 1997
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.
In Her Case, Suffering Had Meaning
THOMAS AQUINAS COLLEGE STUDENT'S HEROIC DEATH
By Karen Walker
A hiking accident November 5 in the Punchbowl area of the Los Padres National Forest claimed the life of 19-year-old Angela Baird, a sophmore at Thomas Aquinas College in Santa Paula. Those who were with her in her last hours tell of an inspiring inner peace and a heroic unselfishness uncommon in one so young.
Hiking with seven other students in mountains behind the Thomas Aquinas College campus, Angela lost her footing on an overhanging trail shelf, falling 70 feet straight down to the rocks below.
"Part of the trail had washed out," said fellow student, Jon Daly, a junior who was hiking behind her. "I remember hearing her slip and seeing her go down on her stomach, but there was nothing I could do. I wasn't close enough to grab her."
Shouting for another student to run back to campus and get help, Daly angled his way quickly down to where she had landed. "I found her at the bottom [of the ravine] on her back. She was conscious," Daly recalled. "I told her to squeeze my hand if she could hear me and she squeezed it." An experienced rock climber, Daly knew Baird was hurt, but not how badly. "I knew we were going to stay there until the paramedics arrived," he said, explaining that he checked her pulse, found it to be strong, and kept her warm with blankets.
For three long hours Daly and the others prayed with Angela, comforting her and touching her forehead to keep her awake before paramedics arrived by helicopter. "We prayed the whole time," continued Daly. "I asked her what she wanted to pray for. The first thing she said was to pray for aborted babies, then she said to pray for her dad and to her guardian angel. At one point, when I asked if she was peaceful, she nodded her head. She was peaceful the whole time. After a little while it was hard for her to speak. She prayed the whole prayers when we started, then just the first few words as it got later. I told her we'd pray out loud and she could pray in her heart." Daly also gave her a Rosary to hold. "She held on to that the whole time," he said.
"The thing that moved me the most as I look back on it now is the prayers for the aborted babies and her father -- it's so beyond me. As [seriously as she was injured], it was selfless of her to pray for them. That's amazing and beautiful to me."
John Finley, also a junior at the college, agreed. Upon hearing news that a student had been seriously injured, Finley and another student grabbed what medical supplies they could find on campus and ran the four or five miles to offer their assistance. "Between the time Angela fell and the time we arrived must have been a little under half an hour," said Finley. "[Students] were with her, soothing her and praying with her. They had tried to incline her arms and legs, but the pain was too great for her to be moved. I was amazed that she was alive and conscious after falling from that height...When we finally heard the helicopter coming, you could see her smile a little, she had definite awareness of her surroundings." Paramedics immediately started IVs and examined her injuries, then loaded Angela into a basket-like stretcher and made the difficult 20-minute climb to where the helicopter had landed.
Meanwhile, on the 217-student campus, about 40 students had gathered in the chapel to pray for Angela. Many others gathered on the soccer field, praying and awaiting news from the helicopter's return.
Around 11:30 p.m. Angela arrived at Ventura County Hospital emergency room. Dean of students Dr. Paul O'Reilly and Father De La Torre met her at the hospital where Fr. De La Torre administered the Last Rites before she went into emergency surgery. When news that her injuries were life-threatening reached the college, all the students poured into the chapel to pray. Upon the annoucement of Angela's death, "there were streams of students," said college president Tom Dillon, "now in the early hours of the morning, in tears but in prayer, all concerned about her and her family and praying together."
Although she suffered many injuries, including a broken spine, several compound fractures in her legs and arm, pelvic injuries and a large gash in one leg, it was the massive internal bleeding and injuries to internal organs, common in such a long fall, that caused her to die on the operating table around 1 a.m. Thursday morning.
"We see tragedy all the time in here," said Dr. Robinson, the physician who treated Angela. "[We were struck by] her courage to be down there for 2-1/2 hours, the incredible pain she must have been in, and yet having so much faith in God. She was so calm, so rational and so understanding of what needed to be done. That is very unique and very touching. I have to say that in 10 years, this is the most devastating thing I've had to go through. The hardest thing to deal with is that she was awake in the helicopter when they were bringing her in, she was awake when she got here and we still couldn't save her." Dr. Robinson attended the Rosary and wake that evening and the three paramedics attended the memorial Mass on campus the following day.
"She died a holy death and there's great consolation in this," said Dillon. "It's another reminder of our own mortality, that death can really come like a thief in the night. Will we be as well prepared for death as Angela was?"
"One of the things we talked about at the hospital after learning of her death," added O'Reilly, "was that suffering would be meaningless without having the belief that Christ rose from the dead. It would be depressing and something to be avoided. But in her case suffering did have meaning. Angela followed in the footsteps of her Savior, taking Him up on His command to take up your cross and follow Him."
Angela's brother, Joe, though visibly saddened by his sister's death, unhesitatingly observed that God had prepared her for such a death, citing a gradual transformation and deepening of her spiritual life which began last year and intensified during the last two months. "[This year] she was going to daily Mass, to Benediction every day, to Adoration every day, to the school Rosary and night prayers and I understand she was also saying the Chaplet of Divine Mercy daily," explained Joe, a senior at the college. "She would sneak away when she wasn't working or studying, find excuses to leave groups of people and never tell anyone that she was going to the chapel." Many students later confirmed that they saw Angela in one of two small college chapels often throughout the day.
In addition, Angela regularly taught catechism to woman inmates in prison, serving as a confirmation sponsor for two of them. And this year she had organized a small group of students to quietly pray every Thursday in front of a local abortion clinic. On the afternoon of her death, 80 students prayed in front of the clinic and now about 20 students pray there for the mothers and their unborn babies each Thursday.
Dillon and O'Reilly noted that the outpouring of support for Angela's family has been tremendous, not only from those on campus, but also from the extended college community of alumni and benefactors. This support included spontaneous donations of more than $5,000 to defray funeral expenses, a donation of seven airline tickets for students to attend the funeral in Spokane, Washington, separate enormous spiritual bouquets from students and alumni, a memory book of letters and notes for her parents from students and a generous gift of $100,000 from a member of the college's Board of Governors for an Angela Baird Memorial Scholarship Fund. Later the following week, a procession of 40 students mounted a hand-made, six-foot-high wooden cross with an inscription, over the place where she fell. They also diverted the path so that no one else would encounter the same fate.
In spite of her sorrow, Angela's mother summarized: "You can't help but be happy to see that she really did achieve that Christian ideal every parent hopes for their child. As Catholic parents we want our children to get to Heaven, to be saints, to live holy lives, and at 19 she did that in remarkably less time than it will take most of us." "I am proud of my daughter," added her father, a retired Air Force survival instructor who later told a group of survival leaders that "the purpose of suffering is to soften our hearts."
"I'm very sympathetic to her parents," added Dillon. "At the funeral I found that they, too, were heroic and noble. There was great consolation for them in the kind of life she lived and in the kind of death she died. They are grieving, but there is great nobility shining through that grief."