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Man says 6-year-old daughter saved life following accident
By Kristina Peterson
Palo Alto Daily News
May 13, 2008
Burlingame native Reinold Jones had long been a daredevil with good luck.
Over years of skateboarding, Jones had never broken a bone. Once, he rammed into a truck on his motorized bike, bounced off and kept going.
But this spring in Tonga, Jones' luck ran out on a Sunday outing with his daughter when he fell off his bicycle, fracturing his neck and breaking his jaw, nose, cheekbones and eye socket.
The 40-year-old man credits his survival to his 6-year-old daughter Maggie, who got him to the hospital when no ambulance arrived.
Back on the Peninsula for surgery at Stanford Hospital, Jones said last week that he doubts he would have lived had Maggie not been with him.
"My daughter really went beyond," he said. "She saved my life."
The accident occurred about 11 a.m. Easter Sunday, when the pair set out for a ride past a graveyard on a waterside trail. Jones, who has lived in Tonga for about 10 years, had just oiled and tuned up his single-speed mountain bike.
The two had gone only about 100 yards when Jones hopped a curb and his shock absorbers fell off, sending him toppling face-first to the ground.
"I couldn't move," Jones said. "The concrete was burning my face."
The impact had split his face through his chin, lip and sinus cavity. His jaw and nose were broken and his neck was fractured.
Jones thought he had only minutes to live.
"I said, 'Maggie, hold my hand. Always remember your daddy told you you're a winner,'" Jones said through shredded lips. Then he told her to try to find an ambulance.
A few onlookers had come out of their houses, and Maggie asked one to call an ambulance, Jones said. Then they waited.
Jones was bleeding heavily and told his daughter they needed to get to the hospital soon. So Maggie stood by the side of the road and flagged down a red Toyota pickup truck.
"We drove to the hospital going 100 mph," Jones said.
But when they got there, it became apparent he would again have to wait for a doctor who could treat him.
Maggie called her mother, dialing her number from memory, and then started sobbing and calling out to doctors, Jones said.
Eventually everyone in the waiting room began entreating a doctor to see him.
"They were all saying 'faka ofa,' which means 'for the love' — help this guy out," Jones said.
Finally, around 7 p.m., doctors took him into the operating room, where they pumped six units of blood into him, wired his jaw, stitched together his forehead and lip and put him in a cervical collar.
Jones knew he would need additional medical treatment in the United States. But before boarding a plane he had to wait six days until he could drink liquids and wait for his just-renewed passport to arrive.
Peace Corps volunteer Bethany Jacobs helped Jones chase down the delivery driver who brought Jones' passport on the same plane he soon left on. When Jones arrived in the Bay Area, he drove straight to Stanford's emergency room, where doctors immediately operated on him.
"They had to break my jaw again because it was healing wrong," he said.
Dr. Samuel Most, chief of facial plastic surgery at Stanford Hospital, said it was unusual to operate on a patient several days after such a traumatic incident.
"He had a neck fracture and significant facial injuries initially triaged in Tonga, but they didn't have the proper facilities to diagnose what was going on," Most said, adding that Jones was lucky that "an aneurysm undiscovered in Tonga did not lead to a stroke."
"With his spine injury, he could have been paralyzed," Most said.
Doctors are predicting a full recovery for Jones, who hopes to rejoin his family in Tonga within the next year.
While he and his wife have traditionally been strict with Maggie and their 1-year-old son, Drew, recently they have become more lenient, Jones said.
"Normally I don't spoil her," he said. "But my wife now — she's buying her anything she asks for."
E-mail Kristina Peterson at kpeterson@dailynewsgroup.com .
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