Teen survivor recovering after tragic car crash – and you can help

It was the one time Gia Elumbaring didn’t get picked up by her family after work.

Elumbaring, who lives half a mile from her job at the Dawley Farms Buffalo Wild Wings, was getting a ride home from coworkers in the early hours of May 8, when a car traveling more than 100 miles per hour ran a red light and crashed into them.

Her two co-workers sitting in the front were killed.

Her former boyfriend, sitting in the back, was injured and is recovering well, she said.

Gia’s injuries were extensive — to say the least.

“I honestly don’t remember a lot of things,” the 17-year-old senior at Brandon Valley High School said. “I don’t even remember getting in the car. And then I woke up in a hospital bed.”

That was after she’d had emergency surgery on her left foot, hurt so badly “I lost almost all of it,” she said. “My skin, my tissue and muscle were gone, and the bone was just out in the open. And I’m missing a middle toe.”

It took seven surgeries to stabilize her. At one point, she was sedated for a full week because it would be surgery after surgery and doctors didn’t want her awake and in pain in between, she said. She spent six and half weeks at Avera McKennan Hospital & University Health Center.

“They said she’s lucky to be alive,” said her stepfather, John Wooldridge, who had driven her to work that night and usually would have brought her home.

“She’s got scars all over her body. They said, ‘We want to keep you optimistic. We’ve had really good success with this, but there’s a chance she may lose her foot.’ And they said her vital signs were good. There’s no internal injuries. And that was another big, huge thing. So she had broken bones and we were pretty thankful for that. But a lot of broken bones.”

She had multiple fractures involving her pelvis, seven fractured ribs that thankfully spared her lungs, a breaks to her tibia and fibula on the left side and the tibia on the right, plus a break in her upper left arm.

“I had a huge gash on my head, on the left side, and thankfully the brain didn’t get touched, so they stapled it together. And they kept my hair and didn’t have to shave it,” she said.

Leaving her “safe space” at the hospital was scary, she continued. Driving, especially through intersections, was nerve-wracking.

Their Sioux Falls home had to be made wheelchair accessible, though she’s left that behind and is down to twice a week for physical therapy.

“The doctor said I was doing great,” she said. “They told me I was healing way faster than they expected.”

And today – the first day of school – she drove herself to high school, with her mom in the passenger seat, ready to take the car home.

“From the very first surgery to where it is now, it’s like night and day,” Wooldridge said. “Her graft is taking very well. Her foot is straight.”

A recovery of that extent creates a lot of expenses, though.

So this weekend, the Dawley Farms Buffalo Wild Wings will hold a large fundraiser for Gia and her family. She’d worked there for a few months prior to the accident as a cashier and was a “good employee,” general manager Randy Peterson said. “Always prompt and on time. I talk to her dad quite often.”

In one ride home, his team had lost two of its members, 17-year-old Javier Velasquez and 20-year-old Pascal Niyonkuru, along with Gia to serious injury.

“We were all close and we just did everything teamwork wise and they were our friends,” Gia said. “We would hang out after work or get something to eat. Javier was very caring, very thoughtful. And Pascal kind of just did his work without complaining about it and he was just a friend. He covered one of my shifts and we just became really good friends. He wouldn’t complain about it. He’d take any of our shifts.”

As a leader, “honestly, I had to take a moment,” Peterson said. “Right away we needed to take care of the staff and address that this was going to be something huge. But I needed a moment to get myself in order. I’d worked with Javi and Pascal for two years and Gia for months and I have two kids at home. Thinking about their lives cut so short and Gia’s changed so drastically, I needed to make sure I could get the staff where they needed to be”

There were some immediate things the team did for the victims’ families, he said, and the plan was to do something big for Gia once things had settled a bit for the family.

So from Aug. 27-29, LaHaise Management will donate 25 cents for every boneless wing sold to Gia for her medical expenses.

Franchisee Todd LaHaise “was the orchestrator of the whole thing,” Peterson said. “Doing it for a whole weekend and not just a day and attaching a percentage of what we’re doing for her. He was at the forefront right away, it was just a matter of finding an appropriate time.”

Gia and her family plan to be there.

“They’re probably the best managers I’ve ever had,” she said.

As for her future, she was thinking of a career in design or architecture before the accident, but now has a new potential interest: Nursing or the legal profession.

“All I have to do now is focus on school,” she said.

Buffalo Wild Wings opens daily at 11 a.m. and closes around 1 a.m. Here’s the schedule of events for Sunday:

• 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.: Games galore with inflatables outside
• 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. A live remote from Big Country radio
• 1 to 4 p.m.: Big Country serves as host and DJ
• 4 to 7 p.m.: A performance by Eclipse

Mark Dobmeier and his trailer/sprint car will also be on site throughout the day.