Pain and Progress

An investigator from the district attorney’s office called Tracey Deel’s father in October. He said that four guys had thrown a blanket over Kevin Rivas, the boy sentenced to life in prison for shooting Tracey, and beaten him so badly he was hospitalized.

“That really made us feel good,” says Tracey’s stepmother, Linda Deel. “We thought about sending a get-well card.”

Kevin may have spent a night or two healing, but Tracey has spent the last year just beginning to recover from the November 1999 night when two teenagers took her to a field, shot her a dozen times and left her there to die. She dragged herself almost 1,000 feet to get help at an apartment complex (“Left for Dead,” by Wendy Grossman, August 3).

She still faces more surgeries as the doctors try to restructure and rebuild her body. Two months ago surgeons grafted bone from her right hip into her left hand. But the bones are dense, and they’re not growing together the way the doctor had hoped. She needs more surgery in January. She wants to start working out, doing push-ups and exercising, but the doctor said no — he wants her to keep weight off her hand.

She was planning to get a prosthetic eye, but before she could do that, Tracey’s wounded right eye got infected. The bullet had shattered her tear duct. A lump in her eye got harder and bigger, and by the end of the week it was the size of a golf ball. Tracey’s stepmother says the doctor acted like the swelling was expected, and he ordered more surgery.

They had to break her nose to go in and repair the damage. Then they installed a tube leading from her eye down into her nose.

“It feels like I’ve got a fuckin’ booger in my nose all the time,” Tracey says. It really bothers her.

She still sleeps with the lights on. And her parents still worry when she goes out by herself. She takes her cell phone with her and calls to check in whenever she gets somewhere or when she’s about to come home.

“She’s getting a little braver,” says her stepmother. “But then one night coming home she was a little hungry and she wanted to stop and get something, but she was a little scared so she didn’t. A year ago, she wouldn’t have thought about it.”

Because her hands are still unusable and she faces so much more surgery, she hasn’t been able to go back to work. Plus, she’s still suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Her mind always feels full as she relives the moments of that night.

She just got the first check from the Crime Victims’ Compensation Fund. It covered only 40 percent of the first three months she was on short-term disability. Now they have to evaluate her long-term disability, plus the money she and her family spent on co-pays and parking and prescriptions, says her mom, Karen Bryant.

“Maybe things are finally starting to roll for her, but she is still out of pocket a lot of money,” she says. “I just don’t know what she would have done if she didn’t have a family to help take care of her. It’s scary to think of folks who don’t have someone able to help them. Hopefully they will send more when the red tape clears up.”

Tracey filed a social security disability claim in May and still hasn’t gotten anything. She keeps having to talk to people and visit their doctors to prove that yes, she really was shot and yes, she really is blind in her right eye and no, she really can’t use her left hand at all.

“You have to practically be without two legs and two arms before they approve it,” says Linda Deel. “They make you feel like you’ve done something wrong. I’m gonna write a long letter to my congressman about it. It’s just another thing we’re having to go through because those two SOBs decided to change up everything for her.”

The week after Thanksgiving marked the one-year anniversary of the shooting. Tracey’s mother lay awake reliving where her daughter had been and what the boys had done to her. Tracey woke up, couldn’t sleep and put on a pot of coffee.

Her family took her to Gringos for dinner. “We didn’t want to make too much of it, but we did want to recognize it,” her stepmother says. They gave her cards and told her how much they loved her and how happy they are that she’s with them. The year before, she’d been in the operating room and they hadn’t known if they were going to get to keep her.

“We were glad to get through that first year,” Linda says. “Like they always say, “Time will take care of it for you.’ “

They talked about sending their “boys” a Christmas package. “Just a bunch of goodies,” Linda says. Like rubber gloves and Vaseline — things they think would be useful in prison.