The letter

I’m fairly certain that there a number of people who read this blog are wondering why I, being Sara’s father, have been so mute, while others have been posting messages all along.

It isn’t that I’m disconnected from all of this, or that I don’t care about my daughter. Indeed, just the opposite is true. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think about her. During the quiet moments of my life, especially those where I’m driving to and from jobs (I’m kind of like an on-site computer / network / audio-video technician, so I’m frequently on the road), I find myself thinking about Sara and her condition quite a lot – almost to the point of feeling despair and or depression. This is why I must keep myself busy and preoccupied with other things; I might just go crazy otherwise. (Keep in mind that my first son died at the age of 8½ months. While this makes it easier to deal with the cold, hard, medical facts about Sara’s condition, it doesn’t make it any easier to deal with this emotionally.)

I’m also a private person. I don’t want others to be burdened with problems that are my own. However, I do want to help. It occurred to me that, with the benefit concert that is coming up on the 16th of December, there may be something I can do after all.

So, I wrote a letter. It is a letter asking for help from, well, complete strangers. This isn’t for myself (as you will read later), but for Sara and, by extension, Sara’s Mom. As I mention in the letter, I don’t want any credit; all of the attention should be towards Sara. So, why am I posting this here? It occurred to me after I contacted a few places that, if there is a large response, Sara’s Mom and her insurance agent may want to know about it in advance, so they can be prepared. And I do hope there is a large response…

Copies of this letter have been sent to a number of newspapers (San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Examiner, Santa Rosa Press Democrat, The Community Voice), television stations (the Bay Area affiliates for ABC, CBS, FOX, and NBC), radio stations (quite a number of ones in San Francisco with local hosts during the morning drive-time, as well as a number in the Rohnert Park / Cotati / Santa Rosa area). I’ve received a few replies back, so far. We’ll have to wait and see what kind of response, if any, develop from this.

So, if you’re reading this, I hope that you, too, will do what you can to help Sara. She can use all the help and support that she can get.

Here’s the letter, with certain parts redacted (which will be explained using curly brackets {}). (And Kristine, if you want to discuss anything about this with me, please call me – I don’t want to have any sort of public discourse about this.)

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To whom this may concern,

I hope that this doesn’t come across as spam, as it isn’t. This is a plea for help. This is not for me; it is for my daughter and her Mom. I don’t even want any credit for trying to help them.

There will be a number of web site links at the bottom of this e-mail. None of them link to any site that are harmful or questionable. They’re included so you can check on events for yourself; you can either click on them, or type in the URLs yourself, whichever you feel most safe doing.

I am the father of Sara Baker. Just thirteen days after her nineteenth birthday, on October 24, 2007, my daughter was in an automobile accident on US101 near Rohnert Park. Luckily she was the only one involved, and the only one injured.

As a result of a blood clot that formed due to a fractured C1 vertebra, she suffered a massive stroke in the pons area of her brain. Due to this stroke, she now suffers from an extremely rare neurological condition known as “Locked-In Syndrome”. This means that she is completely awake and aware, but has no voluntary control of any part of her body, except for her eyes, which she can open and look up and down (but not side-to-side).

Currently, Sara is in a Kaiser facility in Sacramento, having been transferred to that facility after receiving care at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital and then UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento.

As you may be aware, there is a new movie called “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”, which is about Jean-Dominique Bauby, the former editor-in-chief of the French magazine, Elle, who also suffered from “Locked-In Syndrome”. I have been reading the book on which the movie is based. So far, I find his descriptions of what he went through to be much the same as what my daughter is experiencing.

The reason I am writing to you is that I hope you can find a way to make mention, in some fashion, of a benefit concert that is being organized by Sara’s Mom’s insurance agent. (Sara’s Mom is Kristine, my ex-wife, with whom Sara was living.) The concert is being held in Rohnert Park, at Sonoma Mountain Village, on Sunday, December 16, 2007, 6:00pm to 9:00pm. The person organizing this event is Andre Morrow, and his phone number is 707-794-8100. He is looking for people who can perform, act as sponsors, or for people who can simply attend.

The event is to raise money for the Sara Baker Trust Fund, which is to help Sara and her Mom cope with extraordinary expenses being incurred due to the accident and subsequent stroke. While Sara is being covered by my wife’s (Denise, my second wife) and my health care insurance, there are expenses that insurance simply does not cover.

Both Sara and her Mom were employed part-time, with no insurance when this happened, and therefore have very little money of their own. A single trip to the hospital, for instance, costs Kristine about $40 in gas money. That’s comes to about $1,000 a month, just to visit her daughter. Of course, there are other expenses that Kristine must deal with like rent, food, and those associated with taking care of Sara’s 16 year-old brother (my son), Michael. (And yes, in case you’re curious, I do help as much as I can.)

Before this happened, Sara was going to Santa Rosa Junior College with hopes of eventually becoming a surgeon; she really wanted to help ease people’s suffering. She was working part-time in a veterinary office, helping hurt and injured animals. She was also studying to get her black belt in tae kwon do. It is amazing how someone who is so caring towards others, with such a bright future, can suffer such an awful injury in a blink of an eye.

If you need more information, please feel free to contact me (my name is Tracy Baker) in any of the following ways: {redacted, as I don’t want my personal phone numbers nor e-mail address posted on a public forum}

Here are the web site links so you can check things out for yourself.
{redacted, as all the links I’ve given are either found here already, or on the Sara’s Courage website}