To the lingering sect Aurorans who view the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus as the city’s perpetual ivory tower: Meet Eduardo Franco Ramirez.
A native of Guatemala who moved to Colorado for work in 2012, Franco has recently become the unlikely face of a shift in how Anschutz is dealing and interacting with the surrounding north Aurora community.
In September 2013, a band of young men assaulted Franco with baseball bats in the parking lot of his apartment complex on the corner of East 16th Avenue and Lansing Street in Aurora, bashing in about a quarter of his skull and nearly killing him. First responders to the scene believed Franco to be dead, but he was nonetheless transported to the University of Colorado Hospital where doctors performed emergency surgery that resulted in the removal of a large segment of his skull. Franco survived, but shortly thereafter slipped into a coma.
“For 16 days I don’t remember anything,” Franco said in Spanish. “I was practically, basically dead, but I came back to life again.”
Despite the miraculous recovery, Franco was unable to afford or organize any sort of follow up procedure because he was uninsured. As a result, doctors covered his exposed brain with a skin flap, gave him a helmet to wear for protection and discharged him shortly after the physical incisions began to heal. For the better part of the next year, Franco suffered debilitating headaches, blurred vision and memory loss issues.
“I almost couldn’t handle it,” he said.
In an act of desperation, Franco went to the St. Therese Catholic Church on Kingston Street in Aurora in June 2014 seeking any solace he could find. It was there that he connected with parishioner Rich McLean and the course of his recovery dramatically veered.
“Neither I nor the staff really knew what to do, so I went to MCPN (The Metro Community Provider Network) to see what could be done,” said McLean, who also sits on the board of Aurora Health Access, a coalition of city officials and residents with the goal of providing healthcare to under-served populations.
“For 16 days I don’t remember anything,” Franco said in Spanish. “I was practically, basically dead, but I came back to life again.”
After eventually being turned down from MCPN, McLean collaborated with Lizzy Sinatra, then a student pursuing a master’s in public health at CU, to look at alternate solutions. The pair had worked together in recent months due to McLean, in his capacity with Aurora Health Access, helping Sinatra with her final thesis. After pursuing several options, the duo decided to launch a GiveForward.com crowd funding site in Eduardo’s name. The hope was to raise about $20,000 to go toward a cranioplasty — the necessary, nearly $75,000 procedure needed to restore Franco’s skull. Neither McLean nor Sinatra knew what type of response they would receive from community members to help an undocumented immigrant get such a procedure.
“Just when you say the word ‘undocumented,’ people immediately can get so political and hysterical,” said Sinatra, now a project coordinator for the Community Campus Partnership.
Franco’s story of tragedy and painful triumph touched a nerve with the surrounding community, which produced 91 donors who poured nearly $9,000 into the cause.
“And it wasn’t just the surrounding community (that donated), it was actually students from on-campus who donated, too,” Sinatra said. “So this was a wonderful case of community dissolving that separation among the community and the campus and coming together as a unit.”
Despite falling short of the original goal, McLean and Sinatra reported the final sum to UCH officials who ran the issue up the hierarchical flag pole and got a surprising response: the University would perform the cranioplasty in exchange for the money raised — a savings of about $65,000.
“I think it’s because the community cared, and they (UCH) saw that it wasn’t just talking, they saw the number of contributors we had to the cause,” McLean said. “If there wasn’t any community interest, Eduardo would probably still be in the condition he was in.”
Since undergoing the procedure in May, Franco has returned to work pouring concrete for a local construction company and said that he’s seen a drastic improvement in his daily functions.
“I see better, I hear better, I’m doing really, really well,” he said. “I got my life back.”
Despite falling short of the original goal, McLean and Sinatra reported the final sum to UCH officials who ran the issue up hierarchical flag pole and got a surprising response: the University would perform the cranioplasty in exchange for the money raised — a savings of about $60,000.
McLean and Sinatra said that they are planning on using Franco’s story of success to develop future mechanisms that could be used to fund healthcare procedures for uninsured patients in need. They said that there is currently no timeline on the project, but that buoying community support is what set Franco’s case apart and is what will need to be leveraged going forward.
“That’s probably going to be key in future Eduardo cases — the community has to be willing to step up and not be indifferent to that pain and suffering going on,” McLean said. “It’s that spirit that we see both at the higher levels and among the up and coming healthcare providers that give us hope that we can really begin to make a difference when it comes to these very serious cases of people being neglected.”
Still can’t speak the language of this country, I’m sure he got here by legal means, correct? What horseshit. ‘he was uninsured’ AND HE IS, YES IS, ILLEGAL. What a nonsense story. Here’s an illegal, gets into a fight, needs very expensive surgery, and the good people of the USA give it to him, think he’ll return to the dirt roads of Guatemala anytime soon? Nah, why?
gofastgo, and you wonder why society thinks that people like you are bigots. You stated no factual information. He was not part of a fight, but rather getting robbed, who cares if the streets of Guatemala are dirt; that incites hate and unnecessary vibes. So he is illegal; but that’s another issue. What is wrong with you man?
Nothing ‘wrong’ with me man. I am law abiding, I expect our laws to be enforced. Part of legal immigration is to learn the English language, 3 years later and he’s still speaking Spanish? Bigot? Perhaps, but more so an American citizen that’s tired of a ‘justice’ picking which laws to enforce and which not. I don’t believe in open borders, I do believe in voters ID’s, I KNOW the ACLU is the most un-American organization in this country, btw, you’re not a conservative, you’re a liberal.
gofastgo, no, no, my friend, a true Reagan conservative, and I quote: “Hispanic are republican, they just don’t know it because of the liberal media”. I see things for what they are. We are in fact a nation of immigrants. Your parents, grandparents, great grand parents, or great great grand parents crossed here ILLEGALLY in their time, the only difference is they’re brown and speak another language. The Republican party used to be the party of civil rights, abolishing slavery, and diversity encouragement within their lands. You my friend are an OLD, Andrew Jackson democrat, who complains complains and whines about everything and everyone. Do you see the Hispanic community rioting, looting, stealing, free loading? No my friend, as a whole, that title belongs to the African Americans, who by the way, you Andrew Jackson democrats brought here ILLEGALY through slavery. Come on
My grandparents came through Ellis Island, legally, they did not cross into America illegally. They came from Italy, there wasn’t any press one for Italian, there was no voting ballots written in Italian either, they had to learn the English to get along, they were not pampered and taken care of, there was no welfare, no food stamps, no ADC, just hard work and industry.
I’ll give you one point, the Mexicans don’t burn and loot, that’s exclusively a black tradition, one they’ve gotten away with for no good reasons since their time here and AFTER we gave them seemingly everything they demanded. Michael Brown, a memorial, the one year anniversary, of just what? A memorial for a black thug, no more, videos prove me out.
I won’t discuss slavery, it’s been over and paid for over and over, with affirmative action, free college tuition, you name it, we’ve given to the black race. There is no one that has any family members they can recall that was a slave, and of course no slaves. MLK was a good representative for the black race, he would turn his back on this bunch today.
The slave trade was legal until 1808, per US Constitution.
“A native of Guatemala who moved to Colorado for work in 2012”.
Sounds like an undocumented immigrant or worker to me. Here we have a feel good story of survival, and I applaud all the health care workers who spent many (paid) hours on the emergency intervention, but our compassion and our tax dollars are not unlimited. I am happy for this man. However, this person scoffed at our laws to come here looking for a better life. At some point the citizens of this country, and those here legally, will rise up in protest against this abuse of our system.