Home

Ernesto Perez moved to Routt County from Peru to work as a shepherd. In the years since, he became a citizen, got married and had two children, started a cleaning business and two years ago, he and his wife, Leyda Perez, built a large house in Steamboat Springs with commanding views and a yard for their dog.

As the walls of the house were going up, Leyda Perez watched with pride and guilt. While most of her siblings have moved to the United States from their native Mexico, and while most of them have created better lives for themselves, her brother Alvaro Zamora is still there. Zamora is an amputee who lost his leg when he was 12 years old. He works with his father in the family tire business in Ciudad Valles.

The accident happened when Leyda and Alvaro were children, and they didn't talk about it until now -- 20 years later.

Twenty years ago, 12-year-old Alvaro Zamora was driving an old farm truck with his father in the passenger seat. As he drove over the railroad tracks, the tires got stuck.

While his father got out of the cab, Alvaro didn't hear the train coming. He can remember the sound of twisting metal. He remembers that, in the three hours it took to get him to the closest hospital, he didn't lose consciousness.

"I remember thinking that my leg was destroyed," Zamora said through interpreter Lupita Hathaway. "I knew my life was never going to be the same."

There wasn't an ambulance in the tiny town where the accident happened, and there wasn't a phone to call one.

When Alvaro arrived at the hospital, the staff pronounced him dead "or almost," Zamora said. "They were just going to let me die, and my father had to argue with them."

Doctors finally agreed to save his life. They removed his leg above the knee and Zamora lay in the hospital for 28 days.

"It's hard to know what happened back then," he said. "Everything was up to the doctors."

Zamora spent another three months in bed at home, but it took a year before the scar tissue healed enough for him to wear a prosthetic leg.

"It's still so difficult to talk about," his mother, Maria Zamora, said through the interpreter. "I don't like to remember it. Life just changed totally in our house.

"Nothing was the same."

Zamora's new leg, the one his family could afford, was heavy and roughly made.

"It hurt to wear," he said. "It damaged my hip and my back. I wore it as little as possible because it hurt me more than it helped."

At 13, he was growing, and soon his leg didn't fit.

He changed legs three times. His most recent leg was made of plastic. The knee was nothing more than a plastic hinge that slammed closed every time he took a step. The leg rubbed his stump raw, but after 20 years he was used to the pain.

It was that latest leg, with its peeling foam and its toes worn off by walking, that crossed Leyda Perez's mind as she looked at her new house.

"How can I build this house and not get my brother a new leg?" Perez asked. She called her brother in Mexico and told him to write down his story. "I promised him that I would get him a new leg, but I didn't know how I was going to be able to do it."

It took one phone call.

In 2003, right before Christmas, Perez looked at a list of prosthesis manufacturers that she had collected from the Internet.

She dialed the first toll-free number on the list, and a salesman named Mike Kelly from Ã-ssur North America answered the phone.

"It was a miracle," Perez said. She still has the piece of notebook paper she used to take notes on while talking to Kelly. Among the doodling and information, Perez wrote, "Thanks God."

"I told Mike my story, and he said he would help get (Zamora) a leg and help get him a visa to bring him here," she said.

Listening to her story, Kelly realized that he and Zamora are the same age. (Kelly is 33; Zamora is 32.) They both have young families. The similarities struck him, and he felt compassion.

Kelly made a call to Dr. Paul Henderson, a prosthetist in Denver, and repeated the story. Henderson donated his time. Ã-ssur agreed to donate the leg.

"At first, I thought he was a below-the-knee amputee, and I though getting him a foot would be no big deal," Kelly said. "But then I found out he's an above-the-knee. Knees are so expensive. But my company is awesome. That's why I work here."

Much harder than getting Zamora a new leg was getting him into the United States.

It took six months of phone calls and paper work.

"It was just insane," Kelly said. "They didn't want to let him over. They said he was just making it up."

Perez kept hoping and praying.

"I always knew he would make it," she said.

On Sept. 2, Zamora and his mother boarded a bus for Denver. The trip took three days.

Zamora has been staying in Steamboat with his sister and driving to Denver to be fitted for his new leg.

To someone who doesn't know about prostheses, the leg looks like a metal stick. But Zamora's new leg is a complicated piece of technology.

The silicone liner is designed for maximum comfort and stability. The knee is designed to bend even when the foot is on the ground, eliminating "hip hiking," and the foot absorbs the shock of each step, something Zamora has never had.

Zamora will board the bus this weekend on his way back to Mexico for the three-day journey home.

Editor's note: Much of this conversation was held thanks to the donated time of interpreter Lupita Hathaway.