Mar 31, 2018 By Jacob Calvin Meyer staff Writer jmeyer@thealmanac.Net 5 min read

Rita Beauchamp was saving money to buy a car, and before she started her senior year at Upper St. Clair High School, she had enough money to purchase one.

On Aug. 29, Rita drove away in her new sedan, as her mom Michelle took pictures of Rita, her youngest daughter, on her last first day of school.

Only a few hours later, Rita was in intensive care fighting for her life after a car accident caused internal bleeding, a shattered pelvis and a traumatic brain injury that put her in a nearly two-month coma.

“We knew it was her brain stem, and that’s a crapshoot,” Michelle said. “You just don’t know because that’s the part of the brain that talks to the rest of the brain. But we could tell the percentages of people who have that kind of damage primarily have physical challenges.”

Seven months later, Rita has awakened from her coma, relearned how to walk, talk and eat again and is prepared to graduate high school in June.

While Rita’s mother Michelle said the outpouring of community support for Rita was “amazing,” it didn’t always solve the issues the early months of the recovery brought, like having a child in a coma or the grueling rehab process.

That was until Michelle one day received a message on Facebook, which is where she had been chronicling Rita’s recovery with the hashtags #WakeUpRita, #RitasWakingUp and #RitaWokeUp. The message was from Valerie Johnson, a mother from Peters Township, whose daughter Maddy was in an eerily similar situation to Rita’s.

Maddy, who was also entering her senior year of high school at Peters Township, was driving on July 30, nearly one month before Rita’s accident. She was driving on a gravel road when she lost control of the car and it flipped several times, trapping her inside. The left side of her skull was crushed.

She was flown by medical helicopter to UPMC Presbyterian and spent 36 days in a coma.

“It was surreal,” Valerie said. “We couldn’t believe that she had left our house 15 minutes before the accident. It was very numbing. We felt like we were going on autopilot, and we were doing anything we could do to help her.”

When Valerie came across Rita’s story on Facebook in the fall, she knew she could give Michelle some advice.

“I messaged (Michelle) and told her about Maddy and how we were 30 days ahead of where they were,” Valerie said. “I understand it from a Mom’s point of view how scary it was. Other people don’t really understand, and I reached out to let her know that I’m a parent that’s been in the exact same situation. I was just glad we were able to help out.”

Michelle said Valerie “was like an angel” during those first few months.

“It’s just people like that and she was already stressed and she had a million things on her plate and her own daughter’s accident and recovery and she took the time out to come sit with me in the waiting room and comfort me,” Michelle said. “It was great support to have them down the hallway and see Maddy recover. To have her reach out to me and tell me things were going to be OK when I really needed to hear it was definitely an amazing thing.”

Along with the support for each other, the entire South Hills community donated time and money to both families. Rita’s Italian Ice in Bethel Park held a fundraiser for Rita, and a GoFundMe has raised nearly $24,000 to cover medical expenses. To raise money for Maddy’s medical expenses, the Bethel Park YMCA held a Fitness Day.

“You can never again think that the world is not full of really good people,” Michelle said. “We were just taken care of. We didn’t even have to ask. People just came forward.”

“Everyone was just really caring and thoughtful,” Rita said. “It’s shown me all of the good people around here. If in USC, there are this many good people, then how many are there in the whole world?”

Now, Maddy and Rita continue to recover together. Most of Rita’s issues are physical, as her left side is still catching up with her right, while Maddy’s are mostly cognitive. Rita is set to graduate from Upper St. Clair High School in June; Maddy is now enrolled at ACLD Tillotson, which is a private school in Whitehall, since the pace will support her memory and cognitive difficulties. She is hoping to graduate within the next year and a half.

While rehabbing together at the same outpatient care facility, Maddy and Rita push and support each other.

“It was nice to see how Maddie continued to improve,” Rita said. “It was inspiring when I was still in the wheelchair to see her with her walker.”

Maddy said her friendship with Rita has helped her through her recovery because she knows she’s not alone.

“Rita understands what I’m going through, and I understand what she’s going through,” Maddy said.