'Miracle child'

Kalispell youth rebounds from terrible car wreck

Sean Mallett admits he's accident prone.

Mishaps on trampolines, occasional cuts and other injuries have sent him to the emergency room numerous times. But those incidents pale in comparison to the October 2004 car accident from which Mallett is still recovering.

Pictures of Mallett's 1992 Blazer tell half the story. The car is mangled almost beyond belief after having smashed into a tree.

Mallett, 15, of Kalispell, was going about 80 mph on Lower Valley Road near the intersection with Foy's Bend, in an area where the speed limit is 45.

He was hurrying to get to Flathead High School on time. He had just passed another vehicle, then lost control of the Blazer and slammed into a tree.

"It's the worst (wreck) I've ever seen," Highway Patrol officer Dave Mills said at the time.

It took 35 minutes for rescuers to extricate him from the vehicle.

The condition of his body tells the other half of the story.

Two long scars run just above both his hip bones, the result of a pelvis broken in seven places.

Three upper teeth and one lower tooth are missing from his wide grin.

His right eye droops from a shattered socket.

"He's definitely the miracle child," his mother, Terryann Pate said. "God had to have had another plan for him."

If it weren't for the pictures and his injuries, Mallett wouldn't know the accident happened.

All he recalls was the morning of the accident.

He was leaving a friend's house where he'd spent the night. He was in a hurry, worried he'd be late to his first-period gym class where they were supposed to run the mile. He couldn't find his gym shorts. He ran back into the house to brush his teeth, making him feel even more hurried.

"That's kind of a crappy excuse," Rick Maynard, Pate's boyfriend, said. Mallett nodded in agreement.

And in retrospect, being late to class or having unbrushed teeth doesn't seem so bad, his mother said.

Mallett recalls fastening his seat belt. After that, there's nothing.

Pate rushed to Kalispell Regional Medical Center when she heard about the accident. A few hours later hospital staff determined Mallett needed to go to Seattle's Harborview Medical Center, where he was on life support for about a week. During his nearly month-long stay in Seattle, Mallett had several surgeries.

He came home at the end of October, glad to be out of the hospital and eager to see his friends again, some of whom visited him in Seattle. Mallett's former stepfather, Randy Pate of Lakeside, who's known Mallett for about eight years came out weekly to visit.

Maynard, Randy Pate, family and friends have helped out tremendously since Mallett came home, whether it was with preparing food or keeping him entertained. Pate also credits her daughter, Tianah Mallett, with being particularly helpful. She split with Pate and Maynard the duty of staying with her brother in the hospital and caring for him at home. Juggling work schedules was difficult for the family, but they came together to get it done.

"You just have to do it," Pate said. "That's all there is to it."

Pate lists her son's injuries and treatments with the speed of a parent who is all too familiar with what her child went through: a broken right femur now held together with metal rod, a metal plate and other hardware to hold his pelvis together, a fractured jaw, a punctured lung…

She's nicknamed him "Bionic Boy."

A positive attitude, laughter, jokes and optimism have served them well since the accident.

"You have to look at the bright side," Mallett said, "or else you'll just be miserable."

He and his mother acknowledge, though, the gravity of the situation, the hard times and that Mallett made a mistake.

Mallett is back at school after sitting out a quarter and a half. He also resumed working at Taco John's about six weeks ago. He's walking now, although his right foot still bothers him. His heel was shattered and his ankle fractured on the same foot.

Mallett considers himself to be halfway to "normal," which for him means being capable of plenty of snowboarding, skateboarding - whatever, as long as it's not sitting still.

"He's back to school and work," Pate says, "but we see the wear and tear on him."

Mallett knows he'll continue to improve, but it's slow going and he's had his fill of surgeries and treatments already. His physical therapist, Joe Bilau of outpatient physical therapy at the Summit, said he expects Mallett will be back to skateboarding by summer.

Mallett has several surgeries, treatments and follow up appointments with doctors on his schedule. He's sick of hospitals by now, but he know he has a way to go before he's back to normal.

He also could get braces and false teeth to straighten out and fill in his gaping grin. Orthodontists, though, are having trouble configuring braces to accommodate the missing top three teeth, his mother says.

At this point, he's not concerned about straight teeth; he'd settle just for all his teeth.

Mallett jokes at his own expense, saying the lack of teeth bothers him when he has trouble pronouncing things when working the Taco John's cash register.

"Five fifty-five, fifty-five, fifty … whatever," he said, the number sounding short of correct.

The other thing that annoys him about his incomplete set of teeth is its affect on his eating, something he takes seriously since he lost about 30 pounds throughout the ordeal. He also had trouble eating when his jaw was wired shut to heal the fracture.

"I remember in the hospital, the Food Channel would come on and I would start freaking out," he recalled. "I watched the Food Channel for a while and was like, 'I'm going to become a chef.'"

He wrote down recipes, though he hasn't tried any yet. And he's paying attention to the food course he's taking at school, putting together what he's learning in class with what he watched.

Mallett's also thinking of becoming a professional pool player. Pool was one activity he could do from his wheelchair when skateboarding and snowboarding weren't options.

He used the wheelchair for about two months.

Mallett started school when the third quarter began in January. He failed his classes the first quarter because he missed so much school. So he has two quarters' worth of work to catch up on from his sophomore year.

He'll get it done by the time he graduates from Flathead, but he has no illusions it will be easy.

As for going back to work, his mom isn't pleased about that.

She'd rather he stay at home and focus on getting better, but he's a strong-willed child and she knows he wants to work.

Mallett agrees, saying he's not the type to sit around. And besides, he knows the medical bills have piled up.

"That's what we don't want him to worry about," Pate says.

Medical bills are already well over $500,000. Mallet has health insurance through his father, who lives on the East Coast, but a 20-percent co-payment weighs heavily on Pate.

Mallet knows his after-school job won't dent the pile of bills, but at least it will let him help with some things, he said.

What's he saving up for?

"Insurance," he said. "Yeah, insurance companies don't like me."

Mallett didn't have his license revoked or have any penalties levied against him, but he hasn't driven since the accident.

"I'm scared to death of letting him get in the car," his mother said.

Mallett doesn't recall the accident, so he can't draw on the fear of an impending crash or the pain felt during the impact to teach him a lesson, he said.

"It would be easier for me to learn my lesson if I actually remembered what happened," he said. "But the injuries and the pain (afterward) and what I put my friends and family through, that doesn't feel good."

He certainly won't be speeding, he acknowledged.

"I'll make sure I have someone there to punch me if I go even a mile over (the speed limit)," he said.

This accident is one of many for him, but it's one none of them saw coming.

"This was the icing on the cake," Pate said.

But the lesson seems to be learned, and Mallett said he intends to be careful from here on out.

"We don't need no candles on this cake," he says, grinning his signature, and now toothless, smile.

Reporter Camden Easterling can be reached at 758-4429 or by e-mail at ceasterling@dailyinterlake.com