Girl Crushed By Ice Celebrates Miraculous Recovery
Published: February 9, 2007
No one would have predicted that Allie Jeffords would be attending a sporting event just over a month after she was pinned underneath a 7-foot-long slab of ice.
Nevertheless, she and her family were the guests of honor at a Minnesota Timberwolves game at Target Center Tuesday night.
Jeffords, 10, was playing with her two brothers in some ice caves on Lake Minnewaska last Christmas Day when one of the caves collapsed on top of her head. Her father, Chris Jeffords, tried to lift the 12-inch-thick ice but couldn’t. The image is burned in his mind.
“Seeing Allie trapped … I can just see her crystal clear there,” said Chris Jeffords, “being helpless as a dad to help her.”
Allie’s 7-year-old brother Blake ran to get help. Their mother, Jen Jeffords, dialed 911 while strangers on the lake helped Chris get the ice off Allie, saving her life.
“There was a guardian angel holding that ice from totally crashing on her,” said Jen. “There’s just no way to explain it, when how many grown men could barely budge it? And to think she’s still alive.”
When the Timberwolves heard that Allie wanted to go to Wednesday night’s game against Golden State, they gave her the V.I.P. treatment.
Allie was merely hoping to meet Crunch, the team mascot. Instead the team had the Jeffords family sit court-side pregame and watch warm-ups. They gave Allie a jersey with her name on the back, hand-delivered by Crunch along with an autograph.
When asked about the best part of it all, Allie said, “meeting the players.”
Going to a basketball game was a night of fun for a family that spent Christmas and New Year’s in an intensive care room at Hennepin County Medical Center.
“I don’t know, there’s a lot of people coming up to me that I don’t really know,” she said, but added the support has been important to her. “Thank you.”
“She doesn’t understand why this is all happening,” said Jen, adding she doesn’t remember the incident. “She says to us, ‘Why is this all happening to me?’ I guess I can’t even explain it. Sometimes I feel like I’m in a state of shock myself, just not realizing it’s really happened at the moment. Some days I do, some days I don’t, and you just have to keep on going through it all.”
The past three weeks have been spent at their Willmar, Minn. home. Just this week, Allie started going back to school for half-days. She is currently experiencing headaches and some memory loss.
“We’re glad to have her here,” said Chris. “And we know its going to take time to get to 100 percent. That doesn’t matter.”
Time is something this family now has, thanks to a heroic rescue, a team of doctors, and a young girl with a serious will to survive.
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