A Story of Faith

| Friday, July 11, 2003 10:00 PM PDT ∞

BRIAN HIRO
Staff Writer

Later this summer, Jennifer Klunder will pack up her soccer ball, her lucky No. 13 jersey and her countless T-shirts adorned with the name of her inspiration, and she'll make the two-hour drive south from her hometown of La Mirada to San Diego State, her home for the next four years.

A standout midfielder at La Mirada High, Klunder fulfilled a longtime dream when she accepted a scholarship from the Aztecs in April. Come August, she'll meet her new friends and train with her future teammates as she enters the next stage of her life.

And every minute of every day, she'll think of Faith, her friend and mentor whose footsteps she's walking in, whose courageous five-year struggle with a catastrophic brain injury has inspired hundreds of girls like Klunder across Southern California.

"She makes me never want to give up," Klunder said. "I do everything for her."

Her given name is Faith Desatoff, although most friends and family members know her as Vedda, which means "faith" in Russian. The youngest of six children born to a Russian family from Whittier, she grew up as a happy-go-lucky child who liked to laugh and loved to play soccer.

Everyone who has ever met Desatoff talks about her smile ---- how readily it used to light up her full, round face, how comforting it could be. No doubt she flashed her pearly whites continually on that August day in 1998 when she embarked on the same trip Klunder will make from Los Angeles County to San Diego State, the culmination of her own athletic dream.

Fresh off leading Cypress College to the state soccer semifinals in consecutive seasons, Desatoff transferred into the Aztecs' program as a junior and was expected to start at center midfield. But on Aug. 15, the very first day of practice, she went up for a header, and the ball struck her on the upper left temple. She staggered off the field with an intense, migraine-like headache and began vomiting repeatedly into a nearby trash can. She then lost consciousness and slipped into a coma.

Five years later, she has never ---- and will never ---- come out of it.

"Doctors said it was a 10,000-to-1 shot," said San Diego State women's soccer coach Chuck Clegg, who witnessed the horrific scene. "It's so tragic. I think the odds of this happening again (in soccer) are so small."

Desatoff suffered what's called a traumatic brain injury (TBI), a condition caused by rapid acceleration and deceleration of the brain within the skull, usually resulting from severe automobile accidents. She was rushed to Scripps Mercy Hospital, where her status grew so grave that two priests from the family's traditional Russian religion ---- Molokan ---- were summoned to administer last rites. Three days after the incident, she underwent a rare operation known as a bilateral craniotomy, in which doctors removed a pair of 2-by-4 inch pieces of her skull to relieve brain swelling.

"If they didn't open her up, she was going to die," said Tino Younger, a former Cypress assistant coach who recruited Desatoff to the school. "A nurse who had been there 24 years said she had never seen that surgery done."

How did a simple header, a routine action as central to soccer as kicking and dribbling, cause such massive trauma in a healthy 19-year-old? To this day, no one really knows. The most logical explanation, and the one San Diego State suspects, is that Desatoff was a victim of second-impact syndrome, which occurs when a person sustains a head injury before symptoms from a previous head injury have subsided.

Desatoff passed her team physical on the day before the accident. But according to SDSU assistant athletic trainer Carolyn Peters (Orange Glen High), a teammate came forward after the injury to report that Desatoff had bumped her head while unpacking her truck two days prior and had complained of a headache. Peters thinks that Desatoff probably suffered a concussion from the initial blow and either didn't realize it or didn't mention it during her physical for fear of being held out of practice.

"Second-impact syndrome can be diagnosed only if the first injury is documented," Peters said. "We can't even say for sure if she had a headache. But if there was a concussion, the second impact doesn't have to be very hard at all. The first time you could get your world rocked, and the second time could be just a tap. The thing is, the brain hasn't fully recovered."

Now 24, Desatoff lives in CareMeridian, a residential neuro-care facility in the Orange County city of Silverado. Clinically comatose and physically disabled, she spends her days alternatively in bed and in a wheelchair. She is fed three soft meals a day with a spoon and one through a tube. Her mother, Priscilla, and father, Maury, visit every weekend from Whittier, but her recognition of them is spotty and she rarely smiles anymore.

As recently as 20 months ago, Desatoff was showing encouraging, if sporadic, progress in her cognitive function. Nurses gave her physical, occupational and speech therapy, and she could achieve limited communication through basic finger signals.

In October 2001, however, she developed a life-threatening septic infection that caused significant damage to one of her heart valves and proved resistant to every antibiotic used to combat it. Doctors at St. Jude's Hospital in Fullerton described her condition as "extremely critical" and recommended open-heart surgery as the only way to save her life. The family declined, choosing not to subject Faith to her 16th surgery since the injury.

In early January, Klunder and younger sister Kristin, who used to catch rides to soccer camp from Desatoff, were pulled out of school to say their goodbyes. Discussions of a burial plot were initiated.

By the middle of the month, defying all reason, the infected mass on her heart was nowhere to be found. The septic infection had vanished. Six weeks later, she returned to CareMeridian, physically deteriorated but alive.

"One of the doctors told me, 'I don't have an explanation for it,' " said Pam Hummel, a close family friend and insurance broker who advises the Desatoffs on their astronomical medical bills.

"Vedda's family is very religious," said Hummel, who spoke on behalf of the family for this story. "They're very firm believers in the power of prayer. A lot of people raise their eyebrows, but I truly can't see another explanation."

Praying and pulling for Desatoff has become something of a cottage industry in the region. Soon after her injury, the Cypress women's soccer team honored her by making black warmup T-shirts with the word "Faith" stenciled in white on the front. While Cypress went on to go undefeated and win the program's first state title in her memory, the T-shirt idea caught on like wildfire.

Younger, Desatoff's ex-coach, began producing them in different colors and designs. He said about 4,000 shirts have been sold since 1998, with proceeds earmarked to benefit "Faith's Dream," a charitable fund established to defray medical costs that average $20,000 per month. More than $50,000 has been raised, according to Hummel, a total that helps pay for what isn't covered by Blue Cross, the family's primary insurance carrier, or the NCAA's catastrophic injury program.

The number 13 used to be unlucky until Desatoff came along. Now it's coveted. Klunder and her three younger sisters fight to wear Faith's former digits for their respective teams. Some players write the number on their cleats.

"She is adored in Southern California," said Younger, 38, who now coaches a girls club team that changed its name from the Clash to the Faith. "She is one of the top five human beings I've ever met in my life, not only one of the best soccer players I've ever coached. I never heard anyone say a bad word about Vedda."

However remarkable it is, no one expects Faith's story to have a happy ending.

"Ultimately, the complications of traumatic brain injury will end her life," Hummel said. "We don't know when ---- it could be next week, it could be 10 years. But, obviously, it's disappointing when she gets ill. Every once and a while, you get a little twinge of, 'What would Vedda be doing?' "

Klunder said she gets that twinge all the time. She met Desatoff six years ago at Cypress soccer camp, where she was a pupil and Desatoff a teacher. The two became fast friends. Klunder attended all the Cypress games. Desatoff went to all of Klunder's club games.

In two months, excitement will mix with sadness when Klunder takes the journey of Faith to San Diego State. What would Vedda be doing? Klunder doesn't know.

What she knows is what she would say if she could make her friend understand her one last time.

"I would tell her how much she means to me," Klunder said. "I would let her know I'm going to finish what she started."

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