PVCC Puma Press: December 2002

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	Photo By Robert Cain
	Kevin Becker is currently playing on the PVCC Men’s Soccer team after a tragic car crash.
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Five days a week this fall, out on the beautiful green turf of the PVCC soccer fields, you would see 15 young men working hard and sweating in the blazing hot sun. You would hear a mixture of profane and encouraging words as these men strove to better their individual skills and come together to form a team. Frequently, there would be a collision between two players going for the ball at the same time, and the loud pop would echo in the surrounding air. The focus of these players was overpowered only by the intensity and heart with which they played the game. It seemed natural for these men to be sacrificing their time and energy for the game they love, but for one, it has been a dream come true.

Four years ago, PVCC student Kevin Becker was involved in a traumatic car accident. He sustained multiple injuries and was in the hospital for 16 days. The doctor told his parents that he would never be able to hold a fork again. After the accident, Becker’s life was a jumble of rehabilitation, depression and substance abuse.

During the confusing time following his accident, Becker was very impressionable, looking for guidance. He found that guidance inside himself. “Live your life how you want to,” he always told himself. Becker knows the truth of this axiom from the experience and wisdom he has learned on his journey to overcome adversity.

In 1998, Becker was a star athlete at Chaparral High School and hoped to graduate in 2000 and attend a Division I university. The night of June 8 that year, he was on his way to the airport to pick up his girlfriend who had been in Hawaii on vacation. Her flight was delayed, and Becker decided to play pool with his best friend until she arrived.

Driving a 1988 red Toyota Celica, he stopped at the intersection of Scottsdale and Cactus roads. His two-door Celica was heading west behind his friend when the light turned red and he had to stop. After passing through the green light, Becker sped up, hoping to catch his buddy. He passed his friend’s car, but did not slow down. At Cactus and 56th Street, Becker lost control of his car and veered into oncoming traffic going 65 miles per hour. Eastbound, a Geo Metro, containing the driver and two passengers, t-boned the Toyota and kept it from a head on collision with a wall.

At 9:30 p.m., the red Celica was crunched in half like a horseshoe. The passenger’s seat rotated 90 degrees to the right and faced out the passenger window. All the glass was shattered and gone except the front and rear driver’s side panes, which were severely crushed. The dashboard looked like an LA freeway after a 6.0 earthquake.

The hood and the trunk were deformed with jagged edges protruding skyward. There was no air bag to protect the driver.

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The doctor told his parents that he would never be able to hold a fork again
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Becker was rushed by ambulance to the hospital where he lay unconscious for four days. He sustained multiple traumatic injuries, including a collapsed lung, two broken ribs and open wounds to his elbow and head, causing a severe brain contusion.

When Becker awoke from his coma, he had no recollection of the accident or of the two days before it.

“My family, friends, girlfriend and best friend were all there to comfort me in the hospital,” he remembers.

The doctor told him that he would have to quit playing soccer and he wouldn’t be able to graduate with his class in two years. After hearing this unbearable news, Becker’s support group tried to console him.

“The doctors were trying to comfort me, but they did not seem to do their job,” he recalls of that awful day.

Becker spent over two weeks in the hospital while his body recovered from the wounds. The brain contusion caused impairment of Becker’s memory and motor skills. The medical plan was to send him to rehabilitation to see if he could recover some of these functions.

For two months before school started, Becker’s mother drove him five days a week to “Rehab Without Walls.” Fifteen people would sit in a classroom day after day, relating their stories before starting their individual exercises.

“It was disturbing,” Becker says, “because I felt bad for the others who weren’t so lucky and because I felt as though I was fine.” Other people who attended were in much more critical condition; some spoke through computers and could not walk. During rehabilitation, Becker learned to talk without a stutter and to walk without losing his balance. He tried to recuperate other simple skills that he had lost. He repeatedly attempted tasks such as identifying colors and matching shapes with their correct holes.

Luckily, when school started that fall, Becker was allowed to take three classes, one before school at 0 hour and then 1st and 2nd hours. He graduated from rehabilitation a month later and picked up another class, but school was not the same as before the accident.

“I didn’t fit in any more,” Becker says. “In fact, my parents, brother, friends, teachers and girls all treated me differently.” Despite this setback, Becker worked hard. His steady recovery was unbelievable, but he wanted to return to his passion, soccer. The doctor told him that playing soccer was a grave risk because any injury to his head could cause serious damage, but Becker refused to be deterred. He practiced with his high school team and played in five games at the end of the season. He then began practicing with his club team and returning to a teen’s normal activities. One weekend he attended That Damn Show, a concert venue, and was dropped on his head while trying to crowd surf.

After keeping this incident a secret, he went to soccer practice the following Monday, where he was hit in the head with the ball. That was it. Becker was having intense headaches and could no longer run without becoming dizzy. He had to give up high school soccer, this time for good.

Despite his misfortune, Becker graduated with his class in 2000. Instead of attending a University like he had hoped, he registered at Scottsdale Community College. He was depressed and sometimes felt like he wanted to kill himself.

Becker painfully comments, “Not having soccer and losing every girlfriend I had ever loved, I felt like I had nothing.”

In the fall at SCC, Becker turned to alcohol.

“It relieved me of my problems,” he says. “It was the perfect girlfriend, friend and parent. It was the perfect everything and it made me feel so much better.”

His schoolwork suffered due to his alcohol problem and after a year at SCC of being unhappy with himself and his surroundings, he decided to move to San Diego. At Mesa College in San Diego, Becker was still depressed and found other substances “that made him happy.”

“I had almost died, so what was so bad about drugs?” he thought about his experiences. His life and his schoolwork deteriorated in San Diego and he moved back to Phoenix where he lived with his parents and attended SCC again.

“I hadn’t learned from my past experience and failed all my classes again,” he says.

Becker knew he had a problem and that his life was spiraling downward, but he took it upon himself do something about it. He checked himself into an alcohol treatment center.

There he learned to look introspectively to find the reasons that he chose alcohol instead of facing his problems.

Today, Becker is playing soccer again, this time at PVCC. His head injuries are still affecting him, but his undying passion for soccer keeps him in the game.

“It’s the risk we all decide to take,” he says. All players play the game knowing the chances of getting injured.

Becker talks to a Neuro-Psychologist twice a week to help him overcome his depression, but it’s soccer that keeps him on track.