Katie Karas is missing three months from her life. The 12 year old will never know the period from January through March 2003, following the car accident that nearly took her life and left her in a coma.
"We were going to piano lessons, then the next thing I remember, I woke up in March," said Katie, a sixth grader at White Oaks Elementary in Burke.
Katie was honored on Saturday, May 7, as a recipient of an "Honored Youth" through the state of Virginia's "May the Month for Children" awards program, which is designed to "focus on children’s special contributions to families, schools and communities." Along with her family, Katie traveled to Richmond on Saturday for the ceremony, which included students chosen from across Virginia for their contributions to their community. It was a further illustration of how far Katie has come since Dec. 30, 2002, the day she and her mother Tammy and twin brother Matt were hit head-on by a car. Police determined the driver, a 20-year-old male, was engaging in street racing and was traveling in excess of 90 miles an hour. He plowed into the Karases in their 1987 Oldsmobile, which didn't have air bags, while they were waiting to turn left from the Fairfax County Parkway onto Lee Chapel Road in Burke.
"I came to in the car, and I couldn’t really turn around to see the kids, but I could hear them, and I knew I couldn’t get out of the vehicle, so I kept screaming for them to help my children," said Tammy Karas, who sustained severe lacerations to her face, had teeth knocked out, and broke her ankle. Matt Karas broke the orbital bone in his face and sustained back injuries. Both spent less than a week in the hospital. Katie, however, was not so lucky. She lapsed into a coma until mid-March, with injuries including broken, displaced vertebrae, a ruptured diaphragm, an artery detached from her small intestine, torn uterus and two broken legs.
"It never really came to my mind that I was going to die, because I just wanted to try to get better," said Katie, who was rushed back to the hospital after her first trip home when she went into septic shock.
Katie missed the remainder of her fourth grade year at White Oaks, and while she regained her strength to head back for fifth grade, neighbors contacted Del. Tim Hugo (R-40) about possibly passing a law to increase the penalty on those who injure others while street racing.
"While she was still in the hospital, the kids that hit her were already back in college," said Hugo. "It just seemed to me that here's a family minding their own business, and the girl and her brother are in the hospital … and that was just wrong."
WHEN THE 2004 General Assembly session began in Richmond, Hugo came armed with House Bill 993, which increased the penalty on street racing from a misdemeanor to a felony.
Katie was energized by the possibility of taking action about the issue of street racing.
"It just made Katie even more positive, if that was possible. She came out of it determined to make it a better situation for everybody in general," said White Oaks principal Connie Goodman. "She took this very negative situation and turned it around into a very positive one."
In January 2004, Katie made her first of two trips to Richmond to speak before state legislators. She made quite an impression on the House Sub-Committee on Criminal Law.
"She's a brave little girl. As a little kid, you’ve got to be scared to death, but she went in front of the committee and … pulled her shirt up and says look you don’t want this to happen to someone else," said Hugo. "I said, this is the most poised 10 year old that I have ever seen. She got behind the podium, showed the whole committee the open wound."
Once the bill passed the House of Delegates, Katie and her family returned to Richmond, where she testified before the Senate Courts of Justice Committee. In early March 2004, the bill passed the Senate Finance Committee, and both houses of the General Assembly. Gov. Mark Warner (D) signed the bill into law in July 2004.
"It was really good because then I knew even though we went through this, that if somebody else goes through a similar (event) at least the person that did this to them will have more punishment," said Katie, who said she doubts life will never be normal again.
"I’m glad that I’m still alive and … going to school. But I wish this had never happened, I guess the only thing that did come out of this is that we did change the law," she said.
Now, however, she is Student Council Association secretary at White Oaks and will receive the Bronze Award from Girl Scouts soon. Katie Karas feels she has earned the luxury to be an "ordinary teenager" again.
"(After the accident), I was really mad, because I was thinking about school, and I wished I could be with (my friends) all the time," she said. "You never realize I don’t think how much you like your life how it is until something like this happens."