The weather was bad in Florence on Jan. 18. Wind gusts reached 80 miles per hour, and most schools were closed. University senior Yik Chin Pang,@@http://insideoregon.uoregon.edu/donation-fund-for-uo-student%E2%80%99s-family/@@ 43, called her husband who lived in the coastal town to make sure everything was OK.
Instead of hearing her husband’s voice, a police officer answered the phone.
“I looked at my phone, and the number was correct,” Pang said. “I thought he was joking.”
The officer told her that her husband had been in a car accident.@@officer didn’t call? wtf@@
“I was just so scared,” Pang said.
Earlier in the day when her husband, David Tai, 53, took their 15-year-old daughter to school, a tree fell and smashed though the windshield of Tai’s truck, paralyzing him from the chest down. He has been in the hospital since.
Pang dropped out of school. She had nightmares and became run down with a fever and a cold.
Now, one month after the accident, she has registered for three classes next term and plans to graduate this summer. But with Tai unable to work, she is struggling to pay the bills. Before the accident, Tai was a chef and the sole provider for the family.
To help cover medical expenses, rent and tuition, Pang has set up a donation fund called the David Tai Family Donation Account.@@https://www.caringbridge.org/visit/davidtai/createorsignin@@ So far, the fund has raised hundreds of dollars.
“I need to finish my school,” Pang said, who is majoring in computer science. “I don’t want to waste all my credits and start over again.”
Soon after she and Tai were married, Tai and their daughter encouraged Pang to get a bachelor’s degree. She started taking classes at Lane Community College’s campus in Florence and then transferred to the University in 2009.
“I realized I wanted to challenge myself more. I also realized it’d be easier to have two incomes to support our daughter and pay our house payment,”@@ugh@@ she said. “We were focusing on what we’d do after my graduation, but we couldn’t get there.”
After the accident, Tai was in an intensive-care unit at Sacred Heart Medical Center at RiverBend in Springfield@@http://www.peacehealth.org/sacred-heart-riverbend/Pages/default.aspx@@ for about a month. Now, he is at a specialty hospital in Portland, where Pang said he relies on a 24-hour breathing machine. The doctors aren’t sure if he’ll be able to breath without it, she said.
Tai can’t talk and has to point to letters or spell out words to communicate.
“That’s really hard,” Pang said. “We’ve been missing each other a lot. I just want to cheer him up.”
Since the accident, she has struggled to pay the $750 in rent for her apartment in Eugene and $1,500 for her family’s house in Florence. She’s overwhelmed.
“Before, I was just a full-time student. Now, I’m a full-time mom, a full-time dad — plus a full-time student,” she said.
University senior Micaela Sicroff,@@http://directory.uoregon.edu/telecom/directory.jsp?p=findpeople%2Ffind_results&m=student&d=person&b=name&s=Micaela+Sicroff@@ one of Pang’s closest friends at the University, is organizing a fundraising event for Pang next month. She hopes to partner with the Asian Pacific American Student Union.@@Asian Pacific American Student Union@@
“I just need to do something, even if it doesn’t raise a lot of money,” Sicroff said. “I just need to share her story.”
Pang said professors, community members and other University friends have helped her a lot. University graduate student Hao Song,@@http://directory.uoregon.edu/telecom/directory.jsp?p=findpeople%2Ffind_results&m=student&d=person&b=name&s=Hao+Song@@ a friend of Pang’s since 2009, donated $100 to the fund and has given her rides to Portland to visit her husband. He hopes people continue to help her so she can finish her degree.
“It’s important for her to be independent financially,” Song said. “And a strong mom is essential to her daughter.”
Pang is determined to graduate. She said she needs a well-paying job to support her family and make sure their daughter can go to college. Her daughter recently told her she wants to be a doctor to find a way to help her dad.
Contributions to the David Tai Family Donation Account can be made at any U.S. Bank.