From clinical death to bearer of new life

“Miracles happen” is a motto for Amanda Edwards’ family — and with good reason.

In May of 1997, when Amanda was a Newport Harbor High School student, she was riding in a Chevy Blazer with nine friends when it flipped over at a dangerous curve on Irvine Avenue. She was seriously injured and spent nearly three months in a coma.

Today, although Edwards never completely rehabilitated from the accident, she’s happily married and just gave birth to her first child, a daughter she calls a miracle.

The first blessing came immediately after the accident. Amanda, whose last name was Arthur before her marriage, was thrown from the vehicle and was clinically dead for a moment when rescuers found her, said Carrie Donahue, Edwards’ aunt who lives in Newport Beach.

She hung on to life, though, and the community pitched in to support her.

People donated money to help with medical bills since Amanda didn’t have insurance at the time. Friends visited her hospital room in their dress clothes before going to the prom, Donahue remembered.

“It was like a shrine, because they had put cards and letters and flowers all along the hallway,” she said.

After Amanda woke up from the coma, she struggled to recover. She tried going to college, but the former cheerleader found it hard to get around.

“I just wanted to do it, to be like everybody else, but it was not easy walking from class to class,” Edwards, 27, said in an interview at the Irvine Medical Center, where she was recovering from the Christmas Eve delivery of her daughter.

She spent four years in physical therapy, and she spoke at a few high schools to explain “the consequences of going too fast in your car and stupid mistakes,” she said. She also befriended the family of Leilani Gutierrez, a child who was in a coma after a car crash.

Edwards’ plan to become an obstetrician was a dream that evaporated after the accident, but she went to work as a doctor’s assistant for a few years.

“Then I met Mike,” she said, smiling, “and we’ve been inseparable ever since.”

Originally from Australia, Mike Edwards was in California for a job. The computer game programmer and Amanda hit it off immediately, he said, but they were friends for a long time before they began dating.

“I guess, first of all, it was just her smile and her vibrant eyes and personality” that attracted him, he said.

She mentioned she’d been in an accident, but MIke Edwards said he didn’t know the severity of it until much later.

“I can see how she came back from the brink with the support of her family and friends and the community,” he said. “You see a lot of accidents but not often do you see the community really get behind and rally to help them.”

They were married in January, and on Christmas Eve, baby Audrey was born. The family lives in Irvine.

Edwards said she always expected to have children, and she wants Audrey to have a brother or sister someday.

The accident has had good and bad outcomes, she said — she still has trouble walking, and she doesn’t use her right arm well, but she thinks having a child will encourage her to try harder to get all her abilities back.

Amanda’s mother, Chris Maese, is grateful for the way things turned out, and she believes prayer played an important role.

“There have been a lot of miracles. She’s a miracle herself,” Maese said of her daughter. “They didn’t expect her to live and didn’t expect her to come out of her coma.”

Maese said media coverage at the time of the accident allowed her to ask people to pray for Amanda, and now it will help let them know what happened.

“People, so many times they want to have faith and they try to believe, but sometimes they don’t see the results of their faith and the results of their prayers,” she said.

Amanda said she appreciates how the community supported her when she was in need. “This is my life now, and I’m very happy,” she said. “Miracles do happen.”