Comatose woman to return to kin in Ridge

A Ridge woman's partially paralyzed daughter -- injured in the Virgin Islands when she was hit by a car -- will be flown back to Long Island Thursday on a special flight, a spokesman for Rep. Tim Bishop's office said.

Kelly Breem, 34, was crossing a street in St. Thomas Nov. 14 when she was hit, landing on her head and waking from a coma two weeks later on Thanksgiving Day, said her mother, Althea Richardson, who was by her daughter's bedside.

"She opened her eyes and focused," said Richardson, a bookkeeper. On Friday, the day Richardson left the Virgin Islands, there was another milestone: "She smiled . . . which made it harder to leave."

Breem found her humor in the hospital, her mother said. When she couldn't move her paralyzed right foot, she gave it a little kick with her left foot, Richardson recalled.

Every day, her "helpless" daughter seemed to be making a little progress -- a hand squeeze one day, a foot moving another day -- Richardson said, but she had no way of bringing a paralyzed person back to the mainland, much less pay for it. Breem did not have any internal bleeding, her mother said, but some facial bones were broken and a brain stem injury paralyzed the right side of her body.

Then on Monday, after Richardson contacted Bishop (D-Southampton), one of his aides made several calls and found Angel MedFlight, an Arizona company that provides worldwide air ambulance service. Not only would the company fly Breem, a Rocky Point tax preparer, to Long Island MacArthur Airport, it would make the run for free, said Bishop spokesman Oliver Longwell.

Richardson said her "mind went blank" when the aide told her a medical flight had been arranged: "It didn't dawn on me that it was paid for. I was stunned. I can't believe strangers would do this."

Breem's brother Vincent Richardson is in St. Thomas and will accompany his sister home.

Breem had been going to St. Thomas and living with friends on and off for three years, her mother said. She worked part-time there, fixing cars and roofs, Richardson said.

She was with friends when the accident occurred, her mother said. St. Thomas police are investigating, she said, but police let the driver go and no charges have been filed.

It wasn't until a week after the accident that one of Breem's friends found Richardson's number and called her, Richardson said.

When Richardson got to the hospital, she said her daughter looked "lifeless," a young woman whose talkativeness earned her a family joke: "She was vaccinated with the phonograph needle."

"Now we want her to talk," Richardson said. "She just looked so like a little kid."

With Yamiche Alcindor