The long road to recovery: Ordeal forces Mosca back to basics

      Engineering student Lorraine Mosca has passed many milestones in the past 18 months. They are not the ones she had expected.
      Instead of graduating from UNLV, she learned to walk again. Instead of buying a new car, she struggled to pass a driving test to return to the road.
      It was after regaining a driver's license five months ago that Lorraine began to see "the light at the end of the tunnel" in her recovery from a near-fatal brain injury, said her mother, Lucille.
      The 24-year-old woman's ordeal began Oct. 7, 1995, when she dared to confront a swarm of teen-agers on a shoplifting spree at The Wherehouse music store where she worked part time as a clerk. One of the teen-agers threw a punch that knocked Lorraine to the pavement, where she struck her head. Her doctors did not expect her to live.
      Yet her father never doubted not only that she would survive, but also that she would recover.
      "They had her dead and buried," Salvatore Mosca said during a recent interview at the family's Spring Valley home.
      "I guess the Lord saw fit to keep her going. With her strong attitude, there's nothing she can't do," said the cab company supervisor, who 14 years ago came with his family to Las Vegas from New Jersey.
      Lorraine shares her father's prediction that, in time, she will recover fully. "It's going to be close to it. It may be one year, it may be two years, it may be five years," said Lorraine, who assesses her recovery to date at a "6" out of a possible "10."
      The neurosurgeon who operated on Lorraine five times spoke more cautiously. "I'm not going to say she isn't (going to fully recover)," said Dr. Lonnie Hammargren, who also is Nevada's lieutenant governor.
      "We're told in a lot of our training that people get better for a year" but not much beyond that, he said. "I see a significant amount of recovery also in the second year. People continue to improve in small increments, compared to at first. They adapt, and they learn new ways.
      "Life will be a constant struggle for her to continue to achieve, to regain what she's lost," he said.
      Hammargren counts Lorraine's as a success story. "She's done better than I expected. It's her drive and her motivation that made her better. She is the measure by which I will continue to work and to go in on a lot of the cases that look hopeless."
      She already has come far. She could neither swallow nor breathe on her own after coming out of an induced coma that lasted 4 1/2 weeks.
      Her right side remains partially paralyzed, and she has had to learn to write with her left hand. She has abandoned the wheelchair that assisted her for four months, but often wears a brace on her lower leg and relies on a cane. Her speech, if somewhat halting, is clear.
      She is happy that she no longer must wear a helmet to protect her brain, saying, "It was too hot in the summer."
      The young woman describes her quality of life as close to what it was before her injury, now that she is both in school and at work part-time. She is taking courses in mechanical engineering at UNLV, and is pleased with her grades last semester of a "B" and a "high C." She also works part-time as an intern at the Las Vegas Valley Water District.
      In October, she completed the formal rehabilitation that occupied her 6 1/2 hours a day, five days a week. She continues to work with a personal trainer three days a week.
      Mosca smiles often and laughs easily. She insists she isn't bitter. Just months shy of graduating when she was injured, Mosca now hopes to graduate in May 1998. She then wants to get a good job, and to move out of her parents' home.
      In short, she has the same goals she had before the encounter with shoplifters changed the course of her life. "They took a lot away from her," Lucille Mosca said. "I am bitter."
      The family does not believe that justice was served. Andre Colon, who threw the punch that knocked Lorraine to the ground, was sentenced to eight to 20 years in prison. Marcus Hall and Rasool Ramoz each received a sentence of five to 20 years.
      The family has filed a civil lawsuit against the convicted robbers as well as the shopping center where the incident occurred for failing to provide adequate security. The Wherehouse store is at 320 S. Decatur Blvd.
      Through it all, family members say Lorraine never gave up or became depressed. "She's a happy-go-lucky girl," said Tessie Sisto, Lorraine's grandmother.
      Asked to sum up her ordeal, Lorraine says, "Hell." She says it with a smile. Then she laughs.