April 21, 2019 — Easter Sunday. It’s a day that Ryan Ramirez and those closest to him will not likely forget.
While Ramirez was hiking Bell Rock with his brother, current Sedona Red Rock High School sophomore Kyle, and his friend Reaston McManis, Ramirez fell somewhere between 35 to 45 feet. On his way down he hit three ledges before landing feet away from a tree stump that could have impaled him. In the fall, he broke 11 of his spinous processes, a rib and sustained a concussion. After his fall, Ramirez was flown via helicopter to a hospital in Flagstaff.
The injuries, of course, were bad. But given the fall, things could have been a whole lot worse. Ramirez could have easily died or suffered paralysis as a result of his fall.
“I think about that sometimes,” he said. “I shouldn’t have survived but I survived for some purpose. There were a lot of things that went right for me even though it was so wrong. Falling that far and sustaining those kind of injuries, I could have been paralyzed really easily if I would have hit down on a different part of my spine. My head was bleeding. I fell near an ER doctor from Las Vegas that stopped the bleeding immediately in my head while paramedics and firefighters were getting there.”
In the time since the fall, Ramirez has taken advantage of his good fortune in a number of ways.
One was to drop his weight. At the time of the fall, Ramirez weighed between 240 and 245 pounds. After spending all of May and June in recovery, by July he was down to 232 pounds and decided to keep going.
Another avenue that Ramirez has pursued is bodybuilding. While his interest isn’t new, the fall did inspire him to try to enter a contest.
“I’ve always wanted to do bodybuilding — it’s what I’ve trained for my whole life,” he said. “This, what happened here, is what kind of made it happen in my life right now.”
Surviving the fall also helped Ramirez restore his faith. With that, he’s made more of a concerted effort to bring positivity into the lives of people that he comes across, whether its at his jobs at Oak Creek Espresso, Snap Fitness or in any other part of his life.
As his father, SRRHS custodian Alex Ramirez noted, it was a wake-up call for not only Ryan, but the entire family.
“I believe there was divine intervention in the moment of his fall,” Alex said. “It’s not his time to die. Not his time to be in a wheelchair after an accident like that. There’s another purpose. I believe, his mother believes, that he has a better purpose than to be in a wheelchair or to be six-feet under. We all needed a wake-up call. We all needed to realize that we need to come more together. We need to treat each other better. We need to have more of a sense of life than what we’re thinking.”
Alex was also thankful about the timing of the fall. Moments before Ryan fell, his brother Kyle went up the hill. Since he had already made the trip up, his back was turned when his brother fell and he didn’t have to see the accident.
Ryan remains grateful to a number of people. In addition to the family and first responders, he also expressed gratitude toward Keenan Crans, a football teammate and fellow SRRHS Class of 2013 member. Crans has a Bemer device at his house and allowed Ramirez to use it as part of his recovery.
He also thanked Oak Creek Espresso owner Diana Highmanick and her husband, John, who helped him keep a positive attitude when he was more physically limited, as well as for having his job there waiting for him when he was ready to return. Curtis Marter, a trainer at Snap Fitness, and Mallory Lantz, were both integral in his recovery process, as well.
Going forward, Ryan hopes to do more bodybuilding shows. The first one he entered after the injury didn’t go as he’d hoped. But rather than be disappointed, he’s taking that as a positive learning experience. He also hopes to get his Personal Trainer Certification and continue to work with people to become healthier.
Ramirez also uses the fall as a reference point for where he was in life and where he hopes to be in the future.
“The way I was living when I look back on it now, I thought I was doing the right thing but I really wasn’t,” he said. “It just really humbled me to be in such a weakened position of not being able to walk by myself and just needing help to do daily activities. The fact that I recovered so well really makes me think of people who don’t have the ability to do what I do. In a way, I do what I do because those people that can’t do it; what’s my excuse? I’ve been given a second opportunity to do it.”
