Youth injured by lawn mower recovering

Adam Cover, 9, and his father, Jesse, talk about the riding lawn mower accident that damaged Adam’s leg five years ago. Maggie Beck/Union Democrat, copyright 2009

Now 9, Cover is an articulate, active boy who says he loves to run and begrudges doing chores, just like most others his age.

It took months of therapy to get total range of motion for his leg.

“The doctors said he would be lucky if he could bend his knee 90 degrees,” his mother, Rachel Cover, said, “but he can bend it all the way.”

Cover’s injuries drew a flood of community support.

When a group threw a spaghetti dinner, raffle and silent auction at the Sonora Elks Lodge, a sold-out crowd of 400 showed up and put up $18,490 to help the family with expenses.

There were other offers of help, too numerous to mention, said Adam’s father, Jesse Cover.

“He’s doing better than anyone could have expected,” Jesse said. “We were almost embarrassed and very overwhelmed at the amount of care there was in this county and the degree that people were willing to help. What continues to amaze me is that people still ask today how Adam is doing.”

The large, extended Cover family is well-known in Tuolumne County, partly for things they have done to help others in time of need.

Some family members own Cover’s Apple Ranch on Cherokee Road. Jesse is the ranch’s general manager.

He and Rachel have six children. In addition to Adam, they are Andrea, 17, Amanda, 15, Allison, 13, Andrew, 11, and Anthony, 6.

The Covers are members of the Old Brethren Church, a congregation in which most women wear modest dresses and traditional dress caps, and many of the men wear long beards and blue-color work clothing.

 “We have always believed in our church, and the Lord has been big in our lives,” Jesse said, “but this experience brought the power of God so much closer. We are very grateful.”

Adam remembers bits and pieces of the accident.

“The worst was when I first got hurt,” he said. “I didn’t know what happened, but I remember a bag of ice. I saw the blood, and my foot was really cold. Then I remember seeing Mom by the door of the ambulance and people were cutting off my shoes and pants.”

He remembers riding in a helicopter and seeing tiny trees below him, but most of the next few weeks are a blur.

He was taken by ambulance to the old West Side Lumber Co. building in Tuolumne, then by helicopter to the University of California, Davis Medical Center. 

After doctors at the Sacramento hospital determined the full extent of his injuries, the boy was airlifted to Lucille Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford University in Palo Alto, where a team headed by several neurosurgeons was called in.

He and his parents spent the next six weeks there while extended family members helped with their other children and things at home that needed to be done. Adam had four surgeries during that time.

His last reconstructive surgery was in Norfolk, Va., in January 2007.

He was referred to a surgeon there by the doctors at Stanford.

“The outpouring of community support for us has been very humbling,” Jesse Cover said. “First we went through a fire in 2000, and then when Adam was hurt, people took it to a new level. It’s nice to be part of a community that cares that much.”