[media-credit name=”Alicia Bailey” align=”alignright” width=”243″][/media-credit]Family and friends of Alicia Bailey, the gifted Southwestern College Student of Distinction recipient in a minimally conscious state (MCS) for two-and-a-half-years, have not run out of hope. They have, however, just about run out of money.

A Nov. 5 Golf and Dinner Benefit at the Chula Vista Municipal Golf Course in Bonita is an attempt to raise the funds to send Bailey to an experimental program in New Jersey that reports success waking up viable but comatose individuals.

Doctors gave up on Bailey, but her family has not. Her mother, Vivian, an oncology nurse, quit her job and brought Alicia home to care for her. She is convinced Alicia’s brain and body have largely healed, but that the midbrain injury prevents messages from getting through to parts of the brain required for revival. The New Jersey clinic has had success waking some long-comatose patients.

Bailey was an outstanding student at Bonita Vista High School, Southwestern College and UCLA, where she graduated summa cum laude. She was applying for doctoral programs at Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Yale and other elite universities when she passed out in April 2009 from a diabetic blackout while driving home from work early one morning. Her car struck a tree on Otay Lakes Road and Bailey suffered head and neck trauma.

Alicia wanted to change the world, said her mother. She planned to work for the United Nations or a global health initiative to care for disadvantaged people around the world.

Friends and former professors said Bailey was always cheerful and encouraging, a true gem of gentility and life. Vivian Bailey described her daughter as a “go-getter.”

“Alicia was a one-in-a-million student with so much talent and enormous potential,” said her former journalism professor Max Branscomb. “Of the many great students I have had she was definitely one of the very best. What happened to her is tragic and I am hoping against hope for a miracle.”

Bailey’s family has spent its life savings caring for her and now they are asking for help from the community.

The Nov. 5th golf tournament starts at noon with dinner at 5:30 p.m. Tickets for golf and dinner are $100 and the dinner alone is $35. Checks should be made payable to” Friends of Mike Bailey. Donations can also be sent to the T-Bird Foundation, with the notation “On behalf of Alicia Bailey.” Mail contributions to: T-Bird Foundation Inc. 89 Clyde Ave., Hopelawn, NJ 08861.

In an earlier article the Sun stated Bailey was in a coma, that was incorrect,
The Southwestern College Sun apologizes for the error.