INJURED LAWYER WON'T LET TRAIN CRASH DERAIL LIFE RESIDENT KEEPS SPIRIT STRONG.

Byline: Carol Rock Staff Writer

Jennifer Kilpatrick chose the purple wheelchair.

She considered colors a little more dignified for the courtroom once she reclaims her legal practice, a career interrupted by a Metrolink wreck in January that left her paralyzed.

But purple makes a statement, said Kilpatrick, who shows remarkable spirit in her will to recover and doesn't see her current physical state as all doom and gloom.

``There was serious debate whether I should have a black or dark blue subdued-color wheelchair if I ever go to court again or if I should just get a loud, brightly colored one,'' Kilpatrick said in a telephone interview last week from her new Las Vegas home. ``I ended up with purple metallic. It's a rather assertive wheelchair and an interesting experience.''

Kilpatrick was one of four Santa Clarita residents seriously injured when two cars of the Santa Clarita-to-Los Angeles train toppled after the train collided with a 3-ton utility truck at a Burbank crossing. The collision killed passenger Grace Kirkness of Newhall; Kilpatrick suffered an injured spinal cord and lost the use of her legs.

Now she and her husband have moved to Las Vegas for the next stage of her recuperation. She said she is enjoying her time in the desert, surrounded by nature.

``I'm doing pretty good, compared to January,'' she said. ``We moved to Vegas because my husband loves it for eating and I love it for rock collecting.

``Here they protect endangered rocks and really rare geologic formations,'' she said. ``I love rock collecting, but I can't go out in the field and collect them any more, so we drive around to look at them. I can sit up for about five hours, which gives us about a 2 1/2-hour driving radius.''

The couple bought the home last July for vacations but found it already suited to Kilpatrick's special needs.

``When it came time to get out of the hospital and have therapy done at home, the choice was to totally tear apart my home in Santa Clarita so I could have a bathtub and a bedroom downstairs, or sell it,'' she said.

They put the house on the market, and it sold in seven days. Now they plan to live in Las Vegas for about eight more months, when Kilpatrick hopes lawsuits surrounding the crash will be settled.

Kilpatrick's short-term memory was affected by the accident, adding cognitive therapy to the long list of treatments she receives on a regular basis.

In the meantime, she has accepted that physical therapy is a lifetime commitment. She has spinal cord injuries in two places and painful involuntary muscle contractions.

``It's very complicated. I have so much muscle weirdness, and my range of motion is affected. I can't touch my ankles or the floor or reach around like I used to.''

Her official diagnosis is spasticity and clonus, or rapid repetitive muscle spasms.

``I go through this elaborate exercise thing to keep my legs as limber as possible, so they don't atrophy. Then there's other therapy to teach me to cope with what I can and cannot do. And they're trying to work on the brain injury. But my short-term memory is shot, '' she said.

Kilpatrick takes antidepressants to help avoid post-traumatic stress disorder.

``I don't have to think about the train accident because of my nice little assortment of pills,'' she said. ``I'm not going to enjoy reliving it in court. Basically, when your train car rolls over at 80 miles per hour, it's not a good thing.''

Kilpatrick voraciously reads the local newspapers and couldn't help noting an environmental issue about Red Rock Canyon. In true Kilpatrick style, she went to the local hearing.

``I read the papers because I need to do things to make my brain work, but I made a solemn promise to my husband that I wouldn't get involved,'' she said. ``I'm keeping that promise. I'm proud to say the Sierra Club people here did beautifully.''

Keeping a finger on the Santa Clarita Valley pulse is easy with her network of friends calling with updates on City Council meetings and sending tapes of the Citizens Advisory Group dealing with the cleanup of the Whittaker Bermite property in Saugus, an issue she was working on before the accident.

Her days are filled with reading, physical therapy, sleeping 10 to 12 hours a day and hanging out with her 11-year-old daughter. But she's homesick for the valley and looks forward to coming back to her friends.

Kilpatrick's experience with the judicial system is working in her favor as she waits out her own multifaceted legal proceedings. In question is the safety of train car design, in which the same table setting that caused Kilpatrick's crushed vertebrae was implicated in an Orange County Metrolink accident that resulted in a fatality. Then there's the question of whether the intersection was hazardously designed, causing those affected to first file a claim, then a lawsuit, against the city of Burbank.

Since official reports place blame for the crash on truck driver Jacek Wysocki, who was on duty at the time, his employer, a subsidiary of Universal Studios, must be involved.

``You just do what you have to do,'' she said. ``You don't get to pick who you sue.'' She is encouraged that her employer, the downtown Los Angeles firm of Kearney Alvarez LLP, is handling the claim. ``They are really good plaintiff trauma lawyers.'

After practicing law for 25 years and having to account for every 15-minute segment, she's learning to look away from the clock and enjoy life on her own time schedule.

``Pretty soon, I will be able to do things like get out of bed and use a walker to get into my wheelchair or transfer to the car,'' she said. ``Whether or not I will drive again is being debated now, because part of my brain damage affects my hands. I can't drive with my feet, and they're not sure if I can drive with my hands.

``But it's a wonderful life. The spinal cord is an interesting organ.''