WALKING AWAY FROM $2.2 MILLION SETTLEMENT; PARENTS SUFFER TRAGEDY TOO TOUGH TO FACE.

Byline: Dennis McCarthy 

He still drops them a line from time to time, to let them know where the money is going and who it is helping.

It's been over a year, though, since either of them showed any interest in hearing from him. If they even bother reading his letters anymore, David Romley doesn't know about it.

Maybe it's just as well, the Burbank attorney thinks. Even now, seven years later, the memories still have to be painful for both of them - no matter how far they run to change their lives and forget the past.

All you can do is wish Teresa and Rod Sampson well, hope each of them found whatever it was they were looking for in their new lives when they left their old one behind in 1990.

Still, it's hard to imagine in this day of the almighty dollar something like this happening.

Two people walking away from $2.2 million.

Just leaving the court-ordered judgment they were awarded from their insurance company sitting there on the table - telling Romley they didn't want any part of it.

Money couldn't bring back the only thing either of them cared about, their 6-year-old son, Chris, who went into a coma with severe brain damage after nearly drowning in 1986.

Money couldn't undo the emotional drain and heartbreak of four years of long days and nights, sitting by his bedside praying for a miracle that never happened. Chris died in 1990 without ever waking up.

``They divorced shortly after Chris died,'' Romley says. ``Teresa moved to Indiana, Rod to Arkansas.

``They were a low-income family and certainly could have used the money, but they donated all of it in Christopher's memory so that other people with catastrophic injuries and handicaps could receive help.''

For a while, Romley says, they stayed in touch. He would let each of them know what the money they left behind on the table that fateful day was doing for others - how the Sampson Foundation was keeping alive their son's name.

Tell them about a young mother of two, an amputee, tearfully thanking them for helping her acquire a handicapped van, or a young woman who had lost her leg in a car accident thanking them for the prosthetic limb the money they didn't want bought.

Tell them about the computerized environmental control unit for a quadriplegic who was an innocent victim of a drive-by shooting, or the smile on the face of a 12-year-old quadriplegic boy in Kern County when he received a computer system that opened up his world.

Tell them 40 or so more stories from the last seven years that the money they didn't want bought in their son's name.

And now, on a recent Monday in his Burbank law office, Romley will try again. He'll sit down at his desk, and write Teresa and Rod another letter, letting them know where the money is going. Hoping they still care.

He'll tell them how the Sampson Foundation is helping Mary Beth Holliday, a young girl who went into a coma after she was struck by a car in Granada Hills in 1994.

He'll tell them how her mother, Mary Sloan, prayed over her daughter's hospital bed, just like Teresa and Rod prayed over Chris - tell them how her miracle was answered when Mary Beth woke up one day.

Tell them about the front page story in the Daily News this March detailing the bureaucratic nightmare that Sloan and her daughter have been going through trying to get the Los Angeles Unified School District to offer Mary Beth the various therapy classes she needs for her schooling.

Tell them how the Sampson Foundation has stepped in to pay for another year of physical therapy at Northridge Hospital Medical Center for Mary Beth, now that her insurance benefits have been exhausted.

He'll tell them about a young Pacoima man named Ronald Oliver, who paints beautiful pictures holding the paintbrush in his mouth because his arms don't work.

Tell Teresa and Rod how the Sampson Foundation is spending $16,000 to convert the Oliver family van so Ron can be transported in his wheelchair safely.

He'll also talk a little business, tell them how tough it is for charities to raise funds continually because the needs are so great and the competition for the charity buck so strong. But the foundation is hanging in there.

Finally, he'll end by hoping their separate lives are going well and assuring them that their son's memory is alive in the lives of so many people helped with the money they didn't want.

Grant applications for the Christopher Sampson Nonprofit Foundation for the Catastrophically Injured may be obtained by calling Romley at [phone].