Her Cruelest Shock Came Last

Thinking only that her “mommy was asleep,” Ruby Bustamante waited patiently beside the body of her dead mother for 10 days before a work crew noticed that their car had skidded off the road and plunged 150 feet down a rocky canyon.

The little girl, who was rescued Tuesday in a deserted section of Riverside County’s badlands, caught a glimpse of a television news segment on her mother’s death in her hospital room, officials said. Relatives who surrounded the girl’s bed quickly switched the channel to a cartoon as the girl asked, “Is mommy OK?”

“Mommy is going to heaven,” the girl’s grandmother told her, according to the officials. The young girl, officials said, looked “as if someone had yanked something away from her. She definitely changed.”

The Riverside County coroner’s office reported Wednesday that Norma Bustamante, 26, suffered numerous blunt force traumas, severe injuries to her liver and several broken ribs. Medical examiners determined that she probably died shortly after the crash.

CHP Officer Chris Blondon said the needle of the Ford Taurus’ speedometer was stuck at 83 mph, and tests would be conducted to see if the accident was caused by mechanical failure.

The mother and daughter were last seen in Indio, where they lived, April 4. Ten days later, a crew of Caltrans workers and private contractors were repairing worn guardrails along the 60 Freeway when a worker saw a car beneath a large tree in a box canyon.

“There’s a car down there,” yelled Ralph Merino, a worker with Modern Alloys, a Stanton firm that installs guardrails for the state. Caltrans worker Gerry Magnuson said he heard Merino say, “Something’s wrong. I saw something move.”

Merino, who scurried down the hill, returned moments later with the girl in his arms. They placed her in the passenger seat of their pickup and gave her water.

“Oh my, she drank that water down fast,” Magnuson said.

While stranded, authorities said, the young girl would have faced such dangers as hypothermia and rattlesnakes. They said Ruby was wearing a heavy red jacket with a hood and jeans. Authorities said that both the mother and daughter were barefoot, and that their shoes were found lined up near the wreckage.

Hospital, police and Caltrans officials said they had not heard of a child surviving alone for so long. The girl, according to authorities, survived by eating Top Ramen noodles and drinking Gatorade that had been in the car.

“It’s amazing. She was incredibly lucky, unbelievably lucky,” said Dr. John Rodarte, a La Canada Flintridge pediatrician and search and rescue physician.

“It really shows how incredibly resilient children are. It’s a testament to her strength and her will to survive,” he said.

While the girl suffered no serious injuries and seems to be recovering from dehydration, experts said the mental trauma she could face was more difficult to determine.

Family members say the child’s trauma was exacerbated by police, who they claim failed to act quickly on reports of the missing mother and daughter.

On Wednesday, CHP and Caltrans officials said it appeared that Bustamante’s Taurus had just crested a hill when it skidded off the roadway, flattened a road reflector, clipped the end cap of a metal guardrail and sailed end over end into the canyon, slamming into the trunk of a thick tree.

“They had to have been airborne,” said Robert Baker, a highway contract employee from Fallbrook who was one of the crew on the road above when the car was discovered.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Baker, who has done highway work for 17 years. Neither the mother nor the daughter were wearing seat belts. Norma Bustamante was ejected from the car, officials said.

A day after she was rescued, Ruby sat in a hospital bed surrounded by stuffed animals brought by friends and family members. Outside the hospital, friends and relatives held a press conference and charged that police could have done more to prevent Norma Bustamante’s death.

Some family members and friends say that two motorists called 911 shortly after the accident but that CHP officers failed to search the scene.

“There were two calls to the police,” said Dan Jones, minister of the Banning Church of Christ. “If there were calls, why don’t you go down the hill and look?”

CHP officials said that there was only one emergency call and that an officer did search the area.

“We understand our officer did get out of his car at the scene and look around, and he saw nothing,” said Tom Marshall, a CHP spokesman in Sacramento. “There were fire crews on the scene as well and they saw nothing.... We’re very sorry, we feel very sorry for the family. We of course like to do everything we can.”

It had been reported that the girl was 6 after relatives confirmed the date of birth on fliers they had posted. But on Wednesday, hospital officials insisted she was 5 after talking to the grandparents.

Another discrepancy involves statements the girl made to emergency workers shortly after her rescue. While county medical examiners said Norma Bustamante probably died moments after the crash, her daughter told emergency crews that her mother was “awake” for perhaps a couple of days, complaining of a broken leg and a “tummy ache.”

The young girl said it was her mother who directed her to find the dried noodles and sports drink that sustained her. Rodarte, the pediatrician, said time is often distorted for people who suffer trauma, and that that phenomenon could explain the discrepancy.

“During a time of trauma, time really gets suspended. It’s very difficult to form timelines after the fact,” Rodarte said.

Ruby might bury many of the memories of her mother’s death for years, he said. But he added that children were often able to recover well from such early traumas.

“If she was in fairly good physical condition when they found her, she’s only going to get better,” he said.

Times staff writer Seema Mehta contributed to this report.