Others had scoured the area, looking for signs of Ricky's truck. Sheriff's deputies were ready to call off their long search.

But Scott and Andrew weren't ready to give up. As it turns out, their determined effort is just one of the miraculous events that saved Ricky's life.

The two went for a drive in the late morning hours and explored the vicinity of Ricky's girlfriend's house, his last known stop. On Mt. Eden Road, near Damon Lane, Scott suddenly stopped the car and told Andrew to go and take a look at the side of the road.

Despite the lack of skid marks and no signs of any disturbance to the vegetation, "there was an opening where you just couldn't see" into the creek bed, Scott says.

Andrew glanced down and didn't see anything at first but then caught sight of a "slight unnatural glimmer" that caused him to search even harder.

Then Andrew saw it: a black Ford F150, upside down and just next to Calabazas Creek. Andrew says there's no way to describe how he felt when he saw Ricky's car—"I was kind of hoping that I wouldn't find him, that he had gone somewhere by himself."

"I could tell by the look on Andrew's face that that was where Ricky was," Scott says.

While Scott made his way down the 30-foot slope and then somehow made Ricky squeeze his hand, Andrew used his cell phone to call Ricky's parents and then 911.

A Saratoga Fire District engine was first on the scene.

"He was unconscious but breathing," says Capt. Bill Morrison. Ricky could, however, feel painful stimuli, and Morrison says he was evidently suffering from internal injuries.

According to engineer and paramedic Chris Stuehler, the Ford's cab had sunk by approximately 1¹/2 feet, with the steering wheel pinning Ricky down to the seat. Because the airbags hadn't deployed, however, firefighters were unable to simply take out the steering wheel, since airbag deployment could have caused additional injuries to Ricky and emergency personnel.

Instead, the men used the Jaws of Life, which only bought them a few more inches in the cab. Finally, firefighters tore apart Ricky's seat and began removing the interior foam. Extracting Ricky from the vehicle took approximately 40 minutes.

Photograph courtesy of Rich Bunch The Ford F150 that Ricky Bunch drove off the side of Mt. Eden Road sat in a tow yard; the driver's side was almost completely crushed.

"Andrew Brady and his father, Scott, gave us the most important Christmas gift we could ever receive," says Dona Bunch, Ricky's mother.

"I just look at it as, I found my friend and he's still my friend and he's still alive," Andrew says.

Photograph by George Sakkestad Chris Stuehler (front), engineer and paramedic for the Saratoga Fire District, attended to Ricky Bunch's rescue. Ricky's Ford lay upside down for 16 hours where Stuehler stands; in Stuehler's hand is an armrest and at his feet is some foam from the driver's seat. The armrest and seat had to be cut out to extract Ricky.

A helicopter landed less than one-eighth of a mile from the accident and flew Ricky to Stanford Hospital's trauma unit.

"The odds were stacked against him when he hit the door," says David Spain, professor of surgery and chief of trauma and surgical and critical care at Stanford.

After being trapped in his car for 16 hours, Ricky was suffering from hypothermia—which in actuality contributed to his survival because the condition slowed down his vitals; a collapsed right lung; a crush injury to his right leg; renal failure; and "a rattling of the brain," called a diffused axonal injury.

Spain says if Ricky had been found even a couple of hours later, he probably would have been dead. "He was getting toward the end there," Spain says. "I'm more surprised that he lasted as long as he did, to be honest."

"To tell the truth, I didn't think he would make it," Stuehler says.

"We were told the worst scenario that day, that he wasn't going to make it," Dona says.

Photograph by George Sakkestad Dona Bunch is given the news that her son will not lose his right leg, despite extensive tissue damage.

Ricky, who was recently transferred to Kaiser Hospital in Santa Clara, is now sitting up on occasion and talking, albeit in short sentences because of the effects of several weeks with a tracheal tube. And Ricky's right leg still has to be operated on each day to repair tissue damage, but it did not have to be amputated, as doctors originally predicted would need to be the case.

"Most of his wounds started to close really well on their own," Spain says. "And I thought that his head injury was pretty bad, but he did really well. I have to admit, there were moments when I was pleasantly surprised."

"The kid is a fighter extraordinaire," Rich says of his son, a junior at Saratoga High School. "That's what I told him: 'You gotta fight for your life, Ricky, because I would do that for you.' "

Ricky grew up as a fighter, training in his father's jujitsu studio to become an award-winning martial artist. Ricky's other interests include showing motorcycles, playing blues guitar and teaching jujitsu to children.

"He is what you'd want a child to grow up and be," Rich says. "I didn't realize he ended up growing up to be such a good kid."

At Saratoga High, Ricky joined the wrestling team and was on this year's varsity football team. One of his favorite classes is ceramics, which is taught by Leah Aguayo.

"He always comes into my room with a smile and a calm about him," Aguayo says. "He always wants to know how I'm doing. He says, 'Hey, Mrs. A, how ya doin'?' "

Ricky "traverses all groups," says Saratoga High Assistant Principal Karen Hyde. At lunch Ricky will sometimes sit and eat with the "neglected kids" or hang out with his football buddies. "For a high schooler, that's unusual," Hyde says.

Photograph by George Sakkestad Ricky Bunch's hospital room is lined with posters signed by friends. Andrew Brady, who was the first to catch a glimpse of Ricky's car in the creek, signs one of the posters.

Sam and Ricky "are very sweet together," says Hyde, who has spent countless hours with the couple since the Dec. 24 accident.

That day, Ricky—who'd had his driver's license for just five days—went to Sam's house, off Mt. Eden, to drop off her Christmas gift. Nobody was home, but Ricky had told Sam that he was going to stop by and then go back to his mother's house, just off Cox Avenue.

"I was the last one that had talked to him, and he wasn't going to go anywhere else," Sam says.

According to Dona, Ricky had been suffering from a cold and was home when she went out. "I come home and there's no Ricky," Dona says. "I was panic-stricken and called a friend and called police. Rick's the kind of young man that would always call and tell me wherever he was going or was reachable by cell phone."

"She lives for him. She knows that he would not have done this to her on Christmas Eve," says Sharron Grichuhin, the friend who has been with Dona, who is divorced from Rich, throughout the ordeal.

"I got a call from Dona—'Where is he?' That blew my mind. It was Christmas Eve, and that's just not like him," Rich says.

Sam called Ricky's phone throughout the night and next morning. "I flipped out," Sam says.

Finally, the group called Andrew Brady, who had known Ricky since sixth grade. Scott says his son was very concerned about his friend, which convinced him to go out searching. "He usually doesn't get upset that easily," Scott says.

The spot where Ricky crashed was less than a quarter-mile from Sam's house. According to the firefighters, Ricky had gone straight where Mt. Eden bends slightly to the right. The Ford glanced off one tree and then crashed into another, taking most of the bark off the tree trunk. The car then careened into the creek, coming to a rest on the cab, just inches away from the water.

Sam describes the final appearance of the vehicle as, "Take a normal truck and then smash completely the driver's side."

The weather forecast for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day was rain. But fate was on Ricky's side—it stayed dry. "We're lucky it wasn't raining, because if it had been raining he would have drowned," says Capt. Bill Morrison.

"That was an act of God," Rich adds.

"I was at my house and I heard the ambulance," Sam says. "I knew it was something, whether he was dead or alive."

Scooter Hart, a Saratoga High graduate and Ricky's best friend, was going to pick Sam up and saw the helicopter fueling up to leave. Scooter says, however, that he wasn't that scared. "He made it through the night. He made it through the cold. He made it through the accident," Scooter says. "He couldn't just stop now. He's just stubborn."

Less than an hour after being found, Ricky arrived at Stanford. "The minute I walked into Stanford Hospital, I knew there were angels there," Dona says.

"At first, he didn't look as bad as he really was," Sam says.

Scooter says, "He looked like Ricky, but he was sleeping and there was a thing sticking out of his head."

Within a matter of days, however, Ricky's face had ballooned to several times its normal size, and doctors had to take him into surgery to drain fluids from his body.

"It was just hard the first couple of weeks because we weren't sure if he was going to live. But he is," Sam says.

Sam, Rich and Dona slept at the intensive care unit those first few weeks. "[Dona] especially just camped out. I had to tell her to go home, finally," Dr. Spain says. "To her, it wasn't a sacrifice at all."

Ricky was in a coma for about a week and had to be on dialysis because of kidney failure.

According to Spain, Ricky's age worked in his favor. Diffused axonal injuries typically are irreparable for adults. "For head injuries, 16 is good; 26 is old," Spain says. "A year from now, he's got a shot at being a fairly normal kid." If Ricky was over 18, that would be practically impossible.

"From the beginning, it didn't seem like he was going to die, because too many things were right," Sam says. The nature of Ricky's injuries, the way he was found and the recovery he's made are more than a series of coincidences.

"I've seen some incredible miracles with Ricky," Rich says. "God moves in mysterious ways."

"He had 16 hours to decide whether to live or die. Clearly, he wanted to live," Hyde says. "He's the success story."

Hyde says she was notified of the accident by sheriff's officers the day after Christmas. "We have been through so much tragedy at this school that my first thought was, 'Is he going to make it?' " Hyde says. "We've had one suicide and three deaths in a car [in the past three years]. You look at this and think, 'Can we as a family, as Saratoga High, do this again?' With this one, we can."

Aguayo says when she was told that Ricky had been in a car accident, she had a similar reaction. "For a Saratoga High teacher, when we get a call like this, our hearts immediately drop," Aguayo says. "We've had so many students die."

Both went up to Stanford on Dec. 27. "I just held his hand and talked to him and told him that there were so many people praying for him," Aguayo says.

It's the people, Dona says, that have been key in Ricky's recovery.

"It's just been overwhelming, the support from friends and the high school," Dona says. Ricky has received a steady stream of visitors, including fellow students, Rich's martial arts buddies from Southern California, teachers at Saratoga and Redwood and the emergency personnel who participated in his rescue. "He's just touched everybody," Dona says.

Photograph by George Sakkestad Since Christmas, Saratoga High School has publicly shown its support for junior Ricky Bunch with this sign along Saratoga­Sunnyvale Road.

Spain says it's not rare to see such a big group of supporters for a patient in the intensive care unit. "Clearly, there's a benefit to having people around who are interested in your well-being and concerned about you," Spain says.

Sam feels like she's become another child for Dona and Rich. "It's nice; I've become family with them," Sam says. She stays at the hospital daily until about 10:30 at night and says she is often asked, " 'Do you come to the hospital every day?' Yeah, why would I do something different? He needs me. He would've done the same if it were me."

Aguayo calls Sam "one of the most remarkable young women that I've seen in my 22 years here at Saratoga."

Dona says Hyde also has been consistent, visiting the hospital every day during the holiday vacation and at least every weekend since, sometimes staying until 2:30 in the morning. "She is the strongest lady I know and has given me such strength," Dona says.

The two key figures in Ricky's recovery, however, are Rich and Dona.

"His father and I have faced every parent's nightmare. I hope no other parent has to go through this, ever," Dona says. "You can't imagine the trauma that we've had to face."

Hyde calls Dona "the mother that everybody should have—respectful, caring, encouraging."

"She's the consummate wonderful lady. How lucky Ricky is," Hyde says.

"I've been very strong, as his mother has," Rich says. "But now when I think of everything, how close I got to losing my baby ... " Rich has to choke back tears.

With the medical attention of professionals and the love of family and friends, Ricky's recovery has astounded all of those around him. Although he has no memory of leaving Sam's house the night of Christmas Eve, Ricky can recite the alphabet, answer his father's technical motorcycle questions, correct his mother on people's names and gesture to his friends to call him.

His hospital room at Kaiser is adorned with posters signed by classmates, Saratoga High administrators and young jujitsu students he has taught. In the corner, there's a small model of a Harley; a string of Valentine's decorations act as a curtain for the sliding glass door.

Ricky is still tired much of the time and depends on morphine to relieve the pain from his right leg but is wide-eyed with visitors. In those eyes, Aguayo says, there is "that same sweetness" that was there before the accident.

He also nods, shrugs, smiles at jokes and funny stories and utters phrases every now and then. In just a matter of weeks, he will be able to eat, since he's been on a feeding tube for the duration of his hospital stay.

What's next for the Bunch family?

"Rick will need a lot of rehabilitation when he leaves the hospital," Dona says. For the next month, Ricky will need the tissue-repair surgery every day and will ultimately also need some speech therapy.

After "extensive rehab," Rich says, "we all have every intention of getting back in the game."

"He comes here and we do our jobs and fix him up and he'll go on to become a productive member of society," Spain says.

But the experience will definitely have long-term impacts. "Life will never be the same again," Dona says. "Sitting in the ICU for six weeks is an eye-opener."

Sam also says the past two months have been a "life-changing experience." This doesn't change her plans for the future, however; Sam will graduate from Saratoga High this June, still aiming to attend West Valley College and then transfer to San José State University.

"I'm just planning on being there for Ricky as much as I can," Sam says.

Hyde says she plans on being there, too. She sees Ricky's story as one of encouragement for the entire Saratoga community, "because there's hope."