People Donate Thousands For Pedro Perez

Maricela Perez, center, wife of Pedro Perez, a San Leandro man who fell from an 11-story building in San Francisco while window washing, speaks about her husband's recovery with her daughter Gaby Perez, 11, left, and Colin O'Leary, right, a Service Employees International Union organizer, at the SEIU United Service Workers West office in Oakland, Calif.

Window washer who fell 130 feet in S.F. 'wants to get up and run’ - Daniela Perez says her father, Pedro, is a stubborn man. The 58-year-old San Leandro window washer is stubborn about working hard. He is stubborn about passing down his values to his three daughters. And now, he is stubbornly fighting back after suffering extensive brain trauma, a shattered pelvis and a broken arm when he plummeted 11 stories from the roof of a building in San Francisco — and somehow survived.

“He is fighting,” Daniela, 16, said Monday. “He wants to get up already. He wants to get up and run.” It’s going to be awhile, though, before Perez can run — or even walk. He’s been slowly recovering at San Francisco General Hospital since the Nov. 21 accident, when he plunged from the top of 400 Montgomery St. during a job that went wrong. He was hurtling toward the asphalt below when, in an unusual piece of good fortune, he crashed into and crumpled the roof of a passing Toyota Camry.

Perez’s family is now reluctantly asking for help from the public as he embarks on a long recovery. His wife, 37-year-old Maricela, and three daughters — Daniela, 11-year-old Gaby and Monica, 19 — started a crowdfunding site to raise money. Perez, who has worked as a window washer for 15 years, has insurance through work to cover his medical bills and is getting workers’ compensation checks.

But without his full income, the family members said, they are scraping by. Maricela has been working extra hours at a plastic factory, while Monica quit school to take another job. “It’s not easy to be asking for help,” Maricela said through a translator at a news conference Monday in Oakland. Her husband, she said, “was the one helping to make ends meet. We need him a lot. He is our backup.”

A lone shoe of window washer, Pedro Perez who fell 11 stories onto a moving car sits in the gutter of Montgomery and California streets in San Francisco.

When Maricela first learned of the accident, she was told by a relative that her husband had died. It wasn’t until after she had frantically picked up her daughters from school that she learned through authorities he was alive — barely. Along with the brain trauma and broken bones, Perez was hemorrhaging internally from a ruptured artery in his right arm. Maricela Perez also didn’t know the incredible circumstances of the fall. It was around 10 a.m., amid the bustling crowds of the city’s Financial District, when Perez fell 130 feet into Mohammad Alcozai’s 2002 Camry.

Witnesses stepped in to help — calling 911, stopping traffic and urging Perez to hold on — and paramedics were at the scene within minutes, stabilizing Perez and rushing him to a hospital. “I think God wanted me to be there just at the moment that poor man fell,” said Alcozai, a traveling tech specialist from Dublin, who had slowed down and then sped up after his car’s navigation system shut down momentarily. “It was a miracle that he was able to fall in my car, and it was a miracle that I was OK.”

The driver of a 2002 Toyota Camry that was crushed after a window washer fell 11 stories onto its roof talks on the phone.

In the days after the accident, Maricela Perez said, “It was surgery after surgery. The doctors induced a coma because the suffering was so great. Truly, it is a miracle that he is still alive.” When he finally woke up, Perez wasn’t able to speak, his family said. He didn’t remember the fall, nor could he recognize familiar faces. But in the past few weeks, he has improved.

He’s now calling his relatives by name and is out of the hospital’s intensive care unit. Soon he will be moved to a rehabilitation center in Pleasanton, where he will work to regain use of his right side, Maricela said. “At first, it was hard to see him and not be able to ask if he’s OK,” Daniela said. “Now he’s talking. He can tell us what hurts. Before we couldn’t help him. We felt helpless.”

An investigator takes photos of window scaffolding platform after window washer, Pedro Perez fell 11 stories onto a moving car at Montgomery and California streets in San Francisco.

California workplace safety regulators are still looking into what caused Perez’s fall, and said Monday that they could not release details about the case until the investigation is complete. Century Window Cleaning of Concord, the firm doing the job, has not commented. “We have up to six months to complete the investigation,” said Peter Melton, a Cal/OSHA spokesman. “Typically, they are not finished within a month.”

Perez’s loved ones said they will spend Christmas at the hospital. They said he is eager to get back to work, but that his days of washing windows are behind him. “It’s hard not having my dad at home, especially with Christmas and my birthday coming up,” said Daniela, who turns 17 next month. “I hope he gets better, and he gets to come home. I want to be able to celebrate with him.”

Pedro Perez has had several surgeries for the injuries he received when he landed atop a car in the city's financial district Nov. 21 after plummeting 130 feet from the top of the Sterling Bank and Trust. He suffered extensive brain trauma, severely damaged his right arm and fractured his pelvis, and it's not clear whether he'll walk again. Maricela Perez through a translator said “They are saying it’s a miracle.”