Miami SunPost
School for the profoundly handicapped loses staff
Ryan Saavedra graduated from Felix Varela Senior last Friday at the age of 20. For most students, graduating two years behind the rest of their classmates would be a source of humiliation. For Ryan, it was a triumph.
During the 2005-2006 school year, Ryan, an honors student enrolled in AP courses, was a senior playing offense, defense and special teams for the Coral Reef Senior High football team.
But during his school's Sept. 30 homecoming game, he walked off the field complaining of nausea and told his coach, "I just got banged." Then he collapsed on the sidelines and had to be airlifted to the Ryder Trauma Center at Jackson Memorial Hospital, where he fell into a coma that he would not awake from until October 25, his 18th birthday.Read more
