LONG BEACH, Calif. (KABC) — A 15-year-old high school athlete, left paralyzed after diving headfirst into a sandbar, walked out of a Long Beach hospital Wednesday to the cheers of dozens of supporters.<\/p>\n
Alessandro Apuzzo suffered a severe spinal injury during the Fourth of July holiday and has spent the last four months learning how to walk again at Miller Children’s & Women’s Hospital. Wednesday morning, dozens of his family members, friends, medical staff and even the Long Beach lifeguards who saved him, gathered outside the hospital to congratulate him.<\/p>\n
“To see all the people who supported me, it’s awesome,” Apuzzo said. “It just really makes me happy.”<\/p>\n
Apuzzo, who attends Woodrow Wilson High School in Long Beach, is a standout water polo player. The injury to his neck often leaves victims paralyzed for life.<\/p>\n
“He suffered three burst fractures of his cervical spine,” explained Dr. Kimberly BeDell. “He had an incomplete quadriplegia.”<\/p>\n
She said Apuzzo’s recovery has been difficult but that his athletic drive has propelled him through setbacks and frustrations, something his father agrees with.<\/p>\n
“His recovery in the last month has been absolutely crazy. It’s amazing,” said Jose Santos Loria of his son. “It is Thanksgiving, so I can say… thank you to this community for all the support that we have received.”<\/p>\n
Doctors say Apuzzo still has at least six more months of therapy ahead of him, but say his outlook is good.<\/p>\n
The teen athlete agrees.<\/p>\n
“I hope to get back to doing what I love, being in the water, surfing, bodyboarding, all of that,” he told Eyewitness News, adding “And Happy Thanksgiving.”<\/p>\n
Copyright \u00a9 2025 KABC Television, LLC. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONG BEACH, Calif. (KABC) — A 15-year-old high school athlete, left paralyzed after diving headfirst into a sandbar,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":72253,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[42355,131,133,132],"class_list":["post-72252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-42355","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72252\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}