Antonio Galvis

A 10-year-old girl who became blind while undergoing treatment at Childrens Hospital of Los Angeles has been awarded $4 million by a Superior Court jury. Valerie Castro, the daughter of an oil field worker in Ventura County, will need special education and care for the rest of her life, according to her attorneys, who alleged that the child was negligently treated at the hospital in 1983.

A 10-year-old girl who became blind while undergoing treatment at Childrens Hospital of Los Angeles has been awarded $4 million by a Superior Court jury. Valerie Castro, the daughter of an oil field worker in Ventura County, will need special education and care for the rest of her life, according to her attorneys, who alleged that the child was negligently treated at the hospital in 1983.

A 10-year-old Santa Paula girl who became blind while undergoing treatment at Childrens Hospital of Los Angeles has been awarded $4 million by a Superior Court jury. Valerie Castro will need special education and care for the rest of her life, according to her attorneys, who alleged that the child was negligently treated at the hospital in 1983.

So small that most courtroom observers could see only her blond curls in the box as she testified, the sole witness to an alleged beating that left her twin brother severely brain damaged squirmed Wednesday as a prosecutor tried to coax her into telling what she saw. She is 4. Jessica Thivener sang into the microphone, asked for her mother and said, "I want to see Jason." She looked at pictures of Jason, her brother who is in a vegetative state--perhaps permanently--from his injuries.

Boise State's 43-42 overtime victory over Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl has been good for all sorts of recruiting -- Ian Johnson landing a fiancee, the Broncos winning over some on-the-fence prospects. "We had a guy that was deciding between three schools and still visiting here and there," Coach Chris Petersen said on the Fox Sports Radio show "Out of Bounds." "After the game, sure enough, the phone was ringing and he said, 'I'm in. I'm not even visiting other places.' So it's good."

A Glendale man faces trial on attempted murder and child abuse charges, even though the prosecutor was unsuccessful in coaxing testimony from a 4-year-old girl--the only other person who witnessed an alleged June 12 beating that left her twin brother severely brain-damaged. Fateheen Rahman, 22, who told police the boy hurt himself in a fall against a marble coffee table, will be arraigned later this month in Van Nuys Superior Court.

At the end of a row of palm trees, in the section where so many other babies are buried, Elizabeth and Javier Zendejas busy themselves around the grave of their son, Eder. They spend so much time at Calvary Cemetery that they bring a foam pad to ease the pain of kneeling on the hard-packed dirt. Eder died on March 22, five days after choking on a piece of steak. He was 19 months old.

It started out as a happy expedition, a trip to find a dress for a wedding. It ended in trauma: A 6-year-old boy seriously--almost fatally--injured from a rock thrown from the side of a freeway and into a car--an action that could have resulted in the deaths of all five people in the car. That Daniel Yonan, 6, is recovering from his skull injuries is, in his doctors' words, "a miracle."

At 4 pounds, they are good-sized babies by today's standards. But they are not healthy babies. Their lips and limbs are bluish, their skin ashen from lack of oxygen, their blood so deprived it spurts blue-black when a vein is opened. There is no question these babies are dying of heart-lung failure, and that makes them perfect candidates for ECMO, the controversial bypass machine.

The baby was not quite dying. And that was the problem. He had spent the last month in an intensive care nursery, breathing tubes down his throat, IV lines in his tiny arm, his tiny foot, little dark goggles taped across his eyes. The doctors and nurses who have been giving him morphine every few hours have lost all medical hope for his recovery. Now, they are weary of his care, of his pain. Still, the parents plead, don't stop.