Support for Lauren De Crescenzo

Alex Kim is organizing this fundraiser.

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Lauren

Lauren De Crescenzo is a sister, daughter, granddaughter, girlfriend, bae, bike racer, scholar, student, coach, and a friend. She is family, famry, and an incredible teammate on the Visit Dallas DNA Pro Cycling womens team. Best known for her incredible humor, positive spirits, and long course stamina – when the going gets tough, Lauren gets going. She is also known by her many nicknames, such as the Wolfpack, woofpack, ROREN, laurenissima, LDC, Bambina, Leather, TheStrongestPony, add your own here… Everyone that meets Lauren immediately becomes a friend. It seems Lauren’s goal in life is to make everyone around her laugh and be happy – it is almost pathological for her, focusing on making everyone happy.

The Accident

On Saturday, April 2, 2016, Lauren was involved in a serious cycling accident while participating in the San Dimas Stage Race in Southern California. The race was 56miles/8 circuits on rolling terrain. The accident occurred during the field sprint just after Lauren had led out teammate Mia for the win. Lauren went down at about 100m.

The injuries were obviously serious from the start. Teammate Beth Ann, and several members of other teams with medical skills came to the aid of Lauren to clear her breathing and stabilize her spine Lauren was then flown by helicopter to USC Medical Center’s trauma unit. Once in the hospital, everyone was happy to see that she was stable. She has several broken bones and severe lacerations. Her head injury is the most concern although the early CT scans did not show serious acute injury. Subsequent CT showed some bleeding, but the medical team remains positive.

What Happens Now

Lauren has been in the ICU for a week now. Her recovery has been slow, but promising. She is waking on and off during the day and has started communicating by nods and smiles. She's responding to rap. She is able to move her fingers. We are hopeful that her responsiveness will continue to improve as she recovers.

Lauren is a fighter. She doesn’t take anything sitting down; it’s not even a question for us about whether she will fully recover.

The Fund

One big unknown is with insurance. From her emergency and critical care, to a long term recovery and therapy, the medical bills will be enourmous. Lauren does have insurance, but we are reminded of what someone once said, "insurance is like a hospital gown; you only think you are fully covered."

We are putting together a medical fund under trust which will have Lauren’s father as the trustee. He will be responsible for using funds to support Lauren where the insurance and Medicaid do not help. Our goal is to raise $75,000, we hope that this will be sufficient to take some financial burden off Lauren and the family so they can focus on her full and healthy recovery.

Thank you to Lauren’s friends and family. Thank you to the cycling community; all of the competitors, staff, and sponsors. We have had so many people reach out from around the world asking how they can help. This is how we can help. Lauren never hesitated to ride in support of her team. Let's team-up and join the ride to recovery for Lauren.