Ventura Surfer Loses Arm In Train Accident — And Gets It Re-Attached

“I’ve gone through four surgeries so far, and I’ll go through my fifth one tomorrow,” Elieah Boyd tells me, from the hospital room she’s spent the past couple weeks in.

There’s a lightness in her voice, which stands in heavy contrast to the reason I’m calling her. 

Elieah is a 24-year old surf instructor from Ventura who has organized her life, like most of us, around the all-consuming task of being on the correct patch of ocean when the pleasant remnants of a storm arrive.

“After high school, I decided I kinda just wanted to travel and surf,” she explains. “I work at a little cafe in town. I sew, I make jewelry. I’m pretty creative, and I’ll do anything to be outside.”

Two weeks ago, she was biking through downtown Ventura, when she underwent nothing short of tragedy. 

“I was biking this route that I’ve gone hundreds of times,” she says. “It’s basically a path across train tracks in a neighborhood. I was using a friend’s e-bike, and it has an extension on the back to take her kids. So it’s really heavy, probably like 80 pounds. This guy was walking the same route, and I started crossing the tracks by myself in front of him, trying to lift the bike over the tracks. It was so heavy I could barely lift it. Then the guy offered to help, but as he got to me I looked over my right shoulder and saw that there was a train coming. I said something to him, but it was probably not even three seconds from when I saw it to when it got to us. We tried to pull the bike off, and it clipped the bike, which my hand was still holding — and I guess it just severed my arm completely.

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“I remember everything, I never blacked out,” she continues. “There was a moment of silence right as it initially happened. It just went completely silent. It felt like a movie, honestly. I remember grabbing my arm and looking down at it, trying to come to grips with what had just happened. I just thought ‘there’s no way this could be real right now.’ I was looking down at my arm and my arm just wasn’t there. I grabbed my shoulder as tight as I possibly could, trying to control blood flow to basically not bleed out.”

As it turned out, the guy with her was a recently retired firefighter — and he immediately called emergency services. 

“I remember looking up at the sky as he was calling the ambulance thinking ‘This cannot be the way my story ends. This is not the way I’m supposed to go out,’” she tells me. “I was awake the entire time, and I didn’t feel anything. It didn’t hurt at all. I was just in such shock, with so much adrenaline, just thinking ‘I need to survive. I need to stay awake. I cannot black out.’”

“I just remember telling ’em a hundred times to call my mom and my boyfriend. I actually was having phantom arm syndrome. I was laying down in the ambulance, looking down at my arm that was no longer there, and wiggling my fingers. I could feel it, but there was nothing there.”

After being brought into the Ventura Hospital, she was heli-lifted to UC Irvine — where she underwent a 10-hour arm replantation surgery.

“The firefighter told the cops to look for my arm after I got loaded into the ambulance,” says Elieah. “I honestly didn’t even know they could reattach an arm. I’m so grateful. Science is pretty crazy these days. I mean, the ultimate goal is full use of my arm — but realistic expectations, I might not have a ton of finger mobility. It’ll take a lot of work to get full strength back. Doctors are optimistic and tell me because I’m 24 and in good health, they think I could make a really good comeback.”

“I told myself right as it happened — if Bethany Hamilton can do it, I think I can do it too.”

With her fifth and (hopefully) final surgery happening tomorrow, Elieah is one step closer to a C-street noseride.

If you want to support her, you can donate to the GoFundMe here.