Losing Leg In Crash Won't Stop Joliet Business Owner Mike Ross

JOLIET, IL — It's been more than three months since Joliet resident Mike Ross survived a horrific crash along Route 6 that claimed the life of the other driver and her 6-year-old son. As for Ross, his right leg was amputated below the knee after he was airlifted from Silver Cross Hospital to the Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood.

Ross' life changed on May 26, but his strong Christian faith and his determination to maintain a positive attitude give him the strength to endure after having his leg amputated.

Last week, he let Joliet Patch visit his house on Joliet's far west side to interview him about the crash and his recovery.

"The goal for me now, within the next three months, is to have the prosthetic to learn to walk again, and hopefully I can get back in to my business operation," Ross said. "By the end of the year, I'm hoping to be up and moving."

Being away from his business,Freedomclean, has been one of the most difficult aspects of the recovery, because of the economic hardship. The 48-year-old Ross owns the business on Route 30 in Plainfield. It’s a carpet cleaning and water damage restoration company.

Then, around 6:30 p.m. on May 26, Ross was involved in a head-on crash along the Route 6 stretch between Joliet and Rockdale.

The other driver, 27-year-old Sara Altiery, and her 6-year-old son, Levi Eichelberger, both were killed. The boy died of his injuries at Joliet's AMITA Health Saint Joseph Medical Center, and Altiery died the following morning, May 27.

Ross said his heart stopped briefly beating while he was taken by helicopter from Silver Cross to the Loyola. He spent the next three days in a coma.

He has faced a difficult and challenging recovery.

"They say that when you lose below the knee, they say it's a lot easier," Ross said. "This left leg broke in three different places, so that makes it difficult to bear weight on this leg."

Joliet police previously said Altiery lost control of her car and veered across the center line into the oncoming traffic, colliding with Ross' pick-up truck.

"I did not see her at all," Ross remembered. "I did not have a chance to hit my brakes or anything at all."

Ross was driving his 2007 Chevy Silverado westbound along Route 6 while Altiery, the young mother from Joliet, had three children in her 2018 Chevy Malibu, as she headed east. Altiery's 7-year-old and 12-year-old children survived the crash and their injuries were not life-threatening, authorities said at the time.

"By all accounts, from the reports I read, she lost control and went in my lane," Ross said. "I remember most of everything up until the Joliet paramedics put me in the back of the ambulance, until they put the oxygen on my face. Two or three days later, Saturday, I woke up, so three days, I was completely out.

"I was basically bleeding out, and that's when they sent to me to the trauma center. They couldn't treat me locally."

While in the helicopter flying to Loyola, "my heart stopped," Ross said.

At the time of the Route 6 collision, Ross said he was driving to his office.

"I was getting ready to take Route 6 to Houbolt Road to get to Interstate 55," he said.

He remembers the Joliet firefighter/paramedics treating him after "someone had pulled me out before they got there."

He does not know the identity of the people who rescued him from the wreckage, but he wonders if they were employees at Ecolab, since the crash happened right in front of the company at 3001 Channahon Road.

"I was yelling for someone to get me out," Ross said. "They pulled me out and set me on the grass and I just remember laying there, and it seemed like forever, and eventually I remember the ambulance coming."

The Joliet Fire Department firefighter/paramedics arrived at the scene.

"They put oxygen on me, and they just kept saying, 'Don't go to sleep. Don't go to sleep, stay with me,'" Ross recalled.

Ross does not believe he was knocked unconscious after the wreck.

"I was literally up the whole time," he said. "I was having difficulty breathing, I had a collapsed lung, so I was gasping for air."

Thoughts raced through his mind.

"I just kept thinking about my wife and my children. I basically told myself, 'I cannot die like this. I'm not going to die like this,'" he said.

At some point after the Joliet Fire Department ambulance had him en route to Silver Cross Hospital, he lapsed into a coma.

"I was out three days," he said. "A week after I woke up, I could sense that my wife was really concerned."

As he recovered in his hospital bed at Loyola, Ross said he found out details of the crash.

He learned the 27-year-old mother from Joliet, along with her 6-year-old boy, died in the wreck.

Some of his most vivid memories of coming out of his coma at Loyola were meeting a chaplain and a surgeon.

"Loyola, as far as how they handled me and communicated with my family, they were excellent. I stayed from May 26 until June 24," Ross said.

Ross said his wife "drove up to the hospital seven days a week" to be with him. They have two grown daughters, 28 and 22, and a son, who is 18 attending Joliet Junior College this fall.

Over the summer, the family of Sara Altiery contacted him and his family, he said.

"The family ... just offered her sympathies to my situation and well-wishes for me, and it was warmly welcomed on my behalf," Ross said. "It was pleasant to have them reach out to me."

Ross can still visualize laying in the grass, struggling to breathe, after the crash.

It happened on a Wednesday around 6:30 p.m. as thousands of Joliet area residents were coming home from work.

"I wasn't thinking about money," Ross said, "The only thing I was thinking about was my wife and my children. I just kept thinking, 'I can't die. This is not my time.'"

Ross' injuries were numerous:

• A broken left arm
• A broken left femur
• A broken left tibia
• A collapsed lung
• A plate in his pelvis now
• Six broken ribs on the left side
• His right leg was amputated

"It was two vehicles going 40 to 50 mph," he said. "It was just head-on."

To provide him constant care at home, Ross said his wife, Tawona, took a leave from her job where she works at a mental health hospital.

"So we lost two incomes basically," he said.

Ross wants everyone know he has a positive outlook on everything that has happened to him.

"I never once blamed anyone," he said. "I never held any ill will, and I always maintain a positive mental attitude. It comes from a spiritual and religious background.

"I really believe that all things work together for good."

During his interview with Joliet Patch, Ross recited the Bible passage Romans 8:28, which is: "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose."

Ross grew up on Joliet's east side near Brandon Road. He graduated from Joliet West and attended Northern Illinois University in the 1990s. Since he's been home recuperating, Ross re-enrolled in college through Lewis University in Romeoville.

His goal is to obtain a master's degree in business.

Some of his loyal customers from the carpet-cleaning industry have come out of nowhere out to help his family in their time of need.

One customer wrote him a $500 check. The next day, the same customer "brought us Portillo's to our house for the whole family," he said. "So, as customers found out, they've been incredibly supportive."

Patch reported in June that there is a GoFundMe set called, "Help The Ross Family With Expenses." So far, it's raised $10,925 thanks to 152 donors.

Ross has been in the carpet cleaning business since 1996.

His company performs commercial and residential cleaning, but "the residential carpet cleaning is all me. I've been doing this quite a while," he said.

He has at least 400 regular customers in the immediate Joliet area. Several of his jobs take him into Chicago, and he even traveled to Texas earlier this year.

"I will go anywhere if the price is right," Ross smiled.

Being unable to work this summer, Ross said he's fortunate to have two reliable colleagues in the carpet-cleaning industry who have been "servicing my clients on my behalf, because I can't."

One is Maldonado's Carpet Cleaning run by Israel Maldonado. The other is Luther Johnson, who runs Clean Path Carpet Cleaning.

Both businesses are in Joliet.

After our interview at his house ended, Ross reflected on his situation and how the past few months changed the direction of his life.

"Because to me, it’s really a story of survival and maintaining the right mental disposition," he wrote Joliet Patch's editor. "I read a lot of motivational and self-help books and I know how important it is to have a positive mental attitude. I literally take time every morning to meditate and visualize myself walking and running and even riding my Harley again.

"I’ve been hurt, John. But not destroyed! This situation, howbeit tragic, has actually improved my marriage, my outlook and perspective on life and love. Napoleon Hill talks about finding a seed of an equivalent benefit no matter what you go through. I believe I’ve done so."