A Thanksgiving Morning in Long Beach
For years, we’ve all heard heartwarming stories about lost pets returning home, the Packers defeating the Lions, and grand memories of our families, with gratitude filling our hearts.
Gratitude feels like a fragile thing; some years it stays close, other years, you claw for it, hoping something breaks through the noise.
Christmas miracles, eat your heart out: Thanksgiving in Long Beach, Calif., gave us one of those rare moments where gratitude stood tall on its own.
A fifteen-year-old athlete named Alessandro Apuzzo walked out of Miller Children’s and Women’s Hospital on his own two feet. Why is this important? Because doctors feared he’d never walk again.
Apuzzo dove into a shallow sandbar on the July Fourth holiday and suffered three burst fractures in his neck, an injury that left him with incomplete quadriplegia, which occurs when a person has suffered a spinal cord injury in the neck region. Still, the damage did not entirely sever communication between the brain and the body. Some signals still get through. That allows partial movement, partial sensation, or both in the arms and legs.
Families can never expect a comeback story after hearing that diagnosis, expecting a long, uncertain road with steep challenges ahead.
But something else happened in Long Beach: crowds formed in the hospital hallway as he took step after step, the cheering rising with him.
He smiled and said he felt happy, and the moment carried its own kind of light.
A Family That Refused to Fold
This past month has been absolutely crazy, according to Apuzzo’s father. It made sense; sometimes recovery feels like a long series of small battles. One day, you lift a finger; another, you move your leg.
In the beginning, Alessandro could barely move at all. He went through rounds of therapy that tested his mind as much as his body, displaying a will that made him a strong water polo player, but it became the anchor keeping him from slipping into despair.
The family learned to accept the wins in whatever form: a new twitch, steadier breath, and an extended hold on the walker. Thanksgiving came at the right time, when families gather, old memories surface, and food passes around the table. Yet, none of that compares to watching a young athlete push through a hospital exit with the crowd cheering him on.
Hope walked with him.
The Road Back to Water
Alessandro isn’t entirely out of the woods; doctors believe he’ll need at least six more months of therapy, with a strong chance of getting better each week. He’s already leaning toward the ocean, wanting to be back on a board, with waves under his feet, and listening to the young man speak, you understand why so many people came to celebrate his walk.
He told reporters he wants back in the water as soon as possible, then added, “And Happy Thanksgiving.” An honest line that’s earned.
“To see all the people who supported me, it’s awesome,” Apuzzo said. “It just really makes me happy.”
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.
“He suffered three burst fractures of his cervical spine,” explained Dr. Kimberly BeDell. “He had an incomplete quadriplegia.”
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.
“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.”
I’m not included in this, but from what I’ve read, those who know Long Beach understand how water shapes its identity: surfboards in garages, wet sand on sidewalks, and kids chasing waves until the sun goes down.
A powerful chord captures the struggle of a young surfer battling to return to the ocean. A boy almost lost his ability to move, and a community almost lost a piece of itself.
Instead, something much better happened.
Finding Gratitude Where It Matters
In a world full of endless stories, some actually true, Thanksgiving stories sometimes feel forced.
Not this time.
The image of Alesandro walking into the sun makes the holiday feel new, giving families something meaningful to talk about today. Gratitude grows when courage breathes. There’s no way he should’ve been able to walk this soon, yet he did, with steps becoming a sign that hope surprises you, rising in a hospital hallway on a quiet holiday morning, pushing back against everything that tried to break him.
If you needed another reason to lift your head today, you got one. A fifteen-year-old boy stood taller than fear, doubt, and a bleak medical chart, pulling off a comeback that did more than inspire a room. It reminded people that gratitude still has power in a country that feels restless.
Final Thoughts
Thanksgiving means more than a meal and a long nap in front of a football game; it’s stopping long enough to notice grace when it appears.
Alessandro’s walk felt like grace in motion: A family watched a frightening diagnosis lose ground, and a community cheered as a kid took back part of his life.
The rest of us? We got a rare moment that made the day feel richer.
Hope didn’t whisper; it came through a hospital door on a pair of steady legs, giving us another reminder of why gratitude still matters.
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