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Darrell Smith, Jennifer Larson and Lois Gormley, The Desert Sun, report:

MORENO VALLEY (CA) — She survived on sport drinks, dried noodles and a resilience that family, friends and even doctors are struggling to believe.

“All I know is that it was a miracle for my little niece to survive down there by herself,” Ruby Bustamantes uncle Johnny Marin said Wednesday.

“It felt pretty good knowing that God was looking over her, that he was over her, protecting her.”

Little 5-year-old Ruby Bustamante lingered for 10 days in the wreckage of a crash that killed her mother.

Caltrans road crews who saw something moving in the bottom of the ravine where the wreckage lay, found her tired, hungry, dehydrated, but alive. She continued to recover Wednesday at a Moreno Valley hospital.

“Ruby is doing extraordinarily well,” said Webster Wong, chief of pediatrics at Riverside County Regional Medical Center. “Its a devastating loss, but a joyous recovery.”

Outraged family members, wrestling with joy and tragedy, said more should have been done to save the life of Rubys mother.

They laid the death of Norma Bustamante, 26, of Indio at the feet of the Indio Police Department in an emotional news conference outside the medical center.

Relatives accused Indio police of foot-dragging and dismissing the familys pleas to search roadways for the missing pair.

Those delays cost Bustamante her life, they said.

“This is an outrage,” said Rose Lopez, Bustamantes aunt and family spokesman.

“Theres no excuse for a mother to be left out to die and a daughter to have to go through such a horrific ordeal.”

Minutes later, the news conference was abruptly and angrily halted by Bustamantes grandfather Bill Cooley, who later scuffled with and shouted at news camera crews who attempted to follow the family back into the hospital.

Later, Indio police officials said they understood the familys grief, but said the department took the reports of the missing pair seriously.

“I understand the family is outraged and lashing out,” said Indio Police Cmdr. Mark Miller. “Theyre grieving and thats understandable. The department holds no animosity toward them.

“We did consider it a serious matter and we were looking for them,” he continued. “Unfortunately, we had no specific location to search.”

Miller said the department followed up on every lead and followed all standard procedures in investigating the Bustamantes disappearance.

“Its a terrible tragedy,” Miller said. “Its not the way we wanted this to end.”

Miller said the first reports from family members came April 5, information that was put into a national missing persons database. Indio, Coachella Valley and Riverside County authorities were also advised.

Indio officials said they later learned the Banning CHP office had received a call April 4 at 8:32 a.m. of a possible wreck involving a similar green vehicle that was seen going over the side of an embankment.

Couldnt find it

CHP officers and Riverside County fire crews responded but were unable to locate the green Ford Taurus.

Bustamante was reported missing the following afternoon.

“Had we been aware of that at the time, we certainly would have searched in that area,” Miller said.

No firm leads steered authorities to the car and the missing pair.

“There is nothing we could have done differently,” said Indio Police Chief Brad Ramos.

According to Johnny Marin, Bustamante had been driving to visit her boyfriend in prison in Norwalk on the day she disappeared.

What happened to her?

“But she never made it there. Her boyfriend was calling my mom, crying, What happened to her? ” he said. “And everybody already knew something had to have happened to her.”

Richard Ortiz, a longtime friend and neighbor first met Bustamante when she was a shy little girl in his third-grade class in Desert Hot Springs.

Ortiz remembered calling Bustamante on her cell phone the day she was reported missing.

She told him to call her back in three hours.

“I called her back and it was the machine, the machine, the machine,” he said.

He never received another phone call from her.

Results of an autopsy released Wednesday just hours after the chaotic scene outside the hospital, however, showed little could have been done to save Norma Bustamante.

She suffered multiple blunt force trauma, Riverside County medical examiners said. Her battered body sustained multiple lacerations of the liver and rib fractures in the wreck.

“The autopsy revealed that Ms. Bustamantes death likely occurred within minutes of the accident,” read a Riverside County Sheriffs statement.

Initial reports Tuesday said Bustamante had died two days before Rubys discovery.

The fact her mother died so quickly after the crash makes it even more remarkable that little Ruby survived.

For every bit of 10 days, she stayed and waited.

“Its really quite amazing,” said Dr. Harry Weil, director of the Palm Springs-based Institute of Critical Care Medicine.

“There was some indication that there was some food and drink available, but its quite extraordinary she could survive at the age of five without substantial nourishment.”

Obscured by trees

Caltrans road crews found Ruby by her mothers 1996 Ford Taurus on Tuesday. The car was obscured by trees at the bottom of a ravine in the canyon-marked mountainous terrain of the Badlands — the desolate stretch along winding Highway 60 from Beaumont to Moreno Valley.

Investigators on Wednesday met with Bustamante family members at the spot where the car plunged off the roadway sometime April 4.

Later, California Highway Patrol officials said investigating the wreck would take two to three weeks.

Hit center divider

They were able to surmise this much on Wednesday: Norma Bustamantes car crashed into the center divider on westbound 60 just east of Gilman Springs Road on the road out of Beaumont.

The car careened across the roadway, then plunged more than 150 feet down the ravine and overturned before coming to rest under a tree.

The hilly, winding roadway is a dangerous one.

In the past five years, the California Highway Patrol has logged 472 traffic accidents. Six of those were fatal and happened on the stretch of Highway 60 bounded by Interstate 10 and Gilman Springs Road, said officer Chris Blondon. He is a CHP spokesman from the patrols Beaumont office.

As a crowd of reporters gathered in front of the medical center Wednesday afternoon — its entrance blocked by long strings of yellow tape — Wong spoke of a young girl in “miraculous shape.”

Ruby has very minor injuries, cuts, scrapes, bruises, he said.

She was sitting up in bed. And she wanted her ice cream.

“Thats good news in pediatrics,” Wong said.

Ruby was smiling, watching TV and was happy to be surrounded by family, he said.

But, Wong added, “Its difficult to know the long-term ramifications.”

Ruby is OK, at least, physically.

But so far, most of Norma Bustamantes other five children and their cousins dont really know about or understand that Bustamante is gone.

Only Ruby really knows what happened, Marin said.

On Wednesday, 4-year-old Ashley, Rubys younger sister, was happily hugging her uncle, Martin Recio, before hopping down to scramble up the dusty trunk of a shady tree in the front yard at her house in Indio.

As she clung to her uncle, Recio said that he and the rest of the family were doing OK, but everyone is very sad about Normas death.

Ashley piped up, in the high bright voice of a child who doesnt quite realize what shes saying, “Shes dead.”

Recio hugged her to him, rubbing her small back with his palm, and kissed her.

“She was a good person,” he said.

Darrell Smith’s column appears Sundays. Reach him at or by e-mail ().

April 15th, 2004