A drunk driver hit a Sacramento County teen. She and her mom navigate a new life
Kelly Carr was ready for the next chapter of motherhood, as her child grew up and she could step back. That future vanished when her daughter, Angel Renteria, was hit by a drunken driver.
Three years later, a new normal has set in. In a quaint living room in Galt, Renteria laughs as she gestures from her wheelchair for her friends to sit down around her. Carr sits close by, adjusting her daughter’s clothes and gently wiping her face.
On March 14, 2022, Renteria never made it back from walking her dog just steps from home. She was 16. Today, she is 19 and lives with a traumatic brain injury and paralysis that left her with the mental capacity of an 8-year-old. Her mother left her nursing career to become Renteria’s full-time caregiver.
“People don’t understand that you just got to keep going. You don’t get the luxury sometimes to just breathe,” Carr said.
Every 85 seconds, someone is killed or injured in a drunken driving crash, according to Mothers Against Drunk Driving. These are devastating incidents that researchers and advocates have long called preventable through technology, tougher penalties and better street design.
For survivors such as Renteria, the devastation lingers — lived out behind closed doors in the routines of daily life.
“Trying to mourn a loss of somebody that’s still here is probably one of the hardest things you’ll ever have to do,” Carr said. “Because I lost that child. I have a whole different child.”
The grief of this loss is compounded by the knowledge that the incident was preventable, caused by the combination of an unsafe street and a driver’s dangerous choice.
A normal day, a life upended
At 16, Renteria’s life looked like that of many teenagers. She loved doing her makeup, walking her dog, scrolling through social media and spending time with friends.
It was a typical spring evening: a familiar road, her dog’s leash in hand. Renteria was walking on Ayers Lane, a wide suburban street without sidewalks or marked crosswalks, when she was struck. X-rays would later show dirt and grass in her teeth from the force of the impact.
Carr got the call from paramedics and rushed to the trauma hospital. Her daughter was barely breathing.
“I didn’t realize the severity of it, even with the trauma surgeon coming out and telling me, this is what happened,” Carr said. “It wasn’t until I actually walked into that hospital room for the first time in ICU that I realized how devastating the actual incident was.”
In the months that followed, Carr and her family lived in constant fear of losing her. Renteria’s brain continued to swell, requiring multiple procedures to relieve pressure. The lower half of her face was shattered. Her body was riddled with broken bones. But the brain injury, Carr said, was the most terrifying.
“The worst part of it was the brain injury. It just controls everything,” Carr said. It determined whether Renteria would survive. Later, it determined what kind of life she could have.
Doctors couldn’t tell them what Renteria’s future would hold. All they could offer was a timeframe: whatever function she regained in the first two years would likely be permanent.
Those two years, then, became everything. And Carr poured everything she had into them.
Recovery and new routines
At first, Carr tried to keep her nursing job at Sutter Health. The insurance she received there helped offset much of the hospital bills. But over time, the demands of caregiving proved too great — Carr manages every appointment and keeps up with school and therapies — and she had to quit and rely on Medi-Cal and her savings.
Rhonda Campbell, victim services manager and advocate from Mothers Against Drunk Driving, has been with Carr and Renteria for much of this journey.
“I know that every time I see a video of (Renteria) getting therapy, (Carr) gave something up to make sure it happened,” Campbell said.
For Carr, there are no weekends off, few moments to grieve in peace. “I don’t get the luxury to just lay in bed and grieve and work through a loss,” Carr said.
Today, Renteria remains paralyzed and nonverbal, though she has made great strides from not even being able to hold her head up in the first year. She must wear a diaper and be fed through a tube and moved into her wheelchair with assistance. Her days are filled with occupational, physical and speech therapy. Around the clock, Carr is at her side.
“Emotionally and psychologically, I feel like we had a reset,” Carr said. “Like she started over from being a newborn. And now, I would say she’s like at eight, nine-year-old level.”
But in other ways, Renteria never changed. Her personality is exactly what it was when she was eight, her mother says. She’s still the same expressive, funny and opinionated girl — just now, she communicates with simple signs: thumbs up, thumbs down and pointing. When she’s particularly displeased, she flashes a middle finger, a gesture that always makes her family and friends laugh.
The crash has also been financially devastating. Carr drained her retirement savings. The family now lives paycheck to paycheck. While Medi-Cal covers some medical costs, other essentials — like a $97,000 wheelchair-accessible van — must be paid out of pocket.
Right before the incident, Carr had lost her mother and brother — nearly her entire immediate family. Mothers Against Drunk Driving stepped up to become their “number one advocate,” helping the family with logistics and as an intermediary in court proceedings.
Eventually, Campbell grew personally close to Carr and Renteria. She regularly visits their home in Galt to catch up. On a Wednesday afternoon, she dropped off matching braille bracelets and a puzzle for Renteria to play with.
“She’s become like another family member for us,” Carr said.
A preventable crash
The woman who hit Renteria, Devin Calderon, had not only been driving while under the influence. After the crash, she fled the scene to return home and drink more before driving back to Ayers Lane and crashing into the police car on-site. Throughout the court process, Carr said Calderon never showed remorse.
While Renteria recovered in hospitals for nearly a year, she and Carr were also in and out of court, navigating the sentencing process. Calderon was sentenced to eight years in prison, but was ultimately released after 22 months to join a community reentry program.
Carr and those close to her say the sentence felt far too light.
What hurts even more, Carr and Campbell said, is how preventable it all was.
Ayers Lane has no sidewalk. Renteria had been forced to walk along the road’s edge to walk her dog. Following the crash, Carr pushed the city council for changes: speed bumps, a zebra crossing, anything to slow traffic and protect pedestrians. But she couldn’t keep up the fight while also managing full-time care and court hearings.
Every morning, Carr said, she wakes up and her heart breaks again, for the life her daughter lost and the justice they never truly received.
“She’s still here, but it took away her life,” Carr said.
Learning to live again
Renteria’s story is one of survival, as well as adaptation, loss and transformation. There are also moments of joy.
“When she’s laughing and she’s so loving, and she says sweet things. You know, she’ll say, in her own way, how grateful she is,” Carr said, referring to Renteria’s gestures. “Those are the moments that keep me going. Because otherwise it’d be so hard.”
Renteria still adores shopping trips, and Carr wheels her around the mall to her favorite shops. She still loves doing her makeup and painting her nails. At senior prom, two police officers — one of them the investigator on her case — escorted her in.
She banters with her friends and family, communicating her wit with well-timed hand signals, and they tease her back for scheming to shop with her dad’s credit card — he’s currently working in Texas. She refuses to go easy on anyone in card games.
“This one,” Rhonda said about Renteria, “boy, she gets under your skin, she’s just wormed her way into my life and my family’s life.”
Rhonda felt a calling to work with MADD after her 12-year-old sister was killed by a four-time DUI offender when she was 15. Now she supports victims and advocates for legislative change — such as AB 366, a current bill on the Senate floor that would require all DUI offenders to install an ignition interlock device, preventing them from starting a car while intoxicated.
“I feel like when there’s not a fatality, there’s a severe injury, something like Renteria’s injury, people don’t understand the long term consequences,” Rhonda said. “As a general public, we don’t see past the initial crash and the long term effects, and it’s real and it’s happening and it’s heartbreaking.”
After three years, Carr is finally learning how to care for herself again. Her friends note that she seems lighter now: more relaxed, laughing more, beginning to open up again.
Renteria is still here. But she’s not the same. And neither is Carr.
Though Renteria can’t express herself the way she once did, she’s learned a few signs: “I love you” and “Thank you”. She forms one in particular with care, moving her hands slowly and deliberately:
“Don’t drink and drive.”
This story was originally published June 23, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
