Indonesian burn victim finds help in Valley

By Dana Bartholomew, Staff Writer

Febuary 3, 2006, SHERMAN OAKS - Nine-year-old Jervino Umpung stared past his surgeon, past the glare of operating lights and into the eye of Heaven.
" Hallelujah," he said in a singsong voice to something far away.

He closed his large brown eyes, murmured a prayer in his native Indonesian, then drifted into anaesthetized bliss.

Whispering comfort into the boy's badly deformed ear was Dr. Richard Grossman, founder of the Grossman Burn Center at Sherman Oaks Hospital. Voicing cheer to the 49-pound "champion" known as Vino was Dr. Charles Neal, veteran anaesthetist.

Outside the operating room, a father prayed from a darkened room. And around the San Fernando Valley, hundreds of residents quietly rooted for the boy about to undergo his ninth skin graft since being badly burned during a paint-thinner explosion.

"From what he was, he'll look fabulous," declared Grossman, whose center has become world-renowned in burn medicine and recovery. "He'll go back to his island and look like a regular kid with some scars rather than the leper he looked like before."

It was seven months since Vino and his dad were met at Los Angeles International Airport by representatives of Gereja Bethel Indonesia of Los Angeles, a Woodland Hills church that paid for their passage and offered them a home.

They were also met by 14-year-old Yulce Dailongi, an Indonesian girl once so disfigured by an oil-lamp explosion that her face fused to her chest and her upper arms to her sides.

Like Vino, she had been discovered by medical missionaries. Brought to the Valley by Bethel Indonesia and Shepherd of the Hills Church. Put up by a North Hills couple from Indonesia. Educated in two Valley schools.

Each had $300,000 in multiple reconstructive surgeries courtesy of the Children's Burn Foundation and the Grossman Burn Center.

A one-hour documentary celebrating Yulce's journey - from a girl too ashamed to show her face in public to a confident teen who returned to her village with arms freed and head held high - will premiere at 8 p.m. Monday on the TLC cable network.

"Best I've ever done," said Eric Schotz, founder of LMNO Productions of Encino, who chronicled Yulce's progress on two continents and into the operating room over the course of a year. "When she comes home and is welcomed by the village, it's spectacular - it's heartwarming."

Vino's burns - and recovery - were equally dramatic.

The kid with a penchant for soccer and mock sword fights had stepped out of his two-room village hut to play with a backyard trash fire. Curious, he poked it with a stick - then poured what turned out to be paint thinner on it.

"And it blew up - pheow!" said Vino, wearing a Pokemon shirt at the home of his hosts, Andoko and Herna Setiadi of North Hills, on the eve of his surgery.

"After the can blew up, I couldn't scream - my eyes and mouth locked. A neighbor heard the explosion. He brought a bucket of water to help, slipped and fell," he recalled through the help of a translator.

"I lit on fire."

Vino suffered third-degree burns on his face, arms and torso. With scant medical care, his ears turned to scarred stubs. His lower lip melted into his chest. His right hand welded over his heart, his wrist locked at a grotesque hook.

He couldn't close his mouth. He couldn't close his eyes at night. He couldn't shower without pain.

"After he got burned, Vino and I would kneel down and pray for help," his father, 33-year-old Djefry Umpung, a Christian and a tin-can maker from the island of Sulawesi, said through a translator.

"We asked God to find a way to help my son - that Vino would be well like he used to be.

"Here, the impossible was made possible."

After he was discovered by the International Friends of Compassion, Vino was flown to Los Angeles, where he bowled a perfect strike with his good arm on his very first throw.

He attends Granada Hills Baptist School, where he's learned enough English to say, "See you later, alligator." With pistol-like wit, he has provoked peels of laughter from doctors, philanthropists and his American hosts.

He dreams of becoming a cop, he said, "to chase bad guys." And to teach his best friend English at home.

Grossman, during eight surgeries, has freed Vino's arms and partially reconstructed his face. One complication, a flesh-killing bacteria, has hampered skin grafts with infections.

Without complaint, Vino has soldiered on through skin grafts, bandages and pain. During surgery Thursday, Grossman would cut .006-inch grafts from his scalp and apply them to his chin.

"Boop de do, boopy boopy do," sang Grossman, 73, crouching by the boy like Captain Kangaroo after a grueling operation on a 3-year-old girl burned head to toe by a scalding shower.

"Who's your best friend? Me? Show me how your fingers work. Stretch 'em way out. Raise your arms up. Raise your other arm up. We're going to be putting some skin on your face.

"It's gonna be all fine."

---
Dana Bartholomew, (818) 713-3730 dana.bartholomew@dailynews.com

View this Article

Copyright © 2006 Los Angeles Daily News
Los Angeles Newspaper Group