Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Family’s DUI nightmare drags on

The Las Vegas community reached out with their hearts and pocketbooks when the Maynard family was nearly killed by a suspected drunken driver. Now that gift is coming back to haunt the family.

It's a $5,200 nightmare to be exact, says Donna Maynard, now confined to a wheelchair because of two shattered feet, three inches of bone missing from her right femur and numerous internal injuries.

The money -- donations from local families touched by the trauma the Maynard family suffered Dec. 21 -- had been a blessing until Thursday morning when the phone rang.

Richard Phillips, a representative of the state welfare office in Las Vegas, told Donna Maynard that because she spent the donations on food for her family and not as payment on the more than $200,000 her family owes in medical bills, they'll be getting no financial help from the state.

"How were we supposed to get by?" Maynard asked. "We lost everything when the accident happened, and now they say that because we used donations to pay off what household bills we had, they say they're not going to help us with anything."

On Dec. 21, Donna Maynard was heading from Pahrump to Las Vegas to spend Christmas with family. It was just getting dark when she neared the Rainbow Boulevard intersection on State Route 160. Her 1-year-old baby, Sarah, was in her car seat, and boys Mykel, 10, and Kyle, 7, were safety-belted into the family's Nissan pickup.

Alan Spencer, 40, was heading west along the same stretch of road at about 85 mph when he veered into oncoming traffic to get around a slower driver. Within seconds, Maynard's truck and Spencer's station wagon went flipping across the roadway in opposite directions.

Spencer's blood-alcohol level, measured about an hour after the accident at University Medical Center, was 0.33 -- three times the legal limit in Nevada.

Spencer was arrested today by the Nevada Highway Patrol from a travel trailer he was living in on Bureau of Land Management property off State Route 160, Trooper Steve Harney said. He was booked into the Clark County Detention Center and charged with felony drunken driving. Bail was set at $15,800.

Baby Sarah escaped without serious injury. Mykel still needs surgery to remove a metal plate from his right jaw. Kyle lost a kidney and half his spleen.

Spencer had no auto insurance. The Maynards had just sunk all their savings into the chance to buy a percentage of an electrical contracting business.

With more than $200,000 in medical bills, Donna Maynard can only shake her head.

And Sandy Heverly of Stop DUI is at her wit's end.

Heverly went to Bank of America's branch at Decatur Boulevard and Meadows Lane in late December with Donna's father and husband, Steve Maynard, to set up the account that has thrown the family into double jeopardy.

Stop DUI made the first donation -- $500 -- which established the account.

"It's the same type of account that is set up for victims all the time," Heverly said. "The three of us went in there, Steve signed some paperwork and that was it. Our intention for that money was that it be used for exactly what Donna and Steve used it for."

The Bank of America account, No. 490050208, is technically referred to as a "donative account," meaning that donations can be made but are not taxable because the money does not generate interest.

The account paperwork specifies that donations can be made through it for Donna, Mykel and Kyle Maynard.

Donna Maynard has amassed receipts for more than $4,700 of the money.

"We decided that we'd try to keep our credit clear and keep paying little by little, as much as we could," she said. "There's about $500 that I can't account for -- stuff like groceries, diapers and lovely things like that. But the welfare office says that the donations are considered unearned income, and that unearned income automatically makes us ineligible for financial help."

The state's Welfare Division has agreed to take another look at the Maynard case.

"The case is being re-evaluated based on the number of calls to our office we've received today," Welfare Division Administrator Myla Florence said Thursday afternoon.

"An appeal has been filed, and a request for a hearing puts the case in a pending status."

Because of confidentiality rules, Florence could not answer specific questions about the Maynard's situation with Medicaid.

Maynard said a UMC representative helped her file for Medicaid while she was in the hospital for several weeks. On those applications she disclosed that her family had one truck -- hers was destroyed in the accident -- a mobile home in Pahrump and a small bank account.

That application, submitted in January, was specifically for her. In February, she applied for financial assistance for her two injured sons.

For the past month she's submitted additional paperwork on the welfare office's request and persistently followed up with phone calls, she said.

The Maynards put their home up for sale, but when Tom Terry Homes didn't submit to the welfare office proof of such an agreement, Maynard said she received notice from the welfare office that because she was not cooperating, they would not get food stamps.

They are three months behind on their mortgage payments, and foreclosure is pending.

She was told to reapply, and did. They gave her 10 days. She met that deadline with the help of a friend, who drove the paperwork to the welfare office Monday.

Thursday, when Phillips called, he initiated the conversation with questions about how she'd been spending the money in the Bank of America account.

Florence explained that if an account is established for an individual to draw upon for income, it is considered a resource.

"When an outside organization has established an account for an individual, the welfare office contacts that organization to verify what the account has been set up for," Florence said.

But Heverly said she's never received a call from the Welfare Division, and has never experienced any problem like this over the years that her nonprofit group has given financial assistance to other drunken driving victims.

"This is absolutely ludicrous!" Heverly said. "How are these people supposed to survive? They have nothing."

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