He should have been earning a little pocket cash at the parking kiosk on Stearns Wharf and talking baseball with his brother. Or maybe designing that T-shirt or surfboard line he always talked about.
Instead the 22-year-old local spent most of that time in a hospital bed, blinded by a senseless act and suffering from a traumatic brain injury, limited mobility and a fierce longing to be out in the surf again.
He just wanted to help out a friend.
June 7, 2008. 2:28 a.m. By the time police arrived at the intersection of Chapala and Ortega streets, medics were already treating the unconscious victim. Eyewitness accounts were sketchy, but officers pieced together a few details:
Nick and his friend stopped by a burrito place after a night on the town. They ordered and stood around, waiting for their food. Across the street, a group of men — gangsters, according to several witnesses— began jawing at them.
Nick’s buddy, admittedly intoxicated, got into a fight with one of the guys. He managed to scramble away after being knocked to the ground and kicked several times. Nick stepped in to break up the brawl.
Things settled for a moment and a girl tried to calm Nick, placing her hands on his shoulders as he sat down. Then a figure approached. A foot shot up and hit Nick in the face.
He fell backward, his head hitting the sidewalk, a pool of blood slowly forming.
Nobody got a good look at the attacker.
An hour and a half later, Paul Cavalier got a phone call from Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital. His son had been in an accident. Twelve surgical staples were necessary to close the lacerations on the back of Nick’s head. Doctors told Paul that his son’s brain was bruised and bleeding.
“At that time, he was still alert,” Paul said. “Then his brain started to swell.”
After more than five hours of emergency brain surgery, the 22-year-old was placed in a medically induced coma as his parents prayed for the swelling to lessen.
Two weeks later, doctors tried to bring him out of the coma and the swelling started again.
“That’s when he almost died,” Paul said. “The doctor said he wasn’t ready to come out of it yet. That was a really hard time.”
Nick made it out of the coma a week later, but his life was shattered. The traumatic injury weakened his right side and interrupted the conversation between his eyes and his brain.
Worse yet, he wasn’t aware of his limitations. His brain told him that he was fine, that he should be out enjoying his young life.
“Nicholas was still in his denial state, wanting to go to work and surf and hang out with his friends,” his mother, Faith Magdalena, said. “He hadn’t closed the door on his past life.”
After a month and a half of recovery from his feeding tube and tracheotomy, Nick was transferred to the Santa Barbara Cottage Rehabilitation Hospital.
He didn’t like being confined to a hospital bed, but he started making progress, Paul said. And with cortical blindness, there was always a chance his sight would return.
“It’s all wait and see,” his father said.
Then hospital officials called his parents into an office. They had evidence a male nurse abused Nick, hitting him on at least one occasion and turning up the television volume to full blast on a Spanish-language channel, Paul said.
In a letter dated Sept. 29, hospital officials described their reaction.
“Upon learning of this incident, the hospital immediately removed the employee from contact with your son and initiated an investigation,” wrote Melody O’Shock, a risk manager at the hospital. “Once inappropriate behavior had been confirmed, we immediately took necessary steps to ensure that this sort of incident would not happen again.”
Hospital officials declined to comment when contacted, citing patient privacy laws.
Following the incident, Nick became defensive and had more trouble with staff at the rehab center, his father said, sinking into flashes of aggression — a common symptom of traumatic brain injuries.
“Clearly his trust had been broken,” Paul said. “…He’s such a kick-back kid. To see him get angry like that, it’s not him.”
Doctors gave Nick sedatives and kept him in an enclosed bed, his father said, posting a security guard at the door.
Concerned about Nick’s treatment at the hospital and feeling pressured, his parents decided to sign him out and take him home. But it quickly became apparent it wasn’t the right move.
“He should never have been allowed to come home until his impulsivity and periodic agitation was brought under control,” his mother said.
Paul was forced to restrain his 6-foot son several times after he became agitated. Then, without his anti-seizure medication, Nick suffered a seizure in his sleep and his parents took him back to the emergency room, where he was eventually readmitted on Nov. 21.
At that point, Paul said hospital officials told him it was their policy to have his son in four-point restraints and heavily sedated due to his aggressive nature.
When he asked for permission to help Nick take a shower or walk him around, Paul said officials refused, calling it a liability.
Three weeks later, after Paul filed a complaint with the State Department of Public Health and Licensing, the hospital removed the restraints. Officials declined to discuss Nick’s specific case, again citing privacy laws, but hospital spokeswoman Maria Zate said it’s hard to pin down the hospital’s policy when it comes to physically restraining a patient.
“It’s difficult,” she said. “It would probably be on a case-by-case basis.”
Once out of restraints, Nick started improving again, his father said.
“Before, he was losing his life,” Paul said. “He was just lying there. When he got up, he was doing better. He started to make positive strides.”
But two days after Christmas, Paul found out Nick had been taken to jail for allegedly hitting a hospital aide.
According to police documents, Nick called officers to the hospital to report medical personnel battering him. When their investigation revealed the claim was unfounded, officers started to leave.
That’s when staff started screaming for help, telling authorities that Nick was hitting a hospital staff member. Officers returned and spotted an aide stepping away from Nick.
When they grabbed his wrists and tried to calm him down, Nick reportedly tensed up and tried to pull away.
When they took him to the ground, he began resisting and was eventually handcuffed. The aide told police that Nick had pushed him several times. He signed a complaint and Nick was booked for battery and resisting arrest.
“It just seems bizarre for a patient who is being treated in a hospital for a traumatic brain injury to be taken to jail,” Paul said.
A friend of the family who works at the jail recognized Nick and placed him in an isolated cell to keep him safe.
For those who know Nick and grew up with him, jail seems to be the last place they’d expect to find the 22-year-old.
Diana Palmer, parking supervisor at the city waterfront, said she never had any complaints about Nick since he started working at the parking kiosk on the wharf in August 2006.
“He liked to surf, so when he’d see those waves, boy it would be tough for him to keep working,” she said. “…He always had a smile. He got along with everybody.”
He frequently talked about his graphic art designs and his plans to put them on surfboards or T-shirts, she said.
“We miss him,” Palmer said. “I just hope he can get through this and hopefully get his life back.”
A lifelong Santa Barbara resident, Nick graduated from Washington Elementary and San Marcos High schools. He was taking business and art classes at City College until a few months before the incident.
At age 13, he started working with the city, first in youth sports as a camp counselor and flag football coach. He eventually took a part-time job at the waterfront.
“He liked being down by the beach,” his father said. “He worked it out so he could work and surf and pay the rent and chase girls at night.”
Justin Drewich grew up with Nick, first running into him in kindergarten and remaining good friends ever since.
“We pretty much did everything together, surfing and hanging out,” Drewich said. “He was super easygoing, super peaceful. I never saw him get into any trouble.”
When he found out Nick wasn’t cooperating with his therapy and becoming agitated, he knew it had to be the brain injury affecting his personality.
“He would never do anything like that before,” Drewich said. “It’s completely the injury.”
He’s convinced Nick just needs a place where he can be comfortable during his rehabilitation, where he doesn’t feel trapped.
Don Devan, a board member at Jodi House, a local nonprofit that offers services for adults with brain injuries, said aggressiveness is a common byproduct of brain trauma.
“Part of what drives the violence is the crazy isolation that comes with a brain injury,” he said.
Unfortunately, he added, it often closes the doors to many rehabilitation centers.
“Most of the rehabs aren’t equipped for that kind of thing,” he said.
Nick’s parents have scoured the state for a rehabilitation institute that would take their son. There are options out there, such as the Center for Neuro Skills in Bakersfield, but the issue is money.
As a part-time employee for the city of Santa Barbara, Nick doesn’t have health insurance and is only covered by Medi-Cal.
He received a small amount of money from the Victims of Violent Crimes fund, but it wouldn’t cover much more than a month at most private rehab centers.
Paul took vacation and sick leave from his job as an irrigation technician at city schools during the first few months. Since then, he has returned to work intermittingly, but he doesn’t have the kind of money it would take to get his son into a decent facility.
Faith, a marriage and family therapist, can’t afford to pay for private rehabilitation either.
And because Nick’s injury is physical in nature, he doesn’t qualify for mental health services.
“They just split hairs and he’s just falling through the cracks,” Paul said, tears welling in his eyes. “He needs help. I can’t afford to pay for it.
“It’s been like six months of living hell. I’m a man’s man. I don’t want help. But we’re desperate at this point.”
Family members established a fund at Santa Barbara Bank and Trust — the Nick Cavalier Rehabilitation Fund. Donations will support his recovery.
For now, Paul is still working on getting his son out of jail and into a place where he can receive proper rehabilitation. He just wants to see his son happy and carefree again.
“Maybe Nick will never understand,” he said. “I don’t know that. But there’s a good chance that he can live a good life. He says to me, Dad, I just want to be at the beach. I just want to be hanging out.
“What happens to him in the next six months to a year is critical to the rest of his life,” he continued. “That’s the thing that motivates me to get the help he needs.”