After falling out of a tree 7 months ago, palm-frond artist now on path to recovery

A few years ago, Sami Rudnick-Hoover and her band, the ShinDig, were regulars on the stage at Miami’s Bayside Marketplace.

After many performances, a man would give her pieces of artwork he crafted from palm fronds. Sometimes it was a rose. Other times it was an animal. Rudnick-Hoover, a graduate student and young mother at the time, would always bring them home to her young children. Some of that artwork is displayed in her home to this day.

“As a student with three toddlers at home, I never had money, but he would say, ‘it’s OK, some day you will find a way to pay me back,’” Rudnick-Hoover, 41, said.

That opportunity came in December when the man, Dale Silvia, was lying in a bed, severely injured, at the Jackson Memorial Perdue Medical Center in Cutler Bay, where Rudnick-Hoover is director of social services.

A month earlier, Silvia, 61, fell 50 feet from a palm tree in downtown Miami while collecting fronds for his artwork.

He suffered traumatic injuries to his jaw, wrists and legs. Both kneecaps were fragmented, and he was spitting out what he thought were pebbles, but were really his teeth.

“I was just like in a little cave, a dark place. I knew I had been hurt really bad, but I didn’t know what was happening to me. My legs had collapsed,” Silvia said.

After crawling about 150 feet, a couple walking their dog found him, tapping his face to keep him awake until medics arrived and took him to Jackson Memorial Hospital. There, he underwent several operations to restructure his knee caps with wires and screws.

Since then, with the help of nurses, therapists and Rudnick-Hoover, Silvia has worked constantly to learned how to walk and use his hands again. He’s able to do his palm frond art again — although he vows never to climb another tree — and, he is playing the guitar again, a lifelong hobby.

“We used all kinds of tools to help him regain his strength and movement in his arms, hands, and legs,” said Kathy Anglin, director of occupational therapy at Perdue Medical Center. “Staff began to bring palm fronds to incorporate weaving into his occupational therapy, so that he could continue working his craft using his fingers and hands.”

On Tuesday, Silvia walked out of the rehab center, on his way to Wynwood Senior Care, an assisted living facility where he will live and continue his therapy. Tania Leets, a Jackson spokeswoman, said Wynwood was chosen so Silvia could live in a community of other artists.

A grateful, sometimes tearful, Silvia told reporters outside of the rehab center Tuesday afternoon that he would not have made any real progress if not for the persistence of the staff there.

“It took me seven and a half months and everything they gave me to do it, but I’ve gotten there. But, they only reason I did is because of these therapists and these nurses, even the housekeeping staff, know me name and stop me and ask me how I’m doing. They encourage me, they motivate me, and they’re so thrilled, but they have no idea how grateful I am,” he said.

It was a difficult process, and Silvia said there was a lot of tough love from the rehab center’s medical staff.

“I didn’t want to get out of bed. I didn’t want to use my legs. I was scared,” Silvia said. “The first time I stood up on my legs, I was so scared I thought I was going to collapse. But, instead of letting me sit back down, they made me start to walk while they held me. And, they walked me to a wheelchair. And, I got into the wheelchair. Because being freed from the bed to the wheelchair opened it up. They kept telling me, ‘you’ll be able to walk.’”

Rudnick-Hoover and her team arranged for Silvia to have new clothes, new teeth, a guitar, art supplies and vocational training. And, by placing him at Wynwood Senior Care, they provided him with the first home he’s had in three years.

‘I was struggling’

Born and raised in Miami, Silvia left home at the age of 13 because his father had left and his two older brothers were rough on him, he said. As the years passed, he was in and out of trouble and became addicted to drugs. He got clean about five years ago, but he was still living on the streets.

Then, came the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It took me out. In two months, I went through my savings. Everywhere I did my art work closed, and I was struggling,” Silvia said.

Although he by no means views the accident positively, it started a path toward opportunities he thought had long passed him by.

“I wasn’t reborn. I don’t have a new life. I damn sure have a different one now. And, I have a chance to live a different life that has a good, solid start to the foundation of it all,” he said. “And, that’s what I’m grateful for.”

The reunion

When Rudnick-Hoover realized Silvia was the same man who gave her the artwork while she was in graduate school, she viewed it as a chance to pay him back for his generosity.

“It was amazing I could watch his recovery. I mean, we helped him file his taxes, we helped him get a stimulus check. He’s wearing my husband’s clothes,” she said. “To fix him and replenish him, I really feel like I made good on that debt.”

In the months since Silvia arrived, he’s made more of an impact on the staff and patients there than any other resident in recent memory, Rudnick-Hoover said.

“He’s made such a miraculous recovery, and everybody’s been touched by him. In a place like this, we have people assigned to this wing, or this patient load. And, so not everyone knows everyone, but everybody knows Dale. Everybody knows who he is.,” she said.

“I think it’s really cool that for the first time in about 30 years he found a place that he considered home, and now we’re actually transitioning him to a home for the first time,” she said.

And, by the way, she still fronts the ShinDig band.

“We perform everywhere,” Rudnick-Hoover said.

Continued gratitude

Silvia was a daily bicycle rider before his accident, sometimes riding up to 20 to 25 miles a day. He hopes that within a year, he’ll be fit enough again to bike from Wynwood to the Perdue Medical Center to raise money for the facility. He’s looking for a sponsor.

“I want to ride my bike from Wynwood to here with a truck carrying the sponsor’s banner, whatever I have to do to get support,” he said. “I don’t want anything. I just want to make it right. And, I want to hand a check to use for a bonus to the employees.”