http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/15/AR2010121506798.html?hpid=moreheadlines
Joy Keo, paralyzed after being shot by boyfriend in 1982, dies of respiratory illness at 45
By Emma Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 15, 2010; 8:21 PM
Joy Keo's on-again, off-again boyfriend took her one summer afternoon in 1982 to a shallow grave he had dug. She would end up in that hole, he told her, if she continued to try to break up with him.
Six weeks later, he was in a rage when he tracked down Ms. Keo, then 17, at a friend's house in Oakton. He broke through the door of a bedroom where she had taken refuge and flashed a handgun, yelling "You're gonna die, bitch!" before shooting her four times.
She bled for two hours before police found her, then spent seven weeks fighting to survive. Doctors saved her life, but not her spinal cord: Ms. Keo was paralyzed from the neck down.
Her case riveted Washington for months. But the headlines eventually faded, and Ms. Keo's efforts to fashion a life continued in private. She was 45 when she died Dec. 8 of a respiratory illness at her home in Alexandria.
A striking Thai American beauty, she had been a popular honor student, cheerleader and soccer player at J.E.B. Stuart High School in Fairfax County. Her 19-year-old boyfriend, Chuck Brewer, had been deemed "most attractive" in the Stuart yearbook.
After the pair started dating, Ms. Keo fell out of touch with her wide circle of friends. "It was a really passionate relationship that kind of exploded," said Janis Kupferer, a friend of Ms. Keo's from high school. "She became very isolated."
Within months, Ms. Keo had left school, despite her mother's objections. She ran away with Brewer to Florida, where he became increasingly possessive and aggressive, she later told reporters.
At one point, he tied her to a bed and gagged her, she said. When he untied her, he punched her and broke her nose.
Ms. Keo fled home to Virginia, and her mother filed charges against Brewer of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. A Fairfax judge ordered Brewer to stop making contact with Ms. Keo, but he continued to call her, threatening to commit suicide if she wouldn't see him. She couldn't manage to cut off contact.
"She was the rescuer," her mother told The Washington Post in 1983. "He would tell her, 'You are the only person who understands.' "
Ms. Keo had avoided Brewer's phone calls Aug. 28, 1982, the day he shot her.
In the months that followed, local media covered each turn in the story.
Brewer pleaded guilty to his crimes and was sentenced to 50 years in prison; three months later, Ms. Keo donned a white cap and gown and triumphantly graduated with her class at Stuart.
"I think to myself, if I kept myself alive when everybody else had no faith in my living, then I can overcome anything," Ms. Keo told The Post on her graduation day.
In 1985, Ms. Keo successfully sued Brewer for damages, and the resulting $30 million judgment made headlines.
Then the case fell out of the news.
Brewer was released from prison in 1990, after serving eight years of his sentence. He never paid the millions he owed Ms. Keo. He married and had children, his brother Craig Brewer said.
Chuck Brewer could not be reached for comment. His father, Charles Brewer Sr., declined to be interviewed.
"Some things I guess you like to forget," he said. "It's just a sad tragedy."
Joy Keophumihae was born June 27, 1965, in Bangkok. Her father was a native of Thailand; her mother was a Peace Corps volunteer there.
Ms. Keophumihae (pronounced gow-poom-ha), who often went by the shortened version of her surname, was young when her family moved to Northern Virginia. Her parents divorced, and her father returned to Asia, becoming estranged from his children.
Ms. Keo was largely raised by her mother, Marion Keophumihae, who spent her career working with victims of domestic violence. She said in an interview Wednesday that she fears people still don't realize how many women are abused.
"It's an epidemic," she said, "and we need to acknowledge that."
Besides Ms. Keo's parents, survivors include her younger sister, Malai Keophumihae of Richmond.
After graduating from high school, Ms. Keo attended George Mason University and Northern Virginia Community College. Then she set off for the Western United States, where she had landed a spot at the University of California at Berkeley.
It was a difficult move, and she stayed one year before returning home. Even with 24-hour-care offered by the university, managing school and daily life so far away from family turned out to be overwhelming. "She tried things," her mother said, "but it was just too much."
About 1990, Ms. Keo took a course in computer programming at a rehabilitation center near Charlottesville. There she met Michael Yeoman, who would become her boyfriend and caregiver for most of the rest of her life.
"She would always stare at me when I was waiting in the cafeteria line," said Yeoman, 44, who was taking an engineering course at the time. "She was always happy and smiling, didn't let being in a wheelchair bother her."
Ms. Keo was able to use a mouth stick, and later dictation software, to operate computers, and she got a job at the Census Bureau in the mid-1990s. But her handicapped-accessible van broke down. Ms. Keo couldn't afford to fix it, Yeoman said, and couldn't get to the office. She left the Census Bureau and lived on disability assistance.
Yeoman worked odd jobs and helped take care of her until 2003, when he began to receive state payments to care for her full time.
Money was often tight for Ms. Keo, whose friends and relatives tried in vain to extract monthly payments from Chuck Brewer.
"He had no money; he had no job," Craig Brewer said. "He basically didn't have any monetary ways to pay her."
Ms. Keo was in dire financial straits and in danger of losing her home when Craig Brewer proposed a deal: He would pay for Ms. Keo's housing for the rest of her life if she agreed to waive the $30 million owed her.
She took that offer and had lived with Yeoman since the late 1990s in an Alexandria condominium paid for by Craig Brewer.
For the past decade, Ms. Keo had spent most of her time in bed. The Internet became her portal to the outside world: She reconnected with old friends on Facebook and made new ones playing online games.
She had struggled in recent years to keep her spirits up and had become less willing to keep up with medications, doctor visits and physical therapy, Yeoman said. It became increasingly difficult for her to leave her bed.
Yeoman said Ms. Keo made her last outing in the summer of 2009, when she and Yeoman and a friend from high school, Julie Houk, went to see 1980s pop star Pat Benatar perform at Wolf Trap.
"We never really rehashed the past. We just talked about what she was doing and how life was," Houk said. "I never got the sense that she felt sorry for herself."