Alpharetta Restaurant Helps Injured Employee

The coworkers of an Alpharetta restaurant worker have rallied to his aid after a freak accident left him as a paraplegic.

Primus Sanders, a six-year employee of Ray's Killer Creek restaurant, suffered a devastating fall in mid-April. Kelsey Horvat, one of his coworkers, said on April 17 he was at a birthday party for a friend who also works at the restaurant. He was sitting in a plastic lawn chair on her driveway.

"There were a bunch of us out there doing a little grill out type thing. He just went back to laugh and just tipped straight over backwards and just fell down a ledge. It was about a five foot embankment.  You know, just within one second it happened, he literally just whipped straight back and fractured his sixth and seventh vertebrae,"  Horvat said.

They airlifted him from Douglasville to the Atlanta Medical Center where he immediately had surgeries. Now he is paraplegic–paralyzed from the waist down. 

"So it was quite tragic, but he's been very positive throughout all of it," Horvat said. "He does have some sensation, and he also recently had a little bit of movement, so that was really exciting. So his type of injury is basically an incomplete spinal cord injury. Complete is where there's no movement and no sensation. So with his type being an incomplete, you know, possibly, in the future, he could be able to walk again. It'll be a long road, he'll have to do rehabilitation and all that stuff."

Sanders is 48, his parents have been deceased for a long time, and he has no family in the area. The employees at Ray's, a  close-knit family in their own right, decided to step up to take care of him. To help cover the medical expenses, the restaurant is hosting a raffle for a set of MP-52 irons (3-PW), a JPX-800 driver and an Aerolite stand bag with a total value of $1,300.

"Well, I definitely plan to recover," Sanders said with confidence. "It has been a very good transition from a bad situation because of where I work. They have taken such good care of me and made me feel so protected that all I have to worry about is getting better, and that's what I'm doing.  I mean, Ray's Killer Creek hands down has made my life better, by far, and I have never heard of a job doing that for another employee, not where I've worked, anyway."

"He's just been really inspiring, I think, to everybody," Horvat said of her friend. "You know, he's gone through a lot, obviously, but he has not complained at all, and when I go down there, he's just in a really great mood. We've all been trying to visit him to cover the emotional support aspect. We were down there yesterday doing a little bit of training.  Myself and Eva and Karen are training as his caregivers to be backup. Right now, they're still planning to release him on June 15th."