Parker family shares daughter’s recovery after deadly Aurora motorcycle crash

A Parker family’s life changed in seconds on South Parker Road, when a car that had just exited I-225 crossed multiple lanes of traffic and struck the motorcycle carrying 22-year-old Carissa Aspnes around 10:30 p.m. on March 28, 2025. What followed was a year of surgery, rehabilitation and relentless caregiving for her mother, Patti Fox, as the family tried to hold together through a recovery that is still far from over.

Aspnes suffered major trauma to the right hemisphere of her brain. She later became unable to speak, depended on a wheelchair and needed tube feeding. DAWG Nation Hockey Foundation said she was thrown into a concrete barrier, suffered fractures to her leg, arm and face, and underwent surgery to remove a large portion of her skull. She stayed in the ICU nearly three weeks, moved to Craig Rehabilitation Hospital in June 2025, had another surgery in August and returned home on Oct. 2, 2025.

Fox has described the toll in painfully practical terms: the family is grieving the daughter they knew while caring for the young woman who is physically still with them. The crash also brought a financial burden that quickly climbed into the seven figures, with medical bills, rehabilitation costs and the daily demands of around-the-clock care adding up long after the wreck scene was cleared.

Fox has taken on roles that most families never expect to face at once, including nurse, advocate and benefits coordinator, while trying to navigate the medical, legal and bureaucratic maze that can follow a catastrophic crash. That burden is part of why her case has resonated beyond Parker and Aurora, where a single reckless turn onto South Parker Road set off a long chain of consequences for one family.

Fox also traveled to Washington, D.C., to talk about VOICE, the federal Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement office, and says the program helped her family find resources they were not getting elsewhere. ICE says VOICE was established in 2017, replaced in June 2021 by the Victims Engagement and Services Line, and reestablished in 2025. The Department of Homeland Security said the office fielded nearly 900 calls in its first year after reopening, including calls tied to violent assault, sexual assault, homicide, family violence and stalking, and said it gives victims one place to get custody updates, releasable case information, victim-impact-statement guidance and referrals.

The driver, Valeria Bermudez Marcano, later pleaded guilty in January 2026 and was ordered to pay $15,000 in restitution. ICE says she was later deported to her home country. For the Parker family, the crash is still measured not in a court date or a restitution order, but in the slow, costly work of helping Carissa Aspnes recover enough to come home.