LA makeup artist breaks neck, back in 22-foot Mexico bridge fall

A 29-year-old Los Angeles makeup artist broke her neck and back after falling 22 feet from a wooden bridge when the ATV she was riding flipped on a guided tour in Cancún, Mexico, while celebrating her birthday.

The fall, caught on video by her phone left behind on the bridge, left Bakhshizadeh facing an emergency surgery bill of more than $50,000 in a foreign hospital with no travel insurance — prompting friends and family to launch a GoFundMe campaign on her behalf.

Bakhshizadeh was on a birthday trip when the guided ATV tour turned catastrophic. As she and her boyfriend crossed a wooden bridge on their vehicles, an ATV tire snagged on a wire attached to the bridge structure, causing the vehicle to flip, ABC7 Los Angeles reported. Her boyfriend narrowly avoided a fall by getting caught in the wire, but Bakhshizadeh was thrown clear of the bridge.

"His tire got stuck to the wire of the bridge... and then we flipped, the car flipped. My boyfriend got stuck in the wire. But I fell down off the bridge," Bakhshizadeh said in a Zoom interview from her hospital bed, according to ABC7 Los Angeles.

Her phone, left on the bridge above, recorded the fall on video. After hitting the jungle floor, she could not move on her own and had to be carried out on a board. No ambulance was available at the scene, and she was transported to a hospital in the back of a truck, ABC7 Los Angeles reported.

Doctors in Cancún performed emergency back surgery, which cost more than $50,000. A GoFundMe campaign was set up by those close to her to cover medical bills and the cost of returning home. She expects to arrive back in Los Angeles in approximately two weeks.

"I was awake the whole time. You know how you sleep sometimes, and you fall in your dream, and you wake up? It was like that. When I fell, like, it was the longest and the shortest fall of my life," she said.

Despite a broken neck and back, Bakhshizadeh said she expects to recover the ability to walk. "I'm very, very, very lucky to be able to walk again, hopefully soon, because... I was about to be paralyzed," she said.

From her hospital bed in Cancún, Bakhshizadeh shared a message for those following her recovery. "Appreciate your health. Hug your loved ones, and if you can walk, go take a walk. Take some air, enjoy life. It's shorter than what you think," she said.