Daisy Switzer

She's groggy from painkillers, but even from her hospital room, Daisy Switzer hasn't stopped trying to telephone clients shut out of the Nevada County Behavioral Health Department because of Wednesday's shootings.

"In fact, what blew me away was, she wondered if it was OK to see clients in my office as she recovered," said Switzer's mother, Jayne Kelly de Lopez, a Grass Valley divorce lawyer.

Switzer, 35, was working at the department to gain clinical hours required to become a licensed psychotherapist. She earned a master's degree in psychology from Golden Gate University in San Francisco and has been at the clinic about a year, her mother said.

But her plans might be slowed.

Switzer, after hearing gunshots, leapt from a second-story window, shattering bones in both legs and breaking her pelvis, spine and four ribs.

More than 20 feet below the window, she writhed in pain for about 40 minutes while rescuers evacuated the building, her mother said.

On Friday she was in stable condition in Sutter Roseville Medical Center's trauma center, said her mother, who was unsure how long Switzer would remain at the hospital.

De Lopez said her daughter, the second of her nine children, was unable to discuss the shooting because she was in extreme pain, on painkillers and taking medication to fight blood clotting.

And the grieving process has begun taking its toll.

"She was better yesterday. I think it's hitting her now. She cries a lot," de Lopez said. "She said she knew the other people who were involved and was just terrified that this thing happened."

Switzer didn't know the alleged gunman, mental patient Scott Thorpe, but felt no anger toward him, her mother said. That fit with her pacifistic outlook, which included a stance on gun control opposite her mother's.

"She'd no more touch a gun than I'd pick up a rattlesnake," said de Lopez, who keeps a gun and a Doberman at her office because of her sometimes messy career in divorce law.

A single mother of an 11-year-old girl, Switzer became a vegetarian and legally changed her name to Daisy after growing up as "Karen."

"That spirit is what kept her alive," de Lopez said.

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