After being run over by a truck, this Philly designer reached out for help

A South Philly web designer was run over by a delivery truck last Friday, on the 1200 block of Pine Street.

Becca Refford, a TechGirlz volunteer and designer at WordPress shop CreativeMMS, is now looking at four to seven months of recovery time as she fends off multiple fractures including a rib, a foot and her pelvis.

The designer, 24, has launched a $5,000 GoFundMe campaign to help her grapple with the associated costs from the accident. Refford said she’ll be moving in with her parents during recovery since her apartment is an unaccessible third floor walk-up, but rent and utilities are still due. Medical bills, according to Refford, will likely be footed by the truck driver’s insurance.

https://twitter.com/bexrefford/status/943634974972014594

We first caught wind of Refford in 2015, when she dropped out of Temple University’s computer science program and joined Chariot Solution’s paid internship program. Earlier this year, at our NET/WORK jobs fair, she told us she did not regret the decision.

“Man I feel uncomfortable asking for funds, but I’m going to suck it up and ask for your help,” Refford wrote in a GoFundMe campaign. “Thanks for your consideration, it means so, so much. It’ll be nice to not be broke while I work on getting un-broken.”

(This deep dive from the Huffington Post says medical bills and healthcare-related costs are a key factor in most bankruptcy filings by millennials.)

Any leftover funds from the campaign will go to Women Bike PHL, a program of the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia. The coalition has been advocating for safety policies to protect riders in the city.

Philadelphia needs this #VisionZero bill to pass yesterday. The Bicycle Coalition will make sure it becomes law in the New Year. Legislation is 100% uncontroversial, creates added safety to places where pedestrians are injured and killed.

— Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia (@bcgp) December 20, 2017

Refford’s crash comes just a few weeks after a woman named Emily Fredricks was killed in an accident at 11th and Spruce.