Los Angeles sheriff’s deputy, injured in crash, is surprised with a new prosthetic running leg

After Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputy Garrett Rifkin’s foot was badly injured in a hit-and-run accident in August, the doctors asked if he would be open to amputation so he could one day maybe get back to patrol duty or run again, but with a prosthetic leg.

Three hours were all it took for Rifkin to answer yes.

Four months later, Rifkin, 25, was surprised on Tuesday, Dec. 18, with a custom-made, lighter-weight prosthetic running leg at the Lake Forest-based American headquarters of Össur, an international maker of orthopedic equipment.

With the gift, Rifkin said he is already thinking about activities that seemed unthinkable: Going back to jit jitsu; starting boxing; running in parts of the Baker to Vegas ultra-marathon for law enforcement; and going back to patrolling.

“Why not me?” Rifkin said.

Riding his motorcycle from his Castaic home to his night shift with the LA Sheriff Department’s West Hollywood station on Aug. 3, Rifkin was hit by a driver who ran a red light.

A doctor at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center called the injured left leg “one of the worst we’ve seen,” Rifkin said.

In the span of three weeks, he underwent six surgeries to save his mangled foot. Doctors then approached him with the difficult choice of amputation.

Rifkin said he thought of his girlfriend. He thought of playing with his children someday.

Those made the decision for him, he said, and on Aug. 23 he had a final surgery to amputate his leg below the knee.

“I couldn’t do those if I salvaged my leg,” said Rifkin, who was told he would have struggled to walk. “I can do everything with my prosthetic.”

He learned to walk with his first basic prosthetic leg within four day so he could be a groomsman in his friend’s wedding.

“It’s a lot of falling down the stairs,” he said.

He was back to work on Nov. 4, months before expected.

“I didn’t care if I sat around at a desk,” he said. He had watched enough Netflix.

But his walking prosthetic leg was not suitable for policing the streets and he would needed a lighter designed leg if he wanted to run.

His family, unbeknownst to Rifkin, talked with a friend about his challenges.

That family friend, who works at prosthetic manufacturer Össur, relayed the message to the company, which decided to secretly create a prosthetic fitted to Rifkin.

For 25 years, Össur has gifted hundreds of its prosthetic legs under its partnership with the Challenged Athletes Foundation. This year, the company donated about 100, said Tabi King, the company’s director of marketing for prosthetics and a foundation  board member.

“Living with a limb loss is not the end of the world,” King said. Technology can enable amputees to live without limitations, she said.

The Össur Flex-Run – worth between $15,000 and $30,000 – is lighter and has a design that absorbs and returns more energy, Director of Össur Academy Justin Pratt said. The leg also has treads that mimic that of a shoe, he said.

It will take some time for Rifkin to learn to run on his new leg.

“I don’t know how goofy I’ll look,” he said.

But he said he is already excited for the possibilities that lay ahead, including going back on patrol duty, though this time in a car instead of on a motorcycle.

“I can’t sit on my desk anymore,” he said.