It started with a brisk spring evening walk — just a quick walk around the neighborhood in what seems like a very safe community. On the night of April 14, 2022, Maria Cervan-tes Alvarado took her usual brisk walking trip around the community in Rhodes Ranch. She got to a familiar intersection, entered the same crosswalk that she always passes — but this time when she entered the crosswalk there was a car sitting at the stop sign. 

As Maria walked past, the car suddenly accelerated, striking the 41-year-old mother of three and knocking her more than 20 feet. The blow was hard enough to crack the bumper and the lights on the car. Maria’s head struck the cement and asphalt hard enough to open a nasty gash on her forehead. She sustained other injuries as well. This is the part that we have a pretty good understanding of, as police responded to the scene and filed a detailed report. They know that the driver started to pull away from the scene of the accident but neighbors yelled for him to stop. 

Police officers who responded to the scene said that, in their estimation, the intersection “was limited in lighting,” according to the official report. As luck would have it, one of Maria’s friends happened by and recognized her. In the emotionally fraught discussion that followed, Maria asked her friend to tell her son that she was OK and that she would be home as soon as she could. That is not what transpired: Maria’s friend brought her son to the accident scene, he was traumatized by what he saw, and he was further traumatized when his mother left the scene in an ambulance. It’s at this point that the crash goes from being just an accident with injuries to an incident with some real twists and turns. 

With more than $100,000 in initial direct medical expense, Maria sought the help of an attorney and she reached out to the De Castroverde Law Group.  

Albright is a former prosecutor with the Clark County District Attorney’s office. He knows his way around an accident with injury scene. What you are about to learn next is the real shocker, even for a veteran former DA prosecutor. An attorney for Rhodes Ranch explained that the Homeowners Association at Rhodes Ranch did not have insurance at the time of the accident. The HOA’s attorney said that for some reason the HOA had let their insurance lapse. 

A point of disclosure here: Our firm, Fierro Communications, works with Albright and the De Castroverde Law Group on this case and we have some pretty strong feelings about the way the victim was treated by the HOA. This is where the story goes from bad to worse.

After suffering from fallout from her injuries for more than a year including recurring headaches and other medical issues, Maria was in for the surprise of her life when the lawsuit was filed on her behalf. Her name and the fact that she was suing was plastered all over the Rhodes Ranch clubhouse. It also ended up on various Rhodes Ranch social media outlets including Facebook and Nextdoor. On top of being bruised, sutured and battered, Maria was stunned. She started seeing nasty comments about her accident, particularly on social media, even though she was the victim here. Neighbors were complaining because their HOA rates could go up — HOA officials implied as much. 

“As we dug a little deeper, we found out that, throughout the years, as you can imagine with a community of this size, there has been litigation from time to time, yet not once, in anything that I found, have they ever called an emergency board meeting or ever sent out a notice like this or posted such a notice in the community clubhouse areas,” Albright said. “Not once — let alone a notice that includes the actual name of an individual who lives in the neighborhood and rubs shoulders with those people, whose kids go to school with those people, with the same kids that also live in that neighborhood.”

Maria had contributed nothing in any way to cause this accident. The only thing she had to show for it was a handful of nearly insurmountable medical bills — yet HOA members were pointing the finger at her. She was understandably scared: Her neighbors know where she lives. Her children go to school with children from the neighborhood. Both she and her husband work in the neighborhood. 

“After the accident, I didn’t feel it was safe for my kids to run around or go outside,” Maria told us. “If what happened to me as an adult was happening, then what is going to happen to them, as kids? I don’t feel it’s safe for them to go out for a run or a walk at night, even though we live in the neighborhood. It is supposed to be a really nice and safe community, but we really don’t feel like that anymore.”

At a time in our country when ringing the wrong doorbell or pulling into the wrong driveway can change your life forever, HOA officials seemed to be pointing the finger at Maria at the worst possible time. 

“What we’re trying to do is clean up their mess,” Albright said. “We want the people who have only seen the notice and think that it’s Maria’s fault to know the truth. We want them to know the facts behind the actual incident and that the lighting at the intersection was insufficient. We’ve had an engineer out there who says that the lighting on that corner was insufficient and not to code. That’s also the fault and the problem of the HOA. 

“We also want them to know the extent of Maria’s injuries, to see the photos of her in the hospital with her neck braced and the gash in her head actively bleeding. It’s horrendous. We also need the people to know that they didn’t have insurance. Maria is not the villain in this story. What we’re trying to do is let her neighbors and her employers and the people who live by her, who may be blaming her, to know the truth.”

Orlando De Castroverde, a partner at De Castroverde Law Group, said he and his colleagues at the firm were shocked by what their investigation into the matter uncovered. “There was not sufficient lighting where Maria was hit,” De Castroverde said. “That’s when we realized this accident was a result of those dangerous conditions. Then, with their messaging, the HOA flipped it and made Maria out to be the bad person, instead of acknowledging their responsibilities — then, on top of it, the fact they were not carrying insurance, which is a prerequisite. So the way I see it, there is a lot of irony in the way the HOA is going about it. The HOA is supposed to be protecting the residents of the community, not leaving them exposed to harm and damage.” 

If there was any bright spot in the story, it was at this point that the Las Vegas Review-Journal covered the story. Reporting by Katelyn Newberg seemed to bring some sanity to the online discussion. Follow-up social media posting included comments such as:

• “I am livid. Someone needs to be held accountable for allowing the liability insurance to lapse.”

• “Where is the [HOA board] president now with this possible lawsuit, which now allegedly adds bullying [of the victim] of all things?”

• “Time for a change, no more board members that don’t live in [Rhodes Ranch]. Also we need live, in-person meetings so we can hold everyone accountable.” 

The need to blame seems to grow every day and the extensive role that social media plays in our lives makes the fuse of runaway emotion burn 1,000 times hotter. Maria didn’t do anything wrong. She was simply going out for a walk in her own neighborhood where she should have felt protected. Instead, Maria Cervantes Alvarado feels more victimized than ever.

Mark Fierro began his career as a reporter/anchor at KLAS-TV, the CBS television station in Las Vegas. He worked at the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington, D.C. He served as communications consultant on IPO road shows on Wall Street. He provided litigation support for the Michael Jackson death trial. He is president of Fierro Communications, Inc., which conducts mock juries and focus groups in addition to public relations and marketing. Fierro is the author of several books including “Road Rage: The Senseless Murder of Tammy Meyers.” He has made numerous appearances on national TV news programs.

Jeff Haney serves as Executive Vice President of Operations for Fierro Communications, where he works on developing and directing all media, marketing, research, consulting and public relations strategies for Fierro Communications’ clients including those in business, government, the legal field and cutting-edge high technology in Las Vegas.