Laurel-Rose von Hoffmann-Curzi says she is hopeful that she will not need more surgery as she recovers from the bear attack.
(CNN) -
A recovering California woman says she feels lucky to be alive after being attacked by a black bear that broke into her Lake Tahoe cabin and wandered into her kitchen.
Laurel-Rose von Hoffmann-Curzi awoke early on October 30 to a series of blows to the floor downstairs at her family's Tahoe Vista cabin.
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At first she thought her son was making noise, but as she went downstairs she noticed a large bear rummaging through her freezer and dumping food on the floor.
It was still dark, but the bear was illuminated by the light from the freezer.
"When I recognized that I was a bear, he recognized, I guess, that I was a person and attacked me," the 66-year-old retired doctor told CNN.
Von Hoffmann-Curzi says that he didn't really see the bear onslaught because it all happened so fast.
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"I remember seeing his big paw on my face and basically nothing else," he said.
"And I started to feel like my body was being ripped apart."
He commented that he was "screaming and screaming and screaming" when the bear attacked.
The bear climbed the stairs towards her a second time and von Hoffmann-Curzi says that he threw a bedspread and a robe that landed on his head and scared the animal.
The bear approached her a third time, but ran out of the house when von Hoffman-Curzi's husband and son emerged from their rooms.
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Her husband helped tend to her injuries while her son called 911. She says help arrived in less than 10 minutes and was rushed to the hospital.
Von Hoffman-Curzi says his face hurt more and that he was bleeding a lot.
But she also had scratches and other wounds on her neck, back, arm, and other parts of her body, as well as a bite near her left breast.
There was also a deep puncture wound to her abdomen that she feared might have ruptured her spleen, which she says would have been disastrous because she is receiving chemotherapy for lymphoma.
Von Hoffman-Curzi was transferred to UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento for more care.
The surgeon "did a spectacular job" stitching up his extensive facial injuries, he said.
Doctors gave von Hoffmann-Curzi antibiotics in hopes of preventing infections and abscesses, because she is immunosuppressed and because bears carry bacteria.
Von Hoffman-Curzi hopes that he will not need additional surgeries.
The survivor lives in Orinda, California, in the Bay Area, and says that she and her husband go to the cabin quite regularly because it is one of the few places she can go outside of her home.
Her chemotherapy has made her very susceptible to COVID-19, so it has not been safe for her to be away from home during the pandemic even though she is vaccinated.
"The only reasons [to go out] are medical appointments and chemotherapy," he said.
"That's my social life: going to chemotherapy."
She says they won't come back until they catch this bear.
"It would be dangerous for us because the bear knows the hut, he knows there is food there, he knows how to get in [and] he is not afraid of people," he said.
Captain Patrick Foy of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) says authorities have placed a trap in the cabin to try to catch the bear.
They also took DNA samples from Von Hoffman-Curzi's wounds and from inside the cabin.
The bear will have to be euthanized if they catch it, and they will use the DNA information to make sure they have the correct one, says Foy.
Any other bears they catch will be released to a safe place.
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California black bears are the only type of bear that lives in the wild in California.
An estimated 25,000 to 30,000 live in the state.
Adult females can weigh between 45 and 90 kilograms and males are even larger, between 68 and 158 kilograms.
Foy says that many of the bears around Tahoe, which he described as an urban-rural interface, have become accustomed to humans.
"When there are bears that come into the houses, those are bears that are quite used to these urban areas, and that is the way they really make a living by searching for human sources of food," he explained.
"I don't mean humans as a food source, just human food sources."
He points out that this was the second attack by a bear on a human this year.
Von Hoffmann-Curzi says they had just arrived at the cabin on Friday night and had not cooked or eaten any food, nor had they generated garbage.
She believes that the bear may have smelled some avocados that they brought with them.
They didn't close the latch that night, von Hoffman-Curzi says, and the bear was able to open the door with its paws.
"These bears are super smart," he commented.
Foy recommended that residents and visitors to the area go to keepmewild.org for tips on how to avoid negative encounters with bears and other wildlife.
He said they receive almost daily reports of bears entering people's homes or vehicles, getting into the trash, opening bird feeders and causing other property damage while foraging for food.
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