Family Says Niki Taylor Improving

Mon., May. 14, 2001 1:00 PM PDT by Josh Grossberg

Niki Taylor is getting better.

So says her family, who are hopeful the famed 26-year-old fashionista will make a full recovery after being hospitalized with severe internal injuries following a near-fatal car crash in Atlanta last month.

"I talked to my sister [Niki's mother, Barbara] last night and she said Niki's doing great," Taylor's aunt, Mary Eaton, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution Saturday. "She can't talk because she's on a respirator but she's able to point to a sign board to communicate with the family. She told them she wants to go home."

Eaton says parents Ken and Barbara Taylor, as well as Niki's older sister, Joelle Bolline, remain at the model's bedside at Atlanta's Grady Memorial Hospital, while her her six-year-old twin boys are at home with their father and Taylor's ex-husband, Matt Martinez.

"Her boys are staying with their father but they've been told their mother was in an accident and is in the hospital," Eaton said. "We're all optimistic and feel in our hearts that she's going to make it."

The Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue regular was in Atlanta visiting friends on April 29 before planning to return home to Fort Lauderdale to begin acting lessons. She was riding as a passenger in a friend's Nissan Maxima when the driver looked down to answer a cell phone, lost control of the vehicle on an off-ramp and smashed into a utility pole. The driver, Chad Renegar, a longtime pal of the model, and another male passenger were unhurt. Police later ticketed Renegar for hitting a fixed object and driving without proof of insurance.

Taylor, who was wearing her seatbelt, also seemed unscathed following the crash. However, she soon began experiencing severe abdominal pain and was hospitalized in critical condition.

A few days after the accident, doctors performed life-saving surgery on Taylor in hopes of improving her condition. She currently is listed in critical but stable condition and is expected to remain in the intensive care unit for several more weeks.

Taylor first shot to fame at the age of 14, when she landed on the cover of Seventeen magazine, and has since traipsed the runway for the world's top fashion designers and appeared in ads for Cover Girl and Liz Clairborne.

The leggy blonde is no stranger to tragedy, having lost her then-17-year-old younger sister, Krissy, also a model, to an asthma attack and undiagnosed heart condition in 1995.

The family requests that anybody wanting to wish Taylor a speedy recovery may send her a note and angel bears in care of the hospital.