JAY – Lisa Bryant will never forget the phone call she received last month informing her that her son, Mikael “Mike” Sicotte, 28, had been in a serious motorcycle accident in Kansas.

The town finance director is crediting her son’s safety and riding gear as saving his life.

She’s hoping more riders will don helmets and wear appropriate clothing when they go out riding. and she hopes more motorists will be on the alert for motorcycles on the road.

“I just want people to realize the importance of wearing a helmet and all the safety gear because all of it makes a difference,” Bryant said. “I want people to watch for motorcycles. They are hard to see. Be alert. Stay off the cell phone. Look twice.”

Her new daughter-in-law, Millasent, reached Bryant by cell phone while she was shopping Sept. 22 at Kohl’s in Auburn.

Mikael’s motorcycle had been hit by a sport utility vehicle on a highway after the woman failed to yield the right of way as she exited her driveway.

“I’ll never forget it,” she said. “Everything on his left side is broken.”

He has a fractured vertebra in his neck, fractured collar bone, elbow, wrist and all of the bones in his hands and fingers are broken, she said.

His hip is severely shattered, his knee cap broken and his ankle fractured, she said.

Other body parts have either been dislocated or crushed and his left middle finger has been amputated.

Sicotte, a U.S. Army veteran and now a contractor for the Army, is an information technology computer specialist who graduated Jay High School in 1997. The family moved to Maine in 1985 from Connecticut.e Mikael started school in Livermore Falls before moving to Jay as a second-grader, his mother said.

Sicotte is a member of the Military Riders Club, which always promotes safety.

He was out for a ride with another member “riding in staggered formation as they should” that morning when the accident happened, she said.

The SUV missed the first motorcycle but her son had nowhere to go, Bryant said.

“He had just bought a brand new helmet, a tighter fitting one, and the new helmet is what saved his life,” she said. “He was wearing his leather including his gloves and that’s what saved his hand. His hand is stove up pretty bad but at least he still has one.”

Sicotte started rehabilitation this week at a center two hours from his Junction City, Kan., home.

“It’s hard, really hard. It’s hard to watch your son go through something like this knowing that he has such a long road ahead of him,” Bryant said. “He is young and strong and he has a really good attitude. He has a terrific sense of humor.”

His wife, who is an Army medic, has been temporarily assigned duty at the hospital in Wichita so she can be with her husband. The couple married Sept. 10.

Bryant is thinking of setting up a Web page.

“I have some stickers I have ordered,” she said, including bumper stickers that ask people to “Watch out for motorcycles … your car can kill!!” “The only reason I’m doing this publicly is that I want people to be safety conscious and so many people are asking about him … He did everything right but he still got hit, but his safety gear saved his life.”