"I don't like this," Tara Eichinger-Berendes said, so quietly her husband Josh Berendes saw her mouth the words more than he heard her say them.

In another situation, the statement would not have been cause for celebration.

But those were the first words spoken by the 20-year-old Los Gatos native since a horrible auto accident put her in a coma nearly six weeks before.

"It was just nice to be able to hear something out of her mouth," Berendes said.

Shortly after, Eichinger-Berendes whispered, "Hi, Josh" to her new husband. When Berendes asked who had been there to visit her that day, she said—again in a low whisper—that her mother and father had been there, as had her friend Katie Ball.

Berendes called her father, John Eichinger, to come down to the hospital.

"So I rushed over there," Eichinger said. "She didn't say another word all day."

But the next day, July 11, she whispered a similar greeting to him.

"We both cried together," he said.

Since then, her caretakers at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center in San Jose removed the young woman's tracheotomy tube, and her voice has grown stronger every day. Though she can have a conversation, Eichinger-Berendes is still a bit confused about what happened to her. Her father tried explaining the events of June 1:

She and Berendes were returning from their honeymoon in Disney World just 10 days after their wedding in Monte Sereno. En route to their new life in Colorado, a car jumped the meridian of Interstate 15 outside of Salt Lake City, slamming into the newlyweds' SUV. Berendes was able to escape, but Eichinger-Berendes was trapped in the driver's seat.

Witnesses stopped and helped push the other burning car—whose sole occupant died—away from hers, and assisted emergency crews in extinguishing the flames. When the young bride was freed, she was flown to the University of Utah Hospital, where she was in critical condition for several weeks until being transferred to San Jose.

Eichinger said the explanation did not seem to do much clear up his daughter's confusion.

When family and friends ask if she remembers specific events such as her wedding, she says no. But in conversation, she has demonstrated that both her long- and short-term memory are intact.

"She said to me one day, 'I have a B.A. now, Dad,'" Eichinger recalled with a smile. "I had just walked in the room. She said, 'I'm the first one to get one.' I told her, 'Yeah, that's right.'"

She has also joked about the hospital food she would "rather die than eat,"—something Eichinger told her was not an option.

Eichinger-Berendes now undergoes physical therapy every day. Her initially shaky motor control has become more refined. But her movement is still very restricted, and Eichinger said she has a long way to go. Though doctors recently said she skipped from stage three to stage five of the eight-step Rancho Los Amigos scale for coma patients, Berendes said she has been showing some of the agitated symptoms of the fourth stage.

Still, he said her improvement has been a "testament" to her own will and to the prayers and wishes of many people.

"I think I'm lucky enough to be watching a miracle every day when I see her," Berendes said.

Eichinger said thousands of people have visited www.tarajosh.com, a website he set up to keep people informed and let them know how they can help. In one day alone, the site received more than 27,000 page hits, nearly 5,000 of those from unique visitors.

He said supporters have rallied to help the family pay mounting medical bills. Future fundraisers include a golf tournament in San Jose Aug. 16, moonlight pond tours in Mountain View Oct. 1 and 2, and a not-yet-scheduled concert by local band Trapt.

"It's very gratifying that people are 'paying it forward,'" Eichinger said of the popular goodwill philosophy his daughter lives by. "She always wanted to help change the world. Now the people helping her are doing that. We're going to be eternally grateful."

For more information, visit http://www.tarajosh.com.