At a family barbecue, his father's arm caught fire and Wright saw it but didn't even notice, so focused was he on understanding what his mother was saying to him at the time.

Today, it hardly seems possible that all this could have been just seven years ago.

Thanks in large part to the kindness, patience and understanding of his family and his San Clemente neighbors, Wright, who turns 46 on Saturday, is once again a bright academic scholar, back from a devastating brain injury that had reduced him to a mental infant.

Wright was brutally beaten, robbed and left for dead in February 1995 on the streets of La Paz, Bolivia, where he had been living, working and researching. His mother, Helene Wright, chronicled how this adult-turn-child inched his way back to productive life in a book published in 2000, ``Someone Stole Yesterday.''

Today, Tim Wright is once again a UCLA doctoral candidate in anthropology, preparing to leave Sept. 1 for a year in Bolivia doing his Ph.D. dissertation on a Fulbright-Hays scholarship and a grant from the Organization of American States.

``It's a stunning recovery, and I did not do it alone,'' Wright said. ``San Clemente had a lot to do with my getting well -- the love and support of the people here. And my parents were terrific.''

Wright lives in Los Angeles but was in town this week, staying with his parents, Bob and Helene Wright, readying himself for another year in Bolivia.

He has no recollection of the mugging that ended his previous academic life. He holds no animosity toward whoever did it, be it one or more assailants.

``I would like to know about their lives,'' he said.

Married for 56 years, Bob and Helene Wright have resided in San Clemente for 18 years. In the 1980s they followed their son's service in the Peace Corps in Ecuador, then his work in Bolivia on a previous Fulbright grant in the early 1990s. He became an important foreigner in Bolivia, working with the health ministry on the prevention and control of sexually transmitted diseases and AIDS in a South American society that largely was in self-denial that these maladies existed.

Tim's proud parents saw their lives turned upside-down the day they were notified that their son was unconscious in South America, his prognosis grim. He had survived the beating, but when the Wrights brought him home they learned that he would have to start life all over again, relearning everything he had acquired since early childhood.

Helene Wright, who had raised Tim in La Habra and was now a 71-year-old San Clemente retiree, would have to become Mom again, in the most patient, loving sense.

``What you have to think about when you have a severely brain-injured person is that you are taking them through infancy,'' Helene said. ``You cannot skip any stages. We were not able to skip the toddler stage, where he couldn't be left alone. We were not able to skip the kindergarten stage, where he had to have not only identification on him, but it had to be strapped because he would forget he had it.

``Bob had to follow the bus to be sure he got off at the right place. We couldn't skip the teenage years, when he was furious with us because we were keeping him here, and we wouldn't give him the freedom he thought he deserved. You couldn't skip any single stage.''

The upside? ``He went through it faster. When you take a child and you raise them through the first 15 years, this was capsulated into about three or four. But it was every stage. Parents, when you first tell them that, they don't want to believe you ... `Oh, well our son isn't that bad,' or `our daughter isn't that bad.' Unfortunately, it is that bad.''

Helene has ample occasion to offer advice like that. Her book, which took her four years to write, while all this was going on, propelled her into a career as a public speaker, addressing book clubs, writing clubs, Kiwanis Clubs, Rotary Clubs, church groups, a New York State brain injury conference and book tours at Barnes & Nobles, Borders and other venues.

``We also get a lot of telephone calls from people who have read the book,'' she said. ``They thank us for the help it's been ... we've been in touch with one family in particular whose son had a similar brain injury who, unfortunately, isn't doing as well as Tim.''

At one stage during Tim's recovery, the Wrights had to loosen the cord and let him out on his own. They moved him out of the house and into his own apartment, although they still kept close contact. He credits people from his parents' church -- St. Andrew's Methodist -- and from the small, cozy Spanish-language congregation that he joined at St. Clement's (he had awakened from his brain injury ``in Spanish,'' he said) -- with helping nurture him back to productive life.

The Hotel San Clemente management helped. Staff at the library. Downtown stores. The cleaners.

``They were good to me,'' Tim said. ``This is a good place to recover from a brain injury.''