Compelling Tale of C-o-u-r-a-g-e

She was driving her ’73 Mustang, way out in the desert near Blythe, with hardly anyone else on the road. It was 5:30 a.m. Her dad was up ahead, leading the way. Denver was where they were headed. They’d been driving at night, because it was cool. July in the desert sun is something you want to avoid.

What was the last thing you remember?

Christine Olson, 17 years old, points to an alphabet board on her lap, spelling out her words. She cannot talk.

“E-a-t-i-n-g P-r-i-n-g-l-e-s,” her mother, Judy, reads aloud. And the radio was tuned to KIIS-FM, with the Top 40 hits.

Then Chris fell asleep, her seat belt still on, her foot on the gas. The red Mustang leaped off the road, airborne until a boulder smacked it down. Chris’ father, Lynn, looked in his rearview mirror and all he saw was a cloud of dust.

It’s been a very long way back from there.

Judy Olson called me because she wanted to give thanks to the many people who have helped her daughter--her teachers, her doctors, therapists and friends--to the many who have gone out of their way. They owed her nothing, Judy said. The family had just moved here from Denver a few months before.

But people have been great, she said. They’ve done so much. They’ve given of their time, their patience and their expertise. They care.

Now I understand why. That is the story here.

Chris Olson, at home in Huntington Beach, aims a manicured index finger to her board and spells. “I am not a cripple,” she says, then she smiles with one side of her face. Most of the right side of her brain is gone.

“In her eyes, she is not crippled,” Judy says. “She’s real stubborn.”

The trait, I can see, is in Chris’ genes, and her family nurtures it with love. Stubbornness has been known to prod miracles along. But even Judy says she wasn’t sure her daughter could come this far.

Chris spells it out. “G-o-a-l-s,” she says. “W-a-l-k. T-a-l-k. B-e I-n-d-e-p-e-n-d-e-n-t. D-r-i-v-e a c-a-r.”

“I think she is going to accomplish that,” Judy says. “We just take these days as they come.”

“I am lucky,” Chris writes. “I know how to spell.”

Then she smiles.

Chris graduated from Huntington Beach High School on June 13, right on schedule with the rest of her class. The crash that nearly killed her was July 4 of last year, and the coma that followed lasted two months. The surgeries continue to this day.

Before the end of last year, however, Chris began catching up on her studies from school. The district sent a tutor to her home four days a week. Homework was piled on, and Chris plowed through it all.

And on graduation day, Chris told her parents that she didn’t want anybody to push her wheelchair up in front of the crowd. Instead, a classmate put her in place and Chris drove her own chair to retrieve her diploma.

It was one of the few times that Judy Olson allowed others to see her tears. This time they sprang from pride.

There is a silver-toned photo album in the family’s living room that illustrates the journey, too. Inside are photographs of the smashed Mustang, of Chris in her hospital bed, with her grandparents, her friends, in a cap and gown.

And displayed on the album’s front is a smiling image of Chris, seated in her wheelchair, wearing a strapless black-and-white polka-dot dress altered by a family friend to make it look just right. A bouquet of lilies and baby’s breath rests on her lap.

Moments later, Chris and her dates would leave for the senior prom, May 24, at the Disneyland Hotel.

“She wrote to her brother and said that she didn’t care that she couldn’t walk or talk, she wanted to go to her senior prom,” Judy says. “She asked if he would come down from Colorado and take her, so, of course, he said that he would. Then her cousin found out about it and he said he didn’t want to miss this for the world.”

Why was it so important to go to the prom?

Chris doesn’t waste any time in spelling her answer out. “Because my friends didn’t think I would or could,” she says.

Next is Rancho Santiago College in the fall. Chris will study computerized fashion design.

“I love clothes,” Chris points out.

“Yes. We know that,” Judy comes back.

We’d just been talking about the importance of matching earrings with Chris’ clothes, about not just throwing something on for fear that somebody would unexpectedly drop by.

“And people!” Chris spells. The exclamation point comes by way of a little toss of her head.

So where does this come from, this spark, this spunk? Again, I ask Chris Olson to help me out.

“Because of my family,” she spells. “How I was brought up.”

Judy Olson looks up at her daughter the moment that she stops translating those words. “Thank you,” she says. And then the barest trace of tears begin to glisten in this mother’s eyes.

The source, once again, is pride.

“And God had a lot to do with it too,” this mother says.