In the early hours of March 21, 2021, former Slippery Rock track and field student-athlete Roxanne Dunn was riding in a car when the driver fell asleep at the wheel. The vehicle veered off the road, hit a tree stump and slid down an embankment in western Pennsylvania.
Asleep herself before the wreck, Dunn was knocked unconscious.
She woke up dazed.
She couldn't feel her legs.
As she unbuckled her seat belt, Dunn said it felt like her stomach exploded. The impact of the accident caused her seat belt to sever about 70% of her small intestine.
First responders had to cut her out of the Honda CRV, and she was flown immediately to a Pittsburgh hospital. The 2020 graduate was put on a ventilator and underwent three surgeries within 48 hours.
In addition to severing her intestines, the accident left Dunn with a broken orbital socket and incomplete tear of her spinal cord. She was paralyzed from the waist down and didn't know if she would ever walk again.
The former pole vaulter had never faced a bar this high, but she was determined to overcome it.
"It was never really an option to not keep going," Dunn said. "It was never an option."
Over 2½ years later, Dunn is dealing with the aftermath of the life-altering moment with immense positivity and willpower.
An early childhood education and special education major at Slippery Rock, she is now a special needs teacher and walking short distances with the help of a rolling walker, though she still uses her wheelchair.
Dunn will be honored with a 2024 NCAA Inspiration Award on Wednesday, Jan. 10, at the NCAA Convention Welcome and Awards Presentation in Phoenix. The award is presented to a coach or administrator currently associated with intercollegiate athletics or to a current or former varsity letter winner at an NCAA school. It honors those who used perseverance, dedication and determination to overcome a life-altering situation and become role models, giving hope and inspiration to others.
The beginning of her 53-day hospital stay in the intensive care, neurological and inpatient rehabilitation units is hazy. As Dunn became more coherent during recovery, it was hard to comprehend her new reality.
While doing inpatient physical therapy, Dunn's therapist, Randy, always asked what she wanted to do that day, and her response never changed — "I want to walk."
Each day that they wouldn't attempt to walk, she became more frustrated. Finally, Randy had to lay it out.
"I'm not saying that you're never going to walk again, but you're not going to walk out of here," he said. "When I'm asking you things that you want to do, I want to know what do you want to work on right now that will help you get there. Because no matter what happens here, you will go home in a wheelchair. What happens after that, you'll find out."
Dunn knew that she had lost function and sensation in her legs, but she was attempting to come to terms with the situation and her injuries.
She was going to be in a wheelchair.
Dunn had always been an athlete. The childhood gymnast tried pole vault and eventually became a three-time state high school champion and two-time Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference Championship qualifier in college. That strong body awareness from a life of flying through the air helped as her recovery began.
What also helped was a volunteer experience Dunn had before her accident at the Akron Rotary Camp, where she worked with children with developmental or physical disabilities and became familiar with lifts and transfers for people in wheelchairs.
"Not only was I able to help teach people how to transfer me, I was also able to figure out how to work my own body to best assist in the ways that I could at the time," she said. "That perhaps maybe even was part of the reason why I didn't grasp the magnitude of what was wrong or what was going to be the rest of my life because I was able to figure things out so quickly.
"Not to pat myself on the back, but it did make for an easier transition from being able-bodied to not, having this adept understanding of my body and the way that it worked and therefore how I could make it work now."
Dunn's hospitalization took place while there were COVID-19 visitor restrictions. For her 7½-week stay, she didn't see anyone besides her parents and hospital staff. While bored at the hospital, Dunn took to social media to share her recovery journey. Her honest and inspirational story has resonated with over 68,000 followers and garnered 1.9 million likes on TikTok.
"I've made a lot of online friends in wheelchairs, and it's been really nice to see people who are ahead of me and then also become that person for girls who are behind me and just see kind of like how that process goes," she said.
Dunn moved in with her parents in Ohio after getting released from the hospital. For over a year, Dunn's father frequently drove her two hours to Columbus for a collection of outpatient therapies — occupational, physical, driving, pelvic floor and mental health. At the same time, Dunn was also getting her teaching license transferred to the Buckeye State.
Dunn's first classroom experience was as a long-term substitute for a teacher on maternity leave. It was her by herself, in a wheelchair teaching 27 second graders in a second-floor classroom. On the two-year anniversary of the car accident, Dunn was in the classroom doing what once felt like was impossible.
"There were very hard days," she said. "But there were also like a lot of really good days, too."
Education is in her family's DNA. Her mother, father and brother all teach. Dunn's passion is working with kids. She now teaches third and fourth graders at the Starlight School, a school specializing in special education.
"They're incredibly supportive of me physically," Dunn said. "They are very cautious to make sure that I'm secure, appreciated, and it's been really nice being a teacher there."
Now with a full-time job in her dream career and navigating being an incomplete paraplegic, Dunn has a plan for the next stage of her life.
"I would move out, learn what it's like to live independently or learn what it's like to live either alone or just independently from my parents, although that will be hard," she said. "And then meet someone, get married, have kids and just live the life that I wanted to live anyway.
"I'll just be sitting instead of standing for the most part."
