Up until about 20 years ago, Joy Veron had been living a fairly idyllic life.
The 30-year-old Texan was a successful school teacher with a happy marriage and 3 beautiful children: 2-year-old Elliot, 5-year-old Annie, and 7-year-old Chloe.
In 1999, she and her family decided to take a trip to visit the Colorado Mountains to spend some quality time together. As their vacation drew to a close and they were getting ready to head back home, Joy and her husband promised the children they could go for one last swim before heading off.
The children were elated, quickly jumping into the family’s SUV which had been parked near a cliff.
Suddenly, without warning, however, the vehicle’s gear slipped, sending the SUV rolling towards a deadly canyon— with Joy’s 3 children trapped inside!
She tells the Oprah Show (via Daily Mail), “I just saw complete fear. I remember their little eyes were huge, looking at me just like, ‘Help me, do something!'”
Not knowing what else to do, Joy chased the rolling SUV, throwing herself in front of it in an attempt to make it stop.
“I remember feeling it begin to run me over,” she tells PBS (via Daily Mail). “I fell backwards, and the front of the car caught me by the heels.”
“I did like, a somersault under the car, and the third time it hit I knew that it broke my back.”
“I was 30-years-old, and the whole life I knew was gone.”
Although Joy had been paralyzed, her body had slowed the SUV enough for her father to jump in and pull the emergency brake— she had successfully saved her children.
Despite being paralyzed, things could have been much worse for the brave mother. She explains, “The back tire basically went this way, and just crushed everything; my lungs, my ribs, my clavicle.”
“I had my head tilted— and they say that’s what saved my life.”
Joy told her story on the Oprah Show back in 2004. Two years ago, she returned for Oprah’s Where Are They Now? series.
The brave mother tells Oprah that she had difficulty dealing with the incident for a very long time. She suffered from depression, had grueling rehabilitation sessions, and even lost her marriage as a result.
“I remember lying in my bed one day and being depressed, and hearing my children playing outside,” she says.
“I remember thinking then, it’s my choice. I can lie here and I can be depressed, and I can miss out a lot in life—or I could learn to walk again.
“Maybe not in the physical sense, but walk in life.”
Listen to her inspiring story below.
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