CALEDONIA — The roomful of Caledonia High School juniors and seniors fell silent, as pictures flashed across the screen.
A crumpled, upside-down car. A torn guard rail. A girl lying in a hospital bed, unconscious with numerous wound dressings.
It was the year 2003, and Sarah Panzau was lucky to be alive, after attempting to drive herself home in a drunken stupor.
Instead of making it home, Panzau flipped her green ”96 Saturn four times, took out a large portion of guard rail and lost her left arm when she was flung out of the back windshield of the car. She wasn”t wearing a seat belt, and broken glass severed her arm “straight through the bone.”
“They actually found clumps of my hair and clumps of my skin attached to the guard rails,” Panzau told nearly 300 students at Caledonia High School Thursday morning.
Panzau, 29 and from Illinois, now travels the country telling her story to encourage young people to make good choices.
“I”m living proof of what happens to people when they make poor choices,” said Panzau, who admitted she rebelled against “everything” her mother told her to do.
A record-setting two-time All-American volleyball player at Southwest Illinois College, Panzau began a series of bad decisions when she dropped out of school and became a 19-year-old bartender. Surrounded by a “family of friends,” she drank and partied every night. And Aug. 23, 2003 was far from the first time she chose to drink and drive.
“You see it on TV, and you see it in the newspapers, but this isn”t supposed to happen to young people like us,” Panzau said, admitting she thought she was “invincible.”
“I lived my life that way, too,” she said.
State police arrived at Panzau”s mother”s house in the early morning hours to identify her daughter”s body. They thought Panzau was dead.
Abut after having her mouth wired shut for seven months and 36 surgeries, including two facial reconstructions and multiple skin grafts, Panzau recovered. Throughout the ordeal, her so-called friends were nowhere to be found.
“Every single friend of mine watched me stumble out of the bar that night, barely able to walk,” she said. They never visited her at the hospital.
Her mother, then a major in the Army, who she likened to “the spawn of Satan” rarely left her bedside.
In 2005, Panzau was signed to the U.S. Paralympic volleyball team; at the World Games in 2006, the team qualified for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. But Panzau still had to undergo additional surgeries, and her doctor recommended she give up volleyball. She keeps her No. 6 jersey, which she showed to students Thursday, as proof that “you can accomplish your dreams.”
Students gave Panzau a standing ovation after her presentation. Panzau also spoke at Columbus High School on Thursday.
“It was a good lesson,” said Tony Stewart, a senior. “I learned that you should not drink and drive, and you should respect your parents enough to listen to them. And your parents care about you (even when you”ve done something wrong).”
“I think it was really brave of her to come up here and talk to us and share her story,” said Kaylin Duke-Hurr, also senior.
“It was really inspiring,” said Caryann Malone, also a senior. “I don”t drink, but it really made me think about, in the future, what would I do if I did.”
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