Accident paralyzes Guelph man
GUELPH — A 21-year-old Guelph man is in Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto after breaking his neck jumping into a lake over the long weekend.
The weekend away at a cottage with friends was intended to cap off the end of summer — a season of hard work and reinvention for Samuel Gallo. This past spring, he graduated from Fanshawe College and was on his way to becoming an electrician. In a few weeks he was planning on getting his licence and was and hoping to hear back from Linamar Corp. about the internship for which he applied.
But all that’s been put on hold. On Friday night, drinking with friends and enjoying his time at a cottage near Georgian Bay, Gallo jumped off a dock and ended up fracturing his C6 vertebrae. His friends found him floating face down in the water, brought him ashore and took him to a local hospital.
He was then airlifted to Sunnybrook, underwent emergency surgery and, as of Tuesday, hasn’t had any feeling from his chest down. His mother, Cecilia Gallo, said it’s unclear if this is just because of the swelling or if this is permanent.
The surgeon told her, due to the nature of Sam’s injury, he may never walk again.
“I don’t believe him,” she said. “I’m not listening to him because I have a strong faith and I believe in miracles, and I believe that God is going to heal my son and he’s going to be an inspiration to other people about not only drinking and driving but drinking and swimming.”
She said growing up, her son had never backed down from a challenge — that’s just the kind of person he is. He’s stubborn, focused and resilient. “He’s a fighter.”
Leading up to the accident, she said he'd been making incredible strides to get his life back on track after much darker times. He went back and completed high school, got a job and started saving his money, working toward becoming an electrician.
“Things looked so promising. He was on the right track.”
On Monday, Sam’s cousin Nick Gallo started a GoFundMe page to help with the family’s medical costs. By Wednesday afternoon, the campaign had raised more than $6,500.
The short write-up on the fundraising page details Sam’s childhood as difficult, fraught with challenges. Nick writes that Sam grew up “in a home with a father who struggled with addictions that led to a family being torn apart and eventually to the death of his father three years ago.”
In a phone interview, Nick said it seemed — at least for time — that Sam might end up following in his father’s footsteps, dropping out of high school in Grade 11 and struggling with his own addictions.
“He had his demons in his teenage years,” Nick said. But he was now in the process of changing his life around, making better choices and charting a path forward.
Whatever money comes in from the online campaign will go to help the family, he said. Cecilia works two jobs to make ends meet for her two boys and the family’s finances were tight before this tragic accident.
Following the death of his father in June of 2014 and after a semester away from school, Sam decided to go back to finish his studies. Working with Karen Girard, a youth justice service co-ordinator with the John Howard Society of Waterloo-Wellington, he grieved the loss of his father, worked through various programs and found a way to deal with “his demons.”
One of the things that helped him get his life back on track was putting trust in the large number of people who believed in him, she said.
“He has this phenomenal ability to channel some of that energy (from others) and let it push him through even when he wants to give up.”
Brooke Jaimeson was Sam’s math teacher when he returned to College Heights Secondary School in October 2014. When he started back in the classroom she said it only took him a week or two to get to the top of her class. In 2017, not only did Sam graduate, but he won the school’s Phoenix Award, one of the most prestigious honours the school hands out.
Each year, the Phoenix is handed out to the student who has faced adversity and has overcome their difficulties. He also won the Learning Foundations Award and was on the honour roll, she said, describing him as driven, intelligent, personable and hardworking, in and out of the classroom.
Cecilia is now spending every day at her son’s bedside in Toronto, praying and hoping for a miracle. She said the support she’s seen online through the GoFundMe page is overwhelming, but she hasn’t spent much time focusing on finances. All of her attention is focused on her son’s recovery.
“I know that Sam’s going to walk again: partly because he’s got so many people praying for him and partly because Sam, the type of kid that he is. He’s not going to let this get in his way because he has overcome a lot of adversity.
“It’s just going to be one more challenge in his life that he’s going to overcome. I know he’s going to overcome it.”