How a late- night crash on an Edmonton freeway changed the direction of a brave young woman’s life
A volunteer firefighter who almost died in a horrific crash now helps others get fit
When she came to, the hood of the car was engulfed in flames.
But Chelsea Schroeder remembered her training.
Her car had smashed head-on into a concrete barrier on Anthony Henday Drive and she was trapped, her collarbone broken, her wrist shattered. She couldn’t feel her legs. There was no way to shift the seat back. She pulled on the door handle but couldn’t budge it, threw her shoulder into the door again and again. It wouldn’t open.
Exhausted, the flames burning closer, she looked out the driver’s-side window and saw two firefighters coming toward her. They yanked the door open, and she heard them say they didn’t have time to use the Jaws of Life. Given her training, she knew that meant her life was in danger.
It was about 2 a.m. on an autumn morning in 2010, and Schroeder, 18, was on her way home from an emergency medical responder course. The week before, she had prepared for just such a situation, pulling a firefighter from a car during vehicle extrication training.
She was driving in a poorly lit construction zone on the northwest leg of Anthony Henday Drive when her lane disappeared and merged into the oncoming lane. She didn’t see the sign, doesn’t remember if there was one. Firefighters told her later there was no indication she even tried to slow down. She simply hit the concrete barricade at full speed.
The firefighters who rescued her from the burning car just happened to be driving behind her when she crashed. It’s an improbable piece of luck, but it makes sense, given that the fire department has been following her, or she following it, for most of her life. That piece of good fortune most likely saved her.
“The difference between a serious injury and a fatal is fate,” says Sgt. Kerry Bates of the Edmonton police major collision investigation unit.
There are some factors a driver can control, such as not driving while distracted or impaired and adjusting to road conditions. But “luck has got a really big part in it.
“If you have a nice car with lots of airbags and you’re wearing a seatbelt, you have a much better chance,” Bates says. But every crash is different.
While Schroeder was recovering, her father explained how her car had shifted after the collision, which meant the wind blew the flames away from her. That was another piece of luck that helped save her life.
Schroeder grew up in the small town of Mayerthorpe and, from an early age, was an overachiever. In elementary school she was at the top of her class, a girl who took pleasure from making people, especially her parents, proud of her.
“I was a people pleaser,” she says. It was an instinct that led her to trouble in her teens years, when pleasing people meant going to parties and drinking. In a small high school class of about 40 students, the peer pressure was intense and she went with the crowd.
Both her parents volunteered for the local fire department, her dad as deputy chief and then chief for most of her childhood. Her two worlds clashed. When she was 16, Schroeder was drinking at a party with friends and got extremely intoxicated. Her friends left her at the party, in bad shape.
“It wasn’t a pleasant experience,” she says, but it was a turning point in her life.
An old friend — the granddaughter of the fire chief at the time — confronted her and told her to get her act together.
“That kind of made me realize, something’s not right here,” she says.
She started volunteering with the fire department and going on calls with her parents. After the tough talk, she regained a sense of purpose.
In a small town, firefighters are constantly on call and might have to rush out at 3 a.m. for a house fire or a traffic accident. Schroeder knew that if she’d been out partying on a Friday night, she would be useless to the fire department if a call came in.
She was still susceptible to peer pressure, but now had a ready-made response to friends who wanted her to party. She was doing something she was proud of and, soon, the invitations just stopped coming.
Junior firefighters under the age of 18 aren’t allowed to respond to traffic collisions, except for simple cleanup situations. But they can go to house fires. The last call Schroeder went on before her own accident was a fire in Mayerthorpe.
“It was just a little house but it was a big fire and I got to go in, you know, heels blazing with the hose,” she says.
Running into a burning house, a situation most sane people would run away from, is an adrenalin rush that Schroder calls “the most exciting feeling in the world.”
She was taking courses to improve her skills as a firefighter, and planned to be a paramedic.
Five months before the accident, Schroeder decided to celebrate her high school graduation by getting a tattoo.
Inked into a large section of her back, a firefighter kneels with his head on the handle of an axe, either exhausted from a long call or overcome by emotion. The Mayerthorpe fire department initials are on his helmet and her dad’s name is spelled in cursive above the tattoo, on her lower neck. Angel wings, large and feathered, unfold behind the firefighter.
Schroeder believes she wouldn’t be alive today if that fire truck hadn’t been close behind her. She was placed on a spine board and loaded into an ambulance, and found herself screaming in pain, then apologizing for being so loud.
She woke up later in the hospital, thirsty and in pain. She was headed for surgery, so a glass of water was out of the question — instead she was given a toothpick with a tiny wet sponge on it. The pain was everywhere.
“At that point, you don’t even know, your brain can’t even process what exactly hurts,” she says. “You can’t pinpoint what hurts, all you have is this aching feeling. I would twitch and I would scream, I couldn’t help it.”
The doctors told Schroeder’s dad she might never walk again, that they couldn’t be sure they could save her legs. The family built a wheelchair ramp for the front door of their house in Mayerthorpe.
She had 27 fractures below her knees; her ankles were crushed; she received a donor bone for her talis joint. Metal rods support her tibia and fibula and her ankle joints are encased in metal. A bone graft from her hip was used in one ankle.
During her initial recovery, she noticed she was walking bowlegged and the doctor said her legs had been carrying weight before they had healed sufficiently. They re-broke her legs and the process started over again.
Just over a year after the crash, the walking boot came off and Schroeder started hitting the gym with renewed intensity. She enrolled in the personal training program at NAIT. She wants to help people who have suffered traumatic injuries like hers, but her real goal is to help middle-aged adults find healthier lifestyles. Her ace in the hole is the motivation she can provide. Inspiration comes easily from someone who has rebuilt her body nearly from scratch.
“(Some people) need that extrinsic motivation. I think that I can be that for people. I have a vision of where they can be and I’ve seen the progress I’ve made,” she says.
There’s an urgency to her goals. Schroeder saw her dream of being a paramedic wiped out by the crash and, thanks to post-traumatic arthritis in her ankles, knows she’s in a race against the clock.
“I think, am I going to be running around playing with grandchildren or are they going to be pushing me around in my wheelchair?” she says.
She has beat long odds before, but has no illusions. She has the bone of an 80-year-old woman in her ankle and arthritis sometimes makes her legs swell. When she wakes up, the pain tells her whether it’s a rainy day.
Her aspirations rarely extend past 10 years because, after that, she doesn’t know what kind of condition she’ll be in. All the more reason, she says, to help as many people as she can, as quickly as she can.
“I was so close to not making it out of that vehicle. It used to really bug me, and I used to really struggle with that concept, but now I embrace it. I’m here and I have nothing to do but appreciate that I was given a second chance.”