Paralyzed in a racing accident nearly 25 years ago, Sam Schmidt has spent much of the last quarter century trying to prove to others that there is a way to have a meaningful life with a traumatic spinal cord injury.
That was the furthest thing from his mind when he crashed at Walt Disney World Speedway in the opening days of 2000. He suffered a C3 and C4 spinal cord injury, wasn’t breathing for almost four minutes, and had to be helicoptered to Orlando.
His wife was at home in Las Vegas with their children, and when she arrived in Florida, the prognosis was grim.
Schmidt’s injury at the time was compared to “the same as Christopher Reeve,” in that, like the ”Superman” actor, Schmidt was paralyzed from the neck down and needed a ventilator to breathe. Reeve reached out — he’d been working with doctors, pushing them, to find ways to help trauma patients create meaningful lives post accident — and Schmidt believes it was Reeve’s work that changed the trajectory of his life.
In the almost 25 years since, Schmidt has tried to give back and help others with similar injuries find some normalcy in their new lives. He first opened the Driven NeuroRecovery Center six years ago in Las Vegas, where Schmidt lives, and then set his sights on something bigger.
It came Tuesday with the ribbon-cutting on a not-for-profit Conquer Paralysis Now center in partnership with NeuroHope, an Indianapolis-based nonprofit, outpatient physical rehabilitation center.
The center, located in the former Five Seasons Sports Club, is a 114,000-square-foot building devoted to helping people with spinal cord injuries and other neurological disorders. Schmidt, as a former professional athlete, knows his situation was far different than others who have suffered similar injuries.
He can cite divorce statistics, understands the hopelessness that comes when the insurance runs out, and the lack of resources and rehabilitation access are so hard to find. He found himself living it all over again in 2018 when Robert Wickens, who was driving for Schmidt’s IndyCar team at the time, crashed at Pocono Raceway and was paralyzed from the waist down.
Even though Schmidt could relate and team sponsorship from technology provider Arrow Electronics provided resources not generally affordable or accessible to the general public, Schmidt recognized a need for more. Once released from the hospital, Wickens had to relocate to Denver to do his rehabilitation with Arrow at its headquarters.
