One woman’s will to survive

Janet Steele was driving from her College Terrace neighborhood home to work on March 13, 2006, when a terrible accident changed her life forever. After 58 surgeries, she returned to the scene of the crash, 11 years to the date later, to find closure and to thank the Palo Alto Fire Department for saving her life.

Steele, who had lived in the neighborhood for 28 years, was driving on Stanford Avenue at 2:14 p.m. that fateful day when the front axle and wheels on her 1991 Honda Civic locked up, she recounted last week. Her car veered across the oncoming lane and went straight into a large tree at Wellesley Street. Her seat belt — which unbeknownst to her had been the subject of a recall — didn’t engage; her face and chest slammed into the steering wheel, she said.

Steele wasn’t expected to live. As firefighters and paramedics worked on her, police began to videotape the scene; they were sure she was a fatality, she later learned. Steele remained unresponsive. No one, from the paramedics to the hospital staff, gave her much chance for survival, she said.

But two missionaries dressed in white appeared from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints Institute across the street. They asked the paramedics if there was any way they could help.

The battalion chief told them they could pray for her, she said. She was going to need all of the prayers she could get.

As they laid their hands on Steele and began to pray she opened her eyes.

“The battalion chief was so surprised he jumped back,” she said last week, imitating how the video showed he had sucked in air in surprise.

Steele was transported to Stanford Hospital where she remained in a coma for many weeks, she said. The accident damaged both sides of her face, her heart and a lung and broke bones in her arm, ankle, face and knee. Swelling from brain trauma caused a stroke, and doctors said she would never walk or talk again. But Steele, who awoke to pain in every part of her body, did learn to do both again.

“What got me through it was faith,” she recalled.

Now with her physical recovery mostly completed, Steele is taking the next step in her long recovery — expressing gratitude. Last week, joined by Palo Alto Fire Battalion Chief Chris Woodard, Captain Christy Baird, paramedics Jesse Wooton and Joe Penko and Monte Fisher, director of care and recovery ministries at Menlo Church — none of whom were present at her accident — she nonetheless thanked the Palo Alto Alto Fire Department.

Thanks is paramount to healing, she said.

In the police video, Steele said, the battalion chief and the paramedics bent over her broken and lifeless body.

“A lot of people forget to thank them. And I am so, so grateful,” she said.

Steele and the firefighters joined in a prayer circle led by Fisher.

“Dear Lord … we thank you so much for the jump-start on Janet’s life. We pray for you to close the hurt and anxiety and trauma,” he said.

Steel reflected on her losses and also on her new lease on life.

“I lost my home; I lost friends; I lost my career. That kind of an accident — it just takes everything. My one heartache is not to be able to come back to College Terrace. Everyone was friendly. It’s like a little village,” she said.

Steele now lives in Redwood City. She faces at least two additional surgeries and plastic surgery to her face. She can’t return to her former occupation as a licensed marriage and family therapist because of the brain injury. She has used up her lifetime aggregate coverage by health insurance — millions of dollars, she said.

But she has built a new life by offering solace to others. If the accident has changed anything for the better, it has made her a better person, she said.

“It’s allowed me to be really sensitive to other people’s losses,” she said.

Steele volunteers as a disaster mental health worker in Haiti and in the earthquake-ravaged country’s orphanages. She plans to do inspirational speaking and is writing a book about her experiences with the help of two authors.

She also volunteers in the brain-trauma unit at the Palo Alto VA Hospital. Some of the veterans assume that she can’t understand what they are going through, so she tells them about her experiences, and she tells them to always have faith that they will be able to do things “no matter what the naysayers say.” She had this advice on survival: “You have to have a positive attitude. You have to have a reason to live. You have to find a purpose, and you have to show gratitude.”