Sarah Sniff was sitting on the couch watching television with her friend Amy Neubauer, a quadriplegic since age 14, when she asked Neubauer a simple question.
“I said, ‘Amy, if you could walk again, what would you do?’ And she said, ‘Well, I wouldn’t walk, I would run.’”
Sniff, a runner herself, had recently completed a half marathon and was about to attempt the full distance during the March 22 Quintiles Wrightsville Beach Marathon.
“I was like, ‘Well, we can do that,’” Sniff said. “Why don’t you run next to me and keep me going? I need some willpower.”
And so, March 22, 40-year-old Neubauer will race 26 miles — one mile for every year since the accident that changed her life.
Neubauer was an active teenager involved in basketball, softball, running and swimming. She and her family relocated to North Carolina in 1987. Just one year after moving, she was riding her bike down the road when a car struck her from behind, causing a severe spinal cord injury. At 14 years old, Neubauer became a quadriplegic.
At first, doctors weren’t certain she would even survive the traumatic injury.
“I went into a coma for three and a half weeks,” Neubauer said. “The doctors and nursing staff thought even if I woke up from the coma, then I would be a vegetable for the rest of my life.”
She did wake up and was cognitively sound but faced a long rehabilitation process that would be both physically and emotionally grueling.
“They just kind of threw me around to different rehabs,” she said. “My dad’s insurance ran out so they kicked me out of rehab in Virginia. … Then I was taken up to New Hampshire … for four years.”
Her family could not afford to move with her, so Neubauer, who was still a teenager, endured the rehabilitation by herself.
“I had the good Lord,” she said, “but it was very lonely. … [My family] had to go on with their lives. They visited a couple times but I didn’t see much of them.”
Two years after moving to New Hampshire, Neubauer received support from an unexpected source.
Jim Orr was an older man who learned about Neubauer’s situation and travelled to meet her at the hospital where she was receiving treatment for pneumonia.
Orr told Neubauer he was compelled to reach out to her because of an incident in his own life. His 7-year-old grandson had been sledding down the slope of Orr’s driveway when a truck hit and killed the child.
“It was pretty traumatic,” Neubauer said. “He just wanted me to be able to fulfill some of my ideas that I had … getting my independence.”
She was faced with the prospect of living the rest of her life in a nursing home, so Orr helped her fight to attain her own living space in North Carolina.
After writing letters and speaking publicly to civic groups, media and the government, she received an apartment in Wilmington through the Public Housing Authority.
She said while she is grateful to have her own apartment, remodeled to meet her needs, it is very small with almost no yard. After 18 years of living there she hopes to move into a slightly larger home.
“I think it would be a complete 180 in her life,” Sniff said. “Her house … is literally inches of space that we have to push the wheelchair, it just barely fits.”
Neubauer’s disability prevents her from working, so the only way she can obtain a new home is through the donations of others. Another reason for participating in the marathon, she said, is to raise awareness and funds to help her receive a new home and an improved quality of life.
“You can’t plant flowers, you can’t cook out, you can’t play music because these apartments are connected,” she said, adding that a larger space would also be more comfortable for her brothers or caretakers who stay with her.
“[A new home] would change everything — mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually, it would enhance my life so much,” she said.
The running community has already begun rallying behind her, Sniff said. Wrightsville Beach Marathon founder Tom Clifford gave her free admission to the race and Wilmington Road Runners Club member Chris Diehl invited Neubauer into his office at 101 Mobility to fit her wheelchair with new batteries.
While financial support would give Neubauer a life more typical of other women her age, she also hopes to find a social network within the running community.
“I’ve been so isolated in so many different ways,” she said. “You meet people in your job, or out and about, and I don’t have those opportunities. … I don’t have the network of friends or a boyfriend or a husband … in my life so it makes it kind of difficult.”
Sniff said she hopes the marathon is the first of many races for Neubauer. She is excited to share the experience with her friend, she added, especially the moment when they cross the Heide Trask Drawbridge at sunrise surrounded by the energy of thousands of runners.
She hopes many of those runners will find inspiration in Neubauer’s story, both in running and in life.
“Amy has overcome so many hurdles to even get where she is,” Sniff said. “It’s really opening everyone’s eyes up that you can do anything you set your mind to.”
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