SOUTH OGDEN, Utah (ABC4) – Sarah Frei of Syracuse passed her driving exam Monday morning. Now, she’s able to drive her new 2021 Chevy Traverse, fully equipped with wheelchair accessibility and hand controls.
“If you told me that I’d be driving 6 months ago, now, I would have said, ‘you’re crazy’,” says Sarah.
Last summer, Sarah and her friends were hit by a drunk driver in Logan Canyon. Her friends got away with minor injuries but Sarah became paralyzed from the waist down, got both of her legs amputated and had to re-learn daily tasks.
“Re-learn how to sit up on my own, get dressed by myself, even rolling over to my side, I mean little things that we normally wouldn’t think about,” says Sarah.
She was in the hospital for 75 days, went through 20 surgeries and countless hours of physical therapy.
“The recovery process has been, challenging, but it’s been you know fun meeting new people that I wouldn’t have met otherwise and just having so many amazing opportunities,” says Sarah.
Sarah gained national attention from her favorite country singer Russell Dickerson, who teamed up with Chevrolet to gift her the new SUV.
“This is like the last step that I needed to be fully independent, I’m going to go to college in the fall and so I’ll be able to drive my new car there and come home on the weekends,” says Sarah.
And now, she’s looking forward to her future.
“I can’t control what happened, what’s done is done, and so all I can do is focus on the future and now worry about the what if’s but the what’s coming next,” she says.
Sarah is working on an internship at her old elementary school and plans to attend Utah State University this fall.
