It was just small-town innocent fun on a warm August night.

Summer of ’03 was winding down and two friends were savoring the outdoors around Sequim, Washington, as fall’s chill and school days approached.

The 10 p.m., darkness was more inviting than scary; it added mystery to the prospect of soaring out over the seasonal creek on an old rope swing. It would be exciting…

And that’s where the memory fades for Hailey Fox.

Maybe her foot slipped; maybe she lost her grip; maybe the rope snapped – she doesn’t really know. What’s clear is that the 25-foot fall onto the rocky creek bed left her with five crushed vertebrae, punctured lungs, a lacerated liver, a fractured skull, several broken ribs and temporary brain damage. After a helicopter flight and four days in a coma, she woke up in Seattle’s Harborview Medical Center, where surgeons inserted titanium rods to hold her spine together while it healed.

Hailey also needed blood. The damage to her liver caused massive internal bleeding. “I wasn’t going to make it,” she explains, “if I didn’t get some blood transfusions.” Thanks to Puget Sound Blood Center donors, Harborview had the four units of blood she needed.

After 10 days, Hailey was transferred to Children’s Medical Center and Regional Hospital where she spent the first month paralyzed from the waist down. But verbal therapy brought back her cognitive abilities and physical therapy had its effect. “I assumed I was paralyzed for good,” she recalls. “Then one day, I started moving one of my toes and thought, ‘I might walk again!’”

Ensuing months saw her progress from wheelchair to walker to crutches to her first steps. Not one to dwell on mishaps, Hailey started tutoring learning-disabled children, made up for missed school and graduated with her class last June. She entered the University of Victoria in September.

“It’s been an amazing year,” she says.