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althoff students hear about choices and consequences

Story and photos by LIZ QUIRIN
Messenger editor

A former high school and Indiana University cheerleader received a standing ovation Sept. 7 at Althoff Catholic High School at the end of her presentation. But she accepted the applause sitting down.

Kelly Craig, 27, spoke to the Althoff student body about making choices, about the consequences of driving drunk and the devastating effects those choices have on the rest of your life.

Craig suffered a broken neck July 10, 1999 in an accident on the last day of a family vacation near Durango, Colo., when a drunk driver hit the car in which she was riding. It was a head-on collision that killed one person, put her in a wheelchair and delivered a traumatic brain injury to her younger brother, Jason.

Jason Craig lives in a house with others who have suffered brain injuries, can walk with a walker and “has a huge speech impediment,” Craig said. “The old Jason is gone, and we had to get used to the new one.”

Althoff principal, Dave Harris, brought Craig to Althoff to speak to the student body.

“Nobody wants to lecture students on drinking and driving, but we want to get the message out to you,” he told the students at the end of Craig’s presentation. “Please make the right choices.”

Shawn Schaefer, a 1996 graduate, was sitting in the audience with the students. He was involved in a serious car accident in 1995 when he was a junior at Althoff.

When he read newspaper accounts and saw news reports about Craig’s accident, it touched him deeply. He knew about loss and recovery, and he wanted to tell Craig her experience made an impact on him, but he couldn’t find her address or telephone number. Off and on “for the next seven years I’d look on the internet for an address or telephone number,” he said as he sat in Heritage Hall.

Now a CPA, Schaefer was sent to Indiana on a work-related assignment. “I decided this would be my last attempt” to find her.  And he did.

He wrote her a note. “I wanted to convey to her how impressed I was at her outlook,” Schaefer said. “Her message (about making good choices) can have an impact on a lot of lives.”

Schaefer knocked on her door, and Craig’s mother answered, took his note and promised to give it to her daughter.
At the bottom of the note, Schaefer had included his cell  phone number and asked her to call if she wanted to talk further. It was 9 p.m. the last night he would be in Indiana before returning to Belleville.

Craig called him at 9:10 p.m., and he returned to her home where they talked until after 11 p.m. that night.
“She’s the real deal,” Schaefer said. “She has character and personality.” The couple has been dating for the last five months.

Schaefer listened as Craig told her story to Althoff students.“God gave me this story,” Craig said, “and it’s my responsibility to share it.”

Craig began by voicing the prevailing attitude of most young people: “These things don’t happen to people like me.”
She focused not so much on herself as on the driver who caused the accident,
“Good people can make horrible decisions,” she said.

The driver of the car that caused the accident eventually served eight years in jail. During that time, Craig said, he wrote her a letter apologizing for what he had done and expressing remorse.

He served his time and finished that chapter in his life, but Craig’s life has been forever changed. She struggled through times of doubt, even doubt about what God wanted her to do.

“I could only find meaning after having everything stripped away,” she said, and that meaning is Christ centered. “I realized God was not finished with me.”

Her friends and family stood by her as she put her new life together, eventually returning to earn her degree and begin teaching fifth grade at Precious Blood Catholic School in Jasper, Ind. And then Shawn Schaefer walked into her life.

About “that time, I was praying to god for meaning,” she said, “asking God what is my purpose?”
Meeting Schaefer “was a God thing,” she said.

Craig continues to tell her story, hoping to make a difference, to keep another young person from making a devastating decision and forever altering another family’s life. “Because of one man’s decision (to climb behind the wheel of a car after he had been drinking), 13 people were injured. The majority walked away, but three of us did not,” Craig said.

No more running track; no more cheerleading;  no more dancing; no more thoughts of walking down the aisle at her wedding, she said.

But Craig believes God has a plan for her life, and she wakes up every morning “feeling completely blessed.”
If God would give her one miracle, she said, she would give it to her brother, Jason. “He has many challenges in his life.”

 She ended her presentation with a prayer for the students, asking God to bless them with “wise decisions and great friendships” during their high school years.
To read an article describing the crash, please type Kelly Craig, Jasper, Ind., into a search engine.