A Vacation Ending in Tragedy

It was 1993 and I was about to take a vacation from my job as a news producer for German television. I had just finished producing a story on the sudden increase of tourist-directed crimes in Florida, so when I joined my mother in the The Keys, safety tips were fresh on my mind. Little did I know that my life was about to change forever.

It had been a hard summer. After a heart-wrenching break-up and difficulties in graduate school, I was grateful for a restful break. My mother and I spent the time talking, laughing and enjoying the sun. When it was time to leave, we headed back to Miami International Airport in the rental car and arrived just before mid-day. Trouble began when we could not locate the return lot for the rental car.

Realizing I had gone too far off the beaten path, I pulled over to the curb to turn around when another car pulled up right next to ours. I thought nothing of it, until two men jumped out and within seconds smashed through my window. They pulled the horn out of the steering column and began to beat my head and neck. My mother was paralyzed with fear, unable to help in any way, as I received blow after blow.

What they were after wasn't clear. When we offered to give them the car and our belongings, the only response was, "Shut up bitch, we're going to kill you."

And as one of the assailants sunk his teeth to the bone of my left arm, I managed to punch him, regain some control, put the car into drive and speed away, racing through red lights until we reached the airport terminal.

"Something about my world had irrevocably changed. The security I felt living in my community was gone."

The attack lasted only a few minutes, but it seemed like hours. No money or valuables were taken, but it's hard to put a value on what I lost that day. My medical evaluation revealed a dislocated jaw, a bloody bite wound on my arm and neck injuries so severe that doctors estimated another three millimeters of damage would have rendered me a quadriplegic.

During that year of recovery my first waking moments in the morning were met with excruciating pain. I couldn't eat solid food for weeks. I walked with a limp for two years. Nerve damage left part of my arm and face permanently numb. Recurring nightmares and migraine headaches robbed me of peace and rest. In fact, my physical injuries eventually made it necessary to find another job because I could no longer carry heavy equipment and walk for long periods of time.

I felt alone and, at times, hopeless. For the first time in my life I wanted an escape-any escape from the pain and the nightmare. I drank a lot of alcohol. I let the doctors "play" with prescription pain and muscle medications that made me so numb, I couldn't think clearly or speak in complete sentences. Facing the physical and emotional pain was almost more than I could bear. I contemplated suicide and I felt alone, as if I were living on a different planet.

I had returned from vacation to the same home, the same job, the same friends and family, but something about my world had irrevocably changed. The security I felt living in my community was gone. Any stop light on any street, any parking garage or lonely corner - even my own apartment - held frightening possibilities. What's more, the odds that I could have contracted AIDS or other diseases through my bite wound loomed like a shadow over my future.

My friends could not make sense of the senseless brutality. They were tired of my lingering physical and emotional wounds. They shrugged off the attack as "crazy." The description was accurate-and yet somehow so trivial. In fact, everyone was hoping it would all just go away. But the horror lived inside of me. It robbed me of my health, confidence and, most painfully, a close relationship with the one person who could have truly understood and provided much-needed support: my mom. She refused to discuss the incident.

The other silence with which I would grapple shook me to the core: How could God have allowed this to happen and why wasn't He helping me to feel better? There were no answers and no easy fixes. Yet I was desperate enough to continue asking those difficult and painful questions. What I discovered, over time, was the healing power of new perspective.

I began looking for miracles and the more I looked, the more I found: a good counselor who helped me to work through the healing process; physical therapists with whose help I began to experience less pain; and a new friend who patiently listened and began to understand. However small, to me these were the little miracles upon which I began to rebuild my faith and confidence.

Bad things do happen to good people. But good people can turn even horrible nightmares into opportunities for growth and the chance to make things right. Part of my healing process included a quest for justice. I flew back to Florida several times to work with detectives. I launched a personal campaign, persuading rental car agencies to remove their logos from rental cars and post visible lot markers at their rental returns. And, I sat as a witness against one of my perpetrators: the man who had beaten and bitten me and who had assaulted at least one other person in a similar way — a man who has now been sentenced to life behind bars for attempting to murder me.

Six years after the assault that nearly left me paralyzed, I completed my second marathon. That physical triumph parallels the victories that continue to mark my healing journey — a path marked by little miracles.

Helga West is the founder of Witness Justice and works tirelessly to address the silent wounds experienced by survivors of violence and trauma.