Ocean County Teen's Recovery From Near-Fatal Crash Simply Miraculous

MANCHESTER, NJ — This is a story about community. About family. About the power of love and friendship. About determination. About volleyball. And a whole series of miracles.

It is the story of Hannah Donner, an 18-year-old from Manchester and senior at Central Regional High School who was critically injured in a car crash in September.

Wednesday, if all goes well, Hannah will attend her first full day of school since the accident that nearly took her life that September night. It is a milestone doctors once told her parents was an uncertain possibility.

"They told us she might never go back to school," her mother, Donna Donner, said Tuesday evening.

"I'm excited to be able to say I'm able to do it," Hannah said. "I just love my school. I missed going to school."

Life turns upside down

Before Sept. 23, Hannah Donner was your typical high school senior, juggling studies, a social life and a sport as she savored her final year of school and planned for the future. Much of her life revolved around volleyball, both with her club team at the Ocean County Volleyball Club and with the Golden Eagles, where she was a team captain.

Hannah took up the sport as a sophomore.

"I was so bad," she said. "But I tried to get better." After her sophomore season she joined the Ocean Volleyball Club, attended camps and worked hard on her game. As a junior, she played every game, "and I didn't get subbed," she said. But there was something missing: The team lacked camaraderie.

"We did well, but it wasn't any fun, because the team didn't get along," Hannah said.

After that season ended, Hannah said, Central girls volleyball coach Jeff Mangold approached Hannah and Hannah's close friend Alexis Monguso and Shannan Edler about being the team's captains for their senior season.

It was a role Hannah said they embraced wholeheartedly, spending the next several months demanding the team hang out together, have meals together and spend time really getting to know each other to turn the team into a family.

"Girls would say they didn't know this one or that one," Hannah said. "I literally forced them to go out to eat with each other."

By the time the fall rolled around, the Golden Eagles were a tight-knit group.

Donna and Tom Donner, Hannah's father, were used to their daughter spending time with her friends, so it wasn't unusual for her to go out to eat with teammates after a game.

That was how the night started on Friday, Sept. 23, Donna said.

"We had all gone to Hannah's volleyball game," Donna said. Central played Southern Regional, one of the best volleyball teams in the Shore Conference, and lost the match 2-0, with Southern winning 25-20 and 25-15. Hannah had three kills, an assist and a dig that night, according to statistics on NJ.com. Afterward, Hannah and her friends headed to the Sand Castle Diner in Beachwood, a favorite spot among many of the teens and young adults in Beachwood, Bayville and other neighboring towns.

"Tommy and I and our moms went to a different diner," Donna said.

Originally, Donna said, Hannah had planned to be home around 8:30 p.m. But it was a Friday night, and soon 8:30 stretched to after 10 p.m. At 10:12 p.m., Donna said, Hannah texted her, saying she was leaving in five minutes to come home.

"Hannah was very efficient with her time management," Donna said. "She didn't want to be out past 11 p.m.," which is the cutoff for teens who are driving on a probationary license.

About 20 minutes later, Donna said, she asked her husband where Hannah was.

"We can track her on Google Plus," Donna said, and Tom said Hannah was on Route 530, which meant she wasn't far from home. "I knew she would be home soon," she said.

Twelve minutes later, Donna said, Hannah still wasn't home. She nudged Tom, who had uncharacteristically fallen asleep. Their son, Zack, 21, looked at Google Plus again.

"He said, 'She's on 530,'" Donna said, "and I said, 'No, that's not right.' "

As the realization hit her that something was very wrong, Tom woke up, and simultaneously his cell phone rang.

"It was 10:52 p.m.," Donna said.

The phone call was a police officer from the Manchester Township Police Department, Patrolman Patrick Mabie, who had worked with Tom at his business, Bayshore Carpet and Upholstery Cleaning.

Mabie was telling them Hannah had been in a crash, and they needed to hurry.

"I didn't even have pants on," Donna said. She grabbed pants and they rushed to the scene of the crash that was about to turn their lives upside down and inside out.

'It was just not her'

Route 530, also known as Pinewald-Keswick Road, runs from Berkeley Township through Manchester, merging with Route 539 shortly before it meets Route 70. From the Garden State Parkway just west of Central Regional High School, the road is mostly dark as it passes through the Pine Barrens, going by Robert J. Miller Air Park and winding its way past the retirement communities of Pine Ridge at Whiting, the Crestwood Villages and America's Keswick before you come to a few stores near the intersection of Schoolhouse Road. After 10 p.m., the road is lightly traveled most nights.

Hannah's car hit a tree head-on near St. John's Place, roughly 1,000 feet east of Schoolhouse Road, according to the news release issued by police at the time. Her white Nissan Altima had drifted from the westbound lane, across the eastbound lane before hitting the tree, police said. Police believe she fell asleep behind the wheel.

A witness who had been traveling behind Hannah called 911, Donna said.

"Like so many of these kids, she pushed herself," Donna said. "She'd had a 17-hour day that day."

"When we got to the scene, there were lights and cop cars everywhere," Donna said, as she recounted the details of that night for the first time since the accident. "The first thing we saw was the car, and it was against a tree."

By the time they arrived, Hannah, who police said had been wearing her seat belt, had been removed from the car and was being loaded into an ambulance to take her to Miller Air Park, where she would be medevaced to the trauma center at Jersey Shore University Medical Center in Neptune.

Donna got into the ambulance to ride with Hannah as they rushed her to the medevac, and Tom followed in their car.

But as they arrived at Miller, "they kicked me out of the ambulance because she had flatlined."

"We leaned against the ambulance," Donna said, she and her husband holding onto each other as emergency personnel fought to save Hannah's life. "You could feel them going up and down, trying to revive her."

Emergency personnel got Hannah breathing again, then whisked her to the medevac. A Manchester police sergeant offered to drive them both to the hospital, but Tom refused, rushing home to pick up Zack. Donna rode with the officer.

She remembers asking him "all the wrong questions," questions he had no answers for.

"Seeing her like that, it was just not her," Donna said. "It was really hard to believe."

As they sped up the Parkway to Jersey Shore, she thought about her husband, whom she knew was rushing to get there. And she thought of Hannah, somewhere overhead.

"I just remember looking up at the sky and trying to see if the helicopter was coming," Donna said.

A minute-to-minute basis

When Donna and the sergeant arrived at Jersey Shore, she said, "I didn't even know what to do."

Thankfully, she said, her lifelong friend, Penny Geis, who is a nurse in the neonatal intensive care unit, was standing there.

"Hannah's here," Donna said Penny told her. Then she told Donna something else:

"You need to call your whole family," Donna says Penny said. "You can't be selfish; you have to let other people be here just in case."

It was something she hadn't considered, Donna said.

The waiting room began to fill with people — grandparents, other family and Mangold, Hannah's volleyball coach — when Donna and Tom were told they could see Hannah. They insisted on Zack being allowed in as well.

"She was just broken. A lot," Donna said. She had facial fractures and had lost some teeth. Her right foot was twisted, the ankle shattered.

The doctors told them all of those issues were secondary.

"We are on a minute-to-minute basis," Donna said the doctors told them. "We are just trying to save her life."

For the next two days, they lived minute to minute, she said. Finally, Hannah had stabilized enough to be moved to the pediatric intensive care unit.

'It's my mom'

The Donners have nothing but praise for the staff at Jersey Shore. Tom and Donna stayed with Hannah around the clock, talking to her, playing her favorite Stevie Nicks song, "Landslide," and never leaving her side. One of them was always awake, allowing the other to try to get some sleep, she said.

And the staff included them every step of the way. At first, Donna said, they got upset when the nurse who had been caring for Hannah left at the end of her shift and was replaced by a new one.

"We got attached," she said. "But each (new) one was amazing in her own way."

Once Hannah was moved to the PICU, she was allowed to have more visitors, and there were many people who came to give their love and support. Beyond family, she said, Mangold was a steady presence and soon became their liaison with the school regarding information that was disseminated on Hannah's condition.

"We kept it off social media as best we could," she said, and when bits of misinformation popped up, Mangold squelched it.

Hannah's volleyball teammates visited, as did Central Regional Superintendent Trian Parlapanides and Principal Douglas Corbett.

"The (PICU staff) lectured us. We got in trouble for having so many visitors," Donna said with a laugh.

Without them, she says, she's not sure she, Tom and Zack would have made it through.

"Our family heard things (during the doctors' updates) that we didn't," she said. All of the visits, all of the phone calls and text messages they received helped them through the low points.

"We made it on the shoulders of everyone else," Donna said.

One of the low points came the fifth day after the accident, when doctors tried to remove the breathing tube and allow Hannah to breathe on her own. She couldn't. It was devastating, Donna said.

She had bruised her lungs in the accident, and doctors had to perform another procedure to help clear them so Hannah could breathe.

Two days later, they tried again.

"It was on a Friday," Donna said. She had been there for a week. There was discussion of whether or not they were going to try again, and after the failure two days earlier, "We didn't have our hopes up," she said.

The respiratory therapist monitored Hannah's oxygen intake and other numbers and decided to remove the tube to see if Hannah could handle it. She could.

Knowing their daughter had reached an important milestone, they were able to finally relax slightly.

"I had not had a single morsel of food until that time," Donna said. "We didn't need sleep, we didn't need food."

"For the first time since we got the call, I was hungry," she said.

One of the high moments was the day Hannah looked at Donna and was able to identify her.

"I remember the nurse told Hannah to look to the right, and she looked to the right. Then she had her look to the left, and Hannah looked to her left. The nurse said, 'Who's that?' and Hannah said, 'It's my mom.' I knew she was going to be OK," Donna said.

Coming home

Hannah reached another milestone while she was in the hospital: She turned 18. Donna said the hospital staff threw her a party, complete with balloons and gifts and other mementos.

"They had this conference room our family took over, and they decorated it," and they brought Hannah down for what was supposed to be a 10-minute visit.

"That was her first time out of bed," Donna said. That 10 minutes turned into an hour, and even then Hannah didn't want to leave. She wanted more — a theme that has played out again and again during her recovery.

After 13 days, doctors were ready to release Hannah from the hospital. Typically people who suffer severe trauma get moved to an in-patient rehabilitation facility for a time before they are sent home. But Donna said she and Tom asked if there was any reason they couldn't just bring her home then and drive Hannah to her physical therapy and other appointments.

"I didn't see the point in her sleeping someplace else," she said.

When the day arrived that they were going to release her, "Tommy and I packed up her entire room."

There were signed volleyballs delivered by other Shore Conference teams, ice hockey jerseys, cards and of course all of the balloons and gifts from her birthday party.

"All this stuff completely piled up outside her door," Donna said. "We were leaving that day."

The only question was whether Hannah would go to a rehab facility or home, and the doctors signed off on her going home.

The Donners arrived back in Manchester to find Hannah's volleyball team waiting to greet her.

"Her coach had canceled practice so everyone could be there," she said. Jennifer Binkley from Ocean County Volleyball Club and her daughter brought sandwiches.

"It was overwhelming," Hannah said. "I didn't remember everyone. I didn't remember the summer I spent with them every day." Her teammates were understanding, each introducing themselves as though they were meeting for the first time.

"It was uplifting to see them," Hannah said.

Donna said in the initial days after the accident, the doctors could not tell them whether Hannah had suffered any brain damage as a result of the crash. They didn't know what she would remember. She suffered a bleed in the tentorium, which is a flap of tissue in the back of the brain that separates the main portion of the brain from the cerebellum and the brain stem. The doctors refused to speculate on the impact of the bleed.

But they told the Donners Hannah might not ever attend school again.

"They do tell you everything to give you a reality check," Donna said.

Soon after the breathing tube was removed, however, they saw signs that she was going to be OK. In addition to recognizing her parents, Hannah was processing the things going on around her.

During a conversation about the Greek Orthodox church in Toms River with Parlapanides, Hannah spoke up, interjecting the name of the church when Donna couldn't remember it.

"The fact she was listening and processing was like 'Oh my gosh,'" Donna said.

Hannah also initially said whatever was on her mind.

"She had no filter," Donna said. "She was bossing people around, yelling at people" and sometimes sharing information that under normal circumstances would have stayed locked away.

The filter is starting to return, Donna said, but it has been a source of amusement.

"She would demand that we get someone on the phone so she could give them a piece of her mind," Donna said. "Of course, we didn't do that," she said, adding that the anger seems to be dissipating.

Enveloped in love and support

The last 10 weeks are, in many ways, a blur for the Donners. But one thing that stands out is the number of people who have stepped up to support the family in so many ways.

There were the people who walked the family's dogs while they stayed by Hannah's side at Jersey Shore. There were the dozens of cards, text messages and calls, checking in.

There was the staff at Eat Clean Bro, a Freehold-based business that delivers chef-prepared meals that are made from fresh ingredients without a bunch of additives and sugar. They had been a client of Tom's business, Bay Shore Carpet & Upholstery Cleaning, and they delivered "10 or 15 meals a day" to the hospital while Hannah was still there. "They made sure we were fed, the nurses were fed, everyone," Donna said.

There was the staff at Rosenauer School in Jackson, where Donna is a teacher, who have delivered hot meals to the family every Tuesday and Thursday since Hannah came home.

"Today Hannah had physical therapy and an orthopedic appointment, and we came home to a cooler at the door with a full-blown dinner," she said, adding that she had just been transferred to Rosenauer from the Elm Elementary School before the school year. "I don't even know some of these people and they're bringing dinner for our family."

And of course, there has been the volleyball community. One of the volleyballs dropped off at the hospital was from the team at Red Bank Regional. "They didn't even know us, but they wanted to show support." There were volleyballs and jerseys dropped off by the teams at Brick Township High School and Donovan Catholic, and Manchester's team showed its support as well.

Hannah's Central Regional teammates have been there every step of the way, Donna said, expressing both surprise and gratitude that the girls' parents drove them to Jersey Shore to visit or allowed them to make the drive themselves.

Since their return home, her teammates have come and spent time with her — even gathering a bunch of pumpkins to carve with her before Halloween.

There are many people who express concerns of whether the current generation is equipped for the future and whether the future is in good hands.

"I have never been one of those people," she said.

"The kids who have rallied around my daughter, if any of them are in charge, I'm confident the future is going to be OK. That's how amazing the kids have been."

A series of miracles

On Nov. 24, Tom shared something Donna had written about Hannah's impending return to high school.

At that point, the timeline for Hannah returning to something resembling a normal teenager's life had still been a work in progress. The question of whether she would return to school had been replaced by "when."

At first, the answer was February, but as she continued to rapidly improve, the date moved to a part-time schedule in January.

"The expression on her face was as devastating as any expression I witnessed since she awoke from 7 days of intubation and sleep," Donna wrote. "Seeing the obvious disappointment and surprise on her face, the doctor asked her when she wanted to go back to school, and she answered exactly the way she did when she awoke in the hospital: 'Tomorrow.' For the next 30 minutes, we all sat and talked, and examined her school schedule like it was a cryptic message from a foreign land. He abruptly got up, left the room, and came back with copies of what would free Hannah from her unsolicited teenage isolation: A note to resume school, 'TOMORROW.'

"I felt like saying, 'thanks doc, a little warning would be nice,' but I held my tongue and let my daughter relish in the image of being normal. The reality of this re-entry into her old life comes with limitations. He lectured her on being patient and being grateful," Donna wrote.

The initial days were part-time trips, as they still needed to juggle her physical therapy and her doctor's appointments, Donna said. But Hannah's rapid progress — "One of her doctors who had seen her in the hospital told her, 'You are doing bizarrely well,' and she liked that," Donna said — has enabled her to take things at a faster pace.

"I am a pusher," Hannah said. "I push myself."

"That's kind of how it's gone the whole way," Donna said.

The Donners also attribute Hannah's amazing recovery to a series of miracles, from the driver who saw the accident on that dark stretch of road and who was able to summon help immediately to Mabie's call allowing them to be with their daughter from the get-go to the assistance and comfort from Donna's friend Penny who was there when she walked in the door at the hospital.

The fact that Hannah was young, fit and healthy also has worked in her favor, Donna said.

Hannah, who has no memory of the accident, still faces surgery to repair some of the facial injuries she suffered, and she still is not able to put weight on her right foot. The ankle that was twisted abnormally has slowly been rotated to the proper position, and this week, for the first time, Hannah is out of a cast and in a walking boot, though she still is forced to use crutches for three more weeks.

"The orthopedist said it's healing really, really well," Hannah said. She's finally allowed to rotate the ankle some, which moves her to the next phase of physical therapy. But it will be at least two months of being in a walking boot after she comes off the crutches before she will be free of those supports.

"The worst thing was not being able to play volleyball (this fall)," Hannah said. She hopes to at some point, but there is no timetable on when that might occur.

"I lost 22 pounds of muscle in the hospital," she said, something the physical therapy is working to rebuild.

"As I walked her into school today, watching her zip down the hallway on the scooter that sat in our foyer for 6 weeks, I fought back every tear, every memory, and happily handed her off to the loving support of her friends and teachers, in the place she wants to be most," Donna wrote on Nov. 24.

"People are really amazing, and we're very lucky," Donna said Tuesday.

That knowledge was the unspoken sentiment in the room at Thanksgiving, Donna said. But family members shared their memories of that night as they all acknowledged the miracle that Hannah was still with them.

Hannah said she, too, is grateful for all the support she's been shown, and she thinks back to those summer days where she insisted on the volleyball team hanging out together and realizes what a role that has played in her experience now.

"It's just great to have them come over and hang out with me," Hannah said. "They're a really great group."

And she says there's a lesson in that:

"Be good to humanity before humanity has to be good to you," Hannah said. "It's important how you treat other people because it comes back to help you."

Photos courtesy of Donna Donner