SALINAS,Calif.- "I was texting one of my friends that I'll be home soon...That was the text and the text didnt even get sent.
Twenty-three year old Stephanie Sablan never made it home that night.
January 9th of last year Stephanie's life changed forever, she was on her way back home to Salinas from visiting her grandparents in San Jose on Hwy 101 south right near the Watsonville exit.
"I looked up and the road started to curve and that's when I over corrected. I spun and then I rolled my car and was ejected out of the passenger door. The only time I blacked out was when I hit my head getting ejected out of the car, but I came to when the car was still moving and it stopped rolling on all four tires just a couple feet away from me."
Stephanie said she tried to get up to call 9-1-1, "I couldn't move. I thought I was winded, got the air knocked out of me...So I tried to get up again after a couple of breaths and I couldn't move."
Her parents met the air ambulance at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center.
"When we got to the hospital the doctor had pulled my husband and I and said that it was something really, really bad...Right then I knew it was the unthinkable. I just emotionally lost it," said Darlene Sablan, Stephanie's mother.
Over the last year, Stephanie and her family came to grips with her new life in a wheel chair, "The doctor said I'm in the low percentile of ever being able to walk again."
All because of that important text that couldn't wait, "It's not worth it...Anybody can wait...Any text message, any phone call, email, tweet, Facebook status. It can all wait, it's not worth your life and your ability to walk."
Stephanie learned the lesson she always heard from her mom, the hard way.
"I would tell her everyday as soon as she gets in the car put that phone down, wear your seatbelt and say a prayer and I was the last one to see her," Darlene said.
"I have to live with it everyday and the chair reminds me every single second of the day that that was a decision I made."
As hard as it may be for her, she wants other people her age to see the consequence of that decision, "It's life changing for each and everyone of us," Darlene said.
"You don't ever think that it could be as bad as it can be...I'm thankful just to be alive," Stephanie said.
