Victor skied in the Giant Slalom race in High One, Korea at the
2009 World Championships, where she won the Giant Slalom,
Slalom and Super Combined.
Turning Tragedy
into
O
Triumph
By Jennifer Brozak
Quaker Valley grad
Stephani Victor
becomes paralympic
athlete.
n December 19, 1995, Stephani
Victor’s life changed forever.
Victor had been standing on
a sidewalk in Hermosa Beach, California,
when an out-of-control car jumped the
curb and barreled toward her. The car
pinned her against another car, dragging
her about 15 feet and crushing her legs.
To save her life, doctors had to
amputate both of her legs above the knee. She was
only 26 years old.
While in the intensive care unit, Victor, a USC film studies
graduate, had a vision that she needed to make a documentary about
her recovery. She began filming just five days after the accident, and
the camera would keep rolling for the next several years while she
endured 14 reconstructive surgeries and regained her independence.
“There is inordinate difficulty in overcoming a tragic accident while
living your day-to-day life,” says Victor, a 1987 graduate of Quaker
Valley High School. “The documentary film is a labor of love, and
36 724.942.0940 TO ADVERTISE | Sewickley
became much more expansive than I could
have imagined.”
Three years after her accident, Victor,
an actress, found herself at the Sundance
Film Festival in Park City, Utah, promoting
a role in a movie. While there, she took
her first adaptive ski lesson. After a few
lessons, she was approached about training
for the Olympics. As both a filmmaker and
a lifelong athlete who had enjoyed skiing with her family,
she told herself that winning a medal at the Olympic Games
would make a great finale for her film.
“I asked myself, ‘What have I got to lose?’ After all, what greater
triumphant ending could I create for my film than winning a gold
medal at the Olympics?” she recalls.
She began intensive training, working with Marcel Kuonen, a
former Swiss Ski Team racer who would later become her husband.
Seven years after her accident, at the 2002 Wint