Reflections Magazine Issue #70 - Fall 2009 | Page 23

Alumni Feature

The Good List
After Near Fatal Car Crash, Road
to Recovery Leads Elly TeunionSmith Back to Siena Heights
In law enforcement, they call it the “John Wayne
Syndrome.”
It’s that mentality some new police officers
have when they join the force. They’re going to
change the world. Make a difference. A feeling
of invincibility.
Count Elly Teunion-Smith ’89 in that category.
When she joined the Michigan State Police as
an on-the-road trooper, she thought she found
her calling.
“It was the hardest thing physically, mentally,
I’ve ever dealt with in my life,” said TeunionSmith of the training to become a state trooper.
“I was in the military, and it made boot camp
look like a picnic. But I loved it.”
For five years, she lived and breathed law enforcement, loving the job and everything that came
with it, including the banter and camaraderie
with her fellow officers.
Then, in her frank, sometimes brutally honest,
words, “stuff went to crap real quick.”
It started out as just another dark night in a
cramped patrol car working the third shift for
Teunion-Smith. She and her partner were called
to the scene of a personal injury accident in a
remote rural location. En route to the scene, her
partner, who was driving, rolled through a stop
sign on a country road when a 17-year-old boy
driving his Corvette smashed into them. Her
partner was killed instantly, and Teunion-Smith
suffered injuries so severe that a Michigan State
Police report at the time said she probably
would not make it through the night.
But she did make it, though she faced a daunting recovery. “(The accident) totally screwed me
up physically and mentally for more than two
years,” Teunion-Smith said. “I had a pretty severe
head injury.”
That injury frustrated her the most, as she experienced cognitive problems such as memory loss
and neurological issues. “I didn’t even remember
getting married,” Elly said. “A lot of things never
came back. A lot of memories are gone.”

Eventually, so was her career as a state trooper.
Unable to pass multiple neurological exams,
Teunion-Smith was told her law