Guest speaker and professional adaptive athlete Corey Reed delivered a presentation at a school-wide assembly Jan. 12. The presentation tied in with Awareness Week’s theme: resilience.

At the assembly, Reed, 31, described the circumstances that surrounded his life-changing accident, a car crash.

“I made the choice to hop in [my friend’s] car, not thinking much of it,” Reed said. “Not thinking that my friend was intoxicated, not thinking that I was intoxicated … Not knowing that that choice would have everlasting consequences for the rest of my life.”

Following the crash, Reed was in a coma for one month, and woke up with no sight and one leg.

“There were people fighting for me,” Reed said. “So I told myself, ‘I need to pick myself back up, put one foot in front of the other and move forward.’”

Reed now works with Ride with Core, his personal lifestyle brand, which organizes Reed’s presentations.

Junior Rhys Marshall found Reed’s story to be both “incredibly sad yet also full of triumph.”

“[The presentation] deeply resonated with me on an emotional level,” senior Dennis Chiu said. “I felt inspired by the speaker’s struggle through obstacles and pain that I can scarcely imagine.”

Chiu summed up the message of the presentation: “Despite everything life throws our way, giving up is not an option.”