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Sunday, May 5, 2002
Life Sentences: EULYNDA TOLEDO-BENALLI, 48, Injured by a drunken driver
By Leslie Linthicum
Journal Staff Writer
Albuquerque
After the head-on collision, after the two-hour ordeal of being cut out of her van, after the three weeks in the hospital, the 13 surgeries and the three months at the rehabilitation center, Eulynda Toledo-Benalli went home in a wheelchair.
An elementary school teacher and a runner of half marathons before the accident, Toledo-Benalli had to learn to walk again with a cane. Running was out of the question. Climbing stairs was a painful and exhausting chore. Even sitting for more than 20 minutes was hard.
Toledo-Benalli, a member of the Navajo tribe who had grown up in Fort Wingate, had survived a collision with a drunken driver on a two-lane reservation road. People told her she was fortunate. But she didn't feel lucky. Within a few months of coming home, depression hit.
"I was crying all the time," Toledo-Benalli recalled. "'Why is this the end of my running career? Why can't I teach anymore? Why is this so hard? Why has my whole life changed so dramatically?' ''
Toledo-Benalli had been driving with five students from the Cañoncito elementary school in preparation for a summer wilderness camp expedition on June 10, 1993, when the van was hit. The driver of the truck that hit her was killed.
Toledo-Benalli had a crushed pelvis, a torn liver, two collapsed lungs and a crushed right leg. She also had three children at home — a 13-year-old daughter, a 2-year-old daughter and a 1-year-old son.
The people of Cañoncito sent meals to the house and Toledo-Benalli's mother took care of her and the children during the day. At night, her husband, David, managed the household.
It took a therapist's help for Toledo-Benalli to accept that she would never go back to the physically active life she had before.
Her activity now is mental and intellectual. She is completing her doctoral dissertation at the University of New Mexico and produces documentaries for KUNM-FM.
Three years ago, as she was making headway in her emotional healing, Toledo-Benalli ventured out after dark to attend a lecture at UNM. On her way home, four blocks from her house, she was hit by a car that ran a red light. Police told her the driver's blood-alcohol level was four times the legal limit.
"My physical pain feels like a ball and chain. There's a weight that holds me down."