Lisa Hamilton:  

After high school I traveled quite a bit - touring Europe for 7 weeks alone at age 20. Summer of 1990, so before the Euro and cell phones. I attended De Anza for 4 yrs because I didn't know what I wanted to do. I took whatever classes I wanted and approached my advisor Spring 1992 asking what I had to graduate with a degree. I was given the choice of 3 degrees to choose from. I chose Social Science, and applied to SJSU getting a scholarship my first semester. At SJSU I transferred in as a Social Science major hoping to teach elementary school. I volunteered as a child advocate and worked two jobs while attending school. My final year, I was taking a child psychology course and decided I wanted to work with Special Ed, so I extended my graduation by a year and tacked on a double major in psychology. I graduated with a double BA in December 1995. Unfortunately, while driving to work (security guard) on April 16, 1996, I was struck by a van that ran a red light and gave me a severe brain injury and epilepsy. I was in the hospital for 3.5 weeks. I can no longer handle children making noise for the sake of making noise. My patience is thin, at best. I can no longer do what I went to SJSU to do. I chose to research the person who struck me as part of my cognitive therapy. In doing so, I found the man's SSN, his wife's SSN, the company owner's SSN, information on the company's owner and how he had beat his wife and his kids had to call 911, etc. As the driver and the company/van owner didn't have insurance, no attorney would take my case. A friend of the family took the case based upon the information I found in the public records. I explained how much I loved the research. He said, "That's what paralegals do." I found a job working as a records clerk at a law firm in Palo Alto. The law firm paid for employees to go to school. So, I applied to Santa Clara's Paralegal Program available at the time. Less than 18mos after suffering a severe head trauma the doctors thought I might not survive and would likely not live on my own or care for myself again, I was working full time and attending night school to be a paralegal. I completed the program in the standard 2 years, with honors, as a member of the final graduating class of Santa Clara University's Paralegal program. I have a speciality certificate in Litigation, as well. My injury has been very challenging. I had to learn to walk again. I had no broken bones, but I'm told the entire left side of my body was a giant bruise. The police found me unresponsive at the scene. A friend who works for SJPD says the 911 lines lit up after my accident. The accident report reads "Major injury, Possible fatal." The investigators took over 100 photos, a videotape, and closed the intersection of Saratoga and Williams in San Jose for more than 2 hours while they completed their investigation. Just prior to my injury I had read everything I could find on Anne Frank. Apparently I thought I was Anne Frank in the second hospital, after the ICU hospital. The doctors at Kaiser Santa Teresa tried to get my mom to take me home even though I couldn't walk without a walker. I lived alone in San Jose and my mom lived with her husband in Gilroy. I was 25 at the time, almost 26. She was under no obligation to sign me out. The doctors continued to ask her, in front of me, to take me home. Here I think they are Nazis who have taken me prisoner. I'm very fortunate to have a mother who explained it to me as best she could just when I was getting some sense of myself back. She explained we both knew I needed more care. I needed to learn to walk again and how to think properly. I needed rehabilitation. She was going to make sure I got it. I did, too. I spent 10 days in Kaiser Vallejo's excellent Head Trauma Rehab because my mom didn't let herself be shamed into taking me home. It's because of my mom I can think and walk. I was home and on disability for 6 months after my injury, but I returned to my job as a security guard at Advanced Micro Devices then. I was SO TIRED all the time! I don't think people understand how hard it is to deal with a head trauma! My brain was busy learning to reassess the world around me and I had to trust it to remember what it already knew. I did crazy things like shout at neighbors for being too loud, but my hearing was overly sensitive. The Olympics were on TV that year. I would watch tv with my mom and her husband, but when the volume was comfortable for me, neither of them could hear it at all. It was so hard at first! I worked as a file clerk at a law firm in Palo Alto and worked hard at Santa Clara University to receive my Paralegal Certificate. I was SO TIRED all the time! That's one thing I can't underemphasize - the deep fatigue that comes with head trauma. Then the medicine I take to control the seizures messed up my metabolism. I gained 50lbs+ in the hospital that month. I've never managed to lose it and kept gaining. My weight is shot to hell, but I'd rather be fat and happy than skinny and miserable. I can say I was pretty miserable before my injury. I now appreciate what I have and the people in my life more than I ever did before. After graduation, I was let go when they downsized the records department and had nowhere for me at the law firm. I began to work at a missing children's org. In San Jose. It broke my heart. I was so...Expand for more