Bambi Trotter, a kindergarten teacher at Bridlewood Elementary, doesn’t remember the day of her accident. She doesn’t remember the one-hour struggle the first responders undertook to cut through the hood of the car and remove her from the wreckage. She doesn’t even remember the helicopter ride to the hospital.

However, her husband remembers the day vividly.

Richi Trotter, a football coach at Byron Nelson High School, was on the field coaching his first day of freshman camp when his phone rang. Since it was a number he didn’t recognize he let it ring. Then two more calls from the same number came. When he listened to the voicemail all he could hear was police department.

When he called them back, the police told him about his wife. “Has anyone told you? Your wife has been in a serious accident,” the officer said.

A highway patrol came to the school and told him the same thing. Though all the officers agreed it was a terrible accident, no one could tell him how serious her injuries were. He knew he had to drive to the hospital to get answers. When he arrived, Bambi was in intensive care.

She had sustained serious injuries, including compound fractures in one leg, a crushed foot on the other leg, a cracked vertebrae, a broken pelvis and traumatic brain injuries. It was clear to Richi that his wife’s recovery would be a long and difficult one, but from the beginning he believed positivity would help the process.

“With a situation like this you can’t expect a full recovery overnight,” Richi said. “You have to look for anything positive each day, or any one percents. It’s great when these one percents really start to add up.”

One of the things that helped her to be positive in the recovery was her gratitude that her son who was riding in the car with her was unhurt.

“Camden had been kicking the seat so we thought it was time to turn him around,” Bambi said. “Richi and I knew it was early for a toddler only 20 months old, but he’s a lengthy kid so we thought it was the best move.”

This random decision would protect him during the collision that left their car totalled. The stroller in the car could have hit Camden directly had his carseat not been turned around in the backseat. In addition, every window in the car had been crumpled and shattered when the car flipped except for the one next to Camden.

“We believe a guardian angel came down and took his big old wings and just surrounded him and just said, ‘You’re not going to get hurt,’”Bambi said. “[It was] definitely an act of God.”

Bambi’s one percents would come few and seldom at first. Thirty days passed before Bambi even came into consciousness.When she woke up she was unable to speak full sentences or write.

“When they first had me start writing stuff it looked like a 3-year-old’s handwriting,” Bambi said. “From the start I knew this wasn’t okay.”

The accident had caused damage in her left fronto temporal lobe, which affected the right side of her brain, responsible for skills such as writing and typing. But she was determined to once again write.

At first she began by filling out the hospital’s meal menus with little checkmarks and rewrote her room number again and again. She then moved on to words in regular print as she began to remember letters. With consistent practice she taught herself to not only print again but also how to write cursive, teaching herself just as she had taught her kindergarten students for the past 10 years.

“Being able to write again was definitely a big step,” Bambi said. “But speaking was one of the best feelings.”

Following her accident, when family and friends came to speak to her she usually would just utter, “Hi.” Her thoughts were there, just not the words to share them. This would continue for two more weeks. But she improved every single day. The one percents didn’t stop.

In one instance a friend of Bambi’s came to visit her. After they began talking, the friend burst into tears. Though, at the time, Bambi thought her friend was pregnant, it would become clear to Bambi that the reason for her friend’s tears was not a pregnancy or even Bambi’s physical appearance. Her improvement in speech was what was so miraculous.

This friend wasn’t alone in the support of the Trotter family. While Bambi was fighting through the recovery, many families that personally knew her or that had kids that had been taught or coached by one of the Trotters wanted to help in any way they could. A Facebook page updating others of her situation and an online donation service was created.

About three weeks after the accident, green ribbons began appearing all over the neighborhood of Bridlewood. Tied to lamp posts, mailboxes, and trees, the ribbons covered the area in every direction, and still do. The color green had been chosen because of a video Bambi had posted of her son.

“He loves watercolor and he kept saying he wanted to paint ‘the green,’” Bambi said. “From that people thought his favorite color was green and made that the color to represent their support.”

When she first saw the ribbons she was overwhelmed. She had been teaching for 10 years at Bridlewood Elementary with an average class size of 20, so she had always thought she had just touched 200 families. Nonetheless, the green ribbons reflected an entire community’s gratitude and support of her family.

“I see myself as just a kindergarten teacher,” Bambi said. “I’m nothing special. People just came out of the woodworks to support us and it was really amazing.”

Additionally, the online fundraiser raised $34,119 in just three months to help pay for Bambi’s multiple surgeries she had after the accident. She said she plans to give back to the community by publicly speaking about her accident and the recovery process.
“What [I’ve] ultimately learned is you can get through anything with your family and your faith in God,” Bambi said.

Bambi will be returning to Bridlewood to teach as soon as she’s able, but she hopes to deliver her message to more than just her class in the future.

“Though I plan on returning as a kindergarten teacher, I no longer want to be just a kindergarten teacher,” Bambi said. “I want to touch many lives and help others.”