PULLMAN — Washington State University had always been Emma Spalding’s dream school, and she said nothing would stop her from attending — even a near-fatal car crash.

On her way to tour the institution her senior year in August 2021, a reckless driver struck Spalding and her mom, Heidi Kesler. Spalding was severely injured, and spent the semester confined to a hospital bed.

But instead of letting the collision slow her down, Spalding said the incident only strengthened her determination.

She was able to walk with her class, and graduate from Grays Harbor Community College the following year. This school year, Spalding is attending her first semester at WSU as a transferred junior pursuing a degree in animal science.

“The odds were against me,” Spalding, 19, said. “But here I am, at university.”

Spalding grew up in Elma, Wash., on her family’s 111-year-old farmstead. She said her passion has always been animals, and over the years she’s raised and shown dairy cows, rabbits, pigs and steer at FFA and 4-H livestock shows.

Since the seventh grade, Spalding would come to WSU for the Washington FFA convention. She said she fell in love with the campus and the area immediately, and wanted to attend WSU since middle school.

“If I didn’t get in, I was going to try for UI; I didn’t want to go anywhere else,” Spalding said.

Thankfully, she was accepted to both schools.

Spalding got her first job at a veterinary clinic in Montesano, a town near Elma, when she was 15. She worked until August this year, becoming a vet assistant in her last two years at the clinic.

She was also a volunteer firefighter in her hometown, spending her summers extinguishing blazes in western Washington.

Spalding said she remembers the crash like it was yesterday. When she was 17, she and her mother were driving on Washington State Route 26 near Othello when a driver sped through four stop signs.

The car struck the driver’s side and pushed their vehicle off the highway and into a fence. The impact’s power ricocheted through the car and into the passenger seat, right into Spalding.

Her mom suffered a fractured disc in her back. Spalding went into kidney failure, losing one, had a traumatic brain injury, broke four discs in her back and spent a month in a coma. It took around four months of rehabilitation for Spalding to learn to speak and walk again.

“It was definitely a miracle,” Spalding said. “There were definitely people with me.”

One of her cousins, who died in a car crash when he was 19, visited her in her coma, she said.

“He woke me up,” Spalding said. “He held my hands, and he’s like, ‘Emma, you can’t do this, I regret what I did every day.’”

Spalding was discharged from the hospital a few days before Christmas. Instead of waiting to get back to school, she jumped back into high school in January and graduated with her class.

She also participated in Running Start, giving her the opportunity to take community college classes in high school. She finished community college a year after graduating high school.

Spalding said a few things pushed her to continue her education. One being she’s the only member in her family to go to university straight after high school.

Another was while she was staying at Craig Hospital in Colorado, she noticed a wall where patients who had recovered could hang their college diplomas. Spalding said she only saw a few, and was determined to add hers.

“I wanted to give people hope who went through the same thing I did,” Spalding said.

The hospital hung up her community college diploma when she graduated this spring.

Also, she needed school to help heal her brain after her traumatic injury.

In the coming weeks, Spalding plans to interview at the Pullman Fire Department to become a volunteer firefighter. She said she wants to go through their medic program to work as an EMT alongside pursuing her degree.

“I want to be an EMT and give back,” Spalding said.

When she graduates, she plans to become either a livestock judge at county fairs, traveling around Washington state, work as a sales representative or in machinery.

Pearce can be reached at epearce@dnews.com.