On Wednesday evening, Garrison Leif Sandberg, assisted by an aide or two, will be among the 400-plus Napa High School seniors walking across Memorial Stadium in front of family and friends.
The commencement ceremony will be memorable for many. For Leif, the victim of a drunken-driving crash a year ago, it will be an even more remarkable milestone.
On graduation night last year, Leif was near death at Queen of the Valley Medical Center, with doctors questioning whether he would make it through the night.
Today, Leif, now 18, still cannot walk unassisted. Enunciating words remains a challenge. Continual tremors on his right side have forced him to become left-handed.
But he is alive and much recovered. Come diploma time Wednesday, assisted by buddies, he intends to walk before family and friends.
Last June 10, responding to a crash at 4:46 a.m. on Dry Creek Road north of Orchard Avenue, the California Highway Patrol found Leif, then 17, in a pickup truck, unconscious. The vehicle had rolled and hit a tree on the passenger side where he had been sitting.
A second teenage passenger suffered minor injuries in the crash, while the driver, Joseph Mackey, then 17, was not injured, the CHP said.
Mackey, a skateboarding friend of Leifs who had graduated from Napa High the day before, was arrested for driving under the influence and booked at Juvenile Hall.
He told authorities he had celebrated his graduation with family at home, according to his probation report. Later, when his mother left, he consumed six beers, according to the court filing.
Suzanne Sandberg had believed her son, a free-spirited skateboarder who had just completed his junior year at Napa High, was safe at Mackeys house.
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Comatose a year ago, teen set to walk with Napa High seniors