When she was 17 years old, while walking on the campus of Cal Poly Pomona, a drunk driver hit Mona Patel. Her lower right leg was crushed. She was airlifted to UCLA Medical Center where the orthopedic team told her distraught parents that amputation would be the easiest course of action. It was possible that she could be walking in three to four months. The plastics crew told her parents that they could try and salvage what remained of her crushed leg, but it would mean several surgeries, including amputating the front part of her foot. Even then, if gangrene set in, her leg might have to be amputated anyway.

“My parents did what any parents would—they opted for salvage,” Patel said.

Seven years later, after 20 surgeries and contemplating having children, Patel started to reconsider.

“I thought: ‘I don’t want to have to be going in and out of the hospital.’ My fear was if I elected to amputate, how it would be during pregnancy and how would I be able to take care of newborns? Would I compromise my ability to be a mom?”

She was living in San Antonio, Texas and her husband at the time had a classmate whose mother was an above-the-knee amputee. Patel contacted her asking about the experience of being an amputee and a mom.

“She told me everything I needed to hear and gave me so much comfort. I knew it would be okay, so I called my surgeon and scheduled surgery.”

This weekend Patel was skiing on one leg, her prosthesis and two outriggers, adaptive equipment that resembles crutches mounted with two shortened skis. Executive Director and founder of the San Antonio Amputee Foundation, Patel came to the area to check out Ski Apache and the Ski Apache Adaptive Sports program as possible venues for bringing more amputees to ski.

Her foundation is based on the tenet of the power of peer support. Years before, when she was questioning whether or not to have her leg amputated, there were no support groups for amputees in San Antonio. She vowed after “she got back on her feet” that she would start one. As she was working towards her Master’s Degree in Social Work, that goal became the subject for a group project. Today, about 100 amputees come together once a month in one of the strongest such entities in the country. Her foundation also offers education, advocacy and case management. Being a social worker, Patel is comfortable and knowledgeable about maneuvering through the system, offering help with issues such as transportation, insurance and financial resources. She is also able to obtain prosthetic help for indigent amputees, basic home modifications such as door-widening, wheelchair ramps and grab bars in bathrooms. The foundation helped one amputee who had a car and wheelchair he could independently put in the vehicle but who was now unable to drive to work. Today he drives to his job thanks to newly installed hand controls made possible through the San Antonio Amputee Foundation.

“It has been the most amazing journey to create such a resource for our amputee community,” she said. “We have become the leading non-military resource for amputees in the area. Surgeons won’t schedule surgeries without giving me the time to meet with the patient and their family if they have the time or immediately after.”

In addition to peer support, health and fitness are personal priorities for Patel that she integrates into the foundation’s works. Last year she organized a trip for nine amputees, a medical team and a film crew to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa and one of mountaineering’s Seven Summits.

“Kilimanjaro was to show the community what we are capable of,” Patel said. “We had one guy on crutches. Cory is missing his hip from cancer. Both of Ian’s legs and fingers were amputated after he became septic.  [The trek] was a way to demonstrate to people the power of the human spirit. We are stronger than any circumstance that comes our way. So much of what we go through—probably 90 percent—is mental. All of us have a story. No one is oblivious to circumstances we cannot control.”

Next year she hopes to take a group to hike the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu in Peru.

The steely resolve shown by Patel in her words and actions are not solely the result of her physical transformations. Born to traditional East Indian parents, she grew up with certain cultural expectations, including the tradition of an arranged marriage.

“My brother had all the freedoms in the world, but, as the daughter, I had to be within arm’s reach at all times,” Patel explained. “I went to Cal Poly because it was a commuter school. My reputation was very important for my parents to maintain so they could marry me off to a good family. They wanted me home so they could protect me.”

She was 15 when she heard her mother talking to a middle man asking about her readiness for marriage. Several of her cousins had been married off at her age and Patel was aware of their unhappiness in lifestyles they never envisioned.

“I freaked out because the one thing I wanted before being married off was a college education,” Patel said. “I went to my high school counselor the next day and he understood my culture. My hope was that if I got married while I was still in college that my future in-laws would allow me to continue and finish college. [The counselor] figured a way where I could graduate from high school in 3 years. He looked at my schedule and saw that I was short of credits, so he made up a class for me. I received my last 10 credits that year.  I graduated and started college when I was 16.”

And then she was hit, her leg pinned to a metal post.

Ironically, her parents then gave up their demand of an arranged marriage.

“After the accident, I was no longer a good candidate as a bride,” Patel said. “I was not perfect anymore.”

The perception of a person with a disability as being less of a person is one that is being dismantled largely because of people like Mona Patel. Even as her foundation is reaching out to more and more people facing amputations, she continues to counsel, support and encourage individuals. It is not surprising that her influence and powerful personality extends far past San Antonio. Through a doctor she works with in Texas, she was asked to provide some telephone support to Adrianne Haslet-Davis, whose life as a dancer was derailed at the Boston Marathon bombing when her leg, too, was amputated.  Patel ended up flying to Boston and working with Haslet-Davis and a few other amputees; her goal to show what life for her was like and how normal things could be.

Patel chose her wardrobe carefully for the trip as she does in everyday. It is important for her to show that being an amputee does not mean having to wear frumpy clothes or clunky shoes. Patel wears sandals on both feet, with a special slot being carved in the prosthetic that is the same color as her other foot, and she paints all of her toenails.  The sleeve that helps to attach her prosthetic leg is festooned with sequins and sits atop a fully functioning and articulated metal ankle that allows her to walk with a natural and fluid gait.

At Ski Apache she skied with the adaptive equipment very quickly and rode the lifts, all day for two consecutive days. Eventually she may not need the outriggers and would ski with two skis and ski poles, a standard ski set up.

“Her stance, ability to turn, stop and ski independently was incredible,” Marty Davenport, one of Ski Apache Adaptive Sports instructors said. “She was perfect.”