Natalie Fung said she has become more patient and resilient since her accident in September 2013.
The pace of a new school year was just beginning to pick up when then-college senior Natalie Fung and a couple of her USC classmates decided to take an impromptu road trip to Las Vegas.
On pace to graduate early, Fung was enjoying every aspect of her experience as a Trojan. She remembers the phone call during lunch break from her father in the spring of 2010, shortly before she was to graduate from San Marino High School, telling her that she had been admitted to her dream school, which she had fallen in love with during a campus tour.
Photo courtesy Natalie Fung
Lifelong friends (from left) Natalie Fung, Shannon Dang, Kimberly Nguyen and Kelly Mark. The four have remained exceptionally close, with Dang, Mark and Nguyen instrumental in helping Fung deal with the challenges of being a quadriplegic.
Photo courtesy of Natalie Fung
San Marino’s Natalie Fung, third from left, has found a sense of community and a lot of fun in the Rollettes, a wheelchair dance team. Like the group’s founder, Fung became a quadriplegic in an automobile accident that was caused by a drunk driver.
“I was so happy, I think I told everyone in my next class,” Fung said, with a smile that transmitted through the telephone connection. “I loved the school spirit, the beautiful campus and the strong focus on academics.”
Fung had been the editor-in-chief of the Titanian Yearbook as a senior, performed in the marching band and wind ensemble, so her decision to major in public relations at a college known for its vibrant legacy was a natural.
With the world on a string, surrounded by a loving family and supportive legion of friends, what happened next to Fung seems entirely unfair. A drunk driver plowed into a taxi in which Fung was riding during that Vegas excursion, leaving her a quadriplegic — technically what is known as a C5 quadriplegic, capable of some arm movement but with partial paralysis. So the young lady who was planning on making a living with her extensive writing skills, was reduced to typing using only her two pinkie fingers.
After leaving the hospital, Fung underwent an initial six-week rehabilitation stint at Rancho Los Amigos, eventually returning to USC three months later, virtually, which at the time was an anomaly.
“I took just one class at a time so that I could also focus on my recovery,” Fung said. No longer able to graduate early, Fung instead participated in the May 2014 graduation ceremony along with her classmates. She returned in-person during the fall semester of 2014 and officially finished her classes in the spring of 2015.
Collecting her diploma was one major life event accomplished, but Fung soon found herself dealing with the emotional issues associated with such a traumatic event and began to feel sorry for herself.
“At the beginning, I kept wondering why me?” Fung said. “What did I do to deserve this? It tortured me. Why, Why, WHY? I had not accepted it yet. I just had to understand that things like this happen to random people. It doesn’t mean you are a bad person.”
Next to take a crack at Fung was shame.
“At the time of my accident, I didn’t know anyone who had a disability,” Fung said. “I was shocked. I didn’t want to be a part of that world. I thought ‘I have friends who are able to walk! This isn’t who I am!’ I was ashamed of my disability.” Then a pause: “It’s so weird to say that now.”
In 2016, Fung met Chelsie Hill, and to quote the poet William Wordsworth, “and Oh…The difference to me!”
A competitive dancer who had suffered a spinal cord injury at age 17 in an accident caused also by a drunk driver, Hill had recently started a group that would eventually be called the Rollettes because, as Fung said, Hill “wanted friends, people she could relate to.”
Based in Los Angeles, the Rollettes are an all-female wheelchair dance team that has enjoyed a surge in popularity and has tens of thousands of social media followers.
“There were about a dozen other girls in wheelchairs there and I thought I have never seen so many girls in wheelchairs. I just loved it so much. What a lot of people don’t realize is that 80% of those who suffer spinal injuries are male, so there was a reason it was so surprising to me.”
Fung jokes that although she was never much of a dancer, she last year became a full-time member of the Rollettes. Recently 300 members of the group participated in an open Zoom performance.
“It was really, really great,” Fung exclaimed.
A newer member of the group reached out to Fung and thanked her for her support.
“She was having a real hard time with a diagnosis and the Rollettes experience had shown her that it was not the end of the world,” Fung said.
Fung is also able to assist others through her participation in a support group at Rancho Los Amigos, where she had once herself received valuable guidance. Despite her tremendous progress, Fung said she often gets frustrated with what used to be simple tasks.
“There are a lot of things that bug me,” she said with a chuckle. “Everything takes so much longer. The other day, I was having problems putting on my makeup and I got really frustrated.”
She related a story about operating a space heater at her home and adjusting the dial with her teeth.
“A lot of quadriplegics use their teeth to do a lot of things,” she said with a laugh.
Fung eventually called for assistance, but had to cut off a small piece of her hair when it became stuck in the space heater’s fan.
“A lot of things happen like that,” she said, again with a sense of positivity.
