On December 6, 2007, when Saba Abdullah left her home in Baghdad to begin college engineering classes, she thought she would be back at the end of the day. Instead, her life took a drastic turn when a young man disguised as a student boarded the school van, pulled out a gun from between some books and began firing. He shot and killed the driver, fired point blank at Saba’s heart, then turned and ran, all the while shooting at the van.

Although the first bullet missed Saba’s heart, it traveled through her body, severing her spinal column before exiting and left her paralyzed from the chest down. Saba is lucky to be alive – after several months in and out of hospitals in the Middle East, her family was able to come to the United States. Since then, she has worked incredibly hard to rehabilitate and recover from this tragic event. Recently, Saba began rehabilitative therapy at Project Walk in Atlanta, GA and hopes to continue to make progress in her recovery.