David (Dayna) Vogl

Meet Dayna

We are raising funds to support the most amazing parent, sister, friend, co-worker, and neighbor, Dayna Vogl, as she begins her new journey in life with a disability…(continued)

Backstory

You might know the story already, but it is important to hear it again. On June 22nd of 2025, Dayna suffered a life-changing fall that has left her permanently paralyzed from the waist down. While cleaning the attic above her garage, she fell through the ceiling and struck her head on the concrete floor below. She spent the next fourteen hours on the hot concrete with multiple broken vertebrae, bleeding badly from a deep cut on her head.

Fourteen hours. On the floor of her garage, bleeding and in excruciating pain, in the kind of lung-searing heat that only St. Louisans really understand. Fourteen hours… stop and think about that for a minute. Moving in and out of consciousness, she faced a situation that would have led most people to lose the will to live and completely give up.

Not Dayna.

Over those fourteen hours, her will to live only grew. She did her best to move herself out of the garage, pulling herself an inch at a time through pain that most of us will never understand, in the hopes that maybe a neighbor might see her; trying to find the strength to call out for help. When she did not show up for work on Monday, her boss at World Wide Technology, a hero named David Gray, sensed that something was wrong and instead of waiting, he immediately reached out to her emergency contact to check on her. Thanks to David, paramedics got there in time, and rushed her to the hospital. You know the rest: Dayna was lucky to be alive, but would never walk again.

Moving Forward

Most of us have heard people say that if they ever wound up in a wheelchair, they wouldn’t want to live. Maybe you’ve thought that yourself (it’s okay, lots of us have thought the same thing).

Not Dayna.

Dayna’s reaction to the news surprised everyone. She was thankful to be alive more than anything else, and almost immediately began planning to live independently as a person in a wheelchair. Her will to live did not fade; it grew. Her twisted sense of humor did not fade; it grew. Her love for life and the people around her did not fade; it grew as well. For those of us who once said we would rather die than live in a chair, her response rocked us to our core and changed us profoundly.

Dayna has been spending the last month and a half at an amazing rehab facility in Ankeny, Iowa called On With Life. Don’t feel bad – we had to google Ankeny too. As the name implies, at On With Life the goal is to give her the skills and strength to be able to return to St. Louis, resume work and live independently with her disability.

Now, most people stay at OWL for 60 to 90 days, but when Dayna started, she made her intention clear: she would work twice as hard as everyone else so that she could finish the program and leave after just 51 days. WTF? Why the oddly-specific 51 days? Because 51 days from when she started at OWL, on October 3rd, her daughter Caroline is getting married in St. Louis and Dayna was not going to miss it. Many of us around her told her she was nuts and not to rush rehab, but to the astonishment of everyone but herself, Dayna has worked so hard and made such incredible progress that her team of therapists says she is defying the odds and will be ready to graduate in time to dance, in her chair, at her daughter’s reception. Yeah, take a second to wipe away your tears.

What Dayna Needs

Here’s the part where we ask you to open your wallet. Dayna has been incredibly fortunate to have good insurance that has covered most of her bills up to this point, but that part of the story is coming to a close. Abruptly adapting to life with a disability is not cheap. Many of her expenses going forward will not be covered by insurance, and others will come with very high deductibles. Adding to the complexity of her situation, government programs that typically would have provided assistance to people in her situation in past years have recently been cut or drastically scaled back.

Dayna is returning to work soon, but the looming expenses will exceed what she can afford.

Some examples of her expenses include retrofitting a car with hand controls, which is over $30,000. A used wheelchair van is $60,000. A manual wheelchair carries a $1,500 deductible. Extra wheels are $1,500. Hub motors? Eight grand. Electric hospital beds run over $5,000, and even “simple” things like rolling shower chairs are over $2,000. Insurance will not pay for most of these things. You get the idea.

How to Help

Dayna has done her part. Now it is time for all of us who have felt the joy of knowing her to do ours.

Before you make a decision about donating, there is one story you 100% need to hear because it tells you everything you need to know about Dayna. In the days after the accident tons of people reached out to her at Mercy Hospital asking what she needed and how could they help. Brace yourself. Instead of asking for money (or anything like that), Dayna explained that she volunteered her time with a non-profit in St. Louis called Food Outreach, which provides meals to people living with cancer and HIV. She was worried that she was leaving them short-handed because she would not be there for her weekly shift cooking meals. Instead of asking for one single thing for herself, she asked that people donate their time and money to Food Outreach. THAT is what you need to know about Dayna. And now that you know that, it is time for all of us to hold a mirror up to her mind-blowing generosity and do everything we can to help her with the bills on her horizon.

Why Give Here?

Giving through Help Hope Live has numerous advantages over avenues like a GoFundMe campaign or sending money directly to her. They are a non-profit that holds the funds on Dayna’s behalf and pay her bills directly. This means that, unlike a GoFundMe campaign, your donations are tax deductible and may be eligible for an employer match (if you work for a cool company that does that). It also minimizes potential tax penalties for Dayna, which can be significant.

This is a really hard time to ask people for money; we get that. But we are asking anyway, because our gift to Dayna is a recognition of what a gift she is to all of us who are lucky enough to know her, and lucky enough to live in a world that she makes brighter every single day.

Do whatever you can; it can be a lot or a little. Everything helps. And if you can’t give right now, that is cool too– just send her an endless stream of love. An email or text telling her you are still in her corner will go a long way too.

One last request: PLEASE share this campaign link with everyone you can think of. Post it on social media if that is your thing. Even people who do not know Dayna may be inspired enough by her story to add another nickel to the jar, and every nickel helps.

Thanks for loving Dayna as much as we do.

– Dayna’s Family