Good Morning!

It is a beautiful day in the Black Hills of South Dakota...the temp is in the low 70's and a bright sun is peeking through cottonball clouds.

Be sure to check out the latest article about Jill in our local paper on the links page.

A big chapter in Jill's life closed today. About a month ago the guy that hit Jill entered a no contest plea in court to a felony charge of vehicular battery. Today was his sentencing date and Jill, myself and the kids were allowed to enter victim impact statements to the judge. Instead of just giving you the highlights, the content of all 4 letters will follow and then stay tuned for more at the end of the letters.

Here is Caitlin's Letter.....

The transition from my mother’s accident has not been easy with all the new challenges it has thrown at our family. Life was a lot easier to handle when I knew my mother was enjoying everything that she did. It became hard to realize that there are things that I would be missing out with her. From the past year that she was in the hospital and for years to come I knew she would miss out on a lot with our lives.

I became aware that we would not be able to enjoy horseback riding together on the weekends. Our chance to have what girl time we had alone to catch up and enjoy doing something together. It was hard to not have her be a part of my sophomore year at college; neither of my parents were able to help me move across the state. It was rough not being able to call her during the day to chat and help me with my difficulties during that school year. It was a hard year to know that my best friend, my mother, was not able to be there for me. It was even harder that she was not able to be there when I moved into my first house this college year.

Going home and watching my mother have to relearn something on the computer or just trying to remember a past memory is painful to watch. You can not even begin to realize how hard it can be to talk to someone that can not even remember something that you have done with them and then have to help them remember that memory. There were many things that mom and I were going to do and most of those things may never happen. I always remember her telling me “Oh it might be done by the time your married” for things that she started when I was just a baby. Those things will never get finished.

Mom and I enjoyed shopping all day in Rapid City together. She and I would look for outfits for her and just have a girls day catching up on things that we could not get to during the week or if a horseback-riding trip was canceled. Now she can barely take 3 hours up in Rapid City to shop. Things have definitely changed with the family and the relationship between mom and I, but its one more challenge that has to be done.

The hard times have not begun for the impact of this accident. Most of my impacts will be the fact that what will happen when my college graduation comes around? Will she be able to come watch me and travel those 6 hours? Those are questions that have ran through my mind. Of course I am not sure of the answers but either way it will be difficult on all of us. My younger brother had the hardest time out of all of us. Mom missed out on his senior year of high school, which she will never get a chance to relive again. I just hope that things will get better and that she will recover so that all of us can enjoy things as a family again and not be restricted in what we do.

Here is Cody's Letter.....

It’s obvious to anyone in contact with my family that, since the accident, nothing has been similar to the life we had before. The initial effect was a parentless life on the home front. My sister and I were left in charge of holding down the fort. Being thrown into the situation was strange at first, but things smoothed out after a few weeks, and it turned out fairly well.

Throughout the entire ordeal, the most difficult problem I encountered was my college decision. My parents were busy, and I wasn’t going to consume any more of their time than what was necessary, so I eventually figured that out on my own. Every now and then I feel guilty for not involving them. I was the last kid to leave the house, which translates into their last opportunity to provide significant guidance. However, I feel I made the right decision, so I hope that reconciles the issue.

In the midst of college inquiries, another event changed the experience altogether. During our first football game, I tore my left ACL for the second time. This added more to my dad’s “To Do List.” Now, while my mom was at Regional, he ran me around to other facilities to figure out what needed to be done. Surgery was scheduled for September 28, 2007. When that date rolled around, my mom had been at Craig for three days. Immediately after she was situated down there, my dad had to make the seven hour drive back to Custer to accompany me through my surgery. The next day, he headed back to Denver, and I was left at a friend’s house for a week. When the week was up, it was back to my house and life on my own- but with my crutches of course.

While on the road to recovery, event number three rolled around: construction. To accommodate my mom, our house needed to be renovated. Through the process, I lost any and all privacy that I had ever had. I became very comfortable meeting new people, but I would have liked to have had a room without thirty people walking in it, around it, through it, or cutting holes in it every day.

My last concession was not a single event, but an entire year’s worth: my senior year. My parents missed nearly everything that happened during my last year of school. Granted, they got to see pictures and hear stories, but they missed all of the football games, music concerts, theatrical productions, and, most important, the little things that I wanted to tell them every day after school.

When my mom returned home and got settled in, she was able to come out a little more. When I say she got to “come out,” that means that she was able to come to the first half of a choir concert before she needed to head home to begin the lengthy process to get her in bed. She was able to come to two track meets in Custer, but I wouldn’t say that she got to watch. She and my dad had to sit in the van and try to catch a glimpse as our races went by. She couldn’t be outside because, even when it was seventy degrees out, her body couldn’t monitor its own temperature and would become dangerously cold.

Current trends will carry into the future as well. My dad’s life was consumed by this mess, and he has lost most of the freedom that he ever had. It requires a very special day for him to be able to just walk out and work in the garage.

Further down the line, I will be coming home from my first year of college with a pilot’s license. I would give almost anything to be able to take both of my parents up and show them where my life is going. That’s never going to happen. Someday I’ll be able to take my dad, though. Then, all we will be able to do is go home and attempt to tell my mom about it, and desperately try to not make her feel any more left out than she already is.

Simply put, things are not the same; they never will be again. My mom lost everything but her family in an event that was undeserved and in which the consequences of each party will never be equal.

Here is My Letter.....

Judge Davis,

My name is Don Hart and I am the husband of Jill Hart who was critically injured in the motor vehicle collision on August 6, 2007.

During the immediate days following Jill’s injuries, I spent my time divided between staying with Jill, maintaining a household in Custer, and helping our children cope with the realization of their mother’s injuries.

Jill was critically injured and spent several weeks in the surgical intensive care unit. During this time her body was constantly trying to adjust to the injury that it had received. On three occasions this adjustment created grave life threatening cardiac conditions that required the calling of a special rapid response team at RCRH. You can not imagine the anxiety immediately changing to a feeling of dread when I was sitting on the floor in a hallway trying to make sense out of the current situation when I heard the rapid response team being paged over the hospital wide paging system to my wife’s room and not knowing if she was dead or alive or if she would survive the current malady.

Jill was unable to speak for approximately 6 weeks post accident due to being on a ventilator. During this time she would mouth words for us to interpret. On several occasions that I remember, Jill was asking about what happened and when told that she was in a vehicle accident, her first question was if anyone was hurt besides her. We always reassured her that no one else was injured. She would then ask about her injuries. Each time we would be forthcoming and tell her that the accident left her paralyzed. Each time she would ask us to unplug her and let her die. To her, the life that she enjoyed was over.

Jill was also not completely accepting what we were telling her about her injuries. At one point she asked to be sat up in bed in order to see her arms and legs and see for herself that she was indeed paralyzed.

Jill’s high cervical injury has left her with no control of accessory chest muscles. In simple terms this means that she has a greatly reduced tidal lung volume. This means that Jill cannot cough, sneeze, or vomit without assistance. This also puts constraints on her singing, which she so loved prior to the accident.

The following weeks resulted in many hours of travel between Custer and Rapid City and then between Custer and Denver where Jill was taken for rehabilitation. 371.8 miles one way. That equates to about 6 hours, 6 hours that I could have been spending with my wife or children doing family activities. I tried to maintain my support of our son, Cody, who was a senior in high school by attending his football games, track meets, and school activities. Since I was in a care provider education program in Denver, this meant driving to Custer Friday morning, attending a game or meet that afternoon or evening, and then driving back to Denver the next morning. This happened almost every weekend until the end of December.

Upon returning home in late December, just in time for Christmas, our lives changed dramatically. I had to refinance our house in order to make necessary modifications so Jill would have a home to come home to. This refinancing along with an accessible van that costs 3 times what a regular van costs, a wheelchair that compares in price to a full size SUV, and necessary medical supplies prevented me from being able to purchase gifts for my family at Christmas. This financial crisis also resulted in the home remodel not being completed on time and therefore we had no home to go to. I felt like a failure as a husband and father. When learning of my plight, several charitable organizations came forward and provided some gifts for the family, but that did not relieve me of the burden of knowing that I could not provide for my family at an important time of the year. This also left me questioning if I would have to change our plan of support of our children’s college careers.

I long to feel the tenderness of holding my wife’s hand, sleeping in the same bed and sharing intimate time with her. Her injury prevents this and always will. Even more devastating is that her body will equate lovemaking as a painful stimulus and respond by going into autonomic dysreflexia, which is a life threatening condition that is one of the leading contributors of death in high spinal cord injury patients.

I am the primary caregiver during the evening and night time hours. Jill requires close monitoring during this time and this has led to me being placed in a state of hyper-vigilance. Jill also requires turning during her sleep periods to prevent skin breakdown. This is required every 6 hours. Therefore I wake every night at 2:30 to go through the 20 minute process to turn Jill and repad her body. This event, coupled with never being able to go into deep restful sleep, has left me in a state of perpetual exhaustion.

Spontaneity no longer exists in our lives. A “quick” trip the 3 miles into Custer can no longer be made in 5 minutes. We are lucky if we can make it in 30. A quick visit to a friends home may not even be possible any longer due to accessibility issues. How about visiting friends? A quick trip to a friend’s home is now compounded by Jill not being able to access most homes. Being confined to a wheelchair that weighs 600 pounds, doesn’t give her the option of being lifted onto someone’s front porch in order to get into the home. When Jill does visit friends, the only option that we have is to invite them into our van to sit and visit.

Planned events are usually started weeks in advance. In order to reduce the stress that Jill would be placed under, I go to places and pre-plan how she will gain access, where she can park her wheelchair, if she can even maneuver around once inside an establishment, or if it is even possible to enter at all. Your honor, If it hadn’t been for one of these planning visits, my wife would not have been able to appear in front of you to give her statement today. The gate behind Mr. Oswald was to narrow for passage.

But even the most careful planning cannot reduce all of the stress associated with an event and Jill’s body reacting to this stress can result in embarrassing moments. How about going out to dinner? Nothing difficult for those of us not confined to a wheelchair, but the stress that is induced about worrying about accessibility to the restaurant, getting to the restaurant, and being a disabled person in the public eye can cut an evening very short by causing an involuntary bowel movement during the evening.

We have not been contacted by Mr. Kopp since the wreck. I do understand that there is pending civil litigation and that Mr. Kopp has probably been advised by his counsel that it would be in his best interest to not speak to either my wife or myself. This I don’t understand. I know of no court in the United States that would either misrepresent an apology as an admission of guilt or condemn a man for not heeding his counsel’s directives but doing what is morally right.

Irregardless, the time for apologies has past. It has been over 13 months since the collision and an apology at this time would be unacceptable in our eyes. The amount of time that has passed would negate any credibility and being sorry and remorseful will not negate or change the horrible thing that he has done to Jill.. The only effect that an apology would have today would be for Mr. Kopp to clear his conscience, save face in front of his friends, and to evoke leniency from this court.

Your Honor, if I was ever in the position where I had gravely injured someone and shattered their life as well as their families, I would eagerly appear in a court and ask for punishment that would allow me to save face in my community, pay my debt to society for the crime that I have committed, and finally, but utmost in importance, give some type of value to the person’s life that I shattered. Everyday I think about how this horrific event has changed my families lives. Every day I cuss Mr. Kopp’s name and damn his existence, yet feel sympathy for his wife and 3 young children. My emotions want to see Mr. Kopp punished to the fullest extent of the law in prison, but doing so would burden taxpayers, remove him from a potentially productive life and also shatter his family, especially his children. I would never want to be accused of destroying his family as he has done to us. Therefore in my eyes an appropriate punishment would be to sentence Mr. Kopp to 30 days in jail as a ‘shock’ awareness to emulate the pain and suffering that Jill has experienced, 10 years of supervised probation with alcohol restrictions to emulate the confinement to a wheelchair and dependence on others that Jill will experience the rest of her life and finally a moderate amount of community service each year to repay his debt to society for the crime that he committed by improving the community that he resides in. This would allow Mr. Kopp to keep his family together, contribute to the community and pay his debt to society and give some type of value to the suffering that my wife has endured..

Mr. Kopp made a conscious choice on August 6, 2007 to drive his vehicle while under the influence of alcohol. This choice led to a critical and life altering injury to my wife Jill, the shattering of personal and family dreams, our tumbling into financial ruin and an uncertain future. In essence, Mr. Kopp sentenced my wife to a lifetime of pain, suffering and broken dreams. Your honor, a sentence, of your fashion, that bears weight in regards to the injuries and devastation that has been thrust upon us would be appreciated. Since any type of compensation from civil litigation is unknown and uncertain at this time your honor, the sentence that you will pass along to Mr. Kopp today may be the only justice that Jill and our family will ever have involving this incident.

And finally, here is the finale from Jill.....

My name is Jill Marie Hart. Thank you, Your Honor, for giving me a chance to speak to you today.

I am an innocent victim of a horrible crime. In a nano second, that crime changed my life forever. The person who committed the crime changed my life, my husband’s life, my children’s lives, and the lives of everyone around me.

Let me try to put into words, Your Honor, what that person did to me. Everything in my life has been taken away from me. I am paralyzed and I can’t feel anything by touching it anymore. I can’t reach out and touch my husband’s face or give him a hug or even hold his hand. I can’t hold my children’s hands or pat them if they need consoling or had a rough day or had an injury that needed attention. I can't even walk outside and pull up a blade of grass and put it between my teeth. I won't be able to hold my grandchildren. I won't be able to touch them, caress them, or even feed them a bottle. I can't show them how to make cookies, or how to ride a horse or help them ride a bike.

I’m in a wheelchair now because of him. I can’t do anything for myself. I have to sip or puff in a tube to move my chair. Someone has to be with me to open and close doors, load me in the van, and drive me around. I can’t even go to the basement of my own home where we used to love to watch movies and spend time as a family. Someone that knows how to do the Heimlich maneuver needs to stay with me 24 hours a day in case I need help coughing or I can’t breathe. My greatest fear is being left alone and not being able to breath and dying all alone.

I can’t control my body temperature so I seldom go outside. I spent a little time outdoors this summer -- 3 times. It felt really weird going to Craig Hospital in Denver this past July, and being the only one wearing long sleeves and covered up in a blanket.

I used to love Christmas. If I found the time, I would bake Christmas treats and I loved making candy at Christmas. I loved to decorate the house, and to go shopping for that perfect gift. I can't bake any more or make the candies anymore. I'll have to ask someone else to decorate the house. It will be so different shopping from the wheelchair either electronically or if I can get in stores. I have seen several stores that I would like to shop in that would be hard to get in to and the aisles are so narrow that I would knock something over.

What used to take me one hour to get ready for work in the morning now takes at least three hours for my husband or caregiver to do for me. Plus it takes 45 minutes to an hour to put me to bed. I’m usually so tired that I need to sleep 11 to 12 hours a night. That leaves me only 8 or 9 hours a day to live my life, or what’s left of it.

I don’t even have control over my own personal hygiene. Every morning, my husband or a stranger has to do my bowel program because I can’t have a bowel movement without it. Then they have to clean the excrement from my private parts and deal with my monthly cycles. How demeaning is that? He took all my dignity and privacy.

I haven’t worn makeup since the accident. I have to wear glasses now, instead of contacts. I’ve worn contacts, since I turned 16. When I want to get dressed up now and look attractive to go out with my husband, about the only decision I have to make is which blanket to wear. Even though I so want to be intimate with my husband, I know I’ll never be able to share that with him again.

Every single day I wish for death. I wish I could just stop breathing and this would all be over, but every single day I fight and struggle to breath and try somehow to get better.

I had a goal to be walking by last Christmas, and then I hoped to be walking by this Christmas, but now I’m afraid I’m never going to be able to walk again. I was so hopeful that I would recover, but that dream is almost gone. That realization makes me feel an overwhelming devastating despair.

This crime has also caused my husband to suffer terribly. When we said our wedding vows twenty-five years ago, we promised to care for each other in sickness and in health and in the good times and the bad times. Neither of us ever imagined our lives would turn out this way. All of our dreams were smashed that day, but my husband kept his promise to me. He has been at my side almost every day since I was hurt, and he has taken care of me and loved me and cheered for me and provided me strength in my despair. He has been father and mother to our children, the provider for the family, and has carried on his shoulders the entire burden of my injury. He was at my bedside during the 4 ½ months of my hospitalization, and he has been by caregiver at home after we came home.

He goes to work every day and then he comes home to cook supper for the two of us. He feeds me, one spoonful at a time, and we have just a little time together to talk and be half-way normal. I’m usually ready for bed at about 7:30 and Don spends 45 minutes putting me to bed. Then he does everything else that needs doing before he falls into his bed, exhausted, at the end of his day. Except Don hasn’t been able to sleep through the night since I came home from the hospital last year. Every night at 2:30 a.m., Don gets out of his bed and turns me onto my side and adjusts my pillows so I won’t develop any pressure sores. In the morning, he gives me my shower and does my bowel program and then leaves for work. I know every day he is totally and completely exhausted. He has bags under his eyes that weren’t there last year, and his stress level is at an all-time high.

Some nights I wake up with neuropathic pain or nightmares, but I am so reluctant to wake Don and ask for help because I know he needs his sleep. One of the only things I am able to give my husband is his sleep, so I often just lie there so he can get his rest. I wish I could comfort him but I can’t. All I can do is tell him I love him. He has suffered so much but he never ever complains.

This crime has also caused my children to suffer. Our daughter Caitlin came to the scene of the crime to look for me and saw my crushed pickup and the emergency medical team giving first aid to me. I am told she endured many terrifying days and nights while I was in ICU. She had a terrible fall semester at college and a difficult spring semester. She was so worried about me and wanted to be with me here, and yet tried to study because that’s where we thought it would be best for her to be. When the remodeling project at our home was happening, Caitlin offered up her bedroom to make room for me to drive a wheelchair between our house and the new addition. Caitlin then spent Christmas break sleeping on a futon mattress on the floor in the family room, sharing the mattress with our pet dog. All of her stuff from her bedroom was in boxes in the garage or shed.

Our son Cody missed the best part of his senior year in high school. When the construction at our home started and the walls started to move, Cody lost his bedroom too and slept anywhere he could find a place. Cody’s had to raise himself during his senior year. I think he spent his own money on groceries and clothes that we should have paid for but he was too proud to tell us. He was used to inviting his buddies over to play games in his room, make snacks in the kitchen or watch TV downstairs, but not his senior year. All of his stuff from his bedroom was in boxes and moved from room to room during the construction.

I missed the best part of Cody’s senior year too. I missed his coronation as homecoming king. I missed almost all of his athletic and musical events last year, I wasn’t there when he tore his ACL in football, and I wasn’t there when he overcame that injury at the State Track meet and won first place in the medley relay. I wanted to be very involved in Cody’s graduation, but just couldn’t. I couldn’t take Cody to college this fall either. Cody and I lost our last year together.

I am very angry that my children suffered so much and I wasn’t able to be their mother and care for them when they needed me most.

I’m also angry that I might not be allowed to go back to a job I dearly love. I am the Administrative Officer/Budget Analyst for Wind Cave, Jewel Cave, and Mt. Rushmore. Essentially, I am the Chief Financial Officer for the National Park Service in the Black Hills. I studied hard and worked very hard to earn this position of responsibility and I derived great satisfaction and fulfillment from my work. I had begun training other National Park Service employees around the country about administration, and this experience also made me feel so good about myself and my skills and ability.

When I was injured other people had to fill in for me quickly and try to do what I had spent years developing and refining. So in addition to their normal duties, other people are having to do my job too. My employer is in the process of deciding whether they will let me come back to my job. In addition to my physical challenges, the collision caused a brain injury, which I am trying to improve. But I don't know if I will be as quick as I was before. Thank goodness the brain injury didn't leave me in a vegetative state, but he crushed my skull in and I can't remember the week before the collision or much of the weeks after the collision. He took that away from me too.

My favorite pastime is enjoying sunrises and sunsets on horseback in the Black Hills. I love my horses. I had learned last spring how to trim my horses’ feet and I had decided to switch my horses from being in shoes to going barefoot, being trimmed by me, and wearing leather boots if they needed them. I can’t do that anymore or work at improving my horsemanship skills. And now, because I can't take care of my horses, I have to sell them, and it breaks my heart. We are searching for good homes for them, but it isn’t easy.

There was a time in my life that will forever be burned on my heart. Shortly after I had gotten my drivers license at the age of 16, I remember a dog running out in front of the car and I ran over it. I got out of the car, went back to the dog, confirmed that I had killed it and saw that it had a collar on it with the owner's name. I looked up and down the road, and sure enough, that owners name was on the mailbox at the house ahead of my car. My parents had always instilled in me the importance of taking responsibility for my actions. As I walked up the driveway to knock on the door and tell them how sorry I was, I saw a swing set in the yard. The young lady that answered the door was indeed crestfallen when I told her how sorry I was that I just killed the family pet. I couldn't imagine the pain those children must have felt when they found out their family pet was gone.

The person who rammed into me might be a nice, caring, God fearing person, but after he hit me, he walked away from me. Yes, he may have been addled by the force of his truck slamming into the back of my truck, but he didn't even have the decency to come up and see if I was dead or alive. He didn't come up to check if there was a child or an infant in my vehicle. Thank goodness I was alone! He didn't offer in any way to help keep me alive. Apparently he never learned to take responsibility for his actions. Nice, caring, God fearing person that he may be, this is what will be emblazoned on my heart forever. I would have died but for the grace of the good Lord and the EMT and the trauma surgeon who happened to be nearby and rescued me moments after this collision.

That man was able to walk away from the havoc he created. That man may tell you how sorry he is, but he created a life sentence for me when I didn't do anything wrong.

Your Honor, I know that only you can decide the sentence to give this person. I know that the sentence you can give him cannot compare to the sentence he gave me. I can only hope that you will fashion a sentence for him that will show that my life has value. I hope that you will take from him, for an appropriate time, his dignity, his freedom, his independence, and his control over his life, so that he can experience for a few moments what I will experience for the rest of my life.

Take a minute, take a few deep breaths and as Paul Harvey says, "Now for the rest of the story....."

The Judge passed this sentence to Mr. Kopp.

8 years of probation with random drug testing, 500 hours of Community Service performed over the 8 years, and 16 days in jail to be served 2 days a year on the anniversary of the accident for 8 years.............

Thank you all for the thought, prayers and support that you have given Jill during her recovery and rehabilitation and the beginning of another chapter in her life.

God Bless,

Don, Jill, Caitlin and Cody