Ashley Olson: Making her mark at USC Ashley Olson: Making her mark at USC (March 08, 2002)

1998 accident hasn't stopped her drive to succeed
by Jeb Bing

Remember Ashley Olson - the vivacious, fun-loving captain of the junior varsity girls basketball squad at Amador Valley High four years ago? Today, she's a freshman at the University of Southern California with the same determined spirit, despite obstacles that probably would have stopped most of us in our tracks.

It was just four years ago this summer that Ashley's hopes of becoming a basketball star at Amador and in college ended in a horrific accident on a Nevada freeway. The family van overturned in a gusty rainstorm, killing her father Jim, 47, a Pleasanton landscaper and popular youth sports coach. Both her mother Elaine and younger sister Lori, now a freshman at Amador, were injured and are still recovering. Ashley was thrown from the vehicle and paralyzed from the waist down. An older sister, Kristina, was attending summer school and had skipped the trip.

"I remember waking up in a Salt Lake City hospital and finding that I couldn't move my legs," Ashley recalled. "A nurse gave me the news."

Within weeks, she was back in her Pleasanton home and receiving therapy. Amador helped out with home schooling, and the Pleasanton community held fund-raisers and retrofitted the Olson home to accommodate Ashley's wheelchair. By the second semester, she was back in school to complete her sophomore year, and even took a class trip to Greece before graduating with honors last June.

Ashley is now at USC, where we interviewed her outside Pardee Tower, her dormitory. She talked about her challenges, her fond memories of Pleasanton and the support she received, and her future.

"At first, I had to learn how to cope with everyday life, things that come easy when you can walk, from navigating curbs to making sure that if I go to a party that I can actually get into the event," she said. "I chose USC because it's a flat campus and easy to get around in a wheelchair. But even here there are obstacles - classes where I can't get into the rooms, some dorms that have no wheelchair access."

So for Ashley, planning ahead is a must, from checking out the exact location of classes before registering to finding out if someone's home she's invited to can meet her needs. She drives and has a car on campus and occasionally visits her older sister Kristina at Cal Poly or Amador friends who are now at UCLA. Next fall, she hopes to pledge a sorority so that she can enjoy a closer-knit group of girls and social events.

"There are a number of organized trips for those of us who live on campus," Ashley said, "but they're not always for me. The kids will go somewhere by bus, but I can't get on a bus. They'll say a place has a ramp, but it turns out that it's too narrow for a wheelchair. I'll find a bathroom that has a wheelchair accessible sign only to find it is too narrow for the wheelchair and I can't close the door."

Despite the problems, though, Ashley has said her "biggest pet peeve is the people who stare at me. People will say 'You really are good (at getting around) for being in a wheelchair.' It's really annoying. If you know anyone who does that, tell them to stop."

Ashley has continued her intense interest in sports, although from the sidelines since the accident. She stayed active with the Amador basketball team until she graduated and served as a scorekeeper for CYO basketball in Pleasanton. At USC, she earned a "Swim with Mike" full scholarship, named for three-time All-America Swimmer Mike Nyeholt, a successful businessman who, himself, was paralyzed in a motorcycle accident in 1981. She will be part of this year's "Swim with Mike" fund-raiser later this month at USC.

"I'm sure she had a hard time, but she kind of took it as a challenge, like another competition for her, and she has that drive," said Ron Orr, associate athletic director at USC, during an interview.

That "drive" includes Ashley's plans to "make it big" in sports or other broadcasting or advertising by entering USC's renowned Annenberg School of Communications in her sophomore year.

"I'm hoping to be the next Barbara Walters, or someone big in the entertainment or advertising industry," she said. "I went through an anger stage where I kept asking, 'Why me?' but that's over. I don't think about that anymore. I'm getting on with my life and looking for all of the opportunities that are out there for me. I plan to do the best I can."