ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – In March 2020 Analesa Maldonado’s life changed forever when she was just 17 years old.

“The second I looked up into my rearview mirror to see what was going on, I was hit just like that,” said Maldonado. 

She was getting onto the highway near Coors when a drunk driver sped up behind her and hit the back of her car.

“When he hit me, I just continued to go straight rather than curve and stay on the road, and he just pushed me right off the on ramp into the embankment on the freeway. Car rolled. I was ejected from the driver’s side window. That’s how I ended up with my spinal cord injury,” Maldonado said. 

Maldonado says she was awake for most of the accident. 

“It was awful. I was choking on my own blood,” aid Maldonado. “I was screaming, not necessarily due to pain, because I couldn’t feel anything because of my back, but it was more of a trying to keep myself awake.”

In the ambulance, she overheard how long it would take to get to the hospital.

“The only thought that came into my head was, I’m not going to make it 10 minutes. And so I kind of stopped screaming to keep myself awake, and I just like, it’s up to you guys at this point to get me there,” Maldonado said. 

Maldonado says the doctor described her injury as being split in half.

“I kind of understood what to expect as far as the physical side of it and the medical side of it, but it’s the lifestyle part that I had to really adjust to,” said Maldonado.

Maldonado had been dancing since she was 2 years old. Then, about a year and a half before the crash, she began teaching.

“When I got out of the hospital, all of them were like, ‘So when are you gonna start teaching again? And I’m like, ‘Do you guys realize I can’t dance, I can’t stand, I can’t do any of that?’ Their comment to me was, ‘You used to just sit there and yell at us anyway,’” Maldonado said. 

Now Maldonado owns her own dance studio and continues to teach. But it’s not just dance, she’s also teaching about the dangers of drinking and driving.

“I’m not trying to make you pity me, you know? But I want you to imagine, what if I was your sister? What if I was your wife? What if I was your mom?” said Maldonado. 

When Maldonado found out about the DWI Deception scandal, she was disappointed, especially because she’s talked to several officers about what happened to her.

“You see something like this, and it’s like, do people really care or not? Are they just saying these things to you know, because they have to, that’s what you expect them to say. But they really don’t care, so it’s like, I don’t know what to think anymore,” Maldonado said. 

Maldonado does say she has hope that there are good police officers and that those who took bribes will be held accountable.

As she continues to speak up for DWI crash survivors and share her story, she hopes people will realize just how common these crashes are.