When Christopher Shields first met Maggie Brooks, he had no idea of the impact she would have on the neurological program that he leads at U of L-or on victims of spinal cord injuries everywhere.

Brooks was a 17-year-old freshman at Springhill College in Mobile, Ala., when she hopped into a car with some friends one January evening in 1993. It was a night that would end in tragedy. Brooks and her friends wound up in an accident and her spinal cord was severely damaged. She was left paralyzed from the neck down.

Her college and life plans disrupted, Brooks came home to Louisville hoping for a miracle.

That's when Shields got involved. With Maggie's family-most of whom are U of L alumni-he set off a sequence of events that would prompt Kentucky and its two major universities, U of L and the University of Kentucky, to take a leading role in spinal cord injury research.

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