“I grew up in a very dysfunctional family and experienced many different types of abuse through my childhood. I became a teenage bride and mom, only to have the abuse continue.

“After a particularly bad incident I wound up in the hospital and was told by the staff, ‘You make who you are. You give up that power when you allow someone else to identify who that who is. Today you can get on your feet and say, I am somebody. I will define who that person is.’

“I took that to heart. I left my home state of Georgia to come to Texas and start my life over, with me in charge. I went back to school, then on to college while working three jobs and raising my son by myself. It was tough, to say the least, but I made it happen.”

— Christy Graves

Related:

• ‘Failure not an option’ for first female EMS director

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“I was doing my EMT clinical training with the City of Baytown, and we were at the ambulance center. It was a calm Sunday when we got a call about a rollover accident. It was a possible fatality. When we arrived at the scene, we saw that the body had been ejected about 40 feet from the vehicle. There were a lot of people gathered, and I noticed my brother-in-law and several others I recognized since I was raised in the city. It turned out that the victim was my sister.

“She had a fractured knee, she broke her back and she had a pretty bad skull fracture. I told my paramedic, ‘That’s my sister.’ He’s like, ‘I don’t think she’s going to make it. They called Life Flight, and they’re on the way.’ We met them at Hermann Hospital, and they let me be in the surgery room with her.

“Thanks to God, she survived. As she was recovering, I acted as her nurse. She tells me to this day, ‘You were my angel that day. If it wasn’t for you, I don’t think I would have lived. I knew you were there, so I knew you were going to take care of me.’

“This was in 1999. I was a student at the time. But after that, with all the tragedies I had seen, I decided I did not want to become a doctor. So I became an engineer instead. But I still teach CPR, first aid and AED (automated external defibrillator) on the side. I guess I still have it in me. I love to help people. I feel like if I can help at least one person, then it makes me a better person.”

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