Matthew Price went out with his brother in Austin, Texas last December. After a night on the town, Price did the right thing: He called a cab.
Price, then a student enrolled in UF’s one-year professional master’s degree in business administration and a financial analyst at Tropicana Products in Bradenton, was home on vacation for Winter Break. But that night on the freeway, his life changed forever.
While on the way home, the taxi stalled on the freeway in the right-hand lane. A drunk driver didn’t see the car and pummeled the cab.
His brother walked away with few injuries. But Price didn’t.
Not only did he suffer a few broken bones, but the crash also shocked his spinal cord. Now, the 29-year-old is paralyzed from the mid-chest down. He can flex his ab muscles and wiggle his toes, but he cannot use his legs.
“There’s no real way of knowing if my legs will come back,” Price said.
He began to miss his monthly meetings in the business program. A few of his classmates in his cohort of about 65 students began to notice. Price’s friend German Escallon heard about Price’s injuries from another classmate. Escallon, who is currently working on building a nonprofit organization with his brother, decided to rally their classmates to support Price.
“We’re closer than most of the cohorts,” the 29-year-old UF alumnus said. “We really developed something special.”
Escallon heard about Price’s friends sponsoring a golf tournament in his name, but he wanted to do something within the UF community.
He started MBAs for Matt and began a GiveForward page to collect donations for Price’s hospital bills.
Price attends in-patient therapy for about five hours, five days a week for the next month. For the rest of the year, he must undergo about an hour of outpatient therapy five days a week.
The therapy bills add up, and Price has to pay out of pocket. His hospital stay alone was $300,000.
In just two weeks, Escallon raised $6,669 for Price, which surpassed the goal of $5,000.
“We were overwhelmed by the support that we received,” Escallon said.
At the program’s graduation reception held in the Touchdown Terrace April 14, Price was given a signed picture of Novak Djokovic with a personal message from the tennis pro.
“To get a picture that is signed by my favorite tennis player and having him hear my story really meant a lot to me,” Price said.
Contact Colleen Wright at cwright@alligator.org.
