Articles of Interest Re: ALSTAR Motorcycle Charity Ride

Hepburn found herself lying alone in a ditch. She sat up, looked down at her leg, and saw her bone sticking out of her thigh. "I wasn't in pain," she said. "I just tried to
stay calm and kept telling my dad that I loved him." Hepburn and her father were both airlifted to Victoria Hospital in London. Hepburn's left leg was amputated at the
thigh and her father's was amputated just under the kneecap. "The first memory I have is waking up from surgery and before I even sat up, I knew my leg was gone,"
she said. "I never really went through the shock of realizing my leg was gone. I am young and can still choose a lifestyle that adapts to only having one leg, but I was
worried about what would happen to my dad." Hepburn stayed in the London hospital for three weeks and was then transferred to a hospital closer to home. She went
ten months in physiotherapy learning to walk on a prosthetic leg before returning to university in May 2004 and the life she had temporarily put on hold after the
crash. Now Hepburn walks to class on her prosthetic leg with the help of a cane. "I am still self-conscious about it and try not to use a wheelchair outside the house,"
she said. Except, of course, on the basketball court. Hepburn joined the Burlington Vipers wheelchair basketball team in September and is still learning the techniques
of the game. "It's a lot different than regular basketball because you need upper body strength to shoot and get down the court," she said. "I am used to playing all
these sports where my legs were the power." Chris Chandler, her coach, said she is till a rookie, but a rookie with "great potential." "It's very competitive and she is
doing well for being a rookie," Chandler said. "It helps that she was athletic and played basketball before the accident."

Hepburn squeezes basketball practice in between her human kinetics courses and her work as a trainer with the university's varsity rugby and volleyball teams.

She had always wanted to be a physiotherapist before the accident, but her outlook on life has changed. "The accident has opened my eyes to the opportunities out
there," she said. "I now want to work with athletes with disabilities." As wrote in the Guelph Mercury on April 7, 2005 by Deirdre Healey

Less than two years have passed since Mitzi Hepburn was left lying on the side of the road crying out for her father.

She and her father were riding on a motorcycle when a car sideswiped them, crushing both their left legs and throwing them more
than 30 metres.

"All I saw were headlights coming at me and the next thing I remember is lying on the road," the 21 year-old University of Guelph
student said. "I started yelling for my dad and he was yelling for me. We were in ditches on opposite sides of the road. He
dragged himself across the road and lied next to me."

Hepburn and her father Brent both lost their left legs in the gruesome hit-and-run crash. Before her leg was amputated, Hepburn
was a focused and competitive athlete. She ran track, figure skated and played centre on her high school basketball team. Now
with one leg, she is still a centre on the basketball court, competing at the national level. The only difference is she's in a
wheelchair. Hepburn is a member of the Burlington Vipers wheelchair basketball team. The team is one of six from across Canada
competing in a national wheelchair basketball tournament in Waterloo this weekend. "She is a inspirational women," said Barry
Wheeler, Hepburn's adviser at the university's centre for students with disabilities. "She went on after the accident without
skipping a beat. She is a role model for students who acquire some sort of disability while in school."

Hepburn has done her best to return to a life similar to the one she had before she lost her leg, but admits a large part of who she
was changed forever in that split second when her father's motorcycle was hit. The pair was driving back from Collingwood to
their home in Wiarton on July 14, 2003 when Hepburn's father spotted a car drifting across the road towards their lane. He tried
to move on to the shoulder and get out of the way, but it was too late.