COLUMBIA, S.C. -- JJ Haselbarth doesn’t remember the accident.

He remembers the sound of the jaws of life cutting through the driver’s side door of his wrecked car. He remembers the EMTs injecting him with drugs to numb the pain. He remembers the surgeon promising to “get you fixed up,” the last thing he can recall before waking up in his hospital bed two days later.

But his mother, Donna Haselbarth, remembers the most harrowing detail the Lexington, South Carolina, teenager shared about the experience.

“By the time the car was still again,” she said, “JJ was looking at his leg sitting in front of him on the dashboard.”

JJ was driving on Rawl Road on Feb. 20, heading to work at Zaxby’s, when his car spun out and collided with a guardrail. The force of the collision drove the guardrail through the car, severed JJ’s right leg and severely damaging his left.

The senior at Lexington High School has had 10 surgeries in the month since, first to keep him alive and then to save his remaining leg.

JJ was scheduled to head home for the first time last week, and try to get a radically changed life back on track. His family has been there for him all through the process, as well as another amputee who has helped him see what he can still do and enjoy without one of his legs.

‘Make me walk again’

JJ has had weeks in the hospital to contemplate the life-changing event he can barely remember. But it’s something the young man has processed matter-of-factly.

“I’ve been driving for two years with no problems, and then one random day, I wake up and my leg’s off,” the 18-year-old said.

His mother said she was watching her son on a location tracking app on her phone and noticed his car had stopped on his way to work.

“I’m not really familiar with Rawl Road,” she said. “I just thought maybe he stopped at a park with his girlfriend, or by a pond, and they’re just talking.”

She only knew something had happened when the father of a passenger, who walked away unscathed, called to let her know there had been an accident. She and her husband raced to the scene, but the road had been blocked off and JJ had been transported to Prisma Richland Hospital.

The family has since spoken to several people who witnessed the accident, but they have not been able to find a man in a white truck who stopped to talk to JJ and help right after the wreck.

“He went and he sat with my son and tried his best to calm him down while the ambulances came, but he had to leave to pick up his daughter at a nearby school,” Donna Haselbarth said. “We’re desperately trying to find him.”

JJ survived the initial surgeries that stabilized his remaining leg and began the process of reconstructing the other one. For a month, his world has shrunk down to his hospital room, where he’s spent his time outside of the operating room upping his Minecraft score on the Xbox his parents brought from home. Dad John Haselbarth said he’s sat next to his son’s bed every day since the accident. His wife’s been there all but two.

As painful as the process has been for JJ, his father said, “the parents go through all of that and also everything on the outside that he doesn’t even see.”

“We’ve had so many people calling us, wishing us luck. If it wasn’t for our good friends I don’t know where we’d be. They’ve been phenomenal.”

Those working with JJ through the whole process have been impressed by his resilience.

“He has a team of four psychiatrists,” Donna Haselbarth said. “They asked him what his mental state was between a 1 and a 10. He said an 8. And they said, ‘Well, that’s really good. What can we do to get it to be a 10?’ He said, ‘Make me walk again.’”

‘You can still do whatever you want’

The strange thing about the accident is that it’s led JJ to meet new people, including Carson Galloway.

The 19-year-old Galloway lost his own leg in a motorcycle accident a couple years ago. He remembers what it feels like, and wanted to be able to share his experience with other amputees, to show them they still have a life waiting for them afterwards.

He’s gotten comfortable enough with his prosthetic leg that he can still live an active lifestyle.

“I love playing pickleball, I play basketball,” Galloway said. “It holds you back a bit, but you can still do whatever you want.”

Galloway said a big part of his own recovery was speaking with his own mentor, another amputee named Kaden Bagley, who shared how his own life has gone since losing a leg.

“I was doubtful,” Galloway said of first meeting Bagley, “but he shared a lot, and after meeting him, I’ve seen the things he has done, and that gave me so much hope.”

So Galloway jumped at the opportunity when the hospital asked him to speak to JJ. He and JJ have kept in touch through text since Galloway’s visit, and JJ said he’s found comfort in hearing from someone in the same situation. He plans to be there when a 5K is held in Bagley’s honor in May.

Others in the community have rallied around JJ. The Zaxby’s where he worked on Highway 378 held a fundraiser for him, and a GoFundMe page has raised more than $5,000 to help cover his medical costs.

JJ says he plans to walk at his graduation this spring, on crutches if necessary. When they visited him at Prisma Richland Hospital, JJ invited several of the firefighters who saved his life to attend.

“It’s great that they were able to see me now,” he said. “I’m obviously doing better than the last time they saw me.”

He plans to go back to work at Zaxby’s, where the restaurant is holding open his job as a manager. He’s also nearly completed his certification as an auto technician, which he hopes will get him a job at an auto dealership.

But mainly, he said, “I’m just looking forward to walking again.”

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