Alex Otte knows all too well the dangers of driving − and especially boating − while intoxicated.
And she learned that lesson long before she was old enough to take a sip of liquor.
Now 27, Otte, who has served as national president of MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) and worked with the National Association of State Boating Law Administrators , is working to raise awareness of boat safety and the dangers of impaired driving, whether on land or on water.
Otte was just 13 on July 2, 2010, when her life changed irrevocably. The teen was on an idling jet ski on a Kentucky lake near her father’s home when an intoxicated boater slammed into her at more than 60 mph. She suffered devastating injuries, including a severed leg from the boat’s propeller, a broken neck and collarbone, a shattered jaw, two shattered femurs and a brain injury.
Her parents, who were nearby with her brothers preparing to bring their own boat home, were told to say goodbye, perhaps forever, to their gravely injured daughter as she was loaded onto a medical helicopter. She was in a coma for a week; months and years of surgeries, physical therapy, chronic pain and emotional anguish followed.