Sean C. Morgan
As a seventh-grader at Sweet Home Junior High, Sadi Riggs was on the fast track to big things.
A talented athlete, she was considered by many to be another in a succession of dominating Sweet Home softball pitchers.
She was a cheerleader and volleyball player, following in the footsteps of her older sister Bayli, also an accomplished athlete and softball pitcher.
“I loved to cheer,” Sadi said. “I could do the splits. I would do cartwheels.”
She had just learned some big tumbling moves when she was struck by a mysterious illness late in the seventh grade.
In April 2010 she went to the doctor with a headache and, after being given some medication, returned home, where she suffered a seizure. Doctors at Doernbecher Children’s Hospital put her in a medically induced coma for several days while they tried to figure out what was wrong. They never really did, other than to determine it was encephalitis, an acute inflammation of the brain. The cause has remained a mystery.
“The seizures caused damage to her fine motor movement,” said Sadi’s mother Debi Riggs. “When she first came home, her entire left side was non-functioning.”
At the time, one other girl fell ill with symptoms, but the long-term effects of her illness were not as far-reaching. Was it coincidence? Had the girls been exposed to something at school? No one knows.
Sadi, meanwhile, has been left paralyzed on her left side and blind.
This Friday, now 18, she will graduate with the Class of 2015, after making the most of her opportunities under difficult circumstances that would have stopped many in their tracks.
In addition to the physical adversity she’s experienced, her condition has also cost her friendships.
But she will finish her high school career having performed for four years in choir and, as a senior, on the cheerleading squad.
Her disability didn’t really affect her memory or ability to think, Sadi said. Her mind races along constantly, and she mostly gets As and Bs in school.
She plans to become a counselor and specialize in helping children.
After her month-and-a-half stay at Doernbecher, 17 days in intensive care, Sadi was moved to Randall Children’s Hospital at Legacy Emanuel Hospital in Portland to recover. There, her blindness developed. She began seeing a colorful ball off to the side of her eye.
“Once in awhile I’ll see it still,” Sadi said.
She has cortical blindness, usually the result of improper communication between the eyes and the brain. In Sadi’s case, she does not just see pure black.
“I see multiple colors,” she said. “On the bottom of my eye, you’re in yellow, and either circles are on your shirt or squares.”
She can make out movement.
With the loss of her vision, she returned to Doernbecher for another month.
Today, her blindness remains, but she can keep practicing trying to see.
Her eyes are not damaged, Debi said. While it may never happen, they hope that one day, she’ll be able to see again.
Walking and regaining fine motor skills are other goals.
Originally unable to walk at all, Sadi has spent most of the intervening years in a wheelchair, but she’s been using a walker and making steady progress.
Growing up without eyesight is different from growing up with eyesight and then losing it, Debi said, so education has been a transition for her.
“I loved junior high,” Sadi said, though she missed most of the eighth grade.
She returned to school about three-quarters of the way through the year, Debi said. “Her freshman year, she started Day One.”
“I didn’t want to go to freshman year,” Sadi said. “I didn’t want to be in a wheelchair. It was different. It just didn’t feel good. I told myself, just go through it, and it’ll be fine.”
She joined the choir and participated in drama. She was a member of the May Court this year. She has a 3.65 GPA.
By her senior year, Sadi joined the cheer team. She had hoped to do that her freshman year, but Debi said she didn’t think the family could handle the obstacles at the time.
Help has come from a variety of sources, the Riggses said.
Alex Weikel has been a good family friend for a long time. She helps Sadi through the school day, and Weikel has had to learn right along with Sadi at times, especially in math, so she can help Sadi.
“It’s hard,” Sadi said. “I’m really good at Spanish. I just have to take it slow.”
When she has to write, Alex helps her. She also has used dictation software, although it doesn’t always work well.
“It’s really easy to get As and Bs if I just do it,” Sadi said. “My motto is just get the stuff done. Write it all down, get it down and turn it in. If you listen to it, you get the paper and you learn it, then you don’t have to worry about it at home.”
Sadi works in the attendance office, and she plans to return and continue that next year. She loves working with Peggy Rolph, bringing her coffee and chatting with her. Working in that office, she is able to get socialization at school.
“I think it’s such a great fit for her because she’s friendly,” Rolph said. “It fits her personality because she’s really verbal, and she treats everybody the same. She’s not able to see any differences in people.”
Sadi is really professional.
Rolph said it’s been good to see Sadi go from “being the girl in the wheelchair to Sadi, the girl that works in the attendance office.”
That’s helped her make those acquaintances that have eluded her with the other students, Rolph said. They’re able to communicate with her and get to know her.
“She has a really sunny outlook,” Rolph said. “I’ve seen her come in really down only a time or two, but she has a way of talking herself out of it.”
Rolph has known Sadi since she was 4 years old in day care, and she has always been that way.
“She’s very bright, very warm,” Rolph said. “It’s just a gift she has.
“I think we’re going to read a lot about Sadi in a few years,” Peggy said. With modern technology, “in this day and age, I don’t think there’s anything that’s going to be able to stop Sadi. She is a great assistant. It’s been awesome having her.”
Sadi worked in the attendance office the third trimester, and she’ll return next year while taking some post-high school courses through the high school.
She also works at Wiley Creek Community, in the assisted living facility, Sadi said. “I usually go talk with the residents. I play ball with them. I call bingo. I just help out.”
The Wiley Creek activities started as a paid position through a program to employ the blind, but she has continued as a volunteer since the funding ran out.
The most difficult part of her disabilities, she said, is not the actually physical disabilities.
Though she has “a couple of friends,” there are many with whom she was once friendly, who just pass her in the hallways, Sadi.
“They don’t say anything, and that bothers me.”
That’s largely because people don’t know what to say or what to do when they talk to someone like Sadi, Debi said. “She basically wants to scream to them all, ‘I’m still Sadi.’”
Still, her condition has had a positive impact on the school in terms of awareness.
“She opened a lot of eyes to accessibility,” Debi said. “There wasn’t one automatic door in the school.”
Today, there are three, although the buttons are often broken by other students kicking the buttons, Sadi said.
The key to success in high school, Sadi said, is “getting your work done. After your work is done, go hang out with your friends. Make sure you’re smiling and having fun.”
At home, Sadi enjoys movies, Debi said. She can recall the tiniest details. She also travels to Salem twice a week for physical therapy, although that will end soon with the addition of a swim spa to their home, large enough for her to swim and practice walking.
On Tuesdays, she has singing lessons, Sadi said. “I love to sing.”
And she loves watching “The Voice.”
“When I was a little girl, I was watching “American Idol,” and I wanted to sing like that,” Sadi said, and she got her chance.
The Make A Wish Foundation granted her wish to record an album. She went to the Red Bull Studio and recorded her own CD, recording among the songs covers of “Roar” by Katy Perry, “The House That Built Me” by Miranda Lambert, “The Climb” by Miley Cyrus and “Two Black Candles” by Carrie Underwood.
“I could write a song if I wanted to,” Sadi said. “But I just chose a lot of songs.”
She traveled by limo and went shopping for clothes with Dia Frampton, the runner-up from Team Blake in the first season of “The Voice.”
Yes, she wants to audition for “The Voice,” Debi said. “She drives me crazy wanting to.”
While Sadi has stayed busy with singing, school and sports, her family has supported her from the moment she fell ill. Her mother spent every day with her in the hospital, and they always had people around.
When she returned home Sadi found another supporter when the family dog, a Chihuahua named Chiquita, attached herself to Sadi.
“She’s been stuck to her like glue,” Debi said. “It’s been one those thing; she just obviously knew.”
“She’s like a guardian angel, Sadi said. “She’ll go everywhere with me on my lap.”
The family had to remodel and revamp their home to accommodate Sadi. They were able to get a wheelchair van, which is used by cousin Ashley Hand to take Sadi to school.
In spite of everything, she lives a fairly normal life, from family vacations to dating.
“That didn’t happen easy,” Debi said.
Her condition has been tough on the family, Sadi said.
“It was tough on Mom.”
Despite the obstacles, they’ve had good times. The family has been to Disneyland together and, Sadi, said, they’re planning a trip to Hawaii next.
“There’s not much we haven’t done,” Debi said.
Like many of her peers, Sadi thinks about attending college. She knows what she wants to do because for every way her life is like any other high school student’s, she faces unique obstacles that give her a unique perspective that she believes can provide useful insight to others.
“I’m planning on being a counselor,” she said. “I like helping people, helping them smile.”
She loves helping people through a bad day, she said. “My mother always says I do a great job helping people with their problems.”
When she was at the hospital, she saw children who were there alone, some part of the time, some of them all of the time. She was never alone, and it made her heart go out to those other children.
Sadi hopes to visit Doernbecher to see children like that, to take them a teddy bear and talk to them, to show them someone cares.
“Everybody who has sickness, I hope they get better and get through the day as good as they can because it’s very hard, but it’ll be OK,” she said.
She knows what she’s talking about.
“It was amazing to actually be alive because the doctors said I might not be here,” Sadi said. “I’m glad I’m here.”