 Click the play button on the video window to the right to see the storyTONOPAH, AZ -- Almost three months after a nearly deadly rollover crash in her SUV, Jennifer Mardick, a West Valley View newspaper carrier, is walking, talking, and enjoying life with her three sons and her husband, Gary.
She still has a red, road-rash scar on her forehead, and a mark on her neck from a breathing tube that had been in place for at least two weeks in June.
Doctors put her in a medically induced coma to help her recover.
She had a punctured lung, nine broken ribs, a broken collarbone, broken vertebrae, pulled shoulder nerves, a broken shoulder bone, and a chipped elbow.
Right now, she cannot completely move her right arm.
Mardick said not sure exactly what kind of head injury she endured, but she says she cannot remember what happened the night of the crash.
"If you don't believe in miracles, you do now," Gary Mardick told ABC15.
He was working out of state when his wife's vehicle drove off the road.
"I honestly don't remember anything," Mardick said. "I only remember what people told me happened."
"Nobody can really say what happened," Mimi Moss, Mardick's sister-in-law, told ABC15.
Mardick's vehicle rolled seven or eight times near 339th Ave & Indian School Road on Mardick's way home to Tonopah from her paper route.
Mardick's family is not sure whether she fell asleep or swerved to avoid an animal, but emergency crews airlifted her to the hospital.
"I flied (sic) in a helicopter," said Jennifer's son, Trey, 8. "I went to the hospital and got shots and got 30 stitches."
Trey was sleeping in the back seat with his two brothers, Chad, 7, and Chase, 3.
"(It was) a little bit scary," said Trey, who explained that his mother wasn't moving when their vehicle came to a rest after the crash.
"I saw her bleeding and stuff," he said.
"The glass in the car was broken," said Chad Mardick. "My mom was laying on the other side of the other door," he added.
"I said, 'Mom'," he said. "And she wouldn't wake up."
Chad said he suffered only minor cuts in the accident, and he immediately started looking for his mother's cell phone after the accident.
When he couldn't find it, he started yelling for help.
Fortunately, somebody found them and summoned emergency workers.
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For eight years, Mardick delivered newspapers for the West Valley View to supplement her family's income.
"She's always been there for whatever anyone needed," said Michele Blain, Mardick's sister-in-law.
Recently, the paper delivery income was her family's only income after her husband was laid off from his job.
But in the weeks prior to the accident, Mardick's husband was offered a job working with her brother in New Mexico, so he traveled out-of-state, and she stayed home with the three kids.
Gary Mardick said he remembers the day when he got the call telling him about his wife's accident.
"I think it's only natural to just think the worst," he said.
"The adrenaline just started going," he said. "The heart starts pounding, and you just start feeling it. You just knew something wasn't good," he said.
Gary Mardick said he last heard from his wife several hours earlier, when she spoke to him on the telephone.
He recalled seeing her for the first time after the crash.
"At first, I just figured she was just sleeping, you know," he said. "She was just unconscious. She was just going to - any minute - just wake up and smile," he explained.
He said doctors told him his wife might not remember him if she were to wake up.
"She's always been strong," he said. "So I never doubted ... but when the doctors come and say, 'Hey, you know, just so you know, when she wakes up she may not remember you,' or ... 'She could have some memory loss,' -- it's just hard to take," he said.
Gary Mardick said he slept by his wife's side and prayed for her recovery, and eventually, she pulled through the physical obstacles.
Moss, who helped watch the children when Jennifer Mardick was in the hospital, said she is thankful for the family's church, Desert Springs Community Church, and wants to give special thanks to friends Sarah Lynch, Pastor Sonmore, and Christopher Yee.
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