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It was close to midnight on April 10, 2002, when Erin O’Brien, an attractive 22 year-old, left a tavern in West Little Rock, hopped into her bright red Saturn, buckled her seatbelt and headed west on Highway 10. During the evening, O’Brien had three glasses of wine, not much by her standards, but the night before she had partied hard on drugs and alcohol.
 Six miles down the highway, O’Brien lost control of her car, careened into a ditch, rolled the car two or three times and landed upside down. The car roof was crushed and so was O’Brien’s spine. She was conscious and in a lot of pain, but from the waist down she felt nothing. She was paralyzed. She could have been dead, but the one thing she did right was fasten her seatbelt.
The first paramedic to reach the scene said, “don’t worry, Erin. We’ll get you out.” And they did, but it took two hours of cutting, while she drifted in and out of consciousness.
Later they found that O’Brien had a blood alcohol content of .216, more than twice the legal limit, and she was later convicted of Driving Under the Influence and heavily fined. Because of the alcohol in her system, doctors were afraid to add painkillers to the mix when she got to the hospital, which meant she would have to suffer excruciating pain unsedated.
It is now six years since the day of the crash, and O’Brien (now Erin Gildner), seated in her wheel chair in a Little Rock restaurant is coming up on six years of continuous sobriety thanks to regular attendance at 12-Step meetings and a sponsor.
Struggling but blessed
“Each day is a constant reminder of the consequences of my actions. I struggle every day with the challenges of life in a wheelchair but feel very blessed that I am alive,” Erin says.
“One of the most rewarding choices I have made is to become involved with the Arkansas Spinal Cord Commission (ASCC). Through them I have been able to share my story in DUI classes. Now it’s my turn to try to teach others about the consequences of using drugs and alcohol.
“My goal is to educate as many people as possible about the consequences of drinking and driving and the importance of wearing your seat belt. I am living proof! ”
“This was my second DUI,” Gildner said. “I got away with the first one [with a $2,000 lawyers fee] when I was drunk on liquid LSD, and I got away with a lot of other stuff, but if you keep doing drugs and alcohol it will eventually get you. Everybody thinks they can beat the system, but they can’t.”
As for her life after the accident, Erin went through several months of hospitalization and rehab, continued her schooling and regularly attended her meetings, which is where she met her husband, Ryan Gildner, in the fall of 2002, six months after the accident.
On February 21, 2004, the Gildners were married at Little Rock’s Trapnall Hall, and she rolled down the aisle in her wheelchair accompanied by her father, Tim O’Brien, also well known in recovery circles.
Today, the Gildners have two little boys, live in a house in Bryant and both have jobs and are close to completing their college educations. In addition to speaking for the Spinal Cord Commission, Erin appears, as time permits, at other gatherings. In April, for example, she spoke in Hot Springs at a Town Hall meeting to prevent underage drinking. Just to set the stage for more of what life is like now, a little background on what it was like before is appropriate.
Gildner was born in Great Britain where her father was stationed in the Navy, but the family soon moved to Arkansas where she grew up. When she was about four her mother and father divorced and her father remarried.
The first drink
At 16, she had her first drink, and it was a big one—a half bottle of vodka followed by a half bottle of Jack Daniels. Soon she was throwing up all over the place nonstop. But she also got a taste of what alcohol could do for her, and within a week she drank again.
As time went on, Gildner added a variety of drugs to her list of addictions including cocaine, ecstasy, marijuana, LSD and a variety of painkillers. She was also on an anti-depressant most of that time.
From the time she was 16 she held a variety of jobs beginning as a receptionist in a hair salon, car wash attendant and waitress and lost all of them one way or another, most of them substance abuse-related.
Then came the accident with its intense physical and emotional pain. The urge to ease her pain with alcohol after the accident proved irresistible, and she began drinking again—on four different occasions. Her last drink was September 29, 2002 and in October Erin met Ryan at the “Barely Legal” 12-Step meeting on Markham.
Ryan, as she found out later, was living at a Chem-free house and working at a local sub shop, and she was immediately attracted to the six-foot-two, 220-pound “former bad boy.” When she asked another girl about him, the girl agreed that he was cute but seemed awfully “rough,” a quality that didn’t turn out to be an obstacle.
By most standards, Ryan was rough. He cussed a lot and had been a heavy drug user, which produced a significant prison record. Ryan, by his own account, spent 20 months in DCC in Texarkana and Pine Bluff and four months on parole. He was arrested in Houston, spent a week in jail, then arrested again about a week later in Mississippi where he served seven months before being transferred to Pulaski County for four months and then Faulkner County for about five months.
Ryan was released to Serenity Park, a Little Rock treatment center before his court date because of overcrowding in 2002. Following Serenity Park, he also spent a short span in jail in 2002 for some past charges but remained sober.
Ryan has a tattoo on his upper right arm, which, under pressure from his mom, he had tried to eradicate. He only half completed the job, much to Erin’s amusement.
Honeymoon
After the wedding, Erin and Ryan spent a night at the Capitol Hotel for their honeymoon and then settled down and made plans to raise a family.
Erin became pregnant, and gave birth to twins, a boy and a girl, who were born 15 weeks premature. Tragically the baby girl died three days later, and the boy, named “Hagen” had several defects, including being blind in one eye. He has had to have special attention, but is doing very well, Erin reports.
About a year later, Erin gave birth to another baby boy, Koen, who is now two and doing well. Both Hagen and Koen go to pre-school.
Erin and Ryan bought a house in Bryant last year and both are concentrating on raising their two boys, working at outside jobs and studying for their degrees.
Erin works at a phone company handling customer service problems and hopes to move up to positions of greater responsibility. Erin is two courses short of getting her BA degree at UALR.
Ryan works as an assistant manager at a West Little Rock restaurant and is taking science related courses at Pulaski Tech, but intends to get his college degree before he is through.
When lunch is over at the restaurant, Erin cheerfully wheels herself out to the parking lot, eases into the driver’s seat of her car, disassembles and pulls her wheel chair in after her and with a cheery wave drives off to meet her husband.
Editor’s note: Will Erin ever walk again? Highly unlikely but not impossible. Her spine was not severed, it was compressed, and she has some feeling in spots below her waist. She is making a difference, and I, for one, am praying for the miracle for this courageous young lady.
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