The note wasn’t terribly long. One-hundred forty-eight words to be exact. But on that day, in that moment, it was precisely what Mike Schultz needed to give him hope.
Before that day, the 31-year-old Schultz had never met Jim Wazny. Had never even heard of him. But the two shared something in common that few could ever understand.
In April 2000, Wazny lost most of his left leg after a motocross accident. Eight years later, the same thing happened to Schultz in a gruesome SnoCross accident.
Mike Schultz didn’t just return to snowmobiling. No, he excelled at it even after losing a leg.
When he heard of Schultz’s ordeal, Wazny sat down at his computer, logged onto Schultz’s CaringBridge Web page and typed a message in the guestbook. He said he understood what Schultz was going through. He knew that no words could take away the pain, but he wanted him to know that, in time, things would get better. With the help of family, friends and prosthetic technology, Schultz could walk, run and, if he wanted to, race SnoCross again. At the end of the message, Wazny left his phone number.
"Please give me a call if I can ever help in any way," he wrote.
Mike Schultz needed a prosthetic that could perform on a snowmobile. So he went and designed one.
As the field of snowmobiles raced past and Sara Schultz didn’t see her husband’s No. 5 Ski-Doo, she knew something was wrong. Mike Schultz had grown up racing everything from BMX bikes to snowmobiles and had never been seriously injured. Sure, there had been a few bumps, bruises and breaks — including a fractured clavicle five days before their wedding — but it was never serious. Never was his life in danger.
MIKE SCHULTZ: LIFE IS ABOUT ADAPTING
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