Accident changes student’s life

In the world of frat parties, formals and barhopping, it is easy for college students to disregard the consequences of their own actions; however, Eiseley Morgan Tauginas’ story is a painful reminder that nobody is invincible.

Before moving into Shuttles residence hall, Tauginas, 19, had a promising modeling career doing ads for Abercrombie and Fitch, Glamour, Cosmopolitan and many other magazines. She planned to continue her modeling while attending SMU.

“I had a great teenage life,” she said. “There was always something going on and everyone was so supportive of my job.”

Things drastically changed on a humid Florida night two years ago for Tauginas, who like many other college students, thought “nothing could ever get in the way of my plans.”

Tauginas and eight of her best friends eagerly went out to a karaoke bar one last time before they left for college, never expecting that the night’s festivities would put Tauginas in the hospital, instead of on a plane to Dallas.

They celebrated her planned departure for SMU as they sang and danced the night away. Drinks were poured and everyone was enjoying their lives as teenagers. It was a perfect ending to their summer before college — until it came time to leave.

“The last thing I remember was singing ‘Like a Prayer’ with my best friend,” Tauginas said.

She was not aware of the next choice she was about to make; it was one that would not only hold her back a year from college, but one that would dramatically change her life of traveling around the world, modeling every summer in New York City.

“I got into the car with three friends. The driver was drunk,” she said. “We were on our way to a friend’s house when the car hit a telephone pole.”

Doctors assumed that her head broke through the back passenger window and the pole slammed into the right side of her face, according to Tauginas.

The next two weeks began what Tauginas describes as “the worst nightmare” she’s ever had.

Tauginas suffered 15 fractures to her face, a basal-skull fracture and double vision in her right eye. Her broken jaw was wired shut for more than two months. The injuries stopped after her face, and it is because of this that the former model calls the accident “sickly ironic.”

After being released from intensive care, Tauginas went home to begin a long road of recovery and realization.

“It was miserable at first. I couldn’t leave the house, I couldn’t see, I couldn’t do anything on my own,” she said. “It was like being a kid again.”

Tauginas’ mother, Ali Jamison, was impressed by the strength with which her daughter dealt with four intensive surgeries, three facial procedures and an unbearable amount of stress.

“Eiseley was very positive,” Jamison said. “Before each surgery, she would always say that it was going to get better.”

And it did. Under loving care of her grandmother, mother and younger brother, Tauginas found optimism in the desperate situation.

“I prayed that everything would get better, and I became very thankful for each day in the past,” she said.

Now, Tauginas is publicly discussing her story. She was recently on “Larry King Live,” and she wrote a memoir in the March issue of Marie Claire to remind people that anything can happen. “College students drink and drive because they always think they can get away with it just that one time,” she said. “But it only takes that one time to ruin your life.”

Tauginas was only five minutes from her intended destination when the accident happened — proving that no matter how near you are to your destination, anything is possible.

Her friend Jenny Hutchinson agrees. “SMU is such a bubble,” Hutchinson said. “Eiseley’s story is a reality check for some people who never consider the consequences of drinking and driving.”

With a refreshed outlook on life and a true sense of thankfulness, Tauginas lives each day with passion and reflects on the lessons she’s learned from the accident. She always dissuades her friends from drinking and driving with her firsthand witness to the damage it does to friendships.

“If I hurt my friends in an accident like that, I would never be able to forgive myself.”