MILWAUKEE — 22-year-old Chloe Handrich is advocating for change after a crash this summer changed her life forever.
It was supposed to be one of the best nights of her life. On July 20th, Handrich was out celebrating her recent graduation from UW-La Crosse. A party with friends and family during the day turned into a night of celebrating in downtown Milwaukee.
Handrich and her friend Samantha Zganjar were crossing Water Street when a driver crashed through wooden barricades and hit them.
“The driver sped through a police barricade and plowed through us both. I rode on top of the hood and then was thrown 25 feet,” Handrich explained.
The recent college grad doesn’t remember the crash due to her concussion, but she’ll always remember how she felt upon waking up in Froedtert Hospital.
“One thing I will never forget is just that unbelievable pain that I was in. It wasn’t like, oh, my leg hurts. It was just like my entire being in that moment was just pain,” she explained during an interview on Wisconsin’s Midday News.
Handrich spent two weeks in the hospital, had seven blood transfusions, and two surgeries. She now has five screws keeping her pelvis together.
“And in my leg, I have screws and plates, and a donor cadaver bone because my tibia was shattered beyond repair.”
Nearly three months later, Handrich still needs help walking. Her family pushed her wheelchair into the WTMJ studio on Monday so she could join Wisconsin’s Midday News. With great care and a little help from a walker, Handrich was able to move from her wheelchair into the studio seat.
“I’m working really hard with my physical therapy team to get back to where I was as a 22-year-old girl, but I still live with a lot of pain. This whole roller coaster of a ride has been some good days, and some really bad days with pain.”
Handrich will eventually get back on her feet, but her healing journey is far from over.
“Emotionally, I’ve had a lot of trauma in the past couple of months. That’s something I’ll be working through for a long time because those mental scars are really difficult to try to work my way through.”
In the meantime, she wants to see changes in the city of Milwaukee.
“I think one of the main things is victim and survivor communication. After the crash, I had no one reach out to me, no one from the police department, no one from the city. I was really left with so many questions,” Handrich told Wisconsin’s Midday News.
She said she initially had no idea what happened to the driver and whether police had arrested the woman.
“That made it really difficult to try to find closure within,” Handrich said.
The Milwaukee Police Department did not arrest the driver. They did, however, issue citations. The woman received tickets for failing to yield, a registration violation, and driving without insurance. No criminal charges have been filed in the case.
Handrich also wants traffic patterns changed when roads are blocked. While Water Street was barricaded at State Street the night of the crash, surveillance video shows the traffic light was green when the driver went through the barricades.
“I also want them to have better, stronger barricades so pedestrians feel safe. And I also would push for OWI field sobriety standards to be increased.”
While Handrich continues to heal, she also hopes for closure and believes advocating for change may lead to that.
“So that no one has to go through what I went through, because this has without a doubt been the hardest time in my life and has been such an extreme challenge,” she said.
Since the driver involved in the crash wasn’t insured, Handrich and her family are paying for the mounting medical bills. You can make a donation to her GoFundMe page here.
