“It brings back good memories,” smiles Jovanna Calzadillas. She’s sitting side by side her husband, Frank. ABC15 sitting down with the couple inside their movie lounge filled with their favorite things.
"We built this room, the Pirates of the Caribbean room and it's wonderful. It's my safe haven,” says Jovanna.
There’s plenty of yellow and black, pirate posters, guitars, and an enclosed cowboy boot. The Valley family of four chooses to be around joy after a nightmare.
"You're sitting there and one minute you're listening to music and the next, you know, you're helpless,” says Jovanna.
Five years ago, the couple of 19 years attended the Route 91 Music Festival in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Frank recalls the night, “You could feel the bullets just passing by whizzing by you and you're watching people just drop left and right.”
October 1, 2017 marked the worst mass shooting in U.S. history. A shooter opened fire on the festival crowd 400 feet below. Jovanna thought it was fireworks.
Jovanna was shot in the head. Frank ran and carried her 3,000 steps to get his wife and mother of his children to safety.
"You have her blood, essentially her brains too all over me that was just something that it's just the smell and everything. It's never been you never get it out of your head,” Frank remembers.
ABC15 Reporter Christine Stanwood asks Frank Calzadillas what kept him moving. He replied, "Honestly, being straight from deployment." Jovanna agrees, "He was still in combat mode."
Frank says, "I knew I still had to keep moving over those people and get her where she needed to be. And luckily, she was the first one to the hospital.”
Frank later learned the radio code for his wife was for a dead body. Hospital staff told Frank there was a strong chance Jovanna wouldn’t survive.
"It was hard to make that decision, not just as a father, but just as a human being even,” says Frank. “How are you going to put somebody through that kind of pain? But she moved through it.” "I’m tough," Jovanna smiles at Frank. “Of course,” he replies with a smirk.
Dr. Christina Kwasnica, Medical Director for Neurorehabilitation at Barrow Neurological Institute talks about her patient, “When I first saw [Jovanna], she couldn’t understand language. She couldn’t follow any commands; she couldn’t make any language and then she couldn’t move the right side of her body.”
“We have to remember the statistics,” says Kwasnica. “50% of people with gunshot wounds to the head, do not survive. Of the 50% that survive, the vast majority have significant long-term impairments.”
Dr. Kwasnica says, “To see her kind of go past all that and to be living a fulfilling life, is just phenomenal.”
Through the five years following the shooting, Jovanna has relearned to walk and talk and do day-to-day tasks with the help of her rehab team.
“The reality is, without the work the miracle doesn’t happen,” says Dr. Kwasnica.
Jovanna tells ABC15 she will continue to fight every day for her family. Her next goal is to walk without a cane.
“It's amazing,” Jovanna smiles in disbelief. “I can't explain how amazing it is like it's like non believable.”
"You can overcome anything. I want to show them that,” she concludes.
