A naval aviator from the Valley who was once near death is now determined to climb into the cockpit of a fighter jet.
University of Arizona grad Jordan Lo was a week away from his first solo training flight when he and seven other recruits were hit by a drunk driver while crossing a street in Pensacola, Florida.
Jordan was in a coma and near death.
"The doctors were giving my parents options to pull the plug," said Jordan, speaking out from his hospital room in California for the first time since the crash.
Jordan said his mom assembled a prayer group.
"While the prayer group was going on I started moving," said Jordan. Jordan's doctor came running with an unorthodox test.
"He goes, 'Jordan, if you can hear me give me the bird.' And I flipped him off. The doctors was like, 'This guy is good... he's alive,'" said Jordan.
When Jordan first woke up he could barely move his left arm. Now, he can walk. He keeps his Navy flight suit hung in his hospital room as a constant reminder of what he's fighting for. On the suit is a patch with the callsign given to him by his buddies from flight school - "Phoenix."
"I'm just laying in my hospital bed laughing, like, oh my gosh, you guys are so creative. You're going to call me Phoenix because I'm from Phoenix? And they said, 'No, no, no. Because you're going to rise from the ashes.'"
He hopes someday in the not so distant future he'll rise into the clouds at the controls of an F-18 Super Hornet fighter jet.
"I'm the kind of guy if I start something I'm going to finish it."
