Title:
No Finish Line: IndyCar Champion Sam Schmidt on Life After Paralysis

Subtitle:
After a 180-mph crash left him quadriplegic, Sam Schmidt rebuilt his life through rehabilitation, adaptive technology, advocacy, and a purpose bigger than racing.

Transcript:

Alycia Anderson: Welcome to Pushing Forward with Alycia, a podcast that gives disability a voice. Each week, we will explore topics like confidence, ambition, resilience, and finding success against all odds. We are creating a collective community that believes that all things are possible for all people. Open hearts, clear paths, let’s go.

Welcome back to Pushing Forward with Alycia. I’m Alycia Anderson. Today, we have a former IndyCar driver and champion, yep, I said champion. Sam Schmidt was once chasing checkered flags all over the race course, and today he’s helping others chase recovery, possibility, and a life with no finish line. He is a champion, team owner, entrepreneur, husband, father, grandfather, and he moves through life racing, reinventing it, recovery, technology, family, purpose, all of those things sewn into his life today. And after earning his first IndyCar victory in 1999, congratulations, we were just talking about how it’s not every day you meet an IndyCar champion his life was changed after he had an accident and became a quadriplegic.

We wanna hear your entire story, Sam. After that, he founded Sam Schmidt Motorsports, one of the most successful teams in Indy Lights history, and he later founded Driven, an organization that’s supporting spinal cord injury research, rehabilitation, advocacy, neuro recovery centers across Phoenix, Las Vegas, and Indianapolis.

And now he’s got a new book, No Finish Line, that he wrote recently. We wanna hear all about your new book and your life story, Sam. Welcome to the show.

Sam Schmidt: I don’t think we have enough time for that, but we can do the abbreviated version. How’s that?

Alycia Anderson: I like it. We’ll see how much we can squeeze in. It’s so nice to meet you. We’ve been trying to get together over the last several weeks, and I have thoroughly enjoyed diving into your story and really learning about it. It’s absolutely incredible how much you’ve accomplished in your life, so congratulations on that. I would love to start, if it’s okay with you, before injury, before the crash, before Driven, before the foundation, all the things that you’ve created before the book and learn about who Sam was at the starting line of life when you were chasing all of these dreams.

Sam Schmidt: Bottom line is I thought I was having a normal childhood, but it turns out I wasn’t ’cause my dad was a racer. And so I think you migrate towards what your parents do, et cetera, usually. And yeah, he put me… I didn’t even have a bike with training wheels. When I was five for Christmas, I got a 50cc motorcycle.

Immediately got on that. My dad was racing off-road in Mexico in the desert. And so every weekend we were either I was racing or he was racing, and every night after school we were working on the cars and working on the bikes. So that was our normal at the time. Didn’t know that was not what everybody does, but so that’s where I grew up.

And I grew up in Southern California, where racing was pretty hot and heavy. And my hero became a guy from Bakersfield, California who started in desert, raced motorcycles, eventually raced Super Bs, got picked up by Roger Penske and won four Indy 500s. So his name was Rick Mears. And from a very young age, that was my North Star is I wanna be the next Rick Mears.

And but racing’s expensive. My last name wasn’t Unser or Foyt or Andretti or some recognized name, so I had to go out and find the money and do all the work, and I think it made me appreciate it more when we finally got there. But yeah, so that’s how it all started.

Alycia Anderson: In 1999, let’s take us back to that moment because I can only imagine what a thrill that must be for you to have earned this IndyCar victory, such a massive accomplishment. I can’t even imagine. It gotta be a very small percentage of people around the world that have that title. Can you take us back to the moment that you accomplished this thing that you dreamed about when you were little?

Sam Schmidt: Yeah, I equate it to, somebody going for a gold medal their whole life. You- this is the amount of preparation and perseverance and, it’s what you do, and it’s what you live for. That was my dream. I had worked, pretty much my whole life to get to that point, and it was my third season of IndyCar racing.

I was finally with a professional team that had a proper budget. We had the money to do it right. All of the, all the stars aligned. And then on the personal side, I’d been married seven years. I had a two-and-a-half-year-old, a six-month-old, thinking I’m living life right and doing the right things.

And everything, the stars were all aligned. And there were a couple times earlier in the season that we were leading races, and for one reason or another, it just didn’t happen. So Vegas, which was my adopted hometown was pretty big. It was the second race from the end of the season.

And sat on the pole position and led a lot of the race. And then about 30 laps from the end was our last pit stop. I saw the car in the pits, and so I’m like, “Oh God, did I screw it up again,” right? And but no, we fought back, and I think we came back out in fourth position. And so in the last 30 laps, we passed everybody, won the race with three laps to go.

Everybody went crazy because I had a lot of, local support, and it was one hell of a party. So that’s you’re just looking at my life’s dream has been accomplished. I finally figured out how to win a race I’m going to be, one of the people in the mix for the championship next year.

So that’s the way you’re thinking your whole off-season. The first test where everybody goes, kinda see where everybody’s at speed-wise, is in January in Florida. Good weather all the competitors there, and I showed up for testing, and second day backed into the wall, and that’s, kinda where the, life gets upended overnight as as it happens for any of this situation.

And what do you do? High-level quadriplegic on a ventilator. Luckily I don’t remember any of that. Mine was a situation where I backed into the wall 180 miles an hour, like 60 Gs, shattered my neck, and luckily the right staff was there, got me out of the car, got me resuscitated, got me in a helicopter to the level one trauma there in Orlando, and yeah, the rest is a rather, typical story for a heavy spinal cord injury.

Although I had other complications, but still, I was out of it, for the better part of the first week. They fused… I don’t even have a C4. they had to fuse from like C3 to C5, and I was on a ventilator and typical neurosurgeon with no bedside manner my wife gets on a red-eye with our six-month-old and flies to Florida, shows up at 6:00 AM, walks in, and all he does is say he was lucky to make it through the night.

If he makes it the week just find him a nursing home. He’ll be on a vent the rest of his life, which we won’t expect to be very long because of the ventilator.” So that’s when my family, who had already faced a lot of adversity in my life just said, “Nope, that’s not the prognosis.” They, it’s 2000, there’s not a lot of things on the internet yet, so they just started making phone calls.

Shepherd, Kessler, Craig all the usual suspects. And pretty much to a T though, when they heard I was on a ventilator, heard the severity, they’re all like, “Ugh. Bring him here and we’ll li- we’ll teach you how to live with a ventilator, but that’s all we can hope for.” Not what my wife and parents wanted to hear.

Finally they found Dr. John McDonald, St. Louis, Missouri, at the time working at Barnes-Jewish Hospital, doing a lot of research, and he was focusing heavily on rehabilitation and the infancy of activity-based training. Hardcore workouts. And he was working with Christopher Reeve’s organization at the time.

And so he had developed this kind of, workout routine, and he told my wife and my parents ” Listen, get him here. We’re gonna work his ass off to get him off the ventilator. And if there’s some reason we can’t get him off, then we’ll figure out what the next path is.” And that’s obviously what they wanted to hear.

It was, like, three weeks or so after my accident, had me in one of those little air- whatever, life flight air, aircraft, and flew me from Orlando to to St. Louis, which is a whole story into itself, but it wasn’t a very easy trip. But got there and luckily they had on staff the the Rams neurosurgeon for the St. Louis Rams at the time. And he took one look at my CT and said this you’re not properly stabilized. You either gotta wear a halo for six months or we gotta go back in and do another procedure.” So they opted… I wasn’t gonna wear a halo for six months opted to go back in and do the procedure.

And there’s a whole story behind that because he was scheduled to get on a flight because the Rams were in the Super Bowl, and my doctor said, “No, you’re doing this procedure before you get on the flight.” And and so they did that. And yeah, they weaned me off the ventilator about six weeks after my accident.

And I can honestly say today that A, if Christopher Reeve doesn’t get hurt five years before me, doesn’t inspire this doctor to do the work that he did, I don’t get the same level of service I got, I wouldn’t be here today. Those kind of things are very represented in the book as call them serendipity, call them, just what happens.

I relate it to the fact that I really don’t believe I’m in control of my life so to speak. These things happen and they happen a lot of times throughout the whole story. Yeah. So the perfect star, perfect imperfect storm, whatever. I get off the ventilator and I start my intensive rehabilitation.

And, another abnormal thing nowadays is the fact that I got six months of inpatient rehabilitation.

Alycia Anderson: Right.

Sam Schmidt: They started trying to kick me out at about four and a half, but I knew enough about insurance, knew enough about healthcare to just scream and yell and beat my chest from the mountaintops, and I got six months, but most people nowadays are getting four to five weeks. They don’t know how to advocate, they don’t know how to yell and scream. That’s part of the ones that we’re trying to train. But anyway in my opinion, that’s what enabled me to be able to do what I’ve done for the last 26 years.

Alycia Anderson: Such important advocacy right there. There’s so much to unpack right there because I just heard so many things. First of all your initial diagnosis was very bleak. Bad bedside manner, that happens all the time, especially in spinal cord injury.

And the fact that your family kept saying, “No, not good enough.

Alycia Anderson: No, not good enough. No, not good enough,” that is very important advocacy for anybody who’s out there listening that, it’s okay to question and keep trying to get better for yourself ’cause you deserve it, and there’s…

Sam Schmidt: What do you have to lose, right? You’re never gonna see him again. Like I always say the flea that bites the hardest gets the first hitch, and they’re just taught to deny. And I wanna talk to somebody else. I wanna talk to somebody else. I paid these ridiculous premiums my entire life.

Now that I need you, you’re gonna dump me? Forget it, so just … But most people just take it for granted and they’re like, “That’s what they’re telling me. I gotta go home.” And that’s what blows up families.

Alycia Anderson: Yeah. My husband has spinal cord injury too. I don’t. I’ve got a different type of disability. But a lot of his advocacy right now that he’s talking about is this like three, four, five-week timeframe where people are having spinal cord injury, they are having to completely relive their life, heal, and learn to relive, and it’s just not, it’s simply not enough time, and the fact that you were able to find a path of six months is absolutely incredible. And again, like something that we need to be banding together as a community to be fighting for because it isn’t enough time to heal and then recoup and find your path. It just isn’t,

Sam Schmidt: Not mentally, not physical, not… And people don’t realize that it affects the people around you a lot more than the person in the chair. They’re in the hospital. They’re in a controlled environment. They can do the rehab. It’s the people outside that are shell-shocked and not, “What am I, what the hell am I gonna do?”

And it’s usually the breadwinner that’s gotten paralyzed, and just on and on. Families I see it every day, and that’s the reason we shifted from our focus on research early on to Driven Neuro, which is activity-based training. It’s mental health. It’s, that’s the whole thing because if your brain’s not in the right place, then the physical activity doesn’t matter.

It’s gotta be all a package. Yeah, that’s…

Alycia Anderson: Dive into that a little bit more.

Sam Schmidt: Yeah. Just, I was lucky I think because I was a professional athlete. I had professional athlete insurance. Again, back to the whole serendipity of things, I had done a stint after I got my MBA as a hospital administrator for a year and a half, so I understood insurance.

I understood the economics. I understood, pay me now, pay me later. And I was able to go direct above the insurance claim and the initial person and just go straight to the top and say, “Listen, let’s negotiate on this because I have professional athlete insurance.

You’re gonna have to support me for the better part of two years or a million dollars, whatever runs out first. Let’s take out some of that 24/7 care and instead give me equipment. Give me other things I need. Give me my proper rehabilitation up front.” And so it’s just economics, and if you can talk the same language as them, then you have a way to talk to them, right?

And yeah, we just negotiated out care for equipment and for longevity in inpatient.

Alycia Anderson: You’ve just said something so key that I don’t think a lot of us in the community even think about or know, which is negotiate. What is negotiable? What actually is negotiable? And you had the wherewithal to know because you’d been in the industry, and that’s actually huge. Wow!

Sam Schmidt: Yeah, no, it’s sad that it isn’t common knowledge, but at the end of the day, if you think about it for-profit healthcare is a bit of an oxymoron. You’re battling somebody’s life and the rest of their life and the quality of care over making a buck. And if you got United and you got Humana, you got all these things that have to answer to shareholders, they wanna make quarterly earnings, then you gotta talk in their language, and it’s all about the bottom line.

If you give me a little more money now, I am going to be better health. I’m gonna go back to work, I’m gonna pay taxes, and I’m gonna continue paying my insurance premiums. If you don’t, then I gotta go to Medicaid. And so the really disappointing thing as we’re going forward here is that now basically United and Humana, all those companies are taking over Medicare and Medicaid, so it’s gonna be even worse or better because you’re negotiating with the same people.

They gotta make money for their shareholders. And so I just did the math on what a nurse would cost 24/7, and that’s what they were required to provide me under my contract. And I said, “Look, let’s… My wife doesn’t want those people there anyway. I wanna have a normal eight-hour workout day and have the nurses get me up and stuff.

But after that, I wanna be with my family and send them home. And if I give you back 16 hours a day, that’s X amount every day times this amount a month times the amount of time you have to give me insurance. And I’d rather have a $50,000 bike and a treadmill and stuff than pay for those people, and that’ll help me long term.”

You got, first of all, you gotta get to the right person, and secondly, you gotta have your ducks in a row and have the knowledge, which, yeah, granted, I know that’s not 90% of the population, but at the same time, when you get out of the hospital, you need to maintain, the workouts, the things that keep your mind clear.

Again, high level quad. I traveled upwards of 200 days a year 50 flights, for 20 years. I just stopped going that heavy after COVID. But I’m still doing the better part of 100 days. So it’s just a system. It’s a method. It’s it’s the way of doing things and, or not, learn how to make a living from a chair.

But again, I think the main reason for the book is just to thank the multitudes of people that helped me do that for 26 years, because I have an incredible personal team. I have an incredible race team, operation back in Indy the people at the foundation. I learned pretty quickly overnight that I couldn’t do it all myself, and I had to rely on others because of the paralyzed from the shoulders down.

Yeah, that team, finding the right people, giving the resources, turn them loose, very difficult.

Alycia Anderson: And how is that like leaning in to people to help you like that when you’re, life changes in an instant and you… I think I read somewhere your… Did your dad have a spinal cord injury too or something?

Sam Schmidt: Yeah, that’s what wasn’t mentioned earlier is the perseverance side of things because my dad, when I was 10 years old was paralyzed racing. It was more like a stroke. He slapped his brain up against the skull, paralyzed his right side, lost his speech. 1974, there was not a lot of aggressive therapy.

There was no accessibility equipment or hand controls or anything like that. So as a 10-year-old, I watched him do they said he’d never walk or talk again, but he’s a farm boy from Nebraska, and he said, “That’s how you get him to do things.” And he… Five days a week, two hours a day, hardcore intensive rehabilitation that he created for himself, and got the use of his leg back, got his speech back.

Never got his arm back, but here we are 52 years later, he’s still alive. Still, no arm use, but is living a complete and successful life because he got proper rehabilitation. But again, he had to force it and make it happen and work for it. And so when my injury happened, that diagnosis wasn’t gonna cut it.

Luckily we’d been through it before, unluckily. My mom has been through two different types of cancer. We’ve dealt with these types of curve balls and it wasn’t a matter of if, we just had to dive in and do it, which I, which is what I tell people every day, day in and day out.

I’m probably on the phone at least five times a week to a new injury, to a new injury family, saying, “Listen, this is what you gotta do.” Now we have to design ways through apps and through digital formats to, to do that ’cause I can’t be everywhere, right? And just, I hate social media, I hate every- all these other things we’re trying to figure out how to do, but it really is the way to get the message out.

More of that.

Alycia Anderson: Yeah. Wow. So that’s an incredible extension of your story, and what a life lesson. Whoa.

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Alycia Anderson: I love that you keep mentioning, too, also with your dad, the intensive therapy and the tools and the equipment that you need. Like, how did that change your life?

Sam Schmidt: The only thing I know after 26 years of meeting thousands of people in chairs, if you do nothing, you will get nothing.

Alycia Anderson: Ooh.

Sam Schmidt: Beyond that, the sky’s the limit, right? ‘Cause I have seen people that have been told … One of my race car drivers in my, 25 years of being a team owner had a T6 injury. “Dude, you’re not gonna walk again.

Forget it. Go home.” Nine months later, he walked out of Craig Hospital with hand canes. A year later, got married, danced at his wedding. Two years ago, is back racing full time with hand controls and won a national championship. He’s now a fully paid professional race car driver, full circle, five years after his accident because he didn’t give up and he worked hard.

He was willing to do the work. And I don’t know that we can do that for everybody, right? But if you don’t try, you won’t know.

Alycia Anderson: If you don’t try, you don’t know.

Sam Schmidt: If you do nothing, nothing will happen.

Alycia Anderson: I love it

Sam Schmidt: And it’s just that’s the only thing I know for certain. Yes, I’ve seen people work their ass off for two years, five days a week, and get n- get no better recovery. I’m just happy I got off the ventilator frankly, ’cause I wouldn’t have made it for 26 years on a ventilator.

I wouldn’t have made it for three years. It was a living hell, i’m glad I got that. That was, like, a hurdle. And okay, now let’s do more. Let’s get the strength back. Let’s do this. And so I pushed pretty hard for a solid two years, got back what I was gonna get back, and now it’s, maintenance.

I still gotta do it two, three days a week, ride an FES bike, stand, do other things to keep the bone density, keep the muscle mass, and allow me to do the things I love. Now I got two grandkids under three, so that’s the life shift, but at least I made it that far, I can die and be a happy man.

Alycia Anderson: No, I love that. I think aging and disability is, it’s such a badge of honor for me too. I just turned 51, and I didn’t even… with my disability, there was no life expectancy at all. And and to your point, they probably didn’t know what they were talking about back then either.

You know what I mean? And my parents had to fight too. But aging, let’s talk about aging with our disability because sometimes I’m like, “I’m gonna be the most proficient. That’s when I’m gonna catch up to everybody.” That’s when I’m gonna be really leading physically.

But also, I feel it in my body that things are shifting, and it’s, other things are tiring down. Talk about aging and disability just a little bit.

Sam Schmidt: No, you definitely have to, I think because I can’t feel anything, the rest of the antenna really have to be up, right? I’ve gotta constantly check for starting a pressure sore. I’ve gotta be just on what I eat so that all the other functions happen when they’re supposed to happen and in the normal, process of things.

Staying away from UTIs. It’s all a process, and there’s no spontaneity in life anymore. I’ve gotta eat the right things, gotta drink the right things. Might have my occasional tequila, but I gotta have, Yeah, I can’t, you can’t get rid of all the vices. But yeah it’s…

I went for 18 years in this routine flying. Just, like I said, 200 days a year. No, and even… I don’t have really the use of my diaphragm. But I think that FES bike, I think the standing, it gave me the strength to do what I am and also sit on my butt, for 18 hours a day without getting pressure sores.

But I started having breathing issues. And now I gotta… that began a round of six months of, you gotta see the guy, then you gotta get transferred to a pulmonologist, then you gotta go to an allergist, all this stuff, only to be diagnosed and have, an hour a day of breathing treatment.

So now this other equipment has to go with me everywhere, and I do my breathing treatment in the morning, breathing treatment in the afternoon. But, it’s bought me another eight years, and I know… I now have met people that… I’m 26 years in, which I think is a long time, but now I’m meeting people that are 45 and 52 years in to quadriplegia, and I’m like, “Oh my God, I don’t know if I even wanna live that long in this body, in this situation,” ’cause I know better things are coming.

Yeah. But it’s the balancing act. I wanna see my grandkids grow up now yeah. So that’s kinda what I live for. I made it through my kids getting to their late 20s and surviving all that. But now, we call… In- internally, we say, “Our kids are our investment, our grandkids are our dividends.”

I wanna enjoy the dividends.

Yeah, whenever you think, “Oh, that might can help,” it’s, That’s kinda what it’s all about, is educating people on what they need to do to get the most out of it. And they may still say, “No, you’re out of here,” but at least you’ve given it everything.

Alycia Anderson: I love that. Let’s talk about the book No Finish Line. It, the title feels more than a racing metaphor. It feels I don’t know, philosophy, something like that. Can you talk a little bit about the book.

Sam Schmidt: Yeah, I wish, heck, I could take credit for the credit for the title. We were just… My brain is always focused on driven. I feel like I’m a driven person. I feel like you have to be driven to, get over these life challenges and move on. And so I couldn’t get off that.

And then when I sent the scr- the manuscript or whatever to to Dover Publications/Simon & Schuster they passed it around and came back with that title. I’m like, “That is absolutely perfect,” because really there’s no finish line in what we’re doing. There’s no finish line to what the foundation has to do.

There isn’t one of, with racing daily life. It just seems to be very appropriate that I’m on it. And I’ve always just had this really comp- It starts with competition, from a very young age I was doing entrepreneurial things in college. I was, I think at first it was I wanna be able to retire by the time I’m 30. I wanna do better than my dad did. Just whatever. And then on the track, I wanna beat that guy. So it just is very competitive nature with inside me. I think you have to be born with it. I don’t think that can be taught.

And yeah, the no finish line thing was very appropriate. Not just the foundation, not just the team, it’s just life. And I don’t feel like I’ll be done until I’m underground.

Alycia Anderson: Yeah, I love that. Let’s talk about the foundation and the team. I know that, I believe, your son Spencer narrates your book, and the proceeds of, your author proceeds

go towards.

Sam Schmidt: Yeah, 100%.

Alycia Anderson: Will you talk a little bit about your organization and the work that you’re doing?

Sam Schmidt: Yeah, one thing that I say to everybody in this situation is, “Look, face the fact that it’s gonna be an hour and a half to two and a half hours to get up every morning. So think in your brain, what have you done in your life, maybe you’re not doing it now, but what have you done in your life that makes that worthwhile?”

Okay. You need to make the most out of every day. That’s the way I look at it. If you’re not spending time with the people you wanna spend time with, if you’re not doing the things you love doing, change it. ‘Cause it like, it is a pain in the butt to get up every day, and a lot of times people can’t have help getting up every day.

So it’s so along those lines, that is what got me started the team, is like I’m sitting there in the hospital, “Man, this is gonna suck for the rest of my life if I don’t find something I love. I gotta go back to racing.” I’d never been a team owner, but to me it was the next best thing to being a driver.

If you’re gonna win, win as an owner if you can’t win as a driver. So that all sounded great. It was a bit naive, didn’t know what the hell I was doing, didn’t know how difficult it’d be. It turned out to be the most difficult thing I’ve ever done in my life. Not only to find the right people, put them in the right places not have heavy turnover, but to find the resources.

It is bloody expensive and it was on my shoulders to find that, year in and year out to keep it successful. But yeah, we won seven championships in 80 races and it really gave… I kinda call it like racing to me was my daily sprint race. Finding a cure for paralysis and helping people overcome paralysis is my marathon, right?

And I d- I did for the first 18 years focus entirely on that team, making it successful. We had our success. But then w- when… Actually, the turning point was when my driver got hurt in 2018 and I started hearing about all these insurance issues, about deniability everything just happening.

I’m like, “This is crap. We’ve gotta try and fix this,” and so that was a bit naive too because it’s a pretty big problem and, but at the same time I think with my education, with my competitive nature, with my experience as somebody who’s lived it and got back in a car and driven 213 miles an hour, I’m uniquely qualified to at least try and solve the problem for these multitudes of people that have had something tragic happen and they’re not getting the support they need.

So we started with our first Driven in Vegas. That’s where I live. I’ve been there 30 years. I wanna… They have a bit of a medical… I call it a medical desert because with all the success in Las Vegas, they’re 20 years behind say Indianapolis or Houston or Dallas or LA when it comes to medical.

They got one level one trauma. They just opened a medical school. They’re way behind so let’s try and be s- part of the solution there and we learned a lot from that. And then we had an amazing opportunity in Indianapolis which is my second home. That’s where the team is. Had a lot of financial support there- to get a 100,000 square foot building cheap and and they have three level one traumas.

They’re spinning off a lot of neuro injury tragedies. So let’s move the foundation there. Let’s… There’s incentives, there’s lots of things, for funding. So that’s where that came from. And then, we learned a lot in this process, none the least of which we’re gonna need more facilities.

There’s a lot of ABT training centers around the country, but unfortunately a lot of them require payment or you can’t work out there. And so that’s backwards because the people that need it the most can’t afford it, so we’re trying to solve those kind of problems. It’s a bit of a whack-a-mole, but it’s not as difficult as running a race team.

I gotta… and again, all these things are outta my control. In 2020, I wound up getting a great offer from McLaren’s F1 team the Formula One team that’s on Drive to Survive and a global powerhouse. Anyway, they wanted to get an IndyCar and they made me an offer to sell ’em our team.

Not my first choice, but like when those opportunities come up, you really gotta evaluate it. And so it was a great exit opportunity. It allowed me to to focus entirely on the foundation, on Driven Neuro. Let’s face it, I can help a lot more people that way than I could as an IndyCar team owner just, pursuing my passion.

So the tagline I came up with writing the book is “Racing is my passion. Driven Neuro is my purpose.” And ” I used to think passion and purpose are the same thing. Now I don’t think they are, because I’m still very passionate about racing. I will still go to races. I love racing. I still advise a lot of people about different things, but really the bigger problem and the way I can help a lot more people is is through Driven Neuro.

Alycia Anderson: This is amazing. This is the best, next Christopher Reeve’s Foundation. This is incredible what you’re building, and thank you so much for doing that for our community. Your passion and your love for this is exuding off of the screen. It is so authentic and so real. You are absolutely amazing, and we need to multiply you times a million.

Honestly, thank you.

Sam Schmidt: Anybody out there, I wouldn’t, I don’t wanna be the only one. I’ll help others.

Alycia Anderson: Incredible. It’s incredible that you’ve taken your talents, your lived experience, your family, your dreams, your influence, your lived experience, and are putting it in something that really is, I’m sure h- not only helping people. It reminds me of what you said a little bit ago. Even if you don’t try, you don’t gain. And I’m not saying it the way that you said it. But, and even if you don’t gain something from trying, you still do, because there’s something emotional that’s gonna happen. There’s some sort of confidence or something that’s gonna switch. It might be so minute, but it, it, so the work that you’re doing is incredible. It’s so important. And I can only imagine how you’re inspiring so many people. That isn’t a easy diagnosis to wake up and be on a ventilator and go, “Oh, wow, this is gonna be a tough life.” But you followed it with one more thing. “This is gonna be a tough life if I don’t find what I love to do with it,” and that is such an important follow-up. This life is going to be tough, yes.

Sam Schmidt: Yeah.

Alycia Anderson: But how do I

Sam Schmidt: Yeah, I… The short answer is I worked my ass off for six years just to get the use of my arms back so I could help my grandkids, and I was very disappointed that didn’t happen. But then I- it clicked in my brain that maybe there’s a reason I can’t use my arms. It’s because I can go to everybody that is a paraplegic, frankly, and say, “You can use your arms.”

I would give a major part of my anatomy to be able to use my arms. You have no excuses. If you don’t make something of yourself and find your new purpose, it’s on you. That’s your choice. But you have to make that choice now because you only get so much rehabilitation. You only get so much support. You’ve got to make the most of it, and you’ve got to do it now.

And that’s my two-second hospital speech. It’s I get a lot of people pissed off at me for being so blunt, but that is the reason I believe I never got my arms back is so I can say, “Look, I want to go drive again. I’ve been 213. What’s your excuse?”

It ain’t that you don’t have your arms, because guess what?

You got your arms. And I’ve met a lot of veterans and a lot of people, it breaks my heart, that are way worse off than me, these young people under 40 from Desert Storm, Iraq, Afghanistan, you name it with no limbs, with half their brain, half their head gone. Just all this stuff.

They are way worse off than me, and all they want to do is put bread on the table, and so yeah, I think that’s the reason I got to spend a little bit of time with Christopher Reeve. ‘Cause the dude’s on a ventilator. He can’t even hold his head up. He’s got a rod holding his head up, and he’s got six people 24/7.

I’m like, “Man, my deal sucks, but he’s got it worse.” And if he can do what he’s doing, I better shut up and do the work, so yeah. Anyway.

Alycia Anderson: Wow. Incredible. Ugh, I knew this was gonna be a good interview, but I didn’t know it was gonna be this good. It’s, I feel like you’re amazing.

I’m a fan.

Sam Schmidt: 20 more. I’m looking for 20 more so that I can send them out into the world and and, keep going, I can’t do this forever yeah let’s find some more people.

Alycia Anderson: Yeah. Okay, so we’re gonna leave everything in the show notes so people can contact you, support your organization, buy the book, hire you to do all the work that you’re doing. But just give us a quick elevator pitch on how we work with you and find you.

Sam Schmidt: Yeah, bottom line, samtrimm.com can send you the foundation, can buy the book, do all that stuff through that. And yeah, we’re looking to expand locations, but do it conservatively, responsibly, raise the money. Longer term, the big picture is setting, set up an endowment that will funnel off enough money to fund those resources, because right now we’re still able to take everybody, regardless of their ability to pay, through fundraising efforts.

So I think that’s absolutely key. We have some people that pay nothing, some that pay half, some that pay all. We want everybody to have access to the type of rehabilitation and the type of opportunities I had. But, don’t misread that, right? I went through 14 different CNAs before I found one that could get me up in the morning.

And I grabbed on tight, I didn’t let go. She’s been with me 25 years now, it’s a lot of work. It’s not easy. You just have to not let it get you down and keep pushing forward. I’ve met lots of people, ironically, hundreds, that their tragedy turned into fulfilling a lifelong dream.

An average high school athlete can be a Paralympic, different stories like that where they’re happier now than they were before. So it’s, it sucks, and at the time it happens, you think your life’s over, but you just gotta, push through that and come out the other side.

Alycia Anderson: Push forward. Way to bring in the title of the podcast. We’re just so in sync today, Sam.

Sam Schmidt: What I’m saying is make Schmitt happen

Alycia Anderson: Oh, I like it. It’s like you’re pushing for a moment. We need a pushing forward moment from you. Did we

miss anything? Before we wrap up, did we miss anything?

Sam Schmidt: I don’t think so. It’s it’s all in the book. It’s all on the website. I’ve got great people. I thank them over and over again because that is one of the key issues people run into is caregivers and getting out of bed and access to mobility. I’m on the board of BraunAbility, so we’re trying to change that industry as far as access and autonomous vehicles and all this other stuff, which is really…

I’m not gonna be around, but I think the future is really an app where you can call up an autonomous vehicle, it can take you wherever you want, costs you a few bucks, be federally and municipality supported. All of those things are just really changing quickly. The last five years, as far as rehabilitation, as far as knowledge, as far as Neuralink and all these other research things, I think there’s a positive future for people with disabilities as a whole.

You just gotta stay in shape so you can take advantage of it.

Alycia Anderson: Yeah, those technologies are gonna be incredible for accessibility and just access to life, it really is gonna be a different world for us.

For sure. Yeah, game changer. I have one quick question. Is there technology that you can drive a race car?

Sam Schmidt: I’ve done it. Yeah.

Alycia Anderson: You’ve Done it.

Okay, so you’ve done it.

Sam Schmidt: I’m racing what’s called the Optima series. It’s a traveling series. It’s a couple different high-performance, options. But yeah, that was the whole partnership with Arrow Electronics. We’re still doing it. My latest car is a McLaren 720S. That’s what I’ve gone 213 in.

I’ve raced at Pikes Peak yeah, it’s… But there’s also a lot of ex- achievable things, right? Most of the things that I’ve done that are in a book, anybody can make it happen with a disability. You can swim with sharks. You can take a hot air balloon ride. You can skydive. I did that with my kids.

All these things it takes a little more planning, preparation, and thought, but anybody can do that.

Alycia Anderson: That’s freaking cool. Congratulations.

Sam Schmidt: I’ve got other … It’s like Robert Wickens with his racing in IMSA. I just got a video today from a guy that is racing midgets and sprint cars because we told him he could do it, and we found him the hand controls and he’s back racing midgets and sprint cars. Guys doing motocross, guys doing side by side.

Alycia Anderson: That’s cool.

Sam Schmidt: I get a lot of the racing stuff because of my background, but it really applies to anything. A buddy of mine wanted to get back in a Bobcat loader, so we have a guy make him a transfer seat. He gets out of his chair, he gets in a Bobcat, and he plays in that all day on his farm. It’s whatever it takes to get you out of bed is what you gotta do.

Alycia Anderson: That’s awesome, Sam. Oh, I’m ready to go take on the world.

Okay what’s your pushing forward moment?

Sam Schmidt: It is really make Schmidt happen. It’s it’s what we put on our T-shirts. It conceptualizes what I get up and do every day is I make Schmidt happen. But I can’t do it with a lot of other help. I can’t underscore, underline that enough that pre-accident I was really a horrible delegator.

I had to do everything myself, but I’ve accomplished so much more the last 26 being paralyzed than the previous 35 because I have learned to rely on other people.

Alycia Anderson: Make Schmitt happen with your community. good job at coming together. Sam, thank you so much for joining. It has been my pleasure to meet you. Now I’m a fan. I’m gonna be stuck to your side. We’re gonna be friends. I wanna come to your facilities. I wanna come see the whole thing. Thank you so much for doing this, honestly.

You’re amazing. Yeah. And thank you to our community for showing up again. Two things for our community. First of all, share, re-share, and share this episode again. It’s gonna help so many people. And Sam, just thank you so much. Thank you to our community. Thanks everybody. This has been Pushing Forward with Alycia and Sam, and that is how we roll on this podcast.

We will see you next week.