It has been a little over five-years since Chad Surdi’s motorcycle skidded out of control on Newport Way, leaving him paralyzed below the chest. It was therefore a welcome change for the better in his life when he proposed to his girlfriend, Katrina Sugano, on March 23, 2010, the five-year anniversary of the accident.

Surdi said that after the accident he never thought he would be where he is now.

“I was just thinking of trying to live. I couldn’t feed myself, I was getting off a ventilator,” Surdi said. “I wasn’t thinking about my future.”

Sugano’s sister passed away in February of ’05, one month before Chad’s accident. She said that the trauma in their lives helped to bring them together.

“We didn’t know each other, but we were both going through something that changed our lives forever,” she said. “We can kind of relate to each other because we have each seen our families deal with that stuff.”

The two were introduced by the caregiver that stepped in to take care of Chad after Barb Surdi, Chad’s mother, fell while running and tore her rotator cuff.

“I didn’t even put it all together,” Barb recalls. “Chad and Katrina called me up together and said we just want to thank you for falling,” Barb Surdi said. “And I’m like, well, whatever it takes, if I need to fall next week just let me know.”

Both Surdi and Sugano say that despite all of their tragedies, they are happy with how things turned out.

“I wouldn’t change a thing. Everything bad that has happened to me has made me who I am now,” Sugano said. “With my sister passing, I had to deal with it, and am still dealing with,” Sugano added. “But if it wasn’t for that, I don’t think I would have had the same understanding for Chad’s situation and his family as I do now.”

Surdi agreed, saying that their relationship is stronger because of the person he is now.

“It was like I always had the kind of person I am now, I had that, but [the accident] brought it out more,” he said. “You lose somebody or something, part of your life changes, you see things in a different way.”

Barb Surdi said that though her son’s accident was definitely not part of her plan, it is now easy to see that everything happens for a reason.

“He met Katrina because he was in the accident, and because I fell, and because somebody else had to come take care of him,” she said.

She also said that things definitely could have been worse.

“I look back and I say I still have my son and he still is alive,” Barb Surdi said. “He might be in a wheelchair, but there are so many people who don’t have their kids.

Surdi just recently moved into a new home with Sugano and is taking classes at TLG Learning. The wedding date is currently set for August 27, 2011.

“I remember one of the first nights we actually talked face to face, he said to me, ‘I just gave up on girls a long time ago, I am not even going to try to get a girlfriend,'” Sugano said. “Little did he know, he was going to have a fiancé instead.”

Kirsten Smith is an intern with the Bellevue Reporter. She is a student at Northwestern University in Illinois.