Jill Webster speaks last week at the opening of The Farms at Rainbow, a new vocational program for people with head and spinal cord injuries. Webster suffered a head injury in a car crash in 1984 and eventually got help from Rainbow Rehabilitation Centers.

Angela J. Cesere | AnnArbor.com

She and about 50 others affiliated with Rainbow Rehabilitation Centers were there last week because the garden is Rainbow's first to open under a new vocational program for its clients called The Farms at Rainbow.

Webster, 44, of Ann Arbor, is a client. She is tan and her sandy-brown mop of curls falls forward, framing her face. Scars that hint at the severity of a long-ago accident mark her mouth and chin.

Most could guess that, as a client speaker for the new farm's opening ceremony, she's survived a brain injury. But few know what Webster’s been through to get there, standing, a speech in hand, ready to introduce the farm and then plant broccoli and blueberry bushes on a cool June day.

Like most clients who find their way to Rainbow, Webster's brain injury story begins with a car accident.

In 1984, Webster was 17 and one of five teenagers driving in a 1967 Chevy truck when a Camaro traveling 100 mph struck the vehicle. The Camaro was fleeing a string of cop cars on the highway.

Webster’s boyfriend, 18, had been driving the truck, Webster said. He was going to graduate from high school the next day. The collision decapitated him. Everyone in the truck died violently that night. Everyone but Webster.

Had she worn a seatbelt?

“It was 1984,” she said.

How did she survive?

“I kissed the dashboard,” she said, smiling.

She was in a coma after the accident. When she woke, she couldn’t speak, couldn’t walk, couldn’t remember much of anything.

Then, there was very little hope.

She recovered enough to return home and gained back some mental and physical capacities that she’d lost in the accident. But she couldn’t make the simplest of decisions, she said. She would do things like walk straight into the street, in front of moving cars. Her mother wouldn’t let her leave the house without her 10-years-younger sister. She knew her head wasn’t right, but it was still humiliating. The accident didn’t change the fact she was a teenager who resented control.

Webster had problems with addictive behavior before the accident, said Colin King, a clinical psychologist at Rainbow who supervises Webster’s clinical care. Her brain injury made those problems a lot worse, he said.

Those with brain injuries often lose “the brakes,” that stop individuals from making poor, impulsive decisions, King said. “The brakes” have to be learned again, with therapy. But Webster had never received therapy. She didn’t have any brakes.

Then the settlement money came. Her mother thought she was mature and well enough to handle the pile of money, all at once. She wasn’t.

She took the money and ran away.

Like the Camaro that killed her friends, she barreled toward a life of drugs and alcohol at 100 miles per hour.

Someone put a pipe in her hand. It stayed there, on and off, on and off, for over 20 years. Lost years. She never received rehabilitation for the injury she sustained the night her friends died.

A retired detective practically scraped her off of the street in 2007, she said. He probably saved her life.

He became her guardian, and he put her into the hands of the staff at Rainbow Rehabilitation Centers, a private southeast Michigan company that provides medical care, vocational training, housing and other services for its clients with brain and spinal cord injuries.

The most severely injured clients need nursing care, while others live at varying levels of independence in one of 35 homes and apartments.

Webster was somewhere in between. At first, she lived in a strict, supervised group home.

But she didn’t want to be there. Not at all, King said.

Webster came to them addicted to alcohol and drugs. She came to them angry. She couldn’t control her emotions and she didn’t want to listen to instructions. She just wanted weekend passes so she could return to the streets and the drugs and alcohol.

King said it took Webster about eight months to come around.

“I just decided to shut up and listen,” Webster recalled.

Getting her on board with recovery was a huge challenge, King said. “First of all, we had to get her away from the environment and get her dried out, and then start to treat her brain injury and substance abuse at the same time,” King said.

Occupational therapy taught her living skills, like self-care, preparing meals, grocery shopping, budgeting, all other activities of daily living, King said.

Mental health counseling taught her strategies to compensate for her mind’s deficits — in her case, how to push the brakes that stop impulsive, poor decisions. A nurse helped develop a medication plan. She started to attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. Now, most days of the week, for about 4 to 6 hours a day, Webster is paid to work on Rainbow’s grounds crew, taking care of the land outside the organization’s homes.

“I just love it,” Webster said of her grounds job, which she's held for the last year. “You’re outside, and you get a tan.”

She now lives in apartment that is not staffed; it has a care manager from Rainbow on hand, though, if she needs anything.

“I feel healthier,” she said. “My head’s better.”

“I’ve got the rehabilitation I need.”

Rainbow’s ultimate goal is to get the brain-injured to live as independently as they can, and to get them back to working in the community when it’s possible.

King said that could be possible for Webster, if she continues to apply herself.

He said her story shows that there is hope for a new life after a brain injury.

“Having a brain injury does not signal the end of the road," he said. "It signals the start of a new, different life that will be plagued with challenges, but with the right tools and assistance, they can continue to be productive citizens.”

The new garden is outside of a group home on Talladay Road near Milan. The patch of land has wide grass paths to allow for wheelchair access in between tilled dirt rows.

Rainbow’s officials told the crowd gathered last week that plots like this one will offer brain-injured clients a new option for choosing a vocation and the opportunity to learn seeding, plant maintenance, harvesting and sales.

More gardens like it will open in Washtenaw and Oakland counties in coming years. The farms add to the company's other vocational offerings, which include a grounds crew and an Ypsilanti woodshop where clients make wooden chairs from recycled phone poles. Vegetables and flowers grown here and at future farms will be used in recipes for Rainbow’s clients or sold at farm stands or farmers markets.

Soon, the officials introduced Jill Webster.

Webster looked happy and proud.

She spoke with an almost imperceptible slur as she delivered her message:

“I like to work outside. I love our landscaping activities,” she said.

“The farm will be an important wonderful addition because it will give people new opportunities and skills to grow their own food. Another nice thing about the farm is that we will grow food to supply the Rainbow houses with totally fresh vegetables.

“We started last year landscaping the yards of the houses and adding mulch, planting flowers, weeding to keep them looking great. The new farm is working for a good cause and will expand our efforts. We are excited to get started.”

After the ceremony, she and three other clients got to work right away, planting the new garden.

Juliana Keeping covers general assignment and health and the environment for AnnArbor.com. Reach her at [email protected] or 734-623-2528. Follow Juliana Keeping on Twitter.