Schuback also benefited from the kind of family everyone should have in his or her corner. Michelle transferred to a college near home so she could hang out with her sister, many of whose friendships did not survive the accident. Donna returned to her job as an IT recruiter to maintain an income and wrestled with a redwood's worth of paperwork. And Michael shut down the three small businesses he owned and devoted his life to his daughter. A 15-year volunteer for the Special Olympics, he spent hours with her in the pool teaching her to stand and balance. He oversaw her exercises, drove her to appointments, and puréed her food and helped her relearn how to swallow so she could lose the feeding tube. Unable at first to utter more than two words without drawing a breath, Alison trained with her father until she could speak in full sentences. When not playing coach, Michael scoured the Internet for every jot of information about potential treatments.
While her parents debated treatments and surgeries, Schuback itched to get on with her life. But she flinched from the menial jobs she saw many brain injury patients engaged in. "What I could do had changed," she says. "But what I wanted to do hadn't."
Restaurant meals play a significant role in the Schubacks' lives. On New Year's Eve, about six weeks after Alison woke up, her parents sneaked her out of the hospital for an Italian dinner. It was their first mutiny against limitations on her prospects. "In the restaurant, they stared at us like we were crazy," Michael says. "But my daughter was not going to spend New Year's Eve in a hospital."
Several years and many, many restaurant meals later, the staring hadn't stopped. At first, Alison had to be fed by someone else. Even after she gained sufficient motor control to raise a utensil to her mouth, her hands shook and food spilled. To protect her clothes, she wore an apron tied around her neck. But the kitchen accessory gods demand bright colors: All the aprons Alison and Michelle found were garish affairs, printed with jalapeños or in strident plaids. The effect was at once infantilizing and tacky. "I wanted something to cover me that wasn't noticeable," says Alison. "People already had so many other reasons to look at me. Why give them another?
"All I wanted was my dignity," she says matter-of-factly. She is speaking of more than gravy stains.
Schuback can't identify the point at which her desire to find a discreet adult bib became the intention to create and sell one. Money was certainly an issue. Much of the $1 million settlement Schuback had received from the accident was consumed by legal and medical bills. A surgeon in Beverly Hills studying stem-cell therapy had achieved promising results with Parkinson's sufferers, and the family had persuaded him to make Schuback his first traumatic brain injury patient. But the treatment was experimental, not covered by insurance, and would potentially cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Schuback was determined to shoulder as much of that burden as possible. (Her treatment isn't yet under way.)
So, toward the end of 2002, Schuback began scanning her environment for design inspiration. "I asked my hairdresser, and she suggested vinyl was a good material, because it was easy to clean," says Schuback. "And of course, it had to be transparent. Then one day I was visiting our little cousin, and he was wearing a bib with a pouch on the front. And I thought, A crumb catcher! What a good idea!"
But how to get the business off the ground? Schuback's business experience consisted of an undergraduate advertising class and a dry-cleaning delivery service that she and a friend had operated as college juniors. Her parents were too busy winning bread to be much help. Financial pressure had forced Michael to accept the CEO position at a mining equipment company based in China. The job required long hours and international travel.
With Michael working again, Donna hired Karen Weatherford, a senior-living and disability consultant, to recruit a full-time caregiver. While getting to know Alison, Weatherford became entranced by this surprising entrepreneur and her increasingly ambitious plans. She suspended her own business and signed on to help manufacture and market the Invisibib. In 2003, with $80,000 of her settlement as seed money, Schuback launched the company Independent Empowerment to sell the bib and other products customized for the disabled.
Michael schuback is behind the wheel of the family's van, with Alison beside him. He is skipping important meetings to be with his daughter today, and his cell phone won't let him forget it. Between calls, Michael plays tour guide -- we are rolling through the neighborhood where George Bush may settle post -- White House -- and quizzes Alison about sales techniques: What is the alternative-choice close? What is the Ben Franklin close? Alison responds with good humor. She has heard this drill her whole life.
"What is the one way to be 100 percent sure of failure?" Michael asks.
"Never make the call," says Alison. "You will have 100 percent failure if you don't try." Across the armrest, she and her father link fingers.
With motivational-speaker punch, Michael asserts repeatedly that his daughter will let nothing stop her. He has witnessed her tenacity, seen her do things like spend an hour a day on the treadmill at a setting of .1, in order to lose weight. She even joined Toastmasters. "For eight months, she got up in front of these people who couldn't even hear her and gave speeches," says Michael, managing to sound both awed and amused. "Everybody would be leaning forward. And I would sit there and think, What are we doing here?"
But inevitably, Schuback's disability made starting a business difficult. Her voice was still too weak for much telephone work. She wasn't steady enough with a pencil to write or draw. Five hours of each day were eaten up by therapies. Then there was the occasional brain surgery.
