Entrepreneur of the Year: What Alison Schuback Wants

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After the accident, Schuback remained in a coma for 29 days. Doctors urged the family to consider removing life support. "We weren't having any of it," says Michael, who praises and defends Alison with the fervor of a vice presidential candidate on the campaign trail. "We said we don't care what we get back. You just do your job and bring us back whatever you can."

Schuback woke gradually. ("It's not sudden, like on TV, where they just pop up and say, 'Where am I?' " says Donna.) She then spent three months recovering at the Baylor Institute for Rehabilitation. Her memory and ability to think were largely unimpaired, which is atypical of brain injury patients. But her ataxia -- a disorder of the part of the nervous system that coordinates movement -- was among the worst such cases her doctors had seen.

Schuback stood out in another way, her doctors say. "She was hopeful and sweet every minute that she was here," says Mary Carlile, director of Baylor's Traumatic Brain Injury program. "I think what carried Alison through is that she remained so positive."

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.

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Leigh Buchanan

Leigh Buchanan is an editor at large for Inc. Magazine. A former editor at Harvard Business Review and founding editor of WebMaster magazine, she writes regular columns on leadership and workplace culture, and she contributes Inc.'s capsule book reviews, "A Skimmer's Guide to the Latest Business Books."

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