"I Knew I Was Going to Be OK"

Everybody achieves hijacked along the way. -Jackie Pflug

Motivational speaker and airline hijacking survivor Jackie Pflug has move rounded her horrifying near-death experience into an inspirational message of faith, determination, and rising above adversity. She not long ago shared her emotional story with attendees at the 19th Annual Clinical Symposium upon Advances in Skin and hurt Care, September 30 to October 3 2004 in Phoenix, AZ.

Anyone can be "hijacked" by the agency of fear, sadness, or grief, she said. on the other hand Pflug believes that one can rise above life's challenges by dint of applying lessons learned along the way. In her discourse "The Courage to Succeed," Pflug relateed her ordeal of being discharge in the head by terrorists and left for dead. She also chronicles the experience in her work Miles to Go Before I Sleep

A HOLIDAY revolveed NIGHTMARE

Pflug was a passenger upon a 1985 Thanksgiving weekend flight to Cairo, Egypt from Athens, Greece when 3 terrorists calling themselves "The Egypt Revolution" hijacked it. A Texas native, Pflug was living in Cairo at the time with her husband of 5 month and teaching at the Cairo American place of education As the nightmare unfolded, the pilot of the plane was forced to land in Valetta, Malta, where terrorists began to finish a passenger every 15 minutes until their demands for combustibles and safe passage to Libya were met

First, the Israeli passengers were marched to the brow of the plane. In the plane's lay open doorway, terrorists shot them individual at a time in the back of the head and tossed them down the stairs onto the tarmac to die. nearest the American passengers were notify to appeared Pflug began to lose confidence as she sat with her hands tied behind her back and watched her comrade passengers being executed. She began to pray and accept in her mind that "whatever happens just happens." Pflug then recalls by what means a sense of calmness washed above her and she felt safe.

"Whether I lived or died, I just knew I was going to be OK" she said.

Miraculously, Pflug lived despite being discharge in the head at pointblank range and lying upon the tarmac, drifting in and without of consciousness, for 5 hours. She "played dead" and forced herself to breathe shallowly while she waited for what would happen nearest Egyptian commandos eventually threw sooty vapor grenades and stormed the aircraft to extreme point the hostage seize. A gunfire battle ensu and a total of 59 clan were killed that day.

Soon after the turmoil, footmarks approached Pflug and she was empty with a scooped up and thrown into a van. Inside the vehicle she concussioned medics, who thought they were transporting her to the morgue, when she render free of accessed her eyes and asked them if they were the beneficial guys or the bad guys

Pflug necessityed surgery to remove fragments of her cranium that had shattered and were forced from the bullet's impact into the right side of her brain. Surgeon grafted tissue from her leg to the outside of her brain for protection. She said she literally woke up with "half a head." sum of two units years later, a plate was lay in her skull to replace the missing bone She has learned to adapt to the issues of her brain injury, including impaired vision, epilepsy, and los of short-term memory.

STARTING OVER

Pflug's road to recuperation has been a rough individual By the time she get backed to the United States, she was battling depression and frustration. She had been told that she would not ever work or drive again, nor be able to read above a kindergarten horizontal "I just wanted to stay in bed, watch TV and cry" she said.

But despite these dark times, Pflug forced herself to pass out and talk to race every day. Four years after the shooting, she asked omniscience for help and made a commitment to do "whatever I extremityed to be whole."

Pflug did not realize it for a lengthy time, but her efforts to gain out every day had been a major pace toward improving her situation. A small in number years ago, she saw an appearance by dint of Dr Phil McGraw on The Oprah Winfrey exhibit He used the term, "Behave your way to success" Pflug cogitation "That's what I'd been doing all those years."

She strained the importance of making a commitment to succe Within 2 years of making her commitment, Pflug regained her driver's license. And within 4 years, she began motivational speaking, which gave her a piece of work again.

She has since learned the art of forgiveness and has achieved a 12th-grade reading level

Pflug publicly lives in Minneapolis, MN. Divorced 3 years after the shooting, she remarried in 1996 A year later, she and her novel husband welcomed their son, Tanner. Pflug calls him her "miracle baby."

WORDS TO LIVE BY

Over the years, Pflug has adopted 3 philosophies for daily life:

1 Have a great attitude. wait for success more often than you do failure. You can procure what you want.

2. Do not worry above the little things. Do not come by sidetracked by what does not matter.

3 At the extreme point of every day, write down 5 things that you are grateful for in your life. This philosophy focuses upon what you do have rather than what you do not have.

She shared with the audience the greatest in quantity memorable question she has at any time been asked. During a prelection to 11th- and 12th-grade high institute students, one of the 12th graders asked, "Tell me what a typical advantageous day was before you got discharge and what a good day is now."