DIVING-ACCIDENT SURVIVOR MARK RAYMOND JR.'Being a Quadriplegic Is My Superpower'

AFTER LOSING THE ABILITY TO WALK, THIS ACTIVIST DEDICATED HIS LIFE TO HELPING THOSE WITH DISABILITIES REACH THEIR POTENTIAL

- JOHNNY DODD

The last thing Mark Raymond Jr. remembers in those final seconds before the accident was standing in the back of his buddy's boat at the end of a perfect July afternoon in 2016 and staring down into the waters of Louisiana's Lake Pontchartrain. Then he dove in and instantly felt his forehead slam into the sandy bottom of the lake. "I couldn't move and realized, 'I'm probably going to drown,"" recalls Raymond, now 35, who tragically misjudged the depth of the water. "My last thoughts were about my mom and just praying that my friends would realize what was happening."

He was close to death when his pals pulled him out of the water and performed CPR. Two weeks later Raymond awoke from a medically induced coma in a New Orleans hospital to discover that he'd fractured the fifth vertebrae in his neck and could no longer walk or fully use his hands. "I quickly learned that my life was going to be really different,” he says. "To call it a huge adjustment is an understatement."