After surviving brutal beating, former high school athlete running toward the future

After being viciously beaten with a baseball bat in October, former Eisenhower High School track standout Drew Schreiber wasn’t sure he’d ever run again.

He was hospitalized for more than a month, placed in a medically-induced coma to help reduce brain swelling, and had blood clots removed from beneath his skull.

Schreiber suffered a traumatic brain injury, a major cause of death contributing to about 30 percent of all injury fatalities and disability in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Those who survive traumatic brain injury can face effects lasting from a few days to, in more severe cases, a lifetime of disabilities.

Schreiber, 20, a lean runner who claimed two state titles his senior year in high school, eventually awoke from the coma in late October at Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center & Children’s Hospital in Spokane with badly blurred vision, a sketchy memory and his throat pierced with a breathing tube.

“I didn’t know if I was going to be able to run at all or anything,” he said recently.

“It’s pretty overwhelming at first; I had no idea that I wasn’t going to be able to walk and stuff,” he said. “I hear stories about people who have to relearn everything, but to have to do it yourself, I don’t even know how to explain it. It’s every day trying to get better and not knowing if you will.”

Yet, Schreiber is poised to put any impacts from his injuries far behind him, making exceptional progress on his journey to recovery. For the past month, he has averaged running 3 miles a day, with his longest run reaching 8 miles.

“I’m feeling great,” Schreiber said with a boyish grin. “It feels really nice to be back out there. Running makes me feel like everything is returning to normal.”

An alarming phone call

In the early hours of Oct. 8, Schreiber’s mother, Amy Karau, was awakened by a call from her son’s girlfriend, Edith Zaragoza, who had devastating news: Schreiber was in the hospital after suffering a brutal beating at a Cheney apartment complex not far from Eastern Washington University, where he was a junior.

One of the assailants repeatedly struck Schreiber with an aluminum baseball bat.

Karau immediately called her ex-husband, Schreiber’s father, Alan Schreiber, who lives in the Tri-Cities, then the hospital for more information about her son’s condition.

“I was in information-gathering mode,” she recalled.

She and her husband, Fred Karau, immediately drove from their Yakima home to Spokane to be by Schreiber’s side.

“We just kind of threw our stuff together and hit the road,” she said.

She arrived to find her son hooked up to several machines.

“It was pretty shocking,” she said. “We were still in information mode, what’s going to happen next and where is this going to go from here?”

Zaragoza left school at Central Washington University to be by Schreiber’s side as well. She got the initial call about the incident from Schreiber’s roommate.

“You look at somebody that you care about so much and you want to hope that that’s not really him,” she said of seeing Schreiber hospitalized. “It was a shock to see him that way.”

Zaragoza and Schreiber’s family refrain from specifically describing how he looked in the hospital.

“I could give you gruesome details but that’s not going to help anyone,” Alan Schreiber said. “I’ve never seen somebody on life support before. I took a picture and I show no one. It’s something I don’t think anyone should have to see. It was horrific. I don’t even like to think about it.”

Karau couldn’t fathom why anyone would commit such a brutal act against her son.

“Very shocking,” she said. “That’s pretty much the emotion we were all experiencing.”

Two suspects — John T. Mellgren, 24, and Damian C. Dunigan, 20 — are charged with attempted murder in Schreiber’s beating.

Mellgren told police that Schreiber broke the rear window of his car. Mellgren claimed he never saw Schreiber again.

Police found blood on the rear window of the car and a handgun with an “altered” serial number and two bats, including one that matched witness descriptions, in the car’s trunk.

Schreiber said he doesn’t remember much of the attack and prefers not to talk about it. Instead, he wants to focus on his recovery.

He vaguely recalls waking up in the hospital. Although his vision was blurred so much that he couldn’t identify where he was or who was nearby, he knew it was family.

“It took me a long time to realize I was in a hospital and in a hospital bed,” he said. “Once I realized where I was, I didn’t spend too much time thinking about it. I was just glad to be surrounded by family.”

Schreiber was on a respirator and communicated with family by writing. One of the first sentences he wrote was to ask how his dad was doing.

“He’s in a messed up situation and he wants to know how I am,” his dad recalled. “He never complains, he never feels sorry for himself. I’m very impressed and very proud that he’s my son.”

Road to recovery

On a recent afternoon, Schreiber rubbed the sides of his head, explaining how the right side felt like a deflated football when he first touched it after gaining consciousness at the hospital.

“It was all caved in on that side,” he said. “I can remember my head hurting.”

Twice, a piece of his skull had to be removed on that side — once to relieve pressure on his swollen brain, and another time to remove a second blood clot that had formed, he said.

“That was the worst pain I had ever felt — two craniotomies,” he said.

Using his fingers, Schreiber combed through his short brown hair to reveal several jagged scars on his scalp, explaining he has six metal plates and 24 screws helping hold his skull together.

As he continued to separate his hair to reveal the scars, his mom intervened: “Okay, that’s enough.”

Seeing Schreiber with a breathing tube in his throat, swollen head and having to undergo surgeries to remove blood clots and a portion of his skull wasn’t easy for family, his mom said.

They had to stay in a waiting room during each surgery.

“Oh gosh, it’s grueling,” she said. “There was constant anxiety of not knowing what the future was going to bring. First, is he going to survive? Second, is he going to come back enough to be self-sufficient? We didn’t know those answers until we were several months into this.”

The family didn’t learn he would survive until about two weeks into the ordeal, his mom said.

“It was an enormous relief,” she said.

Schreiber began showing significant signs of recovery. He was able to walk a few feet from his hospital bed to a nearby chair. Then he began walking down a hospital hallway.

“At first, it was hard to walk,” Schreiber said. “I had bad vertigo, like I was constantly flipping over.”

On Nov. 18, Schreiber was released from the hospital and sent to St. Luke’s Rehabilitation Institute in Spokane, where he began physical therapy.

Exercises were minimal at first. “It was really basic, like lifting my head off the pillow,” he recalled.

Zaragoza, who began dating Schreiber in high school, described him as a determined person who never gives up.

“That’s a core trait that Drew always has had – it’s just who he is,” she said. “He’s a fighter and he’s a doer. I think he shows it in this recovery. It’s Drew’s mentality, his push and his desire to succeed.”

Family and Zaragoza stayed by his side, helping him, his mom said. They took half-hour shifts staying with him, and often consulted one another when agreeing to medical procedures suggested by doctors, such as removing blood clots from the brain.

“It’s tiring, it’s emotional and lots of decisions have to be made,” Karau said. “It was a huge challenge for all of us, but it was a group effort.”

Almost a week later on Thanksgiving, he went home and had dinner with his family.

“Best Thanksgiving ever,” Schreiber said.

It was a miraculous moment for the family.

“That kid bounced back like medical professionals had never seen,” Schreiber’s dad said. “The lady that checked him out (of rehabilitation) told me that she has been doing this for eight years, and she had never seen anyone recover as quickly as Drew did. The kid pulled through.”

He’s been making progress ever since.

Schreiber is back to his old self, winning board games father and son often play, his dad said.

He even recently ran about a 6-minute mile on the treadmill. Schreiber’s personal best in the mile is 4:07.32.

“I have my son back,” he said. “He’s got the same personality, the same quirkiness — he’s back.”

Today, Schreiber lifts weights and uses rubber exercise bands to regain strength in his right shoulder, where he suffered severe torn cartilage from the assault. Using his eyes, he follows a moving ball attached to a string in an effort to overcome damaged pathways causing a loss of depth perception and peripheral vision. He’s also undergoing speech therapy emphasizing cognitive functions.

He’s happy with his progress.

“Now I feel like my vision, the clarity is back to normal except for the blind spots where I cannot see,” Schreiber said.

Looking forward

Last week, Schreiber began helping coach distance runners at Eisenhower High School, where in his senior year he won Class 4A state track and field titles at 800 and 1,600 meters, setting an all-time Valley record in the latter. As a result, he was named Yakima Valley boys athlete of the year.

“I love coaching — this is my first week ever coaching,” he said. “I feel like they are responding well to what I’m telling them. It’s great. I love doing it. I always thought I’d come back to Ike and coach.”

And on March 30, he begins at Yakima Valley College. He wants to earn a teaching degree and teach high school science. But for now, he’s running in the mornings and coaching in the afternoons.

“Eventually I do plan to go back to running collegiately,” he said with determination in his eyes.

Schreiber said the ordeal has changed his perspective about life.

“I don’t take any day for granted, and I try to make the most of every single day the best that I can,” he said.