Hailey Remigio, 2016 Walk With Me Ambassador

photo of Hailey Remigio

Known for: Unrelentingly positive spirit, sense of humor, national wheelchair tennis champ
Favorite things: The Florida Gators, writing/blogging
Challenge: Spinal cord injury
How Easter Seals helped her: Equipment loan closet, grant recipient

On May 31, 2015, more than 600 graduates walked across the stage in the Ocean Center to accept their diplomas from Spruce Creek High School, Port Orange. The graduating class of 2015 included paraplegic Hailey Remigio, who stepped out of her wheelchair and walked over to accept her diploma in the same celebrated fashion. The crowd went crazy, but she didn’t hear them.

“I honestly paid no attention to the crowd, because I was so concentrated on every step,” Hailey says.

Walking across the graduation stage wasn’t something Hailey set out to prove to anyone else, she simply wanted the personal fulfillment of accomplishing a major life goal she’d set for herself.

Ambitious goalsetting is part of Hailey’s DNA. She’s an accomplished, nationally recognized wheelchair tennis player, and a freshman at the University of Florida. There, she’s studying neuroscience in hopes of one day becoming a neonatologist who works with high-risk and premature infants.

Hailey has been an Easter Seals Walk with Me fundraising participant since 2013, and 2016 is her first year as an Honorary Ambassador. She credits Easter Seals with helping her discover that she’s more than her disability, and more than a diagnosis.

“When you have a disability, be it physical, mental, developmental, psychological, or otherwise, it is easy to fall under the impression that you will fall through the cracks and live your life in the shadows of others,” says Hailey, “but Easter Seals plays a huge role in assuring this will never be true. I truly cannot thank Easter Seals enough.”

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