Siena Garaffa’s life and hockey career took a bad turn, but she skates on

Siena Garaffa was ticketed for hockey stardom until a single-vehicle accident in May 2024 changed her life forever.

A senior on the 19U Aspen Leafs hockey team, Siena was accepted to play at Northwood Academy in Lake Placid, New York. Its 19U AAA team plays at the Olympic Center where the 1980 US Olympic Team authored its “Miracle on Ice” run to the gold medal.

At the time, Siena was playing junior hockey at its highest level with Team Colorado’s 16U AAA squad.

But, when Siena’s blue Ford F-250 pickup truck hit a massive puddle, she lost control and the vehicle hydroplaned into a guard rail. The truck flipped over four times and she was thrown 80 feet into the opposite lane of traffic.

All of her hockey dreams were put on hold. When first responders arrived on the scene, the last thing they expected to find was a survivor. However, there was Siena, shielded by a good Samaratian, fighting for life.

“I don’t remember all the details,” Siena said. “I had memory loss a full year before the accident. I will see faces and remember that I know the person but not their name. I’ll deal with short-term memory loss forever, it’s something I will work continuously to perfect. It’s like you are living again, in society, for the first time.”

Early into her recovery, Siena couldn’t sit up, she was vegetative and in an unresponsive coma for seven weeks. Neurologists didn’t sugar coat Siena’s prospects when talking to her mother, Emily Garaffa.

“I just wanted a warm body to lay next to one day,” Emily said. “The neurologists were gloomy. They didn’t give us any high hopes. We were told on a scale of 0-10, she’s at a zero.”

Injuries

A feeding tube made sure Siena was nourished. An intubation tube made sure she could breathe. There were tubes coming out of her chest helping her fight to stay alive. And every now and then, while she lay in a coma, Emily saw her daughter engage in auto movement.

Siena had a broken jaw, broken femur, her eyelid was ripped off and she had facial fractures. On an ambulance trip to Grand Junction, in the immediate aftermath of the accident, spinal fluid leaked from her ears.

Even with all those injuries, it was the one Emily couldn’t see that would leave the most lasting impact. Siena had a traumatic brain injury.

“To see what happened my focus turned to all the things that could be fixed,” Emily said. “A broken leg…all these cuts. And then you just can’t absorb what it means when a doctor says the brain injury is the biggest injury. I was thinking a broken bone would take six weeks to heal. It’s almost like you can’t comprehend any of it.”

After five months, Siena was in Craig Hospital which is world-renowned for its neurorehabilitation and research. When the same doctors who said Siena was at a zero saw her they were floored.

A long journey still awaited Siena, but she’d made progress. Emily chalks it up to Siena’s physical conditioning. Emily and her husband David were personal trainers. They founded Design 2B Fit, where they design fitness facilities.

Siena followed in their footsteps, too. When she played hockey at Cherry Creek, Siena set the girls squat record at 305 pounds.

“Siena is so strong, hockey probably saved her life,” Emily said. “The first responder didn’t think she was 17 years old. With her body composition they thought she was 30 years old.”

Added her best friend Kenzie Sebenaler who played with Siena on the Aspen Mountain Select team and on the Aspen Leafs Junior Hockey Club since they were five-years old on the mini mites team: “In school we had strength conditioning together and she’s one of strongest women I know. When you realize your best friend is in critical condition, you don’t know what to do. The best you can do is pray and hope for the best.”

The Phone

Sirens filled the air, lights were flashing and the phone rang.

Siena had just left a graduation party, her friend Jacey Read heard the sirens and called her phone. But it wasn’t Siena’s voice on the other end. It was a first responder who said to call Siena’s parents and tell them there was an accident and she was unresponsive.

Back at home Emily was packing with a friend for a trip to Europe. Some of her friends were already in France and she’d had the journey on the books for two years.

All that stopped with one phone call.

“Thank God we were here and hadn’t left yet,” Emily said. “I tried to call the hospital on the way. All I was told is the doctors are doing everything they can. But they can’t tell you if your daughter is alive or dead.”

While the truck didn’t survive the crash, Siena now says with a laugh that “was her favorite truck, I loved it so much, it was blue and that’s my favorite color,” the phone did and that was an instrumental part in notifying her parents and her recovery.

As she gathered information, Emily called her husband. David was in Rabbit Valley in Western Colorado near the Utah border on a dirt-biking trip with Siena’s brother Rocco. Siena was on her way to join them at the camp. David took the call on his helmet and headed home.

That same phone would be useful months later when Siena would scroll through the photos on it as she worked to rebuild her memory.

The Future

Eventually, Siena asked Emily the big question.

“Can we go home now?”

She’d had enough of the hospital. Yet, Emily would always reply, “we just have a little more work to do.”

A year ago, Siena still had a limited vocabulary. When she was released from the hospital she still faced challenges. As a fall risk, she couldn’t go up and down stairs. On Jan. 30 in the Aspen Leafs 19U Girls Senior Game, Siena scored the lone goal in a 5-1 loss to the Vail Mountaineers.

“We were told that TBI recovery is a marathon not a sprint,” Emily said. “She’s closer to jogging right now. But she has outpaced the expectations of what we were told at Craig Hospital. You see a completely different person now. There’s always going to be some lasting injury. There’s some nerve damage that affects the vision in her left eye and some hearing loss.”

“A year ago she had a very limited vocabulary and speaks so much faster now with a big, broad range of words.”

Still, Siena said sometimes she “knows a word, is thinking of it, but forgets how to say it.”

She’s going to attend Colorado Mesa next year where there isn’t a women’s hockey team. While Siena studies Kinesiology she plans to start a women’s hockey club.

She’s just got a little more to do.