This story is a collaboration between the Illinois Answers Project and Capitol News Illinois .

JONESBORO, Ill. — It was a bitterly cold evening on Jan. 19, 1997, when Judy Stegle and her husband, Mike, received the call that would upend their lives forever.

Their 17-year-old daughter, Cortnie Stewart, a softball and basketball standout at Anna-Jonesboro Community High School, a gifted painter with a spunky attitude, had taken the car without permission to drive to Harrisburg. She hit black ice and the car landed on her after she was thrown from the vehicle. When the ambulance arrived, she was unconscious.

Cortnie woke up 13 days later in a hospital in Cape Girardeau, Missouri.

“She opened her eyes and she saw me, and she started crying,” Judy Stegle said. “And they said,

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