Island woman injured in second serious wreck had learned 'what mattered'

It took years for Maggie Deery to learn what mattered.

The Hilton Head Island woman began rebelling and drinking in middle school and experimenting with drugs in high school. She got a DUI charge and spent a night in jail -- and later, six weeks in rehab.

None of that stopped her drinking.

All that changed one night in November 2011. Deery, then 17, was crammed in the backseat of a packed car that left the road and struck a tree on Hilton Head, leaving the drunk driver dead and her four teenage passengers seriously injured.

Three years later, Deery had learned what mattered, and was using her story to warn others about the dangers of drugs, alcohol and driving under the influence, she said in a series of videos for students at Hilton Head Island High School.

"You don't know if you're gonna have another day, so every day matters, and make the best of them," Deery, now 20, said in the videos, played during the school's morning news announcement last semester. "Doing drugs, thinking you're cool, trying to be cool, and doing Xanax -- none of that is what you'd want your last day to be."

On Friday night, Deery found herself fighting for her life again.

This time, however, the alleged drunk driver was behind another wheel.

Deery suffered stomach and brain bleeding, a fractured back and leg and other injuries after an SUV crossed into oncoming traffic on William Hilton Parkway near Beach City Road and struck the car she was traveling in, according to her father, Terry.

She was in stable condition after undergoing four hours of surgery at Memorial University Medical Center in Savannah, though the extent of her injuries was not clear Monday.

"She's going to be OK, but it's going to be a long haul," Terry Deery said. "She's in good hands.'

Deery's driver and boyfriend, Daniel Holley, suffered minor injuries.

The driver of the other car, 32-year-old Emily Curry of Hilton Head, was listed in good condition at the Savannah hospital Monday. She has been charged with felony DUI resulting in great bodily injury, according to S.C. Highway Patrol.

On Sunday, Terry Deery said he was experiencing "deja vu" at the Highway Patrol report that Curry had been drinking before the wreck.

The driver in the 2011 accident, 17-year-old Kendall Walton, had been drinking before she wrecked, according to police. That accident came not long after Deery got a DUI of her own, she told students in the video last semester. The 20-year-old made the videos at principal Amanda O'Nan's request, in reaction to a spike in Xanax use at school.

"A lot of students said it was very impactful," O'Nan said Monday. "I think so many of our students remember that car accident and remember her and know her family. I think that's how our students connected with her."

O'Nan said it was the first time Deery shared her story through the school, though she's done other public speaking in the three years since she was paralyzed with a traumatic brain injury in the first wreck.

"Xanax became my best friend. It came before school, it came before friends, it came before my family," Deery said in the video. "I thought it gave me confidence and I was cool for taking it, but I was a coward, and it was not the confidence you want."

She experienced a few other scares before the November 2011 wreck.

One night, Deery recalled, she snorted Xanax and woke up in her bed the next day with gashes and bruises on her face but no memory of the night before. She says she never did Xanax again, but continued drinking after she was arrested for DUI and spent six weeks in an Orangeburg rehab center.

It wasn't until after the 2011 wreck that she appreciated the love and devotion of her family and came to value her own potential. Before Friday's accident, she was preparing to start classes at Midlands Technical College, her father said Sunday.

"She is a really positive influence, on how she focused on the positive when it might be so easy to do differently," O'Nan said. "It's a really gratifying feeling just to know Maggie and to know her story."

Video by Maggie Deery, posted to the Facebook page of her mother, Freda Deery:

Follow reporter Rebecca Lurye on Twitter at twitter.com/IPBG_Rebecca.

Related content:

• Update: Hilton Head Island woman hospitalized after Friday crash, March 1, 2015
• Teens who survived fatal wreck continue recovery, December 1, 2011

This story was originally published March 2, 2015 at 12:04 PM with the headline "Island woman injured in second serious wreck had learned 'what mattered'."