But it was on a well-traveled road in Grand Forks that Marvin’s life was drastically altered on Nov. 17, 2014. She had just left campus when her 1984 Dodge Ram pickup truck, plagued by a faulty fuel gauge, sputtered and stalled along Gateway Drive, a four-lane road lined with small businesses. Marvin steered the car to the right side of the road, about 100 feet from a gas station. Marvin bought a gas can, filled it, and returned to her truck. The gas cap was on the driver’s side, facing traffic, which made Marvin nervous.

“I remember looking down the street,” she said. “There was a red light, and I went, ‘O.K., I can fill it quick, quick, quick.’ I remember it was super cold, and my hands were freezing. There was a little snow coming down.”

Marvin said she never heard the two cars racing each other toward her. According to witnesses and the police, a red Chevrolet Cavalier driven by an 18-year-old man slammed into the back of her truck and sent Marvin airborne. She crashed to the pavement, where another car nearly ran over her. The driver of the Cavalier was convicted of aggravated reckless driving and sentenced to 126 days in jail.

“I remember a tiny bit of the ambulance ride, kind of waking up going, ‘Where am I, what’s happening, what’s going on, why are they cutting my clothes off?’” Marvin said. “Then I went out again. The next thing I remember was seeing my sister in the emergency room, and I’m still kind of like, ‘What’s happening, what’s going on?’ Then I went out again.

“The next time I woke is when I started feeling the pain, realizing what happened.”

Marvin had three torn ligaments and additional damage in her right knee, a humerus broken in three places, and a soda-can-size hole in her arm where the bone had burst through. Nerve damage locked the fingers and thumb on her right hand into a fist. It would be three days before Marvin’s teammates washed the gasoline and blood out of her hair.

Marvin needed two operations on her arm before leaving the hospital a week later. While she was in the hospital, her father hired workers to build a ramp from their garage to their house for Lisa’s wheelchair and to add handholds and a detachable shower head in their bathroom. Once Marvin returned home, she needed help with everything.