On January 28, tragedy struck a family of six from Santa Clarita when 18-year-old Kaeli Edmonds lost control of the car she was driving on Vasquez Canyon Road and Sierra Highway, causing it to strike a mountain and flip three times.

Investigators still don’t know what prompted the high school senior to swerve as she drove home from her best friend’s house that night, but family members call the fact that she survived the devastating crash “an act of God.”

“It was just a normal weekend,” Kaeli’s mother, Deanna Thorpe, told KHTS Monday, noting that she was expecting her daughter to be home by 10 p.m. that night. “It was just getting late, like hours had passed and she hadn’t been home yet. The police actually came to my door.”

Deanna arrived at Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital just as Kaeli was leaving emergency surgery, knowing only that x-rays had revealed her daughter’s neck was fractured and dislocated in the crash.

“When I got there, she wasn’t aware or awake,” Deanna said. “I remember just touching her, and she (seemed) fine. I just kept feeling her hands and her feet and her head. She was all there, and I felt so relieved.”

Sadly, Deanna’s relief was short-lived. The surgeon informed her that Kaeli had severed her spinal cord, and all he could do during surgery was realign her vertebrae “as best he could” so she would be able to sit up someday.

“I just remember asking him, ‘Can she walk?’, and he just said, ‘No,’” Deanna recalled. “I remember saying, ‘Will she ever walk?’ and he just said, ‘No.’”

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Kaeli was paralyzed from the chest down, and spent the next 45 days on a ventilator because of a collapsed lung. At one point she even came down with pneumonia, and had to be “bagged” when she suddenly became completely desaturated on a few different occasions.

“What I didn’t realize was how the spinal cord controls everything in our bodies,” Deanna said. “She can lift her arms up and she can flex her wrist, but she has no feeling from the chest down and she has no use of her hands.”

Kaeli with her family and pet pig.

At the beginning of March — around the same time Kaeli was supposed to graduate early from Vasquez High School, where she was taking her last semester online — the Thorpe family was able to transfer her to the top spinal cord injury rehab in the country: Craig Hospital in Englewood, Colorado.

As their daughter continues her recovery there, Deanna and her husband, Matt, have been forced to “fight” with their health insurance company while they attempt to cope with this family tragedy.

Not only is Kaeli’s deductible $6,000, Deanna says insurance will only cover 60 out of 90 total days her daughter needs of rehab — which will cost the Thorpe family an estimated $90,000 out of pocket.

“It’s $3,000 a day to have her in rehab,” Deanna said. “What we’re fundraising for right now is the last month of Kaeli’s rehab and whatever medical equipment our insurance is not going to cover.”

A family friend created a GoFundMe page for the family, which has raised just over $13,000 so far. A fundraiser is also set to take place Wednesday at The Habit Burger Grill on McBean Parkway in Valencia, where 20 percent of proceeds from patrons who show the fundraiser flyer will be donated to help cover Kaeli’s medical expenses.

Kaeli skydiving on her 18th birthday.

Deanna noted one of the most difficult parts of her daughter’s paralysis is knowing how much help her naturally independent daughter will need when she can finally return home.

“She was definitely our most adventurous kid — she wasn’t scared of anything,” Deanna said, recalling how Kaeli convinced her mother to go skydiving on her 18th birthday.

“She just wanted to explore the world and just travel and go to school, and she wanted to work,” Deanna continued. “I think that’s what’s so tragic for me. She’s always been the most independent of all of my kids. She could always do it herself — been that way since she was a baby.”

A big animal lover, Kaeli used to hike with her dog every day, and even convinced her parents to take in pigs, chinchillas, hamsters and chickens at their home in Sand Canyon.

Just before her accident, Kaeli was working as a hostess and training to be a server at Black Angus in Valencia, and her mom noted she was always happy to drive her eight-year old brother, Fox, and nine-year-old sister, Talon, to their baseball and softball practices at Hart, where her dad has also coached little league.

“This has just changed everybody’s world,” Deanna said. “We’ll get through this and we’ll give her the best life possible. We’ll never leave her, and I’ll still make sure she enjoys life.”

To donate to the Thorpe family for Kaeli’s medical expenses, click here to visit her GoFundMe page. For more information about Wednesday’s fundraiser at The Habit, click here.