Senior Spotlight: Danielle Delgado

Back in December, after two weeks at Duke Medical Center recovering a life-threatening a urinary tract infection, Danielle Delgado had a message for her mom: “I’m going back to school.” 

Her mom didn’t blink.  

Two days before Christmas break, Danielle returned to Southeast High. Her longtime physical therapist has a nickname for her and her gritty resilience. She calls Danielle “sassy sunshine.” As for her mom Marie, she and her husband Carlos have brought her up to advocate for herself. 

Plus, she knows her daughter, her only child. She was tired of Duke, a hospital she has been in and out of since she was born. 

“Being around other people, that would be good for her mentality, so I was fine with it,” Marie says. “And I knew she was tired of looking at her mom in the hospital room.” 

Danielle will graduate Thursday from Southeast High. She’ll maneuver her motorized wheelchair across Guilford County’s biggest stage at the First Horizon Coliseum and continue moving forward toward her next stage in life. 

She’ll go to UNC-Greensboro, the alma mater of her mother and her aunt Lisa. She plans to major in special education and follow her mom’s academic footsteps. Marie works as an EC pre-school teacher helping students with moderate to severe disabilities.  

Danielle also will live on UNCG’s campus and be as independent as she can be. She’ll have a personal care assistant in the morning, and in the evening, she’ll have at her side a graduate student pursuing her doctoral degree in physical therapy at High Point University. 

Other than that, Danielle will be on her own. Ask her why, and she’s pretty blunt. 

“I don’t want someone helping,” she says. 

‘This Is Her Next Step’  

During her young life, Danielle has had more than 20 surgeries. During her junior year at Southeast High, she had seven. She can give anyone who asks details about each in a very by-the-book voice. When she offers details of how she broke her right leg in February, she even gives a slight chuckle. 

“I was sitting crisscross with one leg over the other, with my right foot underneath my leg, and I was putting a puzzle together,” she says. “I reached too far to the left, and I heard a loud pop. I knew it didn’t sound good.” 

She was back at Duke for outpatient surgery. Doctors repaired her broken femur with a rod and a screw, and as Danielle was heading home, she started emailing her teachers to let them know what had happened and asked them for an extension so she could finish her work. The surgery was Tuesday; Danielle was back by Thursday at Southeast High after emailing her doctors at Duke for a go-ahead note so she could return to school. 

“I wanted to do good,” she says. “I wanted to pass my classes.” 

Danielle is no-nonsense about what she faces in her life. She doesn’t give much emotional context. Her mom, though, does. 

“I don’t know how I got a kid like that,” Marie says. “I think it’s the way my husband Carlos and I have brought her up. He’s from El Salvador originally. He grew up in California, and he had to have a lot of grit in his life. It’s that whole idea of putting your next foot forward and keep going. 

“And today, when I look back to what we’ve been through last year, and now she’s going live on campus, I know I have to keep going too,” Marie says. “This is her next step.” 

Marie and Carlos met at the Baptist Student Union at UNCG. When she was pregnant with Danielle, they found out she would be born with spina bifida, a condition that occurs when the spine and spinal cord don't form properly. 

“We knew this is who she is, but this is not all who she is,” Marie says. “From our faith, we both knew that you’re given things, you learn through them, and you figure things out. We knew the support would be there, and we knew we didn’t want things to stop Danielle from doing anything in life.” 

Danielle has not. 

More Than a Pink Prom Dress 

Danielle sings soprano in her youth choir at Greensboro’s First Baptist Church. She also sings in INSPIRO: The Triad Youth Choir, which was started by Baker Lawrimore, who directs the youth choir at First Baptist.  

Check out their website and you’ll find this statement about belonging on their website: “At this intersection, we hold high listening, empathy, and wonder – and accept nothing less.” Or check out their shirts, and you’ll see the choir’s slogan in big letters: “We’re more because you’re here.” 

Sometimes, Danielle volunteers with the pre-school children during Sunday worship at First Baptist, and she’s also involved with the youth group at the church. When asked about the youth group, Danielle will pull out her smart phone and thumb through photo after photo, some of which makes her laugh. 

She also has traveled to Capitol Hill to advocate for funding with the non-profit organization Spina Bifida Association, and she’s been the student ambassador both for INSPIRO as well as the Spina Bifida Association annual fundraiser, Walk-N-Roll for Spina Bifida. 

And Danielle drives. She has an adult driver’s permit.  

In April, she went to the prom at Southeast High. She wore a dress that featured her favorite color — pink. It was all glittery on the top with taffeta on the bottom. She found it online, and with her mom’s permission, she ordered it. 

Marie and Carlos dropped her off at the prom, which took place in an event space in Julian, a former barn. They picked her up at midnight. Danielle was, as her mom says, “super chatty and talking.”  

“I’m just glad that she was brave enough to show up,” Marie says. “She got to do something that other seniors do too.” 

 

‘She Is Sassy Sunshine’  

None of that surprises Dr. Renee Hamel. She is an associate professor of physical therapy at HPU. But when she first met Danielle, Hamel was working at Cone Health Pediatric Rehabilitation Center in Burlington. Danielle was no more than 5. 

For years, she worked with Danielle two to three times a week, an hour at a time. Today, she brings her and her mom into her classes at HPU so her doctoral students can understand how to better work with students with disabilities.  

Whenever Danielle or her mom come, Hamel will line along the wall at least four of the leg braces Danielle wore. She wants her students to understand how leg braces can change as a child grows. As for the leg braces, they all sport Danielle’s favorite color — pink. 

“She is sassy sunshine,” Hamel says. “Those are always the first two words I think about when I think about Danielle. She is determined and stubborn in all the right ways. She knew she wanted to stand, and she wanted to walk so we got braces.  

“It was hard, demanding, and she didn’t talk to me for two weeks. But I knew we had to do it on her terms. She adjusted.” 

As for working with Danielle, Hamel knows what she learned. 

“She pushed me to be a better PT,” she says. “She is one of my patients who will always stick with me. She is challenged by the world, and she challenges the world back, and that determination and fight comes with her. And she inspires me to fight for her. That is who she is.” 

Sit with Danielle, even for a few minutes, and you get it. Her resilience. Her grit. Her courage. Her quiet determination. Danielle doesn’t have an easy life. She knows that. But she sees what she has to do every day in her very no-nonsense way. 

“I just go with the flow,” she says. 

And she does.