VALLEY CITY, N.D. (NEWSBREAK) – Wearing a smile on his face bright enough to light neighborhoods, Laine Schwehr walked through the doors of the Madonna Rehabilitation Hospital in Lincoln, Neb., on Wednesday, November 12th and settled into a vehicle with his parents, heading home to Valley City, N.D.
This was a moment that neither the 28-year-old Dirt Late Model racer, nor anyone else, thought would be possible in the initial aftermath of a frightening crash he rode out on Sept. 20 during qualifying for the WISSOTA-sanctioned Stock Car Stampede at Jamestown (N.D.) Speedway. His life seemed to have been altered forever from a broken neck and compressed spinal cord that he had suffered in the wreck and left him with almost no movement or feeling in his body.
“I was kind of just laying there trying to figure out what was next,” Schwehr said Monday evening, recalling the helplessness and uncertainty he experienced while being treated at a hospital in Fargo, N.D. “The doctor, I could kind of tell he was trying to figure out how to tell me what was going on, and I just told him, ‘Don’t sugarcoat it. Just say what it is.’ And he’s like, ‘Well, yeah, you’re quadriplegic, paralyzed from the chest down. I don’t think you’ll ever walk again and you could be lucky to get the use of your arms.’
“At that point I could pick my hands up off my chest about a half-inch and that was all I had. My mom says when I was in the hospital room, I was laying there and I was like, I could move my eyes, and that was it.”
But exactly one month later, on Oct. 21, Schwehr was walking again without human assistance, albeit gingerly and behind a walker. And just over two weeks later he was discharged at least three weeks earlier than expected to continue his recovery in his own apartment in North Dakota.
It was a miraculous rebound for the preternaturally positive Schwehr — and one that he plans to cap by eventually returning to the cockpit of a race car to compete again.
“I mean we’ll get back to it. That’s the goal,” Schwehr said. “I don’t have any doubt in my mind that I’ll get back behind the wheel of a car and act like (the accident and injury) never happened.”
Schwehr asserted that he loves the sport too much to let this episode, however scary it was, end his racing career. After all, he feels like he was just getting started.
A Road to Recovery benefit for Laine Schwehr will be held Saturday, January 3rd, 2026 in the Valley City Eagles Club. Come out to support and celebrate Laine’s recovery.