I Am the Central Park Jogger: A Story of Hope and Possibility

It is the end of a long workday
and she is out for a run.

Shortly after 9:00 P.M. on April 19, 1989, a young woman jogs alone near 102nd Street in New York City's Central Park. She is attacked, raped, savagely beaten, and left for dead. Many hours later, she is found lying in the mud, her body thrashing violently.

I Am the Central Park Jogger recounts the mesmerizing, inspiring, often wrenching story of human strength and transcendent recovery that involved a family, a hospital, a city -- in fact an entire nation -- of supporters.

Even today, more than a decade after the attack, the Central Park Jogger is still in the news. As she writes this story, the headlines scream JOGGER once more. Startling new information about the crime emerges. Because of the nature of her head injuries, she remembers nothing of the attack. Whether one man or several nearly took her life, the damage was done. And for the Central Park Jogger, the crime was not the climax but the beginning of her journey. She tells us who she was -- a well-educated young woman working on Wall Street -- and who she is now.

Once comfortable in a high-pressure corporate boardroom, she is a woman who has had to learn to talk again. She is not the woman she was -- physical and cognitive "deficits" linger -- yet she is stronger and more alive than she has ever been. The event meant to take her life gave her a deeper one, richer and more meaningful.

Meet Trisha Meili, the Central Park Jogger.