Oklahoma City Bombing Survivor Turns Hope Into A Verb

Like many of us Amy Downs struggled during the pandemic lock down. 

AMY: Let me just tell you. Yes. Can I tell you let's just talk about that? Okay. So COVID hits, right? We're all locked down on top of that. I go to the gym and something's not right. And I don't know what it is. I found out I have a, um, cervical issue. I've got a herniated disc. Oh. And then by the way, my knee they've been telling me it was gonna need to be replaced, they've now reached a point where I can't even walk in Walmart and push a cart. And I can't go to the gym and work out and COVID has me locked down and I am depressed, like seriously depressed, like hopeless. Like I keep a journal every morning…And I flipped back over several-month period and the words ‘dark, hopeless, depressed.’ Like those words were just on every page. 

Amy had forgotten how to pull herself out of the darkness. Decades earlier her boss had shown her the way out. It involved an imaginary magic wand. 

AMY: And my husband said to me one morning he said, ‘you know, you need to get out your magic wand.’ Really? Like, oh, first of all, just tick me off. Like, don't use my stuff back on me, you know, but he was right. 

This is a story about how Amy found that magic wand and how she changed her life.

This is 2 Lives. I’m Laurel Morales.

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When Amy was in her mid 20s she was in that dark place. She was living in Shreveport, Louisiana, in her childhood bedroom, too old in her mind to be living with her parents. She felt empty and alone and desperate for her life to start. She attempted college but wasn’t able to focus on her studies. 

AMY: I had a boyfriend and like, this was serious business. Do you remember what a promise ring was? Like? You know, there was like, like this like diamond dust in it or something. And it was like a promise to like one day, maybe get engaged and maybe get whatever. Okay. I had a promise ring and he broke my heart. So I was dumped by my boyfriend. I had flunked outta college and I was just spiraling. I didn't know what I was gonna do. And my sister was like ‘move to Oklahoma City. You just need a fresh start.’ 

So Amy took her advice and moved in with her sister and her five boys. She slept on the floor of her baby nephew’s room and applied to work at a credit union downtown. 

AMY: I can't handle math. I'm terrible at it. And what do I do? I go get a job at a financial institution really like with a cash drawer? 

On the day of the job interview it soon became evident that Amy didn’t really didn’t know anything about credit unions. She was about to be dismissed when the CEO walked in.

AMY: She says, oh you're applying for the teller position. She looks at me and she says, um, ‘what's your, what's your birthday?’ And so I was like, uh, ‘March 31st.’ And she goes, ‘oh, you're in Aries.’ And she looks at the lady interviewing me and she's like, ‘we need another Aries. You need to hire her.’ Legitimately that is how I got this job.

But Amy had trouble balancing her drawer and neglected her other office duties. Her co-workers reluctantly covered for her. Sonja, the teller who worked next to Amy, had a quick wit and was well liked and became Amy’s closest friend. That forced others to accept Amy. 

Amy thought getting a job and a husband would make her happy. So after she landed her job at the credit union she went about securing a husband. Her sister introduced her to a guy who had just graduated from bible college and was about to become a pastor. Amy says he checked all the boxes of what she imagined her Christian prince would be even though she didn’t love him.

AMY: I wanted the knight and shining armor to like, come in and fix all my problems and, you know, make me happy. 

So within six months of meeting each other they were married. But on her honeymoon she realized she still felt empty and alone. So she tried to fill the void with food. In their first year together Amy gained 100 pounds. 

And by the time Amy turned 28 she weighed more than 300 pounds and was wallowing in an unhappy marriage. She’d also lost her faith.

AMY:  I found myself not going to church, not praying, not, uh, doing a lot of the things that I did growing up, reading my Bible, praying all those kinds of things. And so in my twenties, um, I had gotten to a place where really, I was just focused on my job. It was one of the only bright spots of my day was working with the women that I worked with. And, I really was leading a very complacent, very, uh, shallow, honestly, life in my twenties. 

Amy says the emptiness she felt at home matched the emptiness she found in the churches they tried. There were lots of smiles but no deep connections or authentic emotions. Her husband never became a pastor. So instead of going to church on Sundays they stayed home to watch movies and eat donuts. 

AMY: I turned to food. It was a coping mechanism, so, um, I was very lonely and, um, you know, food is comfort…very depressed. Just really feeling like I had really messed up my life.

But on April 19, 1995 Amy was in a good mood as she and her husband were getting ready to close on a new house and Amy thought this was a hopeful sign. She recalled her husband dropping her off outside the federal building where the credit union was housed on the third floor. She remembers smiling at the homeless man outside the front door who was always there.

AMY: I remember so vividly was how beautiful the morning was like the red buds were all blooming. The sky was blue. It wasn't very windy. Like it was a gorgeous spring morning. I remember that. 

Amy chatted with her best friend Sonja who was nervous for her first meeting as a supervisor.

AMY: She had just gotten a promotion to head teller. And so they were having a supervisor meeting in our CEO's office that morning. And so she wanted to pick out, um, back in the day we called it a power suit if you wanted to look confident or take me seriously. So she had picked out this bright yellow suit thinking that was gonna like be her confidence suit. You know Sonja was very funny and so she gets to work and she's like, y'all I just look like a big old, yellow sunflower. That's all. I look like a yellow and flour and we were just cracking up. It was pretty yellow, but we're like, you look great, go in there, do your thing.

Amy was all a twitter sharing pictures of the new house.

AMY: I goofed off the entire first hour of the day.  I remember it was getting close to nine o'clock and I'm thinking, oh my gosh, I haven't even sat down at my desk. Like I have literally been running around, chatting with everybody. 

She finally made her way to her desk next to the big windows overlooking downtown Oklahoma City.

AMY: And I sat down and one of my coworkers who was seven months pregnant, came and sat down beside me to ask me a question. And um, I turned to ask her what she needed and that's when the bomb went off. PAUSE 

…It was so loud and it all happened so fast. There were so many things happening, you know, the screaming and the sound of the building coming apart and the falling sensation, like all of that happening all at the same time and so fast. 

Amy says she heard a woman screaming and then realized she was the one screaming. 

AMY: It's pitch black. I can't see anything. Like I can strain to open my eyes. I still can't see anything. I can't move really. I can barely breathe and it's hot and it stinks and it's burning my throat. And I remember wondering if I was dead or alive, legitimately trying to process am I alive? I knew my life was over. PAUSE My first thought was I'd been shot in the back of the head ..and I thought I was falling like to the ground, but I was falling three floors. And I just remember, you know, growing up in church, you know, man, we were all taught like how to say that sinner's prayer. And by golly, I was gonna say that sinner's prayer as fast as I could before I died. I remember that I was just like praying and uh, and then I'm like, oh my gosh, I didn't get, I didn't say it fast enough. I didn't say the prayer fast enough. And I must be in hell, cuz it's hot, it's dark. People are screaming. Like I don't know what's happening. And then the screaming stopped and it was just really quiet.

Amy had no concept of time but it felt like hours had gone by.

AMY: I heard a siren going off in the distance and I thought, okay, there that's a siren. So I must still be alive. There is a siren, I hear it. But I would yell and nobody would answer. And so I thought, okay, whatever happened is really bad cuz I hear the siren, but what if I'm the only person left alive? Like what if whatever happened, everybody's dead and I'm, I'm left alive and I'm just gonna be here wherever I'm at till I die. …at that point I just kept praying, you know, just for God to help me just help me be with me. PAUSE It was about 45 minutes of this and then I heard men's voices. I heard a man say, ‘okay, let's split up. Let's look for the daycare babies.’ And I was thinking, daycare? You know, I'm on the third floor, daycare's on the second floor. I didn't realize we were all at the bottom. You know, of this building. So I started screaming and the guy says, ‘I hear you. I hear you, child. How old are you?’ And I'm like, I'm two, you know, is what I wanted to say. Cause I thought he gonna come get me. If I told him I'm 28, you know, but I said, ‘I'm sorry, I'm 28.’ And he goes, that's okay. And he, he starts yelling. ‘We have a live one, we have live one and he back up, I need help.’ And he said, ‘we can't see you. We have to follow the sound of your voice. Keep talking to us.’ So I asked what happened and they said it was a bomb.

Amy was picturing a bomb dropping out of an airplane. It was 1995. Car bombs weren’t really a thing yet. So she started to worry about her sister.

AMY: Is my sister's house okay? Like it took me a little bit to figure out that this bomb was only at this building because back then we didn't hear about the car bombs. 

Amy didn’t know it but she was buried under 10 feet of rubble sandwiched upside down between two slabs of concrete. 

AMY: But my right hand was sticking out of this rubble pile. So they found my hand and I thought, cuz I'm not understanding, I think they're just gonna grab my hand, like 1, 2, 3, pull me up and out. So I thought this is over, I'm free. They got my hand. Like, let's go I'm I'm overjoyed. I just got saved you know, saved. And so, by the time they grab my hand, I hear men yelling in the background. ‘There's another bomb. There's another bomb. Let's go, let's go everybody. We've gotta go. There's another bomb.’ And my rescuers start trying to talk over all the commotion and they start saying, Amy, we need some to get some more hydraulic equipment. We're gonna be right back. We just need to get some more equipment,’ but I could hear, I heard and I could also feel the, well, it wasn't a building anymore, but I could feel the, the, what was left of the building, shaking with people running. So I just started immediately saying my name over and over and tell my family, I love them. So I just kept giving them my name, tell my family, I love them. Um, cuz I knew that that was it. PAUSE

...so in my reality at that moment was there was no thought that I was gonna survive it. I mean, you just got told there's another bomb and you can't go anywhere. I mean what's gonna happen. So I knew that was it. And so at that point I really started experiencing what people talk about when they say they had life flashing before their eyes, just all of a sudden, like really the reality of how I had not lived just in my face, you know, realizing all the things that were really important, you know, that my relationship with God, my relationship with my family…and realizing that I had not really lived, you know, just it, it was like a, it was a terrible regret that I had. 

She hadn’t taken an active role in her life. She hadn’t really lived with intention.

AMY: I took my praying to a whole nother level. Now I'm doing the God, …I will never sin again in my whole life. I will like, I am promising wild, wild stuff. Like, please just get me out, please. I just need a second chance, you know, that kind of thing. And then of all the really strange things, um, a song that used to sing growing up in church just kind of popped into my head and I just started singing this song. Um, I love you, Lord. I lift my voice to worship you. Oh my soul, take joy, my king. And what you hear, let it be a sweet sound in your ear. Something like that. And when I did, I really can only describe it as just a supernatural peace that just came over me and I, I knew I was gonna be okay. I, I did not know I was going to be alive. I really thought I was getting ready to step into eternity, but I was really at peace. I really did feel a comfort, um, from God in that moment. 

But there wasn’t a second bomb.

AMY: … and they came back and they started working to get me out…but the area was really unstable. So they were risking their lives to get me out in one piece. So they would stop every so often to talk about amputating my leg. I could hear this, I knew what was happening. And so I, a couple of times told them, I was like, ‘if you guys need to cut something off to get me out, just cut it off.’ Like, I am the biggest baby though when you're faced with like I'm either gonna live or die, like all of a sudden you have courage and bravery, you didn't know you had, you know.

Finally after six and a half hours of being buried upside down under a pile of concrete, granite, and rebar, her rescuers pulled Amy out.

AMY: The first thing I noticed was it was cold. The sky was dark gray and it was misting or starting to rain. It was like the middle of winter. And that morning had been the most amazing, beautiful spring morning. So I had this first kind of shock of like, this is a different day…but that first breath of fresh air, I remember just taking those first breaths of fresh air and just like promising God. Right then I will never, I will never live my life the same. I will never live my life the same. I'm not gonna take it for granted, you know, because I, I had the second chance. 

The entire front side of the nine-story Alfred P. Murrah building had been blown up by a massive homemade bomb hidden in a rental truck parked outside. 

TK NEWS CLIP/MONTAGE

At the hospital Amy watched the bombing play out on TV. At the bottom of the screen a news scroll listed the names of the people still missing or confirmed dead. She recognized several as her co-workers and prayed the rescuers find them.

Grief 

Amy says it wasn’t until they got her to the hospital that she noticed the large gash in her leg so deep she could see the bone. Initially Amy was numb from the neck down but over the next several days gradually got feeling back. The wound on her leg was so large they couldn’t stitch it up and she had to wait for it to heal on its own.

The phone wouldn’t stop ringing from the spouses and parents of her co-workers. They wanted to know what Amy recalled. What were they wearing so they could give rescuers clues. 

AMY: There were only two people I remembered what they had on Sonja in her yellow suit and the homeless guy in camo. And it just felt terrible to know that I sat there talking to Christie, you know, all about my house. You know, it felt terrible. I’m all consumed about my stuff to the point I didn’t even notice what she was wearing.

One hundred and sixty eight people died – including Amy’s best friend Sonja and 17 of her coworkers. 

Amy was heartbroken and overwhelmed with survivor's guilt.

AMY: Why am I still here, Sonja? They found Sonja's body. And you know, she had two year old and three year old baby girls at home. And uh, well, I, why, you know, I didn't have kids. I didn't, you know, she, you know, all these wonderful people and, you know, people would say things like, oh, you're here for a reason. God wants you for, you know, all that. And you're like, but that somehow is making it like, I'm something special and I'm here and I'm not, it just, it was so, and I know people just try to say, we don't, I say wrong things all the time, just cuz you're trying to help. And you know, you wanna comfort somebody, but it was very, um, it was very difficult.

It was several weeks before Amy agreed at the urging of her physical therapist to go to counseling. She resisted because growing up she was taught you pull yourself up by your bootstraps.

AMY: I didn't go to counseling for quite a while. Um, and when I went, I went with like arms crossed, like I'm here cuz they're making me and I don't wanna be here kind of thing. And it was the best thing I could’ve done.

Eventually she opened up and the therapist could help Amy understand that the survivor’s guilt, the PTSD, and the grief were normal for what she had experienced. 

Her anxiety, depression, and feelings of hopelessness at times were overwhelming. But Amy learned to connect her spiraling thoughts to their medical terms and that helped her understand her emotions and deal with them. 

It took some time before Amy was ready to make good on some of the promises she had made to God. 

AMY: It wasn't until after I think I healed quite a bit from counseling that I really was able to dig into I wanna live my life different. I couldn't do anything about it because I was so grief struck and I, there was not a lot of traction …I just knew I wanted to live.

She started small. The first thing she did was plan a garden in her backyard, then she bought flowers, each flower she planted for a friend who died. For Sonja she planted sunflowers. 

Then she recalled some of the regrets she had the day of the bombing.

AMY: While I was buried and I thought I was gonna die and I was having these regrets things like throwing away my college that bothered me. I thought about the fact that I'd never been a mother. I didn't have kids. I actually, I didn't even ever wanna have kids. I didn't think I wanted to have kids, but suddenly when I was dying, I thought I've never been a mom. 

After eight days in the hospital and six weeks recovering at home Amy returned to work a couple hours a week. And gradually came back full time. 

AMY: Like all of a sudden, like it bothered me then as I'm rebuilding the credit union and we've lost all these employees, we've had to hire all people back and it, and all of a sudden those of us that survived are like key people in trying to rebuild. As the years progressed, you know, I was moving up in management and hiring people with degrees. And so it really bothered me that, you know, I didn't have a degree.

They promoted Amy’s coworker Lynette to CEO. 

AMY: She saw something in me before I saw it myself. You know, she was like, ‘you're the future of this credit union?’ And she said, ‘but I think the days are gone where you can get the CEO position and not have a degree.’ 

Her first attempt at college had gone so horribly Amy still felt she wasn’t cut out for it. But her boss wouldn’t let her off the hook. 

AMY: So one day she says to me, ‘Hey, um, I wanna know if you had a magic wand, what would you, what would you do or change around here?’ And I'm like, is this a trick question? Then her question of, ‘okay, given your current situation, your current limitations, what are the next steps you can take?’ Well, that keeps me from being a victim because I can't be a victim if it's steps I'm taking…And I thought, what can I do to take control of my life? Like … what do I really want? And there were several things, but I decided to pick going back to school first. And my first step was literally to like, …it was to get your transcript, like with my 0.50 grade point average and then figure out what college will even take somebody with a 0.50 grade point average. Like that's how small those first steps were.

So Amy was able to sign up for classes at the community college. And this time she recognized that she needed to keep organized to stay focused. She actually discovered she had Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. That’s why school, especially math and balancing her drawer, had seemed so impossible before.

AMY: It was awesome and actually got like …like most outstanding student or something like that. And great grade point average, like it was totally different, totally different. I also flipped the script on my boss. So, you know, she told me, you know, future CEO, like they're gonna need it. And so I said, well then shouldn't you get one? And so she went back to school with me, so we, we went together. …through that process learned like one asking myself that magic wand question to get clear two asking myself what the smallest, easiest step is, giving my current situation and three getting community or getting that support. 

Throughout this chapter of her life Amy’s boss Lynette cheered her on. The bombing made Amy want to be an active participant in her life and Lynette showed her how.

AMY: She had faith in me when I didn't have faith in myself. And so I think she built my confidence up to where I felt like I could do it. And then when I started going to school and I started getting into the leadership classes and I'm like, I already know this stuff. Like I, I had learned it like on the job. 

Amy was doing well in school and she was growing in her job. If she had a problem at work, Lynette would let Amy puzzle it out.

AMY: She was good at fixing things, but what she didn't do was tell me which way to fix it. So she would just let me decide how I was gonna fix it. …So she gave me space to like fail. Actually she gave me space to like, go do what I think I need to do. And if it ever didn't work or if something went wrong,... you could always come tell me and we'll help. We'll figure it out. And so I would come in her office and go, okay, I'm going ugly early. I gotta tell you what's happened. You know? And I would just spill it, like whatever I did, whatever was wrong. Like I would just tell her. And so I think having that safe space to fail actually built my confidence.

That’s when a miraculous thing happened: with each step she took toward the life she wanted, Amy began to believe in herself. And that gave her the hope she needed to take the next step.

AMY: So I decided, you know what, I'm not just stopping with this. We're like gonna one up it, like I'm gonna get an MBA. And also during the same time period, I, my confidence was just really exploding because when I realized I could graduate, like that was so huge. 

Amy and her husband had been trying to have a baby for a couple years and finally in December of 1999 she gave birth to her son Austin. 

It was then after having her son that she realized she wanted to stick around for him. And that meant taking better care of herself. Living a healthier life was another promise she had made to herself in the dark hours beneath the rubble. 

So Amy tried all sorts of diets and weight loss programs but every time she stepped on the scale she was disappointed.

AMY: I weighed 355 pounds… I had joined Weight Watcher so many times that I think I was, could be banned…So I'm like, I need to pretend it's a school project and I'm researching solutions and I need to look at all the solutions available. 

That’s how she found out about gastric sleeve surgery, which helps you lose weight by reducing the size of your stomach. Amy took the next small step and made an appointment with a specialist. 

AMY: He said, well, that is a surgery that we usually just do for, uh, lightweights, you know? Um, so a lightweight is somebody who's not 355 pounds, 355 pounds, you a heavyweight. And he said, the heavy weight, you know, surgery really is a full gastric bypass, but that scared me. 

The sleeve surgery was less complicated, there were fewer risks and it required less recovery.

AMY: So I talked him into doing the, the one on me. He didn't wanna do by promising him that I would exercise and change my life. … he told me, he warned me. He said, you know, the first 75 pounds is gonna come off without any problem. But after that, if you don't change your life, you don't change your ways. Like you're gonna gain it all back. So sure enough, the first 75 came off, no problem. And then all of a sudden, I I'm like I gained a pound, gained another pound, I'm thinking, ‘oh, no, like he's right.’ And I had been going in for checkups and he would always ask me, you know, what are you doing to exercise? And I would always say, well, I'm walking because you know, I parked in the parking lot, had to walk across the parking lot to get to his office.

Amy knew she had to take this seriously. That’s when Lynette suggested riding a bike but Amy didn’t even own one.

AMY: Her husband had had some kind of surgery and she said, ‘you wanna come ride with me and ride his bike?’ And I was like, yeah, cuz I had lost enough weight by now. I thought I could probably fit on a bike maybe, you know, without busting the tires. So I go ride this bike and we rode probably 10 minutes. It was glorious. I felt like a kid again, it was so wonderful. My legs were like jello when I got off that bike after just 10 minutes but I was hooked.

One day Amy and her sister went to a lake in Oklahoma City to ride and Amy was amazed by all the people.

AMY: And there's all these people on like bicycles, there's people in kayaks out on the lake, like it's like a secret society or something. Like I had no idea this existed. I'm like, where did all these people come from? Like, I didn't know, this was the, I had no idea. It was a thing. … So it was really hard when I rode my bike all the way around the lake all the way around the lake. Like I was like, where is my medal? Like, I'm, I am Lance Armstrong right now. Like I want a medal. This is amazing.

After changing her diet and exercise routine, and having two surgeries to remove excess skin and flesh, Amy had lost almost two hundred pounds. It was around this time she decided to drop an additional weight – her marriage. Amy noticed she was spending less and less time at home taking night classes or going on bike rides with friends. After more than 20 years of trying to make it work, Amy filed for divorce.

One of her first days as a single woman, she had just recovered from her surgeries, she drove to the mall to find clothes to fit her new body. As she stood in front of the dressing room mirror, giant tears fell to the floor. For the first time she acknowledged the new Amy in the mirror and the complete transformation she had made – she’d gone from childless to having a son, college dropout to an MBA, bank teller to vice president, unable to walk up a flight of steps to riding her bike all over town.

AMY: There's a book I read called “Hope Rising: the science behind hope.” And in this book, they talk about the idea that hope is the belief that you're, your future can be better and brighter than your past and that you actually play a role in making that happen. …And I looked back over my life and went, ‘oh my gosh. That's exactly it. That's exactly it.’ Lynette was giving me hope when she said, ‘if you had a magic wand,’ but not just stopping there then saying, ‘okay, now given your situation, what can you do’ again, agency, if I can do it, I've got agency over it. That actually is bringing hope to me because I'm making my future better and brighter than my past. And I'm actually participating in that. I'm not sitting back waiting to marry a guy to fix me so I thought that's it. Hope is action. Hope is a verb. 

So Amy says she lives with intention and that means constantly leveling up. She went from riding her bike across town to riding across the state of Oklahoma in a three day organized ride.

In 2005 Amy was asked to volunteer at a memorial race for the victims of the Oklahoma City bombing. That year she was standing at the water station getting ready to cheer on her sister who ran.

AMY: There's like 25,000 people lined up in the downtown streets. And before the, before the gun goes off to start the race, they have, um, 168 seconds of silence to honor the lives that those lost. And you see 25,000 people go completely quiet it's oh, it just it's powerful. …, because I'm a survivor, I would pass out medals at the finish line of this race. I've never run in my life. I just have seen people at the finish line. Well, I'm all emotional and moved cuz I'm seeing people cross the finish line, like old people, people with like one leg, you know, like blade runners, like I'm, I'm like, oh my gosh, you know, big, small, like every walk of life person. And I'm thinking …if they can do it, I can do it. So I tell everybody I am gonna run next year. I'm gonna run in honor of Sonja. 

She took the next small step and found out about a group who trained together.

AMY: Show up for the very first training day in January. And it is like 20 degrees outside. So I am thinking, well, we can't run, cuz we'll die. You don't run in 20 degree weather.  57 so I, I started running and I could run for about 10 seconds before I sounded like somebody needed to call 9 1 1, … I remember thinking Sonja is up in heaven. If she's watching this, she is laughing her butt off at me doing this. 

With more practice Amy was able to run farther. Months passed and Amy managed to convince one other co-worker who had survived the bombing to train and run with her. 

AMY: And we stopped in front of that hospital and took a picture together, cuz it was like this time we're not victims, we're running past this hospital. 

Finishing the race emboldened Amy. Her 45th birthday was approaching and she wanted to do something special to celebrate it. She decided she wanted to ride her bike 45 miles at a wildlife refuge. A friend recommended talking to a cyclist who knew the course well.

AMY: We started talking and I remember thinking, man, that guy's kind of cute, you know? And so we go on this bike ride and a couple of my friends were with me riding next to me as we were riding. And one of them asked me, so are you gonna start dating or whatever? And I was like, no. And then Terry rode by. And then I was like, oh, well, I mean, unless it was a guy like that and then I might change my mind, you know? So I made a joke about it.

For months she and Terry were riding buddies, friends. But eventually that friendship evolved into something more. She entered this relationship very differently than her last. She wasn’t looking for anyone else to save her, solve her problems, or sweep her away. 

AMY: I was just in love. I was just, I was attracted to him. I just loved everything. It wasn't, it wasn't a desperation. It wasn't needing somebody to fix me. It was truly just absolutely falling in love with this incredible person and just wanting to be around him.

As Amy trained for other races she had found what she’d been missing in church – community, authentic connection, camaraderie. If one goes down the very next cyclist stops to help. She says at church it was too easy to hide your reality and pretend you had your world in order but you couldn’t hide the truth on a six hour ride in the summer sun. 

She started meeting tri-athletes with inspiring survivor stories. She met one person who had survived leukemia who encouraged Amy to train for IronMan. At first Amy wasn’t sure.

AMY: And then another guy I had met who had lost a lot of weight through bariatric surgery. I think he had lost like 400 pounds or something. He was gonna go and do the same Ironman. And I thought, well, if they're all going, I, I, if they're going okay, I'll do it too. 

She was turning 50 and decided she wanted to do something epic so Amy signed up for Ironman Arizona. She no longer felt trapped in life with no path to change. She had found the path.

Amy’s goal: to finish the race. She didn’t care about competing, all she wanted to do was finish. And that’s what she told her coach who she hired online. Her coach Erin held Amy accountable and helped her break some of her long-standing physical barriers and mental blocks. And after 14 months of committed training Amy felt ready. 

AMY: It’s really hard. So it's a 2.4 mile swim followed by a 112 mile bike ride followed by a 26.2 marathon. And there's time cuts that you have to make all throughout the race to be allowed to continue. 

On the morning of the race, Amy stood in the back of the crowd knowing she was one of the slower participants and she didn’t want to get trampled. The first leg of the race was the 2.4 mile swim across Lake Tempe. On her third stroke, someone slammed into her and Amy came up spluttering. One minute into the race and she was already lagging behind her friends. When she made it across the lake and got on her bike, fierce desert winds made each rotation a colossal effort. She saw some cyclists quit with nasty road rashes down their calves. But after ten hours of swimming and cycling it was time to start her 26.2 mile run. Her coach was there with fuel and told her she had seven hours or 16 minutes a mile. She started her run strong but each mile became more and more difficult. She looked at her watch and estimated after all of this work she still may not make it in time.

AMY: I thought I'm not gonna make it. I thought I'm not gonna make it…I started, I started praying, started talking to God and I was like, God, this is stupid. I don't know why I did. I don't even need this. Like, I don't need this. I don't know why I thought this was a good idea. Like, I can't do it. I'm not gonna make it. If for some reason, like I said, these words, I was like, ‘if for some reason me crossing this finish line is gonna help somebody someday. Then you have got to help me do it because I cannot do it. I'm not doing it. I can't.’ 

Within a couple minutes her coach Erin was there jogging alongside Amy, who was barely running at this point.

AMY: And she says, ‘Amy, you're doing so good.’ And I said, no, I'm not. I said, I won't finish in time. It's you know, whatever time she said, no, remember it was a self, a, a self seating race. 

She had started 15 minutes after the cannon blast because she was in the back so she had 15 minutes after midnight. Just then a couple volunteers pulled up in a golf cart.

AMY: 1:16:50 These young men pulled up and they were like, ‘ma'am do you still have your timing chip on?’ And I just looked at 'em and I was like, yes. And my coach was still standing there. So she goes over and she's like, ‘she still has time. And there's other people behind her on the course…’cuz they were getting ready to take me off the course... And he goes, ‘no, ma'am, there's nobody else on the course. We've cleared the course. She's the last one.’ And my coach looks at me and she says, ‘Amy, they do have the power to take you off the course. If they think you can't finish, you need to go now!’ And I start just everything in me trying to run. I post like a zombie. I was so sore at this point running and I could see the lights of the stadium ahead. I could see it. And I could actually even hear like Mike Riley's voice. And then the golf cart comes up again. And the, the, the kid goes, um, ‘maam, what's your number?’ And I didn't know what he was gonna do. So I kind of yelled it at him really mean like ‘I was like 1798’ and he puts his megaphone up and he says, ‘final finisher 1798 coming through!’ And I hear Mike Riley's voice go, ‘Amy Downs has done it she's coming in! Let's let her hear,’ oh Gosh, I just wanna cry. ‘Let her hear you make some noise!’ And I hear this roar come from this stadium at midnight. Y'all midnight. These people are still there. I'm the last one. And I come in through the shoot and there's this huge jumbo Tron. And I see myself on the jumbotron and I, I see these shadowy figures of like just hands sticking out over the railing to like high five, me as I'm coming in. 1:19:00 I high fived everybody. And as I ran under that, I saw my husband standing there at the finish line. My coach was standing there with my medal, like, and Mike Riley says, ‘Amy Downs, you are an Ironman.’ I'll never forget that. PAUSE

Today Amy is CEO of the credit union she saw almost destroyed in 1995 and she’s written a book titled “Hope is a Verb: My Journey of Impossible Transformation.” Amy hired Sonja’s daughter Savanna to work as a teller and helped her pursue her dreams of becoming an FBI agent. Amy’s old boss Lynette is retired but Amy still seeks her out on occasion for advice.

This is 2 Lives. I’m Laurel Morales.