A few weeks ago Hazel Alexander received a box from her parents. Inside it were a pair of running shoes and a note from her doctor.

She was cleared to start running again.

Alexander, who will be a senior on the Columbia Falls Cross country team, wept.

The expectation was that her pelvis, which was shattered in a car accident, wouldn’t be healed enough for her to safely train until this winter.

Alexander was almost killed in a car accident on Jan. 9 after the vehicle she was driving was hit by Alfred Chester Flamond of Browning after he allegedly stole a vehicle at the Town Pump in Evergreen and then led police on a high-speed chase through Columbia Falls which ended when he allegedly ran the red light at Highways 2 and 206 and plowed into Alexander’s vehicle.

She suffered numerous injuries, including a ruptured spleen, which had to be removed, a broken femur, broken jaw, shattered pelvis, and had strokes in both hemispheres, a full one in the right hemisphere and a partial in the left hemisphere of her brain.

She was life flighted to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle and after numerous surgeries she spent two and half months in a wheelchair. She also had to undergo intensive therapy to regain her communication and motor skills due to the strokes.

She’s been running a few weeks now, she said in a recent interview.

She gets up every morning, puts her shoes on, and runs.

She was “pretty surprised” she was cleared to run, after all that has happened. Right now she runs about 2 miles a day, adding a little bit at a time. She’s running an 8-minute mile, and the goal is to trim that to 7-minutes or less by the time cross country season starts in a few weeks. Practice starts Friday, but she’ll be on a family vacation.

Prior to the accident, she was the top runner for the Columbia Falls Cross Country team, taking 20th at the state meet last fall.

She plans on her splitting her class duties both through home schooling and in-school instruction, she said.

Her greater goal is to be accepted at the Naval Academy and go to  have a career in aircraft mechanical engineering in the Marines.

A habitual offender, Flamond faces charges of felony fleeing and eluding, felony criminal endangerment, felony theft of a light vehicle and negligent vehicle assault related to the wreck.

If convicted on all counts, Flamond faces 40 years in prison. His case is pending in Flathead County District Court.