Kalani Simpson: When Nicolette Maroulis first came to, she thought she was dead. They were giving her last rites. The priest hadn’t acknowledged that she had woken up, and, so, lying there on that hospital table, it hit her that maybe she hadn’t. Maybe this was it.
She calls herself a control freak, and on 9/11, the world itself was spinning so out of control she’d done the only thing she could think of to take it back. She signed up. The bio says Maroulis had enlisted in the U.S. Navy on Sept. 12, 2001. “It might have been the 14th,” she said. Whatever — that next working day.
It turned out to be the best thing she ever did. She became a bomb-sniffing dog handler; it was incredible. “Best job in the Navy,” she said.
But then something else happened. She can’t say where. It’s not really important what (“I’d rather focus on my recovery,” she said). Suffice it to say shrapnel and last rites were involved.
Once again, her life was blown off its bearings.
It took her a few years, this time, but now she’s again doing everything she can think of to take that control back.
On Sept. 11 — this Sept. 11 — she’s climbing a 14,000-foot peak.
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