Everybody gets hijacked along the way - -Jackie Pflug
Motivational speaker and airline hijacking survivor Jackie Pflug has turned her horrifying near-death experience into an inspirational message of faith, determination, and rising above adversity. She recently shared her emotional story with attendees at the 19th Annual Clinical Symposium on Advances in Skin and Wound Care, September 30 to October 3, 2004, in Phoenix, AZ.
Anyone can be "hijacked" by fear, sadness, or grief, she said. But Pflug believes that one can rise above life's challenges by applying lessons learned along the way. In her lecture, "The Courage to Succeed," Pflug recounted her ordeal of being shot in the head by terrorists and left for dead. She also chronicles the experience in her book, Miles to Go Before I Sleep.
A HOLIDAY TURNED NIGHTMARE
Pflug was a passenger on a 1985 Thanksgiving weekend flight to Cairo, Egypt, from Athens, Greece, when 3 terrorists calling themselves "The Egypt Revolution" hijacked it. A Texas native, Pflug was living in Cairo at the time with her husband of 5 months and teaching at the Cairo American School. As the nightmare unfolded, the pilot of the plane was forced to land in Valetta, Malta, where terrorists began to execute a passenger every 15 minutes until their demands for fuel and safe passage to Libya were met.
First, the Israeli passengers were marched to the front of the plane. In the plane's open doorway, terrorists shot them one at a time in the back of the head and tossed them down the stairs onto the tarmac to die. Next, the American passengers were summoned. Pflug began to lose hope as she sat with her hands tied behind her back and watched her fellow passengers being executed. She began to pray and accept in her mind that "whatever happens just happens." Pflug then recalls how a sense of calmness washed over her and she felt safe.
"Whether I lived or died, I just knew I was going to be OK," she said.
Miraculously, Pflug lived despite being shot in the head at pointblank range and lying on the tarmac, drifting in and out of consciousness, for 5 hours. She "played dead" and forced herself to breathe shallowly while she waited for what would happen next. Egyptian commandos eventually threw smoke grenades and stormed the aircraft to end the hostage seize. A gunfire battle ensued and a total of 59 people were killed that day.
Soon after the turmoil, footsteps approached Pflug and she was scooped up and thrown into a van. Inside the vehicle she shocked medics, who thought they were transporting her to the morgue, when she opened her eyes and asked them if they were the good guys or the bad guys.
Pflug needed surgery to remove fragments of her skull that had shattered and were forced from the bullet's impact into the right side of her brain. Surgeons grafted tissue from her leg to the outside of her brain for protection. She said she literally woke up with "half a head." Two years later, a plate was put in her skull to replace the missing bone. She has learned to adapt to the effects of her brain injury, including impaired vision, epilepsy, and loss of short-term memory.
STARTING OVER
Pflug's road to recovery has been a rough one. By the time she returned to the United States, she was battling depression and frustration. She had been told that she would never work or drive again, nor be able to read above a kindergarten level. "I just wanted to stay in bed, watch TV, and cry," she said.
But despite these dark times, Pflug forced herself to go out and talk to people every day. Four years after the shooting, she asked God for help and made a commitment to do "whatever I needed to be whole."
Pflug did not realize it for a long time, but her efforts to get out every day had been a major step toward improving her situation. A few years ago, she saw an appearance by Dr Phil McGraw on The Oprah Winfrey Show. He used the term, "Behave your way to success." Pflug thought, "That's what I'd been doing all those years."
She stressed the importance of making a commitment to succeed. Within 2 years of making her commitment, Pflug regained her driver's license. And within 4 years, she began motivational speaking, which gave her a job again.
She has since learned the art of forgiveness and has achieved a 12th-grade reading level.
Pflug currently lives in Minneapolis, MN. Divorced 3 years after the shooting, she remarried in 1996. A year later, she and her new husband welcomed their son, Tanner. Pflug calls him her "miracle baby."
WORDS TO LIVE BY
Over the years, Pflug has adopted 3 philosophies for daily life:
1. Have a great attitude. Expect success more often than you do failure. You can get what you want.
2. Do not worry over the little things. Do not get sidetracked by what does not matter.
3. At the end of every day, write down 5 things that you are grateful for in your life. This philosophy focuses on what you do have rather than what you do not have.
She shared with the audience the most memorable question she has ever been asked. During a lecture to 11th- and 12th-grade high school students, one of the 12th graders asked, "Tell me what a typical good day was before you got shot and what a good day is now."
"Before I was shot, I made 'to-do' lists. I gave a lot of power to my lists," she said. "If I could cross everything off my list, that was a good day."
Her priorities have changed since 1985. "Now that I've been shot, I ask myself this: Did you laugh a lot? Did you wave to someone you didn't know? Were you honest with everyone? Did you show integrity?" At the end of the day, these are the things that now matter most to Pflug.