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Risk Central
Digital EditionOne Man’s Story of Resilience, Family and the Power to Rise
Michelle Kerr is Workers’ Compensation Editor and National Conference Chair for Risk & Insurance. She can be reached at [email protected].
There were many memorable moments at National Comp this year, some of them very personal. For the first time, a speaker made me weep at a soul-deep level, knocking me right out of my chairman’s shoes.
That’s what happened when I met Derek Demun. Derek took the stage in Las Vegas alongside Shawn Deane of Ametros in a session aptly titled Unstoppable.
Derek discovered early that he didn’t need wings to fly. Skateboarding, surfing and snowboarding carried him through high school and beyond, and he was working toward becoming a ski patrol paramedic.
By 21, he was living his very best life, and his passion for snowboarding had taken him around the world. But that kind of passion doesn’t come cheap, so he took a job as a painter. What came next, we know too well. A painting job. A gravel roof. A slip of the foot.
Derek Demun had done backflips off 50-foot cliffs. But in a single catastrophic moment, he took flight again: a fall of only 11 feet that left him paraplegic, his spine broken in eight places, his T8 vertebra burst into 12 pieces.
That’s when Derek yanked me out of my chairman’s shoes and dropped me into his mother’s shoes. Suddenly, I was imagining the experience through the eyes of a mother whose son was the same age as my own.
He asked us to close our eyes and imagine picking up the phone, the voice on the other end saying, “Your son has been in a catastrophic work accident. You’d better get to the hospital now. It doesn’t look good.” The gut punch of that short exercise knocked me off my axis.
Derek spoke of the anguish of the early years, the profound toll not just physical but emotional. What this family would endure is painful to imagine. They should have had a support network surrounding them, working to meet their medical, physical, social and emotional needs.
What they got instead: an uninterested case manager there to collect a paycheck, while Derek’s mother took on the role of patient advocate. Medically preposterous accusations of injury fraud and malingering. Fruitless “gotcha” surveillance tactics. Having to battle in court more than 30 times for medication, for PT, even to get a wheelchair approved.
It sounded like every extreme negative stereotype of workers’ comp rolled into one movie plot. But it was real, and this family lived it until they finally exited the system through a settlement.
I know that’s uncomfortable to hear. This isn’t some relic of the industry’s distant past. As long as there are workers left unsupported, there will always be stones left for the industry to overturn.
By sheer force of will, Derek turned the rudder and built a new version of his best life, still deeply rooted in his love of the outdoors and adventure. He pivoted into adaptive outdoor recreation and built a career in professional photography and videography. He is dedicated to helping individuals with disabilities find mental, physical and spiritual freedom through action sports and the outdoors.
Derek Demun was destined to soar. The boy who could fly without wings became a man who will never be kept down. Recently engaged, he proposed to his fiancée while paragliding a quarter-mile above the ground after launching from 350-foot cliffs in San Diego.
I’m grateful to Derek for sharing his story with our audience. We all need a reminder that we must be part of the reason an injured worker soars, not the obstacle or cautionary tale that had to be overcome. &
If you attended National Comp but missed Derek’s session, you can still catch the audio and slides on NoteAffect in the conference app.
