My Story: From Coma to Comeback

THE STORIES WE KEEP  ·  A PERSONAL STORY  ·  OCTOBER 3, 2026

On my 38th birthday, I am sharing the road from a Cass Lake trailer park and a life-changing BMX crash to sobriety, fatherhood, preservation and the work I was meant to build.

Today is my birthday.

It is also Mean Girls Day, the Downtown Pontiac Hauntiac 5K and the Hauntiac Parade. Apparently, Mayor Mike decided to throw an entire parade in my honor. At least that is the version I am choosing to remember.

Birthdays have a way of making us look backward before we look ahead. This one feels different. History Loves Company has grown into something larger than I imagined when I started telling stories about old homes and forgotten places. The Foundry has become a physical home for creators, entrepreneurs and people willing to start small. My work takes me into buildings and neighborhoods whose stories deserve to survive.

But none of that began with a business plan.

It began with a kid in Keego Harbor.

Growing up at Lot 36

I was born on October 3, 1988, and grew up at Lot 36 in a trailer park off Orchard Lake Road in Keego Harbor. Technically, we were on Cass Lake. It was not the kind of childhood that came with polished surroundings or a clear road map for the future, but it gave me something that has shaped nearly everything I do: an attachment to place.

I remember the water, the neighborhoods, the schools and the small landmarks that made up my world. I attended Haviland and Roosevelt elementary schools, Abbott Middle School, West Bloomfield High School and Waterford Kettering. Roosevelt is gone now, but the memories are not. That is one reason I understand how quickly a building can disappear while the stories connected to it remain.

I was quiet, shy and a good student. I loved hockey, but ice hockey was too expensive, so I played roller hockey and became a goalie. Then bikes took over.

BMX gave me a community, an identity and a sense of possibility. Riding taught me to commit, fall, get back up and try again. I did not know then just how literal that lesson would become.

The crash that changed everything

In 2006, when I was 17, I traveled to South Park, Pennsylvania, to ride BMX. One moment changed the entire direction of my life.

I crashed.

The impact crushed two vertebrae, shattered my jaw, caused a traumatic brain injury and left me in a coma. Doctors later told me I had come within roughly one millimeter of paralysis. I woke up with two rods supporting my back and two plates holding my jaw together.

There is no clean way to explain what happens when your life is interrupted that violently. At 17, you are supposed to believe you are indestructible. Then suddenly you are in a hospital, surrounded by machines and people wondering what recovery will look like.

The physical injuries eventually became scars. The emotional aftermath was more complicated.

Watch: My Story — From Coma to Comeback

For my birthday, I decided to tell the full story in my own words: the accident, addiction, relapse, sobriety, fatherhood and the long road toward building a life with meaning.

Watch My Story: From Coma to Comeback on YouTube. The film premieres October 3 at 9:55 a.m. Eastern.

Alcohol, sobriety and relapse

I grew up knowing alcoholism was part of my family history. Because of that, I avoided drinking until I was 17. Once I started, however, alcohol took control quickly.

Recovery was not a straight line. I built years of sobriety—nearly nine of them—and then relapsed. There were multiple attempts, disappointments and moments when I had to face the difference between wanting a different life and being willing to do the work required to live one.

My current sobriety date is June 4, 2023. On June 4 of this year, I reached three years sober.

Three years sober. No booze. No shortcuts. No turning back.

I do not share that because I believe the story is finished. Recovery is not something I completed and placed on a shelf. I share it because honesty matters. Someone can lose years, lose confidence, relapse and still begin again. A setback does not have to become the final chapter.

The accident taught me that a body can rebuild after being broken. Recovery taught me that a life can, too.

Work, bikes and learning how to build

For 12 years, I worked at Cycletherapy in Waterford. The bike shop became an education in people, retail, problem-solving, community and entrepreneurship. I learned that a good shop is never only about the things on its shelves. It becomes a place where people gather around a shared interest and feel like they belong.

Years later, that lesson would become part of the foundation for The Foundry.

I also found running. I completed two marathons and failed to finish another. Even that unfinished race belongs in the story. Progress is not proven only by the days everything works. Sometimes progress is simply returning to the starting line.

Becoming a father

My son, Kit, was born on August 30, 2016. Becoming his dad changed the scale by which I measured everything.

There were now decisions that were no longer only about me. What kind of example would I give him? What would he remember about the way I responded to failure? What would I build that might still matter when he was grown?

Kit is my why. He is the reason recovery has to be more than a promise and the reason the work cannot be only about attention, numbers or money. I want him to see that the hardest parts of our lives can become foundations rather than endings.

The first historic house

In 2017, I became a real estate agent and bought my first historic home in Pontiac's Franklin Boulevard Historic District. It was an old colonial with decades of changes layered over the craftsmanship that first gave it character.

Working on that house changed the way I looked at real estate. I stopped seeing a building as a collection of rooms and began asking different questions.

Who built this? Who lived here? What did this neighborhood once look like? What was covered, removed or forgotten? What deserves to survive?

One house led to another story. One neighborhood led to another. Real estate became a path into architecture, preservation, community memory and the history hiding in plain sight.

Why I built History Loves Company

History Loves Company grew from a simple belief: places become more meaningful when we understand their stories.

What began with historic homes expanded into films about Detroit, Pontiac, neighborhoods, factories, mansions, transportation, vanished landmarks and the forces that reshape American cities. The work now lives through documentaries, writing, photography, real estate and the memories people share with us.

I do not just sell homes. I tell their stories, and I help write their next chapters.

That mission led to The Foundry in downtown Pontiac—a place where creators and small businesses can begin, experiment and grow. In many ways, it brings together everything that shaped me: the community of a bike shop, the survival of an old building, the uncertainty of entrepreneurship and the belief that starting small does not mean thinking small.

What 38 feels like

At 38, I do not look back and see a perfectly planned journey. I see a series of lives that somehow belong to the same person.

The shy kid from Lot 36. The BMX rider. The patient learning how to live inside an injured body. The person struggling with alcohol. The person trying again. The bike-shop manager. The marathon runner. The real estate agent. The father. The storyteller. The founder.

I am still all of them.

The scars are still there. The consequences are still real. The work is still unfinished. But so is the possibility.

If there is one thing I understand now, it is that survival is only the beginning. The deeper question is what we choose to build with the life that remains.

I am grateful to everyone who has watched a film, shared a memory, trusted me with a home, visited The Foundry, bought a book, encouraged the work or stayed beside me through the difficult chapters.

There are still a lot of stories left to tell.

Every home has a story. Every city carries memory. And every life deserves the chance to begin again.

Keep exploring

• Explore History Loves Company
• Read more Stories We Keep
• Watch Detroit's Haunted Mansion: The Whitney
• Watch Historic Fort Wayne

This essay reflects my personal experiences with injury, addiction, relapse and recovery. It is shared in the hope that someone who needs a new beginning will remember that another chapter is still possible.