On Sun­day, April 29, 2012, Jacque Sal­adino was the vic­tim of a delib­er­ate hit and run. She is cur­rently in a med­ically induced coma and under­go­ing treat­ment for brain trauma and bone frac­tures at Cedars-Sinai Med­ical Cen­ter in Hol­ly­wood, Cal­i­for­nia. Her injuries include a shat­tered pelvis, almost all of her ribs are bro­ken, and a brain that is try­ing very hard to come to terms with the amount of trauma it has sus­tained. She may have an utterly bro­ken body but her spirit remains strong and every day of care and recov­ery brings new hope and challenges.

Hope and chal­lenges are noth­ing new to Jacque. Since first expe­ri­enc­ing the movie E.T., Jacque fell in love with space, hop­ing to one day travel to the stars and know­ing that there would be many chal­lenges to that dream. Jacque, a polit­i­cal sci­ence major and fash­ion styl­ist, woke up one day and real­ized that she had muted her pas­sion for space long enough and she was now ready to change the world for the bet­ter while orches­trat­ing her roundtrip ticket to the cos­mos.  Jacque has spent the bet­ter part of the last few months work­ing with two friends in the space indus­try on find­ing ways to inte­grate space and sci­ence into the gen­eral pub­lic in a way that is fun, inter­est­ing, and com­pelling. Her work has allowed her to become an inte­gral part of the New Space com­mu­nity in LA and has helped form a move­ment to recal­i­brate gen­eral per­cep­tions on how cool and impor­tant space actu­ally is. While Jacque is a fighter, her jour­ney ahead is long, intense, and expensive.

There is uncer­tainty as to what the extent of the med­ical bills will be, and given the nature of her injuries, it’s not yet known if insur­ance max­i­mum cov­er­ages will be met. And fur­ther, beyond what insur­ance cov­ers of Jacque’s med­ical bills and reha­bil­i­ta­tion, she has a life to rebuild once she’s recov­ered. We are look­ing at many months of recov­ery– some­where in a six months to a year time frame.

The good news is you can help fuel Jacque’s road to recov­ery by mak­ing a finan­cial con­tri­bu­tion — any amount of relief is sin­cerely appre­ci­ated. Together we can be Jacque’s Social Engi­neers as we raise funds to solve prob­lems that she doesn’t even know she has com­ing. Please embrace your role in sup­port­ing Jacque’s road to phys­i­cal and finan­cial recov­ery by click­ing the  but­ton on the right side of this page and giv­ing what you can. The fund is set up to go directly into Jacque’s boyfriend, Chris Peterson’s account (the most read­ily avail­able, acces­si­ble, and ver­i­fied account in the cir­cum­stances), to pro­vide for Jacque’s future.

There has been an amaz­ing out­pour­ing of sup­port from peo­ple in Jacque’s life. We have filled her room, and the wait­ing room, with peo­ple and things that Jacque loves — pic­tures of galax­ies, neb­u­lae, stars, hand-drawn pic­tures of E.T., and pho­tos of Jacque with her friends and fam­ily. Thank you, every­one, for your love and support.