Just inside the front door of Passle Helminski’s home is a pair of Brooks running sneakers with years of miles and memories seeped into their fabric. Helminski, 68, used to wear the hot-pink size 8s zipping around her Erie, Pa., neighborhood, where she trained as a competitive racewalker. She laced them up for sessions at nearby Presque Isle State Park, too, where in the summer of 1993, she regularly strided out 13-mile loops with her older sister, Bonnie, starting before dawn. One straight leg down, then another, as fast as they could without losing contact with the ground. With miles hovering around 9 minutes—a respectable pace for somebody running a marathon—the loop could take around two hours. “We can do it. Let’s keep going,” Bonnie remembers Passle always telling her.
Helminski planned on wearing the sneakers in the 1993 New York City Marathon, which she had entered alongside Bonnie. And she had them on one evening that July for a training walk in Erie County. By the time she finished and returned to her gray Jeep in a school parking lot, it was getting dark. Helminski says a man suddenly appeared, surprising her. He assaulted her, striking her in the neck with his hand: a blow which caused a tear in her left carotid artery—one of the two vessels that supplies blood to a person’s neck, face and brain—and within 12 hours, a stroke.
LEBRECHTMEDIA/Sports Illustrated
