Three years after Steve Thompson's memory was erased in an accident caused by a drunken driver, he has learned to walk and talk again. But he's still getting to know the parents who turned into strangers.
Starting life over at age 17 - learning to walk, talk and reason - was easy compared to coping with what he'd lost: all the memories of his life. He no longer knew the parents who doted over him or the kid sister who idolized him.Thompson was a "high school jock," as one therapist characterized him, when his car was struck by a drunken driver on Oct. 31, 1988, as he drove a friend home from a Halloween party.
His parents, Randi and Alan, were called to the accident scene. Steve didn't recognize them. A hospital diagnosed a brain injury. But Steve, who was conscious and had no outward signs of injury, went home that night.
"The next morning he was in a fetal position, and we knew there was something very seriously wrong," Randi Thompson recalled.
Thus began the family's struggle to bring Steve back. The ordeal forced his mother to the brink of a mental breakdown, and Steve's sister, Shari, attempted suicide twice.
"I don't know these people from the lady down the street," Steve once said of his family. Their story is told in an ABC movie, "Stranger in the Family," to air Sunday night.
"All those precious things we had done as he was growing up: Pop Warner football, Cub Scouts, teaching him how to ride a bicycle, they were all gone," Randi Thompson said Wednesday, her voice choking. "We were total strangers to him."
Steve spent six months at the New Medico Community Re-entry Center in Apple Valley, Calif., a head-injury rehabilitation center.
Along with his memory, Steve had lost the most basic concepts. One time, his mother said, he tried to walk across the family swimming pool.
Today, he works in a Las Vegas hospital, does volunteer work for an ambulance company and takes college classes. He hopes to become a doctor. But the memories never came back.