Back in the saddle

MOSES LAKE — Breana Daniels was never supposed to ride a horse again.

In June of last year, the Moses Lake High School student — she’d just finished her junior year — was driving to work in Warden when she fell asleep at the wheel.

“I rolled the car into a canal, rolled over four times into a canal, and the seat belt didn’t lock,” the 18-year-old Daniels said. “I climbed out a back window, up 10 feet of embankment, and then walked a mile and a nail to get help.”

Which was an amazing feat, Daniels added, because she was a bloody mess. The seat belt had cut deeply into her lower jaw. Worse, however, was that fact that she wouldn’t learn until three weeks later that her jaw had been broken in four places and her pelvis broken in two.

“My mom took me to the dentist to my teeth fixed. I was having a lot of pain. It was hard to talk or even eat,” she said. “I was at the oral surgeon within an hour, and they wired my mouth shut.”

Which was a problem, Daniels said, because she was set to compete to be the Othello Rodeo queen in two weeks — a dream Daniels had ever since she was a little girl.

“I said, ‘Doctor, I’ve got a title I’m running for in two weeks.’ And he said, ‘That’s not going to happen.’ And I told him, ‘Oh, it’s gonna happen,’” she said.

It did happen, though she didn’t win the competition for Miss Rodeo Othello, competing with her jaw wired shut. But in August, 2016, Daniels rode through the pain and was picked to be the Eastern Washington Junior Rodeo Association queen for 2017.

“I can ride,” she said calmly but confidently.

“She’s a pretty strong girl,” Daniels’ mom Stacey said. “She’s made us proud.”

Currently a senior at Moses Lake High School, Daniels has wanted to ride in rodeos and be a queen ever since she was a little girl. In fact, it’s the little girls she meets who have kept her going through the pain and the surgeries.

“I like encouraging the kids, have a little girl look up to you. I was once that little girl, and I really like being a role model,” Daniels said. “I was the little girl who when the rodeo queens came in, my adrenaline was rushing.”

But her real love of rodeo began when she won a horse at the Othello Rodeo when she was 9.

Now she’s a queen herself, and once rodeo season begins in earnest in May, she expects to be on the road just about every weekend until October, riding horses and bulls and helping little kids learn all about rodeo by chasing cows and riding sheep.

Daniels said her family — both her parents and all the people she calls her “Rodeo Family” — have given her the strength and encouragement to continue despite the accident. The fact that the seriousness of her injuries wasn’t immediately seen means she still lives with a fair amount of pain. And she may need to have her jaw rebroken in order to have it heal right.

Daniels, who plans to attend Washington State University next fall and hopes to become a veterinarian, said she is most grateful for her parents and her two niece Kabree.

“She was the most encouragement. She was there through my whole recovery,” Daniels said.

“I’m a Spokane Indian,” Daniels’ mother said. “And we have a saying: it takes a tribe to a raise a kid. Without everybody who has stood beside and behind her during this, she wouldn’t have made it.”

“We could have lost her,” Stacey Daniels added.

Charles H. Featherstone can be reached via email at countygvt@columbiabasinherald.com.