WEST MIAMI-DADE, FLA. (WSVN) - A car crash may have left him paralyzed, but one Florida International University graduate picked up his diploma on his own two feet, Sunday night, reaching the finish line on a tough and rewarding journey — with a little help.
Shane Mosko’s journey to this point has had its twists and turns, but he said this moment has made it all worthwhile. “For me, walking on stage at graduation, it means everything,” he said. “It means that I could literally do anything I set my mind to.”
The 25-year-old was paralyzed from the waist down after a car crash in Connecticut five years ago, but that wasn’t enough to keep him from his dreams of walking across the stage at FIU as a Worlds Ahead graduate to receive his business degree.
A robotic exoskeleton suit helped Mosko take those momentous steps — and it is another step toward his future. He’s already landed a marketing job with the company that developed the device.
“If this wasn’t going to work out, I was going to walk in the braces, but to do it in the exoskeleton, to do it in this piece of technology, that’s really Worlds Ahead itself,” he said.
The Worlds Ahead distinction is the highest a student at FIU can achieve, and Mosko said he appreciates how far he’s come — from a life-changing spinal cord injury to walking the stage at graduation.
“It is a small goal, and it’s just one of the check marks I get to check off a box and say, ‘You did this. You came here from where you were,'” he said. “They said, “You might not ever walk again.’ Defying the odds of what people say you can do, especially with a disability. Living life through a wheelchair, people put this notion on you that you can’t do things, so for me being in Worlds Ahead is about just pushing myself to places I’ve never been.”
Mosko has been working as an ambassador for Ekso Bionics. He plans to eventually pursue an MBA.
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