During Tina Benner’s first year volunteering with CommonSpirit St. Anthony Hospital’s peer visitor program, she shook every time she reentered the hospital.
A survivor of a hit-and-run, Benner underwent five surgeries and a month-long stay at St. Anthony Hospital in Lakewood, Colorado, after her 2015 accident, all before returning home and relearning to walk. Four years later, Benner returned to St. Anthony as the hospital’s first-ever volunteer peer visitor, a position that paired her with hospitalized patients freshly processing their own trauma.
When she stepped through the hospital doors and experienced her body’s own trauma response, Benner was driven onward by the idea that she could help others.
“I know what it feels like when I go into a hospital room, to be in that bed and be lonely, be scared, be uncertain what the future holds, and I’m able to say to them, ‘I was you. I'm now healed. You can see me walking in,’” said Benner, a Highlands Ranch resident of 23 years.
As part of the national Trauma Survivors Network, St. Anthony Hospital offers trauma survivors healing resources not only through the peer visitation program, but through the hospital’s Life After Trauma support group, where survivors and families connect with peers and professionals who know where they’re coming from.
St. Anthony is part of CommonSpirit’s dedicated, mission-driven healthcare system, which operates across 21 states and provides comprehensive services to diverse communities. While the resources are critical for survivors attending the support group or benefiting from peer visitation, they’re also meaningful to volunteers like Benner, who has found her own healing and perspective in her volunteer work.
Rebuilding With Support
In 2015, Benner — a working mother of three and wife of over three decades — was training for a marathon.
For Benner, running is a way to stay active, get outdoors, connect with friends and loved ones, and even work toward meaningful goals, like race days on the calendar.
That morning in 2015, Benner was already on the road at 5:30 a.m., on her way to meet a running partner friend. What happened next exists in a patchwork of memories for Benner. She doesn’t remember the impact from the impaired driver who hit her while she was running on the sidewalk. She knows she was thrown down a roadside embankment, making her invisible to passing drivers. She knows the driver who hit her left the scene, remembers that after an hour of lying completely immobilized in the spot where she’d landed, a passerby walking to work found her.
“I remember seeing her silhouette, because the sun was coming up and her being with me, holding my hand, and that's it,” Benner said. “I remember a second in the ambulance, like a really bright light, and don't remember anything for the rest of the day.”
When Benner woke the next day, she was intubated at St. Anthony Hospital, where she would remain for four more weeks. Through her lengthy hospital stay, Benner was buoyed by family and friends. They created a visitation schedule that ensured she had someone in her hospital room every day. Strangers wrote her dozens of “thoughtful, prayerful” cards she still holds onto today.
She also remembers the exceptional staff.
“St. Anthony was absolutely amazing,” she said. “I just couldn't have asked for a better team of people taking care of me.”
After her hospital discharge, it was over a year before Benner started to feel “a little bit normal” and regain some strength. She used a wheelchair for months thanks to the trauma her legs endured, and was in physical therapy for nearly three years after the accident. Through it all, she clung to a sense of positivity.
“It was extremely challenging, but my mantra was, ‘God give me grace’ and ‘One day at a time,’” Benner said. “That's all I could do was focus on the day, focus on the PT exercises that I could do at home to get strength, and … follow the doctor's directions and orders, and not do anything that would jeopardize a fall or set me back.”
Forging Connection Through Trauma
In 2025, Benner, age 60, ran a half-marathon to commemorate the 10-year anniversary of the accident. In the decade-plus since her traumatic accident, Benner’s life has changed in many ways.
She has retrained her body to walk, started working two part-time jobs to keep her days busy, graduated all three of her daughters from high school and two from college, and turned her own trauma into a point of connection and healing.
When St. Anthony’s team started setting up the peer visitation program in 2019, Benner was their first program volunteer. She returns to the hospital to talk with patients who are just beginning their healing journeys, giving her the chance to listen and share her own experiences. It has been profoundly impactful for Benner and her peers alike.
One patient Benner connected with in 2019 was back in the hospital years later and asked to see Benner again, remembering their connection. For Benner, the volunteer process has served as an important reminder.
“Sometimes in life, you can get wrapped up in whatever may be going on, and it really doesn't matter when you walk into a room, and you're able to be there for somebody else at their worst moment,” Benner said. “It kind of gives you that perspective, ‘It's not about me. Let me help this person and check myself and make sure that I'm thinking the right way and doing the right things.’ It helps me for sure.”
The opportunity to volunteer or participate in the peer visitation program, along with the Life After Trauma support group, can be life-changing for both volunteers and participants.
For trauma survivors who need resources and support, “You’re connecting your peers, and then you're also connecting with people [who] are trained to listen, because most people just want to be heard,” Benner said. “So, I think it's just important to give it a try and have that community support. They say in this day and age that so many people are lonely, and that we need community, and you definitely need community when you're recovering and going through a life change.”
Call 720-321-0600 or email St. Anthony at [email protected] to request a peer visit, join a support group, or inquire about volunteering.
