Trauma to triumph: Injured NJ woman recovers from accident, returns to Rugged Maniac race

Jeniffer Oriach has been active her entire life. Growing up, she took part in numerous activities, including volleyball, soccer and dance. She also had an interest in extreme sports, so it came as no surprise that when she heard about the Rugged Maniac race, she had to get involved.

With over 25 obstacles — each covered in mud — and with intimidating physical barriers stationed across 3.1 miles, the Rugged Maniac would be a challenge for anybody.

Oriach heard about the race in 2016 from a co-worker at the Hard Rock Cafe in Times Square. The New Milford resident agreed to give it a try later that year.

“I didn’t even research it,” Oriach said. “I thought it was gonna be a little light. Not hard, as I saw it.”

Her initial impressions were proved incorrect.

“Wow, it was very, very challenging, and I actually love that,” she said.

After the race, Oriach told her family and friends how much she loved it. She recalls an obstacle that she describes as “the Shoe-Catcher one.” It was the third obstacle of the race, and her shoes tore apart in the middle of it. With a plethora of daunting obstacles remaining, Oriach decided she had to continue.

“I was like, I’m not gonna just back down,” she said. “I’m gonna do the whole race with socks.”

Her determination and positivity are what make Oriach the person she is today. Because this is not a story of just completing a physical race. This is the story of a person overcoming trauma and injury and the remarkable recovery that ensued.

Oriach was born and raised in the Dominican Republic. Before her sophomore year of high school, she moved to North Jersey and attended River Dell High School in Oradell. Her stay was brief, as the following year she relocated again, this time to Florida. She ended up returning to the Dominican Republic to complete college.

Oriach returned to the United States in 2016 and completed her first Rugged Maniac race later that year. She looked forward to many more of the mud-filled events, in part because of the people who made it so special.

She participated in several more races over the next two years.

“Even if you didn’t know anybody there, everybody was so welcoming,” she said. “When you can’t go through an obstacle, they’ll help you. Like people will actually push you, and you don’t even know them.”

Oriach learned how important people are in life. This lesson was amplified even further.

Everything changed for her on March 9, 2019. She was in the Dominican Republic and was on a yacht to celebrate a friend’s birthday. Oriach and her friends decided to go jet-skiing, and they took turns.

During her turn, she was on the back of the watercraft when she heard a crack. She looked down and saw a horrific sight: her leg was torn and broken.

“So I scream and tell my friend, and I just said, ‘I broke my leg! I broke my leg!’ ” Oriach recalled.

She says she was the victimof a drunken-boating hit-and-run. The operator hit her from the side, said Oriach.

“The whole time I was just looking at this guy [her friend] and I was like, ‘I lost my leg. I lost my leg.’ I said that like 150 times,” Oriach said.

She was taken to the hospital as quickly as possible, but the nearest one was 45 minutes away. To make matters worse, the ambulance siren was not working, she remembers, making the trip even slower. Oriach recalled being extremely thirsty on the way to the hospital, which was a side effect of losing blood.

“I’ve never felt that thirst ever in my life,” she said.

Upon arrival at the hospital, Oriach found out that her femur was broken into three pieces. She also had a broken knee and an open wound. She was sent for emergency surgery, in which doctors discovered another fracture. Oriach did not want to tell her mother about the injury, considering that she was in the United States. However, doctors called her mother that night to tell her the news. Oriach and her mom spoke next.

“She said, ‘Mom, I’m good,’ but then she told me she was under the worst pain,” said Oriach’s mother, Sergia Rocio Henriquez. “And then I said, ‘Look, I’m flying. I’m flying tomorrow morning.’ ”

Henriquez did not have enough money to fly to the Dominican Republic, but her family stepped in and helped buy her ticket. Upon arrival in the Dominican Republic, Henriquez found that Oriach could not even be moved from one bed to another. Doctors then told them that Oriach did not have enough blood to perform the second surgery, but local residents stepped in and donated blood. Overall, she had six blood transfusions during her month's stay in the Dominican Republic, with the first week spent in the hospital.

Oriach credits family, friends and strangers for helping her recovery effort.

“All the good things that you do in life,” she said, “the connections that you make and everything, and the good deeds — they pay off, because every single day from the first day, it was like too many people.”

“People were there every day either talking to me, helping me, everything,” Oriach said.

After she returned to the United States, doctors said the surgeries in the Dominican Republic were successful. Henriquez had a friend who was completing a residency at Englewood Health, so they decided to take Oriach there. Henriquez remembers working constantly with her daughter to boost her morale.

“I was completely lost,” Henriquez said. “I’m like, this girl, she can’t even move. I had to work a lot with her and with her emotion. She’s very positive, but you’re 24, and I mean you’re just lying in a bed.”

Oriach needed a total of four surgeries, with the third occurring in the summer of 2019, and the final one in November 2020.

“She was watching documentaries of young people that lost their legs, and that they were doing sports,” Henriquez said. “I think in a way that was inspiring her, like [she] could do it.”

And now, as Oriach prepares to complete her comeback story by once again competing in the Rugged Maniac , presented by Tipico Sportsbook, on July 16 in Englishtown, New Jersey, her feelings and emotions are off the charts.

“I’m so excited,” said Oriach, who will be bringing a friend to complete the race with her. “I cannot tell you how much, because I go to the gym and I go to [physical] therapy, and this is something I’m actually excited about.”

And both mother and daughter can truly appreciate that love and support played a vital role in her recovery.

“You gotta have people surrounding you, family and friends,” Henriquez said. “Because that is one of the reasons why today Jeniffer is where she is.

"I feel like she's going back to life again."

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Rugged Maniac NJ: Jeniffer Oriach to compete on July 16 in Englishtown