This Marine went from a leg amputation to modeling and elite sports activities

At a 2021 competitors for athletes with bodily disabilities, Marine Corps veteran Annika Hutsler met a 10-year-old lady who, like her, had a leg amputation below the knee.

The lady’s mom requested Hutsler what she did for a residing. Hutsler ― whose advert for health model Athleta had simply come out ― had recently left the Marine Corps and had started modeling.

“This little lady’s eyes lit up,” Hutsler stated. “She’s like, ‘Mother! That’s the girl from the magazine.’”

“It hit me at that second: This little lady is 10 years outdated, from a middle-of-nowhere Texas city. She’s the one lady in her entire college who appears like her — in all probability the one lady in her entire city who appears like her. And now she’s opening up a mainstream journal that they only occur to get, they usually see any individual who appears like her.”

The Los Angeles-based Hutsler has acted in commercials, appeared in print adverts for Goal and walked the runway for Tommy Hilfiger — work she stated she enjoys as a result of it permits her to function a job mannequin for others with disabilities.

She appeared as Miss November within the 2023 fundraiser calendar for Pin-Ups For Vets, a nonprofit geared towards serving to injured and ailing veterans. The calendar features 13 female veterans with 101 mixed years of navy service, in accordance with the group’s founder, Gina Elise.

Pin-Ups For Vets finds its calendar fashions by means of a casting discover on social media, Elise stated. Two amputees, each Marine veterans, have been featured in a Pin-Ups For Vets calendar.

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Hutsler is now an athlete who competes in excessive degree adaptive sports activities and has modeled for standard manufacturers. However when she enlisted within the Corps in 2017, her plan was extra simple: earn a fee by means of the enlisted commissioning program and serve 20 years earlier than retiring.

She had began contemplating the navy in her senior yr at Northern Arizona College on the recommendation of a buddy. She had spoken to recruiters from every department, however the Marine Corps stood out.

Hutsler enlisted three days after receiving her bachelor’s diploma. At boot camp, she labored laborious at her coaching, she stated, and even grew to become a squad chief.

However about midway by means of recruit coaching, she observed a ache in her proper foot. Her drill teacher instructed her she was in all probability overreacting and that her physique ultimately would modify to the stresses of boot camp.

“I saved that mindset,” Hutsler recalled. “I used to be like, ‘Yeah, I’m simply being weak. It’s going to get higher, and I’m going to get stronger, and it’s going to be high-quality.’ After which it by no means did.”

Navy medical at Twentynine Palms, California — the place Hutsler started coaching to grow to be an electronics upkeep technician — at first identified her with a stress fracture. About 9 months later, nevertheless, she discovered that she had a tumor rising in her foot. And it was rising quick.

In July 2018, she was despatched to the West Coast’s Wounded Warrior Battalion.

After months of medical procedures — together with a number of invasive surgical procedures — Hutsler requested her physician how lengthy she had earlier than she must amputate her leg. The physician gave her 5 to fifteen years.

Minimize it off now, Hutsler instructed the physician.

“I had simply turned 22 on the time,” she recalled. “I used to be like, I’m not going to waste my 20s figuring out that I’m going to get my leg minimize off. I’d slightly be capable of reside a profitable life with amputation than wait round for an amputation to occur.”

Earlier than getting her proper leg amputated beneath the knee, Hutsler reached out to different amputees on social media for steering.

Comforted by their help, and fed up with the limitless ache and surgical procedures of the previous few years, she discovered hope in her upcoming amputation.

‘Life doesn’t go as deliberate’

Hutsler received the amputation in April 2019 and rapidly returned to bodily exercise.

By that June, she was competing within the Paralympic-style Division of Protection Warrior Games — and bringing dwelling silver medals within the 100-meter and 200-meter wheelchair races.

With help from a Wounded Warrior Battalion program, she explored much less mainstream sports activities, like archery and wheelchair rugby.

Since her amputation, Hutsler has competed in snowboarding, monitor, discipline, capturing, swimming, archery, wheelchair rugby and seated volleyball. She additionally does different sports activities, like mountaineering, wake browsing, ocean browsing, yoga and golf.

After medically retiring as a lance corporal in January 2020, Hutsler has continued to compete in occasions geared towards disabled troops and veterans. On the Warrior Video games in Orlando, Florida, in August, she picked up 10 medals in six sports activities.

“To me, medals aren’t the top aim,” she stated. “The true factor is seeing how far I’ve come and seeing that, ‘Hey, only a couple years in the past, I used to be sitting in my barracks room in a lot ache on a lot treatment, and now I’m out right here doing all these occasions with one leg.’”

Snowboarding holds particular that means for Hutsler, who fell in love with the game whereas in faculty and whose No. 1 aim after her amputation was to go once more.

Utilizing a snowboarding-specific prosthetic, she was up on a board eight months after her amputation. Now, she hopes to qualify for the 2026 Paralympics within the sport.

Along with her athletic coaching, modeling and plenty of docs’ appointments — between two and 10 every week — Hutsler stated she hopes to do extra public talking within the subsequent few years.

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One key message she likes to share with individuals, she stated, is the significance of adapting when life doesn’t go in accordance with plan.

“If all the pieces went my manner, I’d in all probability be a captain within the Marine Corps proper now and on my technique to 20 years, however, clearly, that didn’t occur,” she stated.

“It’s OK that life doesn’t go as deliberate. You may make a life that’s so nice, even after tragedy, even after sickness. There’s nonetheless life to be lived, even once you suppose that your plans all went unsuitable.”