Local columnist wins TZD Award

Almost 20 years ago Emily Steffens life changed forever.
After traveling home from signing up for college classes with friends their vehicle got into a rollover car accident.
That day changed her life as she is now paralyzed on her right side and partially blind as well she suffers from memory loss.
That day she broke the golden rule.
She didn’t buckle up her seat belt.
In June of 2016 Emily with the encouragement of her parents Larry and Melanie Dobson decided to start writing a weekly column for their family owned newspapers which is apart of Community News Corp.
The purpose of the column called, “Its My Life. Living With Traumatic Brain Injury,” gives readers an inside look on what it’s like to live with such a horrific injury.
While it is difficult for Emily because of her injury to sit down at a computer and write up her column each week they came up with a system for Emily to be able to type it up and have the column be in her own words and tone.
Her parents explained that each week Larry and Emily go on a walk and talk about what happened during the week and what Emily might want to talk about in her column.
From there he writes down Emily’s responses and gives them to Emily so she can type them up. From there she goes through the editing and proofreading process like any good reporter or columnist does.
“She’s really good at grammar and proofreading,” Larry explained, “She even catches things that I miss,” he added.
Larry said that local readers have taken notice of the column.
“Almost everyone reacts to the column and say that they love it,” Larry said, “They tell her to keep writing her column,” he added.
The one of a kind weekly column also got the attention on the state level.
During the Towards Zero Deaths annual conference in Mankato last week Emily was recognized with a Special Recognition Award for her weekly column.
When asked about how she felt about winning the award she said that it gave her a lot of joy.
“I love it a lot, it feels great being recognized for something that I do,” Emily said. Emily said that her favorite part of writing her weekly column is coming up with something new each week to write about.
“There’s something new I can write about each week or do differently with my column,” she said with a smile.
Since the accident, especially in recent years Emily and her parents have been advocates for encouraging people to drive safe and to do one of the simplest yet most important things you can do.
Buckle up every time.