CINCINNATI — While most racing folks were focused on Pimlico and Lookin At Lucky’s victory in the Preakness, an even better horse story was unfolding at River Downs on Saturday afternoon, May 15.
Taylor Rhodus — brought to the track by her family under the guise they’d watch the races — was lured to the winner’s circle by Dee Anderson, a former River Downs trainer with whom the 16-year-old has been working at the Winton Woods Riding Center.
“C’mon, I want you to meet Rodney Prescott,” Anderson said of the jock who’d just won aboard Timbucto.
After that exchange, Anderson lingered there with Taylor as a rambunctious dark bay gelding — which had been hidden in a back paddock stall — was led to the winner’s circle by Gremardi Vasquez, a groom for Woodard Racing Stables.
With all the commotion, the approaching horse didn’t register at first with Taylor. Then, in an instant, her jaw dropped, and though words wouldn’t come, the welling emotion literally made her shake.
It was Stormy, the horse she’d nicknamed My Monster, the animal she’d so fallen in love with before her life turned so terribly wrong when her boyfriend was killed and she was left unbelievably battered.
This was the horse that had helped her survive all that and yet it seemed destined to break her heart because he was about to be sold as a show horse and moved out of state.
“Oh this is my boy, he takes good care of me,” she gushed as he was brought to her. “He is my life.”
That’s when John Engelhardt, publicity director at River Downs, told her Stormy had been bought by Billy Hays, River Downs’ top owner, and he was giving him to her as a gift.
Standing a couple of feet away, Doug Rhodus, Taylor’s dad, fought back tears:
“Look at her big smile. You just don’t see that much any more. This whole thing has been emotionally terrible on her. I mean when you’re just 16 and your life is just beginning and then in an instant everything is taken away, there’s not much to smile about ... until now.”
A heart for horses
When Taylor was a baby, Tess, her mom, said she would put her in her lap and read to her:
“From the moment I opened a picture book and said, ‘The horsey says neigh,’ the kid was hooked. She always brought me that book and she always went straight to that picture.
“As soon as she started talking, she talked about horses. And when she realized you could ride one, it was all she wanted to do.”
Tess heard about the Winton Woods Center, the Hamilton County Parks District program that offered riding lessons — but the place had specific requirements.
“You had to be 7 years old or a certain height and they had a tape measure on the wall,” Tess smiled. “I took her down two or three times, but she was too small. Finally, one day — when she was about 6½ — I put boots on her, she stood tall and just made the height.”
Since then, that love affair never waned. At 14, she began volunteering as a barn attendant at Winton Woods.
“You could tell right away she had this in her heart,” said Anderson, who this past year hired her to work at the center, a job that dovetailed perfectly with Taylor’s schooling.
A junior at Fairfield High School, she’s enrolled through Butler Tech in the equine science program at Greentree Health Science Academy. Her dream, said Tess, “is to use horses in therapy work with handicapped, autistic and behaviorally challenged children.”
It was at school that she fell in love with Stormy, a thoroughbred on loan from a Cincinnati-area owner.
That’s when 18-year-old Josh Crain — Taylor’s boyfriend of more than a year — said he was coming into some money when he graduated and he’d buy Stormy for her.
“I told them no,” Tess said. “I said, ‘Josh, take that money and get yourself an education first and then you do something for her. You two have plenty of time.’ ”
Tragedy strikes
It was just after 3 p.m. on Wednesday afternoon — Dec. 2, 2009 — and Tess was angry.
As she waited for the other three kids — Bailey, Dakota and D.J. — to get home from school, she’d sent Taylor and Josh to get some dog food for their cockapoo at the nearby PetSmart.
They had gone in Taylor’s black Chevrolet Sierra pick-up truck and from the store her daughter had called to ask if she was getting the right food.
“She said she’d be right home, but then at 3:19 I called her again and she didn’t answer,” Tess said. “It made me mad.”
A few minutes later the phone did ring, but it was Doug. On his way home from his job at UPS, he had come upon a nightmare scene on South Gilmore Road.
“He said, ‘Taylor’s been in a really bad accident,’ ” Tess recalled.
From what their daughter has been able to remember — and what a passing motorist saw — here’s what Tess has pieced together:
“She made a right-hand turn and it had rained and she hydroplaned. The truck fishtailed, went across the grass median and hit a box truck. She told me she was trying to turn the truck to her side because she knew Josh didn’t have his seat belt on, but her wheels were up in the air.”
Tess rushed as close as she could get to the accident, then parked her van and began running along the road. That’s when Doug called again.
“He said, ‘Josh is gone,’ ” Tess said with tear-filled eyes. “At first it didn’t register and then he said, ‘Tess — Josh is dead.’
“I let out this blood-curdling scream and I just kept saying, ‘No, no, no.’ ”
With the help of a fire chief who knew her, she was led to the ambulance that held her daughter.
“Both her legs were almost amputated at the knees,” Tess said. “She had broken her right femur in two places, broke the tibia and fibula in her left leg. Crushed both kneecaps, broke both ankles, her right wrist, 11 ribs and she had an aortic contusion and lung contusions — those are what nearly killed her.”
When Taylor awoke from an induced coma, she still didn’t know that Josh had died.
“She mouthed around her ET tube, ‘Where’s Josh?’ ” Tess said. “I finally had to tell her, but the next morning she’d forgotten and when Josh’s mom came to see her, she asked again.”
Although physically she has healed faster than anyone had imagined and is walking, mentally she has struggled.
Authorities have yet to decide whether to charge her in the crash.
“She’s been very, very depressed,” Tess said. “Between losing Josh and not being able to do the things she used to do — she feels she’s lost everything.
“She’ll say, ‘I need a life transplant. My whole life hurts.’ And I say, ‘Yeah, I’m sure it does. You have every right and reason to be miserable, but ... there’s a reason you’re still here.”
And she found that reason again when she was finally reunited with an old friend.
Gift of a lifetime
When she was able to maneuver crutches, Taylor was brought out to see Stormy.
“It was heart-wrenching,” Tess said. “He had his back to us, but when he heard her calling him, he turned around, stuck his head out the window and started nickering and neighing. She rushed to him as fast as her crutches would take her and she was kissing him and he was nuzzling her and I had to turn away. I was in tears.”
A few weeks ago Taylor began to pester Tim Spoerl, her instructor at Greentree, to let her get on Stormy. When he finally relented, he said she lit up “like a 100-watt bulb.”
But that joy appeared short-lived with Stormy’s pending sale.
“I worried what would happen emotionally to her if they separated,” Tess said. “And he was the one thing that could motivate her back to some of her dreams.
“But with all the other bills, we didn’t have the money to buy Stormy. I sold all my jewelry except my wedding ring and my mother’s ring, but it still wasn’t enough.”
Hays, a Louisville car dealer who has been River Downs’ leading owner for several years, heard about the connection between the girl and the horse.
“This just seemed like the right thing to do, the only thing to do,” said Hays’ skilled trainer, Joe Woodard, who represented the owner Saturday. “(Billy) said there are few times in your life you can make a real difference and this was one.”
As he watched his daughter and her new horse rub noses Saturday, Doug shook his head:
“I don’t know if (Hays) realizes the magnitude of what he has done. He saved a life here. That horse is the one thing that will get her back to as close to normal as she can be. I just wish there was some kind of gift I could give him in return. Something...”
It was being given as he spoke.
For the first time in so long, Taylor Rhodus was all smiles.
Source: Middletown Journal