As a marine in Iraq, she’d come under fire, recoiled at the charred remains of blown-up trucks and watched in horror as artillery rounds secretly packed in a car trunk were detonated. But nothing was worse than the crash that nearly took her life.
It was a blue-sky morning, Aug. 24, 2006. Cpl. Staci Renee Smith, in the war-torn country only six months, was delivering ammunition to troops at a faraway combat post when her vehicle flipped over. She hit the ground, head first.
“My first thought was ‘I’m going to die,'” says Staci. “Then I passed out.”
When she woke up, an oral surgeon was hovering over her offering comforting words: “Your jaw is shattered. I can fix it.” After multiple surgeries, he did just that, inserting two metal plates – one in her chin, the other in her right jaw – and securing them with five screws.
The URI senior is so grateful to that doctor she plans to become what he is – an oral surgeon. She’s well on her way. While at URI, she was in the Honors Program, maintained a 3.75 grade-point average, volunteered at a local health clinic, interned in two dentists’ offices, and this spring, spent 10 days in Guatemala teaching dental care to villagers as part of her senior honors project. She graduates this week with a Bachelor of Science degree in biological sciences, and in September, she’s off to Western University Health Sciences College of Dental Medicine in Pomona, Calif., for a four-year dental program. Then she’ll continue studying another five to seven years to become an oral surgeon.
As the first person in her immediate family to graduate from college, Staci can’t wait to get started on the next step. “At age 19 my life was changed,” Staci says. “I was thrust into my future. That doesn’t happen to a lot of people so young. We take so much for granted.”
Her Iraq journey is always with her although the name of the Air Force oral surgeon who preserved her face is a mystery. “I think I like not knowing who the man is,” she says. “He knows what he did, and so do I.”
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