When disaster strikes, most people make promises they think they’ll keep forever.
A Yale swimmer-turned SI swimsuit model made one such promise to paramedics after a shark attack that nearly killed her.
And now she’s about to break that promise in the most inspiring way possible.
From celebration to catastrophe in the blink of an eye
Picture this: You’re 22 years old, fresh out of Yale University with a bright future ahead of you. You’ve just finished a successful swimming career and completed the Copenhagen Marathon. Life is good, and you’re celebrating with your best friend on a tropical getaway to Turks and Caicos.
That was Ali Truwit in May 2023 – a young woman with a five-year plan that included consulting work, business school, and eventually a career in healthcare.
Then everything changed in a shallow reef that was supposed to be a safe tourist snorkeling spot.
"The shark seemed to appear out of nowhere when it started to attack her and Sophie simultaneously," Truwit recalls about that fateful day. "We kicked and punched and fought back, but pretty quickly it got my leg in its mouth."
The next thing she knew, the shark had bitten off her foot and part of her leg.
But here’s where the story gets interesting – and where you see what this young woman is really made of.
When disaster strikes, character shows
Truwit and her friend Sophie Pilkinton – who had just graduated from medical school – found themselves in the fight of their lives. No help was coming, so they made a split-second decision that saved both their lives.
They swam 75 yards back to their boat through open ocean water.
Think about that for a second. Most people would panic. Most people would give up. These two women fought their way back to safety with one of them bleeding from a massive shark bite.
Once they reached the boat, Pilkinton immediately applied a tourniquet to Truwit’s leg. Her medical training kicked in, but more importantly, her character showed through.
"You can be someone who knows those things and not act that way when you too have been attacked by a shark," Truwit points out. "I think of it as an incredible fortune that she’s the type of person that she is – a selfless, composed, clutch person who acts that way in the face of measurable trauma."
That’s the kind of friend you want in your corner when life gets ugly.
The prediction that changed everything
When the first responders finally reached their boat, Truwit was lying there looking up at a paramedic named Matthew. She was in shock, her leg was mangled, and her entire future had just been rewritten in the worst possible way.
In that moment, she said something that perfectly captures how overwhelmed she felt: "Well, at least I got my marathon in before this."
Matthew’s response? "You’ll run another one."
At the time, it probably seemed impossible. Truwit was about to undergo an above-knee amputation. Her athletic career was over. Her five-year plan was toast. She was facing a completely different future than anything she’d ever imagined.
But Matthew saw something in her that she couldn’t see in herself yet.
The competitive fire that wouldn’t die
Here’s what makes Truwit’s story so remarkable – she didn’t just survive. She didn’t just recover. She came back stronger than before.
While she was dealing with becoming a public figure (her story made global headlines), she was also discovering something about herself. That competitive drive that made her successful at Yale? The same fire that got her through 26.2 miles in Copenhagen? It was still burning.
"I have come away with the takeaway that we are all so much stronger than we think, that we have so much more in us than we think we do," she explains. "It can feel scary and overwhelming, but when our mind tells us we have nothing left, we still have more."
One year after losing her leg to a shark, Truwit was back in the water competing at the Paralympics. She won two silver medals swimming for Team USA and was recently featured by Sports Illustrated.
Let that sink in for a moment. Most collegiate swimmers never make it to the Olympics. Truwit made it to the Paralympics after losing a leg and became a two-time medal winner.
From trauma to triumph
But swimming was just the beginning of her comeback story.
Truwit realized early on that "helping is healing." She launched the Stronger Than You Think foundation to support three areas that saved and rebuilt her life: prosthetics, water safety education, and the Paralympics.
So far, her organization has provided eight prosthetics to women and girls who needed the equipment but couldn’t afford it. They’ve also secured five water safety grants and are working on a major gift for Team USA’s Paralympic program.
"It truly feels like a hug to my heart to be able to do that kind of work," she says.
And now? She’s about to make Matthew’s prediction come true.
Coming full circle in New York City
This November, Truwit will run the New York City Marathon on a prosthetic blade. She’ll be running it with her mother – the same person she ran her first marathon with in Copenhagen just 10 days before the shark attack.
The location isn’t accidental either. New York City is where she underwent her amputation after the attack. It’s where some of her hardest memories live.
"There’s a place that can hold some hard memories, and then I can also create new ones that show me again my strength and how far I’ve come," she explains.
That’s the kind of mindset that separates winners from everyone else.
The lesson that applies to all of us
Look, most of us will never face anything as dramatic as a shark attack. But we all face setbacks. We all have moments where life knocks us down and makes us question everything we thought we knew about ourselves.
Truwit’s story isn’t just about surviving a shark attack or winning Paralympic medals or running marathons on prosthetic legs. It’s about something much more fundamental – the choice we all have when disaster strikes.
We can let it define us, or we can define ourselves in response to it.
"A lot of what’s helped me these past two years are lifelong habits that I have had, and I have a lifelong habit of setting really big bold goals for myself," she says. "With that comes so many times where I fall short and fail, so I have this proven track record of times I went for it, I didn’t get it, I went back, I worked hard and I eventually got there."
That’s the American spirit right there – getting knocked down, getting back up, and refusing to quit.
When Matthew told her she’d run another marathon, he wasn’t just making small talk with an injured patient. He was recognizing something in her character that even she didn’t fully understand yet.
This November in New York City, she’ll cross that finish line and prove that sometimes the worst thing that happens to you can become the foundation for the best thing you ever accomplish.
That’s what real champions do. They don’t just overcome obstacles – they use them as stepping stones to reach heights they never thought possible.
¹ Zoey Lyttle, "After a Shark Bit Off Her Leg, Ali Truwit Told Paramedics She’d Never Do This 1 Thing Again. Now, She’s Doing Exactly That," People Magazine, September 4, 2025.