Nothing Stops This Athlete

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

June 10, 1999 / 10:40 AM EDT / CBS

If you've been watching the NBA playoffs, you've seen some exciting basketball. But you might also have seen a commercial that touches your spirit. Jami Goldman is featured in an Adidas commercial, running with prosthetic limbs. CBS This Morning Co-Anchor Jane Robelot interviewed this inspiring athlete.

Jami Goldman and a friend were stranded in a car for 10 days on a snowy mountain road in Arizona. Just 19 years old at the time of that 1988 ordeal, Goldman lost both legs below the knee to frostbite.

She was not an athlete before she lost her legs, but after the accident, exercise became a huge part of her life. At first she exercised to gain the necessary strength to survive. Then, she got such a feeling of accomplishment she began to work out 4 or 5 times a week. Now, she no longer feels by any measure disabled.

"In today's society and especially here in the United States, people are so preconceived with beauty and appearance. I mean, I'm guilty of it. I read the magazines and I work out," she says. "I do what it takes to make myself feel better and appear better in person, but I also think that it is okay to wear a prosthetic limb. It is okay to be in a wheelchair. It is okay to be heavy. I think people don't understand that it is okay to be different."

Goldman hopes to get that message out to the entire world. After the accident, she says, she felt lucky to be alive. The training gave her the mental drive to get through the bad days.

The training paid off. She was introduced to the Paralympics in 1997 and will be competing next year in Australia.

"Amputees can run and we do compete at an international level and we can become elite athletes. That's important for people to be aware of," she says.

"I have discomfort, sometimes irritations," she says. "But if you work through the pain I think you're going to do really well and that's something I'm okay with. I would rather have the discomfort and the irritations knowing I'm achieving my dream, which is running, and that's what I really want to do."

In addition to holding down a part-time job and working out almost every day, Goldman finds the time to do volunteer work. This Saturday she begins a week of work at a camp for terminally ill children.