Westwood High graduate overcomes near-fatal injury to walk across graduation stage

No matter how many times Taylor Jacobs gets knocked down, she always gets right back up.

Last August, at the start of her senior year at Westwood High School, Jacobs faced perhaps the greatest challenge of her life.

On that day, Labretta Hall-Jacobs was driving to the grocery store when she came across a car accident. She decided to stop. When she did, she found her daughter had been badly injured in the wreck.

“I’m a spiritual person, so I (feel) like God puts you where you need to be at the right time, so I drove up on the scene of the accident and realized it was her. She was panicking and going into shock,” Hall-Jacobs said.

Jacobs suffered a fractured wrist, a fractured eye socket and what’s known as a grade V liver laceration.

A grade V laceration is the most serious category of liver injury. Nearly 40% of people with a grade V liver injury die from it, according to a 2012 study from the Scandinavian Journal of Trauma, Resuscitation and Emergency Medicine.

“I was able to hold onto her and keep her from going into shock until the ambulance arrived,” Hall-Jacobs said. “It was a very traumatic experience for me — a mother’s worst nightmare.”

As always, Jacobs got back up. But that doesn’t mean she is free of scars.

“I had to learn how to talk, walk and do basic life skills all over again,” Jacobs said, as she now prepares to walk across the Westwood graduation stage.

Her resilient spirit has been evident for years. It started in elementary school, when Jacobs fell behind her peers in reading. Despite having a mother who taught first grade, Jacobs wasn’t learning how to read.

“I cried many a night because I could teach others how to read but I couldn’t teach her how to read,” Hall-Jacobs said.

Hall-Jacobs had a hunch there was something else going on. Perhaps Jacobs has inherited her dyslexia. Testing, which often exceeds $1,000, wasn’t provided, so Hall-Jacobs paid out of pocket to have her tested. The mother’s hunch proved correct.

By the time Jacobs reached high school, she had gone from avoiding reading to finding confidence in it.

“Thanks to all the English teachers I had throughout my years at Westwood, they always pushed me not to shy away from it and better myself in it,” Jacobs said. “I used to not want to read out loud in class, now I actually volunteer and read out in class. ... And now when I take tests, I always score higher in English.”

In eighth grade, Jacobs discovered her favorite sport, cheerleading. Being small in stature and athletic, Jacobs quickly took on the role of “flyer,” which is the person who is thrown up in the air or forms the top of a pyramid. By 10th grade, she made varsity at Westwood High, and by 11th grade she was cheering competitively.

One time, somebody didn’t catch Jacobs and she fell, spraining her neck and ending up in the emergency room. But as soon as the doctors released her, she was back at it.

Since her car accident, Jacobs has returned once more to cheerleading. But because of her liver injury, it’s unsafe for her to be a flyer.

But Jacobs, who is set to attend South Carolina State University to major in business and marketing after graduating Westwood High in Richland 2, has her eyes on her future.

For several years, she has owned her own business, Tay’s Factory, selling fashion accessories such as fake eyelashes, sunglasses, necklaces and more. She is hoping that experience translates into her intended career choice of being a pharmaceutical sales representative.

“I am a living testimony,” said Jacobs, who, like her mother, considers herself a spiritual person. “I’m well-rounded. I’m a hard worker. I’m dedicated to what I do, and I’m a good leader. And I can overcome anything I put my mind to.”