‘I had just killed someone’: Adelaide Lord Mayor Sandy Verschoor reveals the two tragic events that bookend her life

Adelaide’s Lord Mayor reveals the twin tragedies that shaped her life – and the shock medical reason she fears she only has a few years to leave her mark on our city.

There are two bookend moments in Sandy Verschoor’s life, the first a deadly car crash at age 20 and the second is the looming abyss of the dementia lottery that runs in her family.

“I had just killed someone,” the Lord Mayor says of the first defining event.

Tears build before she quietly adds “by virtue of the fact that I was on the road driving the other car”.

She is being unfair on herself – a young Sandy Verschoor was not responsible for the death of a 23-year-old man on East Terrace.

He had run a red light across the path of her car, his vehicle ricocheted into a pole and he died later in hospital, where the wails of his mother devastated Ms Verschoor.

The Lord Mayor is acutely aware more than 40 years on of the pain of his family. It also ended her dreams of becoming a Broadway star as her injuries prevented her from taking up professional dancing.

In an unlikely twist, the crash did lead to the birth five years later of her daughter Alex, the first of her three “miracle” children after a doctor told her crushed ovaries meant she was in a race against time to have a family.

Lord Mayor Sandy Verschoor with ‘miracle’ daughter Alex Meakin. Picture: Naomi Jellicoe

Ms Verschoor was sitting her final university exams – her father had encouraged her into higher education but it was only meant to be a detour on the way to New York and Broadway.

“I’d been to the movies, but the person driving the other car had been drinking and had a blood alcohol of 0.27, there were five people in his car, there were four in mine,” she recalled.

“Nine people went to hospital, only eight came out. And that was in November. And I had to wait until August of the next year to be cleared in the Coroner’s Court of manslaughter.”

Police and a passenger of the dead driver testified the crash wasn’t her fault.

Ms Verschoor’s injuries included cracked collarbones and ribs, abdominal injuries and severe whiplash. Her friend Karen in the back seat was worse off.

“One of the things that still sticks in my head is Karen, and back in the days when we used to wear stilettos, she had steel-tipped five-inch stilettos on and when the car had stopped, her legs went up in the air and one leg came down into the shin of the other so she had a steel-tip stiletto embedded in the shin of her other leg,” Ms Verschoor said.

“Apparently I walked barefoot across all the glass to get to the ambulance and then one of the attendees stopped me and said, ‘You shouldn’t be walking across broken glass’.

“I remember being in the hospital and having all the X-rays and hearing the mother of the young man who died screaming. He died on the operating table.”

The day after she was cleared in the Coroner’s Court, Ms Verschoor flew to Europe to clear her head. A diary from the time shows she was struggling mentally.

“I was cleared of all charges and I remember crying all the way back from the Coroner’s Court,” she said.

A young Sandy Verschoor (left) with her mother and sister.

As a young dancer, left.

With the devastation came a realisation.

“It did change my life, not so much because I couldn’t dance, that was one of them. Because then I had to try and figure out who I was going to be if I wasn’t doing that,” she said.

“I talk about them as my bookends, I was 20 years old, for a 20-year-old to realise that life is short, and you could die tomorrow is fairly big. It was really that thing of whatever I’m going to do, I’m going to do things that challenge me, that give me joy.

“And it’s been one of the big drivers. I might not have much time on this planet. So go and do the things that are important.”

The final bookend came when her mother and grandmother were diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in their late 60s and early 70s.

“I might only have until I’m 70 before my brain, you know, cuts out. I’ve got 50 years between (ages) 20 and 70 to do everything that I want to do in his life,” she said.

She has packed plenty into the decades since, managing her father’s restaurant, as an advertising agency copywriter, acting in a television series, managing The Gallerie shopping centre in the CBD, a short stint in radio, time at the SA Museum before diving headlong into the festival scene where she was CEO of the Fringe and the Adelaide Festival.

Ms Verschoor is open that without the pandemic curtailing her plans for the city, she probably would have bowed out at this month’s council election.

“You were trying to keep your city safe for a start, bring people back in, keep your businesses afloat, helping people that were in dire straits, it was awful. It was really awful,” she said.

“I used to go for a walk every day and there were no people on the footpath, no cars on the streets, no businesses open. And nobody had any idea when this was going to end.

“I think it’s had a deep impact on people’s psyche. And for me, it was once we got a bit of an understanding of what this thing was, what you can do to prevent it, then it was all about how do I get the city back on its feet. And that really has been my focus.”

Lord Mayor Sandy Verschoor with her three children Thomas Meakin, Ella Mitchell and Alexandra Meakin.

Sandy Verschoor with her husband Greg Mitchell. Picture: Naomi Jellicoe

She is now looking to the post-Covid future where her early moves such as more laneway bars and pop-up bollards to create entertaining spaces in CBD streets can be properly utilised.

The Lord Mayor has a dream for how to develop a Parklands Foundation so the entire state can have a stake in the city’s green ring.

“How do I position Adelaide as being the best place in the world and connecting to the best things in the world?” she said.

She reels off the Space Agency, artificial intelligence, cyber and defence as well as a strong culture program.

The final bookend moment could be approaching Ms Verschoor.

She is 63 and may have less than a decade with her faculties so why would she want to continue running a council riven with infighting?

The answer is simple.

Unfinished business.