How American swimmer Haven Shepherd is embracing life

The American swimmer, whose father tried to kill her in a family murder-suicide, has one of the more remarkable stories among the international athletes in Paris.

Haven Shepherd of Team United States pictured after competing in the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games. Picture: Getty Images

We’ll watch these Paralympic Games through green, gold and rose-coloured glasses. Binoculars will invariably be pointed towards the Australians. But before we begin this jaw-dropping, soul-stirring, whirlwind carnival of sporting excellence and human endeavour, let’s type up one of the more remarkable stories among the international athletes in Paris.

Name’s Haven Shepherd. She’s an American swimmer. Her father tried to kill her in a family murder-suicide when she was a toddler in Vietnam. That’s the gist of it. She was the product of an affair by her parents, who wanted to stay together, and the only way for that to happen was in death.

Shepherd’s parents strapped themselves to an explosive device. Held their 14-month-old daughter. Detonated.

“It was going to be a family suicide,” she says. “I was blown 40 feet away by the explosion. It’s crazy that all the damage was just done to my legs. Nothing else happened to me. I think that’s insane.”

A 14-month-old girl rag-dolling and cartwheeling 40 feet across the sky. She was found by grandma with shrapnel in her head. Her legs and feet were burned and mangled. Grandma rushed her to the hospital by motorbike. Fanged it across mountains and through the jungle. Go grandma. Shepherd’s legs were amputated but she lived to eventually tell the tale.

Her parents died. The grandparents were so poor they asked families of other patients to help pay the medical bills.

The story about Shepherd’s parents wanting to be together forever is what the grandparents told Shepherd.

Vietnamese media at the time reported her father was married to another woman, with whom he had children, and when Shepherd’s mother found out, the father committed the murder/suicide. Either way, the girl was moved to the US before her second birthday after being taken in by a heroic, Jesus-loving American couple by the names of Rob and Shelly Shepherd.

Haven Shepherd of Team United States competes in the women's 200m individual medley heat at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games. Picture: Getty Images

“I’m not going to sweep things under the rug,” Haven says. “I choose to embrace the challenges I have in my life. I have so much gratitude. I can’t really complain. Sometimes I think, ‘Oh, it’s been such a hard day’, but then I look at myself and I’m like, ‘Wow, you need to be thankful to be living this day.’ I could have died back in the explosion.”

Shepherd’s first sporting experiment was athletics. Didn’t like it. Too much sweat in her eyes. It stings! Imagine that girl in her earliest days in the US. Where’d my legs go? And, um, where’s mum and dad? They reckon the first time she cracked a smile was the first time they chucked her in the backyard swimming pool. She will compete in the SM8 200m individual medley in Paris.

“I’ve learnt that the person I am now is because I choose joy every single day,” the 21-year-old says. “I’m going to look at life and I’m going to say, ‘OK, does this situation affect me because I don’t have legs or is it because I’m a 21-year-old girl in a social setting where I feel awkward?’

“I always look at the brighter side. I can think people are staring at me because I don’t have legs. Or I can choose, ‘Oh, wow. They’re staring at me because they think my legs are just so cool’. I usually choose, ‘I think I’m so cool’.”

The Shepherds lived in Carthage, Missouri. They had six kids. They opened their door to a one-year-old double amputee from Vietnam called Do Thi Thuy Phuong. Some people, hey. She became Haven Shepherd, a beautiful name, and she was swimming by the age of three.

“We’d heard a speaker talk about international adoption and the astronomical amount of children in the world that needed a home,” Shelly Shepherd told the BBC.

“I sat there telling myself that could never be us. Why would we? We had six biological children. Then the next thought was, ‘Why not us?’ From that point on I couldn’t rid myself from the feeling that we were absolutely supposed to do this. We didn’t know then that we would fall in love with her.”

Says the Paralympic swimmer who isn’t meant to be alive: “My mum (Shelly) was always really honest about what happened to me and it’s definitely made me the person that I am.

“I think of my biological mom’s sacrifice, too. I was always a very happy, bubbly baby, and I look at her sacrifice of her life for me. I’ve got to live this amazing life. I’m here at the Paralympics. I got to have an amazing childhood. The very first time I ever smiled when I first got adopted was when my parents put me in the swimming pool. I love how it comes full circle.

Haven Shepherd of Team United States leaves the pool after competing in the women's 100m breaststroke at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games. Picture: Getty Images

“Swimming makes me smile to this day. I feel peace. I feel completely free. I feel like myself. There’s no sound, you don’t hear anything, and it’s just so special to know that a sport has your back. You look forward to that at the end of the day. I do nine practices a week and I’m dead tired, but I still look forward to it.”

Swimming begins on Thursday at La Defense Arena. Shepherd’s 200m IM is on Friday.

“Definitely going through an amputation, or just growing up without limbs in general, it makes you grow up really fast,” she says.

“You need to choose what the world is going to be to you. Is it going to be somewhere where it’s not safe and you never leave your house and you don’t want people to look at you? Or do you want the world to know that hey, we exist?

“When people see me out in the wild, you’d think I’m some new fish they found on National Geographic. Everybody’s looking at me but I think that’s so special. To be a learning tool for people, educating them about the Paralympics and the disabled community. I wasn’t supposed to live. I survived.”