• Ex-Marine Angela Madsen on her journey from homelessness to the Paralympics

    Retired U.S. Marine Angela Madsen once lived out of a locker at Disneyland. But the 52-year-old paraplegic turned her life around and has since rowed across the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. She's now competing for Team USA at the Paralympic Games in London.

    By Jamieson Lesko, NBC News

    LONDON -- Angela Madsen's journey to the London 2012 Paralympics is nothing short of extraordinary.

    Complications following a back injury she sustained while serving in Marine Corps at the age of 20 led to her becoming a paraplegic when she was in her 30s.

    Bound to a wheelchair, she fell into a deep depression. She lost her job. Her marriage dissolved.

    "I lost my house ... I ended up homeless, kept my things in a locker at Disneyland. Happiest place on earth, right?" she told NBC News at the USA track-and-field training camp at RAF Lakenheath, near Cambridge, England, last week.

    But the native Californian missed surfing, so she set out to find a way back to the water, determined to turn her life around.

    Some of the hottest tickets at the London Paralympics are for wheelchair rugby. The sport is so violent and fierce, that it has been dubbed "Murderball."

    "I started taking responsibility … and started making the changes and decisions to move positively forward in my life,” she said.

    Now, her definition of a disabled person is "somebody who doesn't believe they can and doesn't try.”

    'Meet the Superhumans': Paralympians burst onto world stage

    She competed in the 2006 world surfing championships and then fell in love with rowing.

    She turned this hobby into history by rowing across the Atlantic and Indian Oceans.

    Ahead of the London Paralympics, L.A. Galaxy midfielder David Beckham spent a day learning blind soccer from Team Great Britain.


    "I didn't row across my first ocean until I was 47,” she said with a laugh.

    "I have six Guinness World Records for rowing oceans. I've circumnavigated Great Britain ... I've been places on this planet that no human being has ever been before. A thousand miles from land in any direction ... it's been a pretty amazing life."

    Read Angela Madsen's profile at the Paralympic Games' website

    Next year, she plans to row solo across the Pacific Ocean.

    Madsen rowed for Team USA in the Beijing Paralympic Games, narrowly missing the podium. "I missed the medal rounds by 7-hundredths of a second.”

    Centra "Ce-Ce" Mazyck, who was paralyzed during a parachute jump with the 82nd Airborne in November 2003, will compete in the javelin at the London Paralympics.

    In the London 2012 Paralympic Games, the 52-year-old is trying her hand at track and field events, competing in the women's shot put and javelin.

    "I don’t have any regrets about anything. If I could go back and change anything I wouldn't, except for the amount of pain I have with the rods in my back,” Madsen said. “That could definitely go. But I can’t foresee change in anything. I'm very, very satisfied with the life that I have now."

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  • Woman assaulted on mission to row around Lake Michigan vows to continue

    View more videos at: http://nbcchicago.com.

    By NBC News staff

    A woman who said she was sexually assaulted while on a two-month row around Lake Michigan to raise cancer awareness says she remains frightened but plans to resume her trip Wednesday.


    Jenn Gibbons is trying to become the first person to solo-row the entire 1,500-mile perimeter of Lake Michigan in an effort to show the role exercise plays in the fight against breast cancer. She set out on her two-month mission from Chicago on June 15, NBCChicago.com reported.

    About five weeks into her journey, she said, she awoke in the early morning hours on Sunday to the sound of someone boarding the boat, which she had docked for the night near a lighthouse on a stretch of a remote shoreline of Lake Michigan. Gibbons told police she rushed to lock the cabin door, but the stranger forced his way inside and sexually assaulted her.

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    “I was out in the middle of nowhere,” Gibbons told the Chicago Sun-Times. “It was terrifying. And he told me he knew where to find me.”

    Police believe Gibbons’ attacker traveled a significant distance to find her, they said in a statement, perhaps following her on the Internet as she documented her mission through her Facebook page and personal blog.

    Gibbons said she punched the man in the chest and ran. She tried to lock herself in a wooden outhouse, but her attacker forced his way inside. She said she fought him off until he fled in a yellow Jeep Wrangler.

    Gibbons said she ran to the boat, locked herself in the cabin and called 911, police said.

    Michigan State Police

    This sketch shows the suspect wanted in connection with the reported sexual assault of Jenn Gibbons on Sunday, July 22, 2012.

    Police released a sketch of the man Tuesday and continued their investigation. The suspect is described as a white male in his 30s, approximately 5 feet 8 to 6 feet tall, with a fair amount of facial stubble hair, but not a full beard or mustache. The man has light eyes, an average to athletic build and shorter well-kept hair. He was wearing a grayish green T-shirt, jean shorts and tennis shoes.

    “I know that I had a choice in telling people about the details of my attack, particularly that it was a sexual assault,” Gibbons posted in a note to her Facebook page. “To go through this at all, let alone publicly, is extremely difficult. I chose to talk about it in the hope that someone might be able to provide more information about the person who did this to me.”

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    “Regarding the trip, one thing hasn’t changed: I’ve still got this,” Gibbons wrote. “But the trip plan will change in a few ways to ensure my safety. Most importantly, I will no longer be alone.”

    Gibbons is a customer service agent for the deal-of-the-day website Groupon and the head coach for the Recovery on Water charity, a rowing team composed of breast cancer survivors.

    Gibbons said she hoped her mission circumnavigating Lake Michigan would raise $150,000 for her charity. She has already raised $80,000, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.

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