When the opportunity presents itself, Diana Dixon shares her story with people she meets on the road.

“Usually they'll ask me why I'm a truck driver or how long I've been a truck driver, and I'll say I've been a truck driver a while, but I took a little break,” she said.

When they ask why, she tells them in a sentence: “I stopped to help at an accident, and the pickup I went to go help got hit by a semi, and I jumped off of a 30-foot bridge.”

Ms. Dixon, who turns 55 on Dec. 26, wants people to believe in miracles.

She is one.

She not only survived the leap from that bridge on I-475 at the Manley Road overpass six years ago, she learned to walk again after sustaining 24 fractures to her pelvis, five broken ribs, a neck fracture, a punctured lung, and a lacerated bladder.

To top things off, earlier this year she climbed into an 18-wheeler and re-started her truck-driving career with Swift Transportation — a decision she chalks up to her faith, plain and simple.

“I shouldn't be here. I shouldn't be walking. I shouldn't be driving a truck,” she said during a stopover at Love's Travel Stop in Lake Township. “My walk with Christ has been amazing.”

Ms. Dixon, who lives outside of Pittsburgh, was one of the Good Samaritans who pulled over early in the morning Aug. 4, 2011 after a pickup and a tractor-trailer collided on I-475.

The initial accident turned deadly when another tractor-trailer came over the interstate bridge a few minutes later and slammed into the disabled pickup, killing its driver, James South, 68, of Monclova Township, and motorist Jodi Lubas, 40, of Maumee, who had stopped to help.

A motorcyclist, Dale Barnhiser, 52, of Grand Rapids, Ohio became entangled in the crash. He was thrown from his bike and also died that day.

Ms. Dixon, who saw the rig barreling toward her, jumped, and landed in the grassy median of the Ohio Turnpike below.

Amazingly, her cell phone landed face up, tent-like, and she was able to crawl to it and tell her then-fiance, who she'd been on the phone with, what happened. Then she called 911.

Her youngest daughter, Sharon Eicholz, a registered nurse who was working in Cleveland at the time, rushed to Toledo. Her mother always had been tough, she said, but even so, Ms. Eicholz didn't think she would survive the trauma.

“When I got that phone call that she had been in an accident — it's just your worst fear,” Ms. Eicholz, 31, said. “She has nine lives. She has a purpose in life because she should've been dead.”

Ms. Dixon spent more than six weeks in the hospital and rehabilitation center. It would be months before she would walk again, but she did, eventually going back to work as a dispatcher for her former employer —Schneider Transportation — going back to school, and ultimately back on the road.

She once hoped to walk for her wedding, but said she and her fiance ended their relationship in the aftermath of the accident. There have been countless other bumps along the way, and it took nearly two years after the accident before she finally dealt with the tragedy and processed what had happened.

Ms. Dixon said she broke her toe while working on her house and broke down for the first time. She couldn't stop crying. The doctor told her there was nothing to be done for a broken toe but sent her to a psychiatrist. Ms. Dixon said she was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

“After the accident I was grateful to be alive, but I felt lost,” she said. “My whole purpose in life had changed, shifted. The three people that died haunted me because I couldn't help them.”

A few months ago — not long after she earned a new commercial driver's license and started driving truck again — she found herself on I-475 in the very spot where the accident occurred.

“It was eerie,” she admitted.

Still, she can’t say enough about the paramedics and others who saved her life that day.

“I am so grateful when I come through Toledo for everyone who was there for me,” Ms. Dixon said. “I am so grateful for their kindness. Everyone took such great care of me.”

Now, she wakes up each day — usually in the sleeper cab of her semi — and smiles.

While she takes no pain medication other than two aspirin and vitamins in the morning, Ms. Dixon concedes she still has pain and struggles with fatigue at times.

She's happy to have an automatic transmission in her rig and the other technology that's built into her freightliner, which hauls beer, kegs, empty cans, and other freight for Miller Brewing Co. She's on the road for four to six weeks at a time.

During her 10-hour breaks, she sends cards to shut-ins, calls people on her church's list to check in with them, but says, “My biggest ministry is just being out here.”

When she decided to return to trucking, she said her two daughters were not thrilled.

“My oldest daughter cried. She said, 'Mom, you can't do that,'” Ms. Dixon recalled. “I said, 'I can,' and she said, 'Then don't stop and help anyone.'”

So far, she hasn't, although she's called 911 a few times for motorists and picked up an occasional hitchhiker.

“I haven't been presented with an accident that I've had to stop at,” Ms. Dixon said. “I know me well enough. I told my kids I wouldn't stop, but I know I would. I would just make sure I was safe.”

Ms. Dixon loves meeting people, loves her job, loves sharing her message. She said she doesn't tell her story to everyone she meets, but, when she does, they want details.

“I had one person tell me, 'You almost make me believe in God.' Almost!” she said with a laugh. “I'm like, ‘What would it take?’”

Ms. Dixon said she doesn't hit people over the head with her faith but simply tries to pass on the lessons she's learned so well: Life is short. Don't sweat the small stuff. Tragedy happens, but miracles do too.

“If I had one message, it would be this: You can't always control what happens to you in this life, but you can control how it defines you,” she said. “I choose to become a better person with each trial in my life, not a bitter one.”

Ms. Dixon said the accident didn't destroy who she was but made her kinder, more loving, a better mother, grandmother, and friend. Her faith is stronger, and she's happier too.

“When I woke up alive, under that bridge, I knew I was going to have to fight to live. I accepted that,” she said. “I have accepted each level of my recovery but strived to be better. Was it easy? No. There were days when all I had was a glimmer of God's light in my heart, but it was enough for him to give me hope.”

Contact Jennifer Feehan at jfeehan@theblade.com or 419-213-2134.

First Published December 25, 2017, 8:10 p.m.