Madsen's life was nothing short of extraordinary.
According to The Guardian, she had joined the Marines after her brothers told her she “wouldn’t make it in the military.”Madsen became paralyzed in 1993 from a spinal cord injury while playing for the Marines basketball team.
An unsuccessful back surgery left her with paraplegia."During one game, somebody tripped me and someone else landed feet first on my lower back during a game,” Madsen wrote in a 2014 article for Time magazine. “That ruptured.