You are driving, flying, baking and sampling holiday spreads today, too busy to give thanks. That's planned for later, maybe over dinner, after a walk or a nap or a touchdown.

Before you bow heads and join hands, consider one young man who lost it all. He set off last summer on a quest to get it back, a quest that took him to the Holy Land. He recently returned with answers for us all -- just in time for Thanksgiving.

Accidents were not supposed to happen to Justin Richardson at the pool.

He was a lifeguard, a slender 22-year-old with short brown hair and solemn brown eyes. He loved the water, took his first dip at 9 months old. His parents helped found a community pool in Wendell. He followed his older brothers from swimming lessons to swim team to coaching and lifeguard gigs. By last May, he had worked his way up to pool manager for a regional company, supervising lifeguards at 120 pools.

Justin wasn't even working at a pool when the accident happened. It was August, and he had switched to a less demanding job with a golf company, determined to finish classes at N.C. State University.

It happened at a West Raleigh apartment complex pool, while he was hanging out with his younger brother, Mark, 20, and some friends on Aug. 10. It was late. He couldn't see the bottom. He dived anyway, and hit his head.

Nobody was watching. He remembers surfacing and trying to steady himself, but he could not stand. He called to Mark.

"I can't feel my legs."

Mark says he thought Justin was joking.

All Justin could think about were a lifeguard's two biggest fears: drowning and a spinal cord injury. He knew the risks -- 10,000 suffer spinal injuries each year. Most are men; more than half are between 16 to 30 years old. The most common sports injuries involve diving.

Mark had the same lifeguard training. When he realized Justin wasn't kidding, Mark swam over to rescue his older brother.

He pulled him over to the pool steps, lay him flat and waited for the ambulance with him. Before they left, he called their mother, who lives in Chapel Hill.

It sounded so far-fetched, Sandra Richardson later said, she thought her son was fooling. Her boys liked to do that, call with some crazy story because they knew how gullible she can be. But they also called late at night for advice. Or help.

Mark repeated what his brother had said: "Justin can't move his legs."

She left to join them at the hospital. All the way to WakeMed she prayed for a miracle that would save her son.

Waiting at the pool, Justin convinced himself he was paralyzed. When he reached the hospital, his suspicions were confirmed.

He had damaged vertebrae in his neck, vital links in the fragile chain that controls his body. His brain was bleeding. He could not breathe on his own.

Doctors called a chaplain. They warned nurses that Justin might not last the night, Sandra Richardson recalled.

When the family asked, doctors told them Justin could be paralyzed from the neck down, dependent on a ventilator. Justin insisted he would walk again.

Sandra Richardson and Justin's father, Vic, who are divorced, suffered through the night. The next morning, the chaplain greeted them again.

Congratulations, she said.

They didn't understand.

Your son is alive, the chaplain said.

During the next few days, Justin recovered enough feeling in his arms to cup his hands, and the family started scouring the Internet for treatment ideas.

Amanda Spivey, 23, Justin's girlfriend of two years, approached the family with a proposal three days after the accident. She remembers telling them about an experimental treatment that could save Justin's spine. It was risky, still in the trial stage and available to only a few patients. It had to be performed within two weeks of injury. And it had not yet won approval from the U.S. government, so it could be done only in one place: Israel.

WakeMed doctors advised against moving Justin, Sandra Richardson said. He didn't even have a passport. Staff at the Israeli company performing the trials warned that he might not be accepted.

When the family asked Justin, he called it a "crackpot scheme."

But he still wanted to walk.

So a family friend, a travel agent, came to the hospital to take his passport picture. While Sandra and Mark drove to Washington, D.C., the family called Sen. Elizabeth Dole's office for help. Dole's staff met the Richardsons at the passport office. Within a day, they were back at WakeMed, passports in hand.

The company, Proneuron Biotechnologies, accepted Justin for treatment. A week after Amanda's proposal, Justin and his mother met doctors aboard an El Al flight to Tel Aviv.

Justin remembers having trouble breathing when the rest of the family said good-bye at the airport. His lungs were still full of fluid and had to be pumped every hour.

But one glance at all the faces he could see from the stretcher, and he realized he hadn't lost everything after all. He still had his family. That was something to be thankful for, at least.

A unique treatment

On the plane and later at the hospital near Tel Aviv, he listened to Israeli doctors explain how they intended to treat him. They would take blood, extract white blood cells and mix them with skin cells from his arm. Two days later, they would inject the mixture into his spine.

As part of the central nervous system, the spinal cord is sealed off from the rest of the body, including white blood cells, or macrophages. The experimental procedure, called autologous activated macrophage therapy, brings in white blood cells to reduce swelling and tissue buildup that can cause damage after spinal cord injuries.

Justin listened to the doctors and dreamed. There was a remote possibility that he could get everything back, be able to hug his mother, toss a basketball, maybe even walk.

Thirteen days after the accident, doctors injected the cellular mixture into his spine. He came down with pneumonia soon after and had to stay in intensive care.

He remembers noticing his surroundings more after that. He met a girl from Boston, also injured in a diving accident, whose injuries were much worse than his. He met a young father who also suffered worse spinal injuries, an American who had settled in Israel. The man had happened to sit on a bus three seats away from a suicide bomber.

"People asked me how I was injured, and I said a diving accident. It felt so petty," Justin said recently.

On his birthday, Sept. 12, he received a box of more than 40 cards and a note of congratulations -- dictated by actor Christopher Reeve. He felt lucky. So did his mother.

"I keep telling folks I got my miracle," she said. "The fact that he even survived is my miracle."

But Justin was waiting for more. He needed a sign that things would improve, that the experimental formula was starting to take effect. He was able to leave the hospital and visit a few holy sites in Jerusalem, including Gethsemane, Golgotha and the Wailing Wall. He tucked two notes into the wall with secret wishes for the future.

Most who survive spinal cord injuries regain their reflexes, and during his month in Israel, Justin felt the familiar knee jerks return. But he also noticed light pressure in places he had not felt since the accident -- inside his left thigh or atop his right ankle. He covered his eyes and had his mother test him. You're touching the outside of my foot, he would say, and uncovering his eyes, find he was right.

He left at the end of September for rehabilitation at a hospital in Denver, and his mother returned home soon after. He had regained strength in his arms but still couldn't walk. Fellow patients quizzed him after he arrived about Proneuron, which was planning another set of trials this month in Denver, New York and New Jersey.

He heard stories about how spinal injuries can cause break-ups, about wives serving husbands with divorce papers at the hospital. Amanda and his family came to visit, but at times he still felt lonely and frightened about the future.

It was then that he had his one and only dream about walking. He remembers it like this:

He is inside a strange townhouse. He is in a wheelchair. Somehow, he transfers himself to sit on a couch. Suddenly, a group of strangers appears and snatches the empty wheelchair. Before he can think, Justin is up walking, then running, chasing after them. He is shouting: "Give me back my wheelchair." He catches them and they scuffle. Eventually, he gets the chair back.

First thing, he sits down in it. And he stays down.

A thankful time

Practically the whole family came to see Justin return from Denver on Tuesday. They brought a banner and cameras, and paid such close attention to the elevator door that holiday travelers stopped to ask who they were waiting for. Some celebrity?

He was sad to leave the people at Craig Hospital who spent the past two months teaching him to do everything again. Thanks to them he has his dignity, he said -- he can go to the bathroom, dress and bathe himself. He has freedom, thanks to cooking and driving courses. He's even an athlete again, thanks to basketball games.

The elevator doors opened. A camera flashed. The family hung back, and Justin Richardson came wheeling out into their arms.

He is still in the wheelchair, but he doesn't see it as a burden. Cost more than my first car, he says. He plans to sell his latest, a 2000 Accord, and get a modified truck. The plasterboard was drying Wednesday on his new quarters, an addition to his father and stepmother's house in Wendell that features a wheelchair-accessible entry, bathroom and desk. Justin plans to start college classes again soon.

He is amazed at how much he can feel. The muscles work all the way down to his groin. His grip is strong -- not enough to open a bottle but enough to eat and pick things up, maybe take up wheelchair tennis or rugby.

But enough about the future. Justin says he is thankful for today. He's looking forward to a spread of American food -- he wasn't too keen on kosher -- and to being surrounded by a family of characters who carried him through the past four months. He can pass them plates, toss them a basketball or give them each a hug. Be thankful for all these little things, he says. You never know how fast they can disappear, and if they do, whether you can ever get them back again.

"I'm fully well aware now that I'm probably not going to walk again," he says. "I guess I just always thought I would beat it. And in a way, I have."