TE'O: She and I, man, we had this relationship where it was just amazing. With all that time on her hands in the hospital, she was never thinking about herself and what was hurting here. She was always thinking about others. She went on and wrote a letter to me before every game. Things that she would want me to know. So yeah.
SI: How did you meet her?
TE'O: We met just, ummmm, just she knew my cousin. And kind of saw me there so. Just kind of regular.
SI: How long were you dating? I know that can be a complicated question.
TE'O: Oct. 15 was the official date. Of last year. I've known her for four years. So we've been friends.
SI: How old was she when she passed?
TE'O: She was 22.
SI: What did she do?
TE'O: She actually just graduated from Stanford. She worked at Clark's Construction Company, I think. She replaced her dad after her dad passed.
SI: When did her dad pass?
TE'O: In October. She took that mantle for him.
SI: What did she study?
TE'O: She graduated in 2011 or 2010. 2011.
SI: What was her major?
TE'O: Her major was in English and something. I'll double check.
SI: I can call Stanford and check. They have to have some record or note that she passed.
SI: So long distance relationship?
TE'O: She was supposed to come [to visit me at Notre Dame]. She was just cleared to come to the Wake Forest game, my senior game. It was mainly just on the phone, every day.
SI: Your dad told me that he called you at 7 a.m. on the day she died. He said when he woke up he had texts from Lennay. I'm confused. Walk me through that day.
TE'O: She was actually getting better to the point where she was cleared to fly and was sent home. She was doing better. So I woke up in the morning and my parents woke me up and they told me about my grandma. And my girlfriend was just someone who was so loving and caring and cares for others. She really loves my parents and my parents love her. She called and she offered her condolences on behalf of her and her family and she was telling them that she loves him and how they're thinking and praying for us.
And then I remember I went to class and went to workouts and after workouts, right before I was about to come into meetings, I got a text message from her phone but it was her brother. Every time her brother texts me he just says, "Bro." I was like, "Why is her brother texting me?" Then I get a phone call from her older brother's phone. He's just crying. And immediately I felt like, "Oh my Gosh, what just happened." And then he told me, "She's gone bro."
SI: How did it happen?
TE'O: It was just so sudden. I don't know the details of it. It was just a surprise.
SI: What was her older brother's name?
TE'O: Koa.
SI: What did he have to tell you?
TE'O: I kind of felt it. He was just crying and crying and crying. I just had to calm him down. I was like, "You have to speak clearly, I need to know what's going on." That's when he told me, Lala is gone. That's what they call her. They call her Lala.
SI: How did you feel in the locker room when you got the news?
TE'O: I just felt that it just turned black. Things got dark. I have never felt that way before. And I don't know. I couldn't control anything. I was just, pure, just I don't even know the feeling. I can't even describe it. I just broke down.
SI: Why did you go to practice after you found out the news?
TE'O: I knew for me that my girlfriend and my family would want me to be out there. They wouldn't want me to be sulking over things. I knew for me, the best way to show they that I loved them was to play the best game of my life on Saturday. In order to do that, I needed to be out there practicing no matter what I was going through. I needed to just suck it up and get out there and get my work done and be ready to represent them the best way I know how on Saturday. When I got out there, it was hard. But I just brought my team up. Coach brought my team up. He had them come out and explain to them what happened. I told them I love each and every one of you. I lost my grandmother the night before and found out this morning that I just lost my girlfriend six hours later. Never in my life has family been pushed to the forefront. My goal is now, and has been, but there's more to it now. Just to make sure I see my family and loved ones again. I told them, this is my family. You guys are my family. I love each and every one of you. Stick together. And I told them, my girlfriend always told me, "Send roses while they still can smell them, tell them they love you while they still can hear it." I told them to make sure you tell your family members you love them every single day.
SI: You have a wedding ring on?
TE'O: It's my church ring. I wear it to remember her. To remember my girlfriend.
SI: Did she give it to you?
TE'O: It's a CTR ring. It stands for choose the right. I always wore it. I had to switch it from my right to my left.
SI: What is it made of?
TE'O: Steel. Some sort of steel.
SI: Coach Kelly said he was more worried about you this week than last week?
TE'O: It was harder than it was the previous week. I was rolling. The feeling of it settling in that, she's not physically here no more. You just can't call her. I talked to my girlfriend every single day. I slept on the phone with her every single day. When she was going though chemo, she would have all these pains and the doctors were saying they were trying to give her medicine to make her sleep. She still couldn't sleep. She would say, "Just call my boyfriend and have him on the phone with me, and I can sleep." I slept on the phone with her every single night.
SI: You would literally sleep with your phone on with her on it?
TE'O: With her on it.
SI: When you woke up?
TE'O: She's be on it.
SI: What would the phone say?
TE'O: Like eight hours. Lucky she had AT&T so it was all free or my family would kill me.
SI: When did you start talking to her all night?
TE'O: When she got in her accident?
SI: So starting in April?
TE'O: Yeah and you know, she was in a coma. I would try, and you know.
SI: Hit by a drunk driver. What were her injuries?
TE'O: I don't know. She had a lot of different injuries.
SI: How long was she hospitalized?
TE'O: She was in that hospital for about two months.
SI: Wow, did she get out?
TE'O: She didn't get out. She went from there. Remember she got in the accident and she was in a coma. We lost her, actually, twice. She flatlined twice. They revived her twice. It was just a trippy situation. It was a day I was flying home from South Bend to go home for summer break. It was May. Mid-May. That was the day where they said, "Bro, we're going to pull it. We're going to pull the plug." I remember having this feeling like everything is going to be OK. They were telling me, "Say your goodbyes." From April 28 to around mid-May, I was always talking to my girlfriend who was on a machine.
SI: She couldn't communicate?
TE'O: No. She could only breathe. One of the miraculous things was when I talked to her and she would hear my voice her breathing would pick up. Like quickly, and then she would start crying. But her breathing would quicken, and she would start crying. So her brother was in the room with the nurse. They were monitoring her. She said, "Who is she on the phone with?" Her boyfriend. She was like, "That's amazing. She doesn't do that with anybody else." So that happened. And then she flatlined and we were losing her.
The day I went home, that was the day they were going to pull it. They were saying their goodbyes and all that. I said, "Babe, I'm never going to say goodbye to you. If you really want to go, she really missed her dad, so I said, "If you want to go, be with dad, go. Just know that I love you very, very much." I had this very positive feeling that everything was going to be OK. I landed in Hawaii. By the time I said my goodbyes. Not my goodbyes, my I love you, I'll see you later, that kind of thing, I jumped on the airplane to go to Hawaii. They were scheduled to pull the plug while I was in the air.
So right when I landed, I was expecting to get a voicemail saying she's gone. So I landed and I had a voicemail from her brother saying, "Brother, call me back right now." So you can imagine what's going through my head. I was like, "What am I going to do? How am I going to take this?'"And so I called him back, the doctor came in and he saw something and he wants to try some treatment on her to see if it works. From there she slowly started to get better. Slowly. Eventually she came out of her coma and she started having memory problems and she couldn't remember because of the accident. That's how much damage she had to her frontal lobe. She had memory problems. I was actually the first person that she talked to. She was breathing, breathing. When I talked to her, I would say, "Babe, do you know who this is?" I knew she knew who it was because her breathing would pick up. I was like, "Relax, chill. Breathe slowly. Breathe slowly." And then, that was when she first started to speak was that conversation. I was like, "Babe, I love you. I love you." Very slightly she said, "I love you."
SI: Was that right when you got back?
TE'O: Then she started to make progress.
SI: This is unbelievable.
TE'O: As she started to make progress. She had her good days. And then the next day she'd say, "Babe my back is sore. I can't feel it. Something is wrong. I don't know what's wrong. My chest is burning." And stuff like that. They said that they took her in and ran some blood tests and that's when they found leukemia. From that hospital she was treated for cancer and then she went to St. Jude's. She was in St. Jude's and then she went to another hospital.
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