Sonya Lynn Wood bundles pipes at an Ohio factory.

It's her and 500 men, juggling tons of steel.

Dangerous? Not like her July 1997 Florida vacation.

``I heard a big boom and turned around and saw this car coming at me like 100 miles an hour,'' says Wood, 25. ``I had a choice of trying to outrun the car or jumping over the rails into the ocean.

``I tried to get my body up on the rails and I did not make it. He was coming too fast.''

It was 3:35 a.m. She'd left a roll of exposed film on a bridge near her Indian Rocks Beach hotel. While her boyfriend slept, Wood walked back to the bridge and pocketed the film.

That's when Chad Heiner, then 21, lost control of a Ford Escort and skidded across Gulf Boulevard.

``I was literally dead. I knew it,'' Wood says. ``I remember asking God to forgive me my sins and if I died to take me to heaven and please watch my children.

``I remember flying so high in the air, I seen the whole entire car underneath me. I remember thinking, `Oh, crap, I hit the front, now I'm going to hit the back.' ''

At Bayfront Medical Center, people asked her name. Hours passed before they found her boyfriend.

She asked for pain medicine.

The slightest stir tortured her road rash.

Skin had peeled away from her right calf, exposing muscle.

``I remember hitting the ground. When he hit me I was knocked out of my shoes.''

After Heiner hit Wood, he took off.

He was trying to turn onto Walsingham Road when his car broke down. Deputies surrounded him.

``He was afraid of DUI,'' says his stepfather, Ron Brehony.

``He got scared and he took off.''

Pinellas prosecutors charged Heiner with DUI, reckless driving and leaving the scene of an accident with injuries.

Heiner pleaded no contest.

He did 30 days of his 60-day sentence.

Meanwhile, 1997 only worsened for Wood.

Three months after the Florida crash, someone stole her car in Sylvania, Ohio. She was still on crutches.

``The kid who stole my car gets a year in prison and five years probation,'' she gripes.

``The kid who runs me over gets two months in jail.''

During physical therapy, she pictured Heiner's face to muster the anger to work harder.

He sent her roses in the hospital.

She forgives him, she says, but doesn't forget.

Scars remind her, even now. Her legs hurt all the time.

The film canister put a permanent dimple in her hip.

She'd like Heiner to appreciate how tough it is to work in a steel factory despite her pain.

If she saw him now?

``I'd feel like smacking him.''