Hutchinson ? Sarah Scantlin’s first words, uttered 20 years after a drunk driver struck her, have captivated a world hungry for a miracle.

Scantlin was 18 when she was hit while walking to her car in 1984 in Hutchinson. She had been aware of her surroundings but unable to make any sounds other than loud crying until a month ago, when she suddenly told staff members, “OK, OK.” Doctors don’t know why she regained her speech.

During all those years while their daughter struggled with a brain injury, her parents’ pushed to toughen the state’s drunk driving laws.

It became a lifelong mission that began with reaching out to the man who put their daughter in the hospital. As part of his sentencing for drunken driving and leaving the scene of an accident, Douglas D. Doman II was ordered by Judge Steven Becker — at the request of the victim’s family — to visit Sarah in the hospital.

Becker told The Associated Press the Scantlin family wanted some acknowledgment from Doman that he had done wrong.

“My recollection is he went to the hospital to see Sarah. Her family was there and it was a very positive experience for everyone concerned,” Becker said Monday.

Doman did not return a message left at his brother’s house for comment.

But Jim Scantlin remembered well the day that Doman and his mother came to the final staffing meeting before her daughter was released from a Wichita hospital to live out her life in a Hutchinson nursing home.

“He was authentically remorseful, cried,” Scantlin said. “The mother sat there and acted like this was an insult.”

Sarah Scantlin, left, sits beside her mother, Betsy, and father, James, at the Golden Plains Health Care Center in Hutchinson. Sarah, unable to talk since she was hit by a drunken driver 20 years ago, has begun to regain her memory and talk. Her parents fought for tougher drunken-driving laws after the accident and say they have forgiven the driver who hit their daughter.

Doman, then 22, asked the Scantlins if he could come see them; they would eventually meet with him at the Scantlins’ home several times.

“I’ve forgiven the boy,” Scantlin said in a recent interview at the nursing home.

Own brain injury

Scantlin said he tried to do with Doman what he does with his own children — emphasize responsibility.

“Being behind the wheel of a car in his condition is not being very responsible,” he said.

But Scantlin empathized with the young man who only months before hitting Sarah had suffered a brain injury from a fall that had left him blind in one eye and with shaky motor control.

“He should not have been behind the wheel of a car sober,” he said.

The judge said Doman’s brain injury made the drunken driving case difficult.

“He also had brain damage from a previous accident and that factored into what he was doing that night,” Becker said. “It was a tragic, tragic thing for everyone concerned.”

Along with the order to visit Sarah, Doman was sentenced to six months in jail for driving under the influence and leaving the scene of an injury accident. He was also ordered to attend an alcohol safety awareness program.

Stricter laws

Reno County Dist. Atty. Keith Schroeder said that at the time Kansas did not have stringent drunken driving laws for cases in which the victim was injured.

The state now has a reckless aggravated battery law to prosecute drunken drivers, under which someone convicted of the felony charge would face between 38 and 172 months in prison depending on prior criminal history, said Schroeder, who once was a classmate of Sarah Scantlin.

In 1987, Doman pleaded guilty to another DUI charge, according to district court records in Reno County. He was sentenced to one year in jail and completed 18 months probation.

Before sentencing Doman on that charge, Scantlin said Becker called him: “He said, ‘And no mercy is going to be shown,’ and I said, ‘Well, it shouldn’t be.”‘

Sarah’s mother, Betsy Scantlin, spent the years after her daughter’s accident helping other people, said Mary Ann Kourny, executive director of the DUI Victim Center of Kansas.

Kansas is still one of the few states that does not have a law where people can sue a server if a drunk person leaves their establishment and injures someone else. A bill enacting that law is now before the state Legislature.