HOUSTON—Three days a week you can find Stephanie Rivard on her elliptical trainer.

It’s one of her rituals, and it’s a cakewalk, compared to the road she’s already run.

Rivard said she was 17 when an 18-wheeler broadsided her car.

She suffered a brain injury that changed her life forever.

“I couldn’t talk,” said Rivard.

Now, years later, her speech is slurred, and her movements are still slow.

But a gold framed letter and a medal in her living room, tell you there is much more of her story to tell.

“I know it was....a thrill,” Rivard said.

You see, Rivard was chosen as one of America’s Points of Light.

She received the award in 1992 from the foundation formed by President H.W. Bush for her volunteer work.

She pushed a book cart through St. John’s Hospital, visited patients, lifted their spirits, and lifted her own too.

“When I’m able to talk to someone who is lonesome, that makes me feel like I’m doing something,” said Rivard.

She no longer works at the hospital, but she continues to volunteer.

Now, she writes and sends letters of encouragement to friends and strangers.

As for that award she still keeps proudly displayed in her home, Rivard hopes others, with less difficult lives than her own, will consider the value of being volunteers too.

“It makes you feel good,” she said. “You make others happy. You share and spread God’s love and that’s the purpose of life.”

It is a purpose in her life that Rivard still celebrates, and keeps shining, as one of America’s of Points of Light.