On April 12, Roarke Burton’s life almost changed forever. On that day, he decided to take his electric scooter out for a ride to enjoy the sunshine and nice weather in Chapel Hill. Fifteen minutes into his ride, the former Salisbury High tennis standout took one hand away from the scooter bar to scratch his head for one quick moment. The next thing he remembered was being surrounded by people telling him an ambulance was on the way.

Roarke had hit a crack in the pavement, sending him head first into the pavement without a helmet. When the paramedics arrived they performed a neurological evaluation on Burton, asking him whether he remembered his name, what year it was, and if he could move his hands and feet.

“My first reaction wasn’t even to call my parents, I didn’t even feel the pain really. All I knew was my scooter was sitting out there on the pavement in the open. So I called my roommate to come and get it. I didn’t realize the paramedics had already moved it into the ambulance with us,” said Roarke, a former co-winner of the Darrell Misenheimer award for Rowan County male athlete of the year.

Once at the UNC Medical Center, Roarke was sent directly to the Intensive Care Unit. He would remain in the ICU for four days. While there, doctors performed a craniotomy and diagnosed Roarke with a broken skull and epidural hematoma, where blood pools between the brain and the skull.

His mother Melanie Burton, a Salisbury High School teacher, and father Scott Burton, did not understand what that meant for Roarke and his health. Kayla Honeycutt, another former Salisbury High student, is a registered nurse in the Neuroscience Intensive Care Unit at UNC Health. Honeycutt came into the hospital on her day off to help Melanie and Roarke’s family and to explain to them what was happening and what it meant.

After being moved from the ICU, Roarke stayed in the hospital for five more days. He would often wake up and need two Tylenol to numb the pain or need to take walks at around two in the morning to get out of his hospital bed, according to Melanie. While in the hospital, Roarke said that everyone else understood what was happening better than he did.

“I think the emotional pain was worse for everyone else than the physical pain was for me,” said Roarke.

While Roarke’s parents hurried up to Chapel Hill to help support him, his three younger siblings had to stay behind in Salisbury. Family and friends from the surrounding community would band together to help out the Burton family. People set up meal trains to help feed the younger children. Some also donated gas cards to help the family pay for the expenses of traveling back and forth between Chapel Hill and Salisbury. Some local churches also set up prayer groups for the family to pray for Roarke’s health.

“Everything pretty much got spread around by word of mouth. I love the small town community we have here. We had people saying that the whole town has y’all in prayer,” said Melanie.

In the end, Roarke ended up recovering almost entirely. He will always have the scars on his head from the injury, but he has shed all of the restrictions doctors placed upon him during his physical rehabilitation and recovery.

Roarke has also used the injury as motivation to help others. Roarke spoke with Overton Elementary students about the importance of wearing a helmet after returning home to Salisbury. Roarke, who recently graduated from UNC Chapel Hill after studying pre-med, is also looking to get into medical school to continue moving forward in hopes of beginning a medical career.