By Sarah Owens
Lulu Strong” has become a phrase tied to resilience, perseverance and a recovery that has inspired people far beyond Mountain Brook.
Lulu Gribbin, however, doesn’t spend much time thinking of herself that way.
To her, she’s just your average teenager. Sure, life looks a little different than it did two years ago, but she still gets up, gets dressed and heads off to school every day just like her peers.
Lulu’s face isn’t just recognizable around Mountain Brook though. Her story has captured the attention, and hearts, of people all over the globe.
Her name made headlines after she survived a shark attack on June 7, 2024, losing part of her left arm and part of her right leg. The then 15-year-old was one of three people injured in shark attacks that day, all taking place along the Florida Panhandle’s 30A corridor, between Panama City Beach and Destin.
“I went unconscious in the water. A random stranger came and punched a shark off of me, and then I woke up on the shore,” Lulu says. “I remember leaning forward and seeing my nail polish on my toes. I remember the tourniquet and just having many strangers surrounding me and all the paramedics coming.”
Lulu lost two-thirds of the blood in her body and credits her survival to the quick thinking of those strangers who just happened to be medical professionals on the beach that day.“The next day, I was extubated, and the first thing I said was, ‘I made it,’” Lulu says. “That just really set the premise of what my recovery would look like.”
After the attack, Lulu spent five days at Sacred Heart Hospital in Pensacola before being transferred to Levine Children’s Hospital in Charlotte, North Carolina, where she spent 77 days. “We transferred to Charlotte because of a special surgery called targeted muscle reintegration, or TMR for short, and it’s where they get the nerves that were cut off and they tie them into the muscles,” Lulu says. “That way, it causes less phantom limb pain. And then a lot of the surgeries were flushing out bacteria in my residual limbs.”
Lulu underwent a total of nine surgeries and received intensive treatment and therapy that have allowed her to adapt remarkably well to life as an amputee. “I think my story is an anomaly because of how awesome my care was,” Lulu says. “I literally was walking in two months, which is really unheard of. It takes like nine months to get a normal prosthetic, and so that was such a blessing that I was able to have my arm and leg before I left Charlotte.”
Lulu finally returned home to Mountain Brook on August 24, 2024, where she was welcomed with a parade in her honor. Since then, it’s been life back to normal, sort of.
Now 17 and a senior at Mountain Brook High School, Lulu still goes to class, does homework and shares in everyday life of a teenager. But she’s also been busy speaking to crowds, establishing her own nonprofit foundation and helping create a federal law.
Lulu has spoken before the Alabama State Legislature, at TEDx Youth and in front of crowds of up to 19,000 people. She has also been featured on ABC’s Good Morning America, NBC’s Nightly News “Great Americans,” and CBS Mornings.
She founded the Lulu Strong Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit working to make emerging technologies, including AI-powered prosthetics and virtual reality therapy, more accessible to amputees. “I was the first patient to use the virtual reality headset for the upper limb from start to finish of my recovery,” Lulu says. “We wanted to make it more available, and so we decided to create the foundation. The goal is to fundraise money to give grants to other organizations, other companies who are diving into all this cool and amazing research, and to help expand the amputee space.”
So far, the foundation has given two grants. The first, announced in March, gave $100,000 to Axolo Health, the Charlotte-based company behind the virtual reality Targeted Brain Rehabilitation therapy that played a pivotal role in Lulu’s recovery.
Because of the therapy, Lulu has almost no phantom limb pain in her arm and believes she would have experienced similar results with her leg had the technology been available for lower limb loss.
“We are honored to be the recipients of the first-ever grant from the Lulu Strong Foundation,” says orthopedic surgeon Glenn Gaston, co-founder of Axolo Health. “Having treated Lulu, we’ve seen firsthand the results that the right care can achieve. This support will keep our research moving forward to expand access to life-changing treatment to any and all amputee patients.”
In July, the foundation awarded $50,000 to the RIVL Foundation, founded by four-time Paralympian and amputee Jarryd Wallace, to support development of an app for the amputee community. The app will use AI and an expert-built information library to create personalized guides, track milestones and connect amputees with resources based on their individual needs.
“After my amputation, I had to piece together my own network of doctors, other amputees and resources through trial and error,” says Wallace, CEO and Founder of RIVL Foundation. “This grant lets us expand on what we’ve already built and share it with amputees everywhere, so the next person doesn’t have to start from scratch.”
Beyond the foundation, Lulu helped establish Lulu’s Law, aimed at improving emergency communications surrounding wildlife dangers at the beach in hopes of preventing future attacks like her own. “Something that I’m super proud of is having a federal law in my name and getting to make the beaches safer,” Lulu says. “Not only does it make the beaches safer, but it allows the lifeguards to be notified quicker, and to help them be hands-on faster.”
Signed into federal law on June 26, Lulu’s Law requires that the Federal Communications Commission allow geofenced wireless emergency alerts on mobile phones in the event of a shark attack or dangerous water conditions.
Lulu has shared those milestones, and much of her recovery, with more than 287,000 Instagram followers. She remembers sitting in a Pensacola hospital room with her twin sister, Ellie, and her dad, Joe, discussing the account they had created to document her recovery. They considered making it private, but it had already gained 10,000 followers. They left it public, and the audience grew from there.
With that audience came an adjustment to being in the public eye. Lulu has grown accustomed to being recognized, but she’s also had to navigate the stares and attention that can come with being an amputee. “I try not to like let it bother me and continue to just live an everyday life,” she says.
But behind the milestones and moments she’s shared publicly, Lulu’s recovery hasn’t been without difficult days. “I think that pain was one of the hardest parts, because you can’t recover if you’re in pain,” she says.
Even as the physical pain subsided, Lulu had to relearn things she once did without thinking. Walking proved particularly challenging. “I think the most difficult thing was relearning how to walk. It seemed easy, I feel like, to people who are watching because when I got my leg, I got up and started walking with a walker,” she says. “But it actually took a lot more trust than I thought it would because I was learning how to walk with something that was metal, that was full of technology, and not something that I was used to.”
The experience also challenged Lulu’s faith early on. During one particularly difficult day in the hospital, Lulu remembers feeling angry, frustrated and sad as she struggled to understand why the attack had happened to her. She questioned why God had chosen her to endure the pain and uncertainty of recovery.
That night, her mom reminded her that her appearance did not define her and placed a Bible verse, Mark 10:27, beside her hospital bed: “With God, all things are possible.” From then on, Lulu turned to the verse during some of her most painful moments, reading it over and over as doctors gave her shots or performed treatments. “Really what keeps me going every day is my friends, my family and the Lord, so I wake up every day with a smile on my face and conquer the day,” she says.
When she’s not in school or speaking to a crowd, Lulu spends time journaling, praying or enjoying a car ride jamming to music. She also loves to play golf and has joined the United States Disabled Golf Association, where she has met other adaptive athletes and seen the different ways they have continued playing the sport.
With graduation approaching, Lulu plans to attend college, though she hasn’t decided where just yet. Wherever she ends up, she says the attack has changed the way she thinks about the life ahead of her. “Obviously, life’s not a given, and that’s taught me to live every day like it’s the last day on earth,” she says. “Literally, live your life to the fullest, and don’t waste a minute of your time ever.”
As Lulu looks toward that future, she also plans to continue building the Lulu Strong Foundation and expanding its ability to support technologies and resources for amputees. Those who want to support that work can donate to the foundation by texting “LULU” to 91999 or visiting lulustrong.com.
And if there’s one thing Lulu hopes people take from her story, it’s the same mindset that has carried her through her own recovery. “Be strong even in your darkest moments. Just pretend like you’re climbing a mountain, and you might be at the bottom, but eventually you will reach the peak,” she says. “And so to continue climbing and never give up is so important.”
