On the Road to Recovery

It sounds like a scene from a movie: You awake from a helicopter crash to find yourself underwater, sinking with the debris. You don’t know where you are, how long you’ve been there, if anyone has survived, or even if you will. All you know is that you need to get out.

For naval aircrewman Dylan Boone, 23, this was reality on the morning of January 8, 2014. Due to mechanical failure in the helicopter cabin, a routine training mission 20 miles off the coast of Virginia Beach became anything but, leaving five people plunging into the 39°F water below.

Only Boone and one other survived. The two somehow battled their way 30 feet up to the surface of the Atlantic Ocean, suffering from extreme hypothermia once they made it to shore. Boone was left with 240 staples and stitches in his head [graphic photos here and here], a torn rotator cuff, a collapsed lung, and a broken spirit. It was as if he had boarded an emotional roller-coaster with no end in sight. “There’s so many different phases,” he explains. “There were phases where I was angry to be alive. There were phases where I was a grateful to be alive. There were phases where I was extremely ungrateful, and I was a little shit about it just because of all the pain I was going through.”

He was quite different from his younger self. A Fresno native, Boone felt compelled to join the military after witnessing the events of September 11 in fifth grade. His enthusiasm continued into high school where he was “ate up” (military speak for gung-ho), determined to join the navy and protect his country and his loved ones. He joined when he was 17, becoming a Petty Officer 2nd Class after five years of service.

Boone had just returned from deployment to Korea, still not fully transitioned back, when the accident happened. He found himself visiting the doctor six times a week, undergoing surgeries even half a year after that fateful morning. To top it all off, Boone’s marriage of two years fell apart, and two months after the crash, he found himself divorced. His life became filled with negativity, pain and anguish as he suffered through horrible nights of both physical and emotional pain.

His body was already healing from the helicopter crash, and with each connection he made at EDC, so was his spirit.

One of the friends that Boone had made through the military was Zakk Schucart, whose wife Amanda Vincent offered Boone an extra ticket to EDC. For someone who had lost almost everything a few months prior, waiting for next year was not an option. He decided to go four days before the show, and after extending his leave and spending $1,000 to change his flights, he found himself making the drive from Fresno to Las Vegas for his very first massive.

When asked about his EDC experience, the first thing Boone reflected on was making those crucial first steps inside the Las Vegas Motor Speedway. “I looked out over everything, and it was just the most encompassing feeling I’ve ever had in my life,” he says.

Like many at the festival, Boone had troubles in his life—his arguably bigger than most. What stood out was that none of those problems existed at EDC. It didn’t matter that he was in an almost-fatal crash that left him with hundreds of staples, dozens of hospital visits, and a failed marriage. All that mattered were the people that he met. His body was already healing from the helicopter crash, and with each connection he made at EDC, so was his spirit.

Vincent might not have known the impact that offering an EDC ticket would have on Boone, but it has most certainly not been lost on him. She and her husband “have been a solid foundation of love, strength, and support,” says Boone. He ended up nicknaming her Wendy (from Peter Pan), and she now calls him her “lost boy,” whom she helped find a home at EDC.

While three days may not seem like a lot, the ones that Boone spent at EDC became pivotal in helping him reclaim his life. “To find it at such a critical point in my life is phenomenal,” Boone says. “The experience that I had—I wouldn’t trade it for the world. I feel so in debt to that whole spirit and experience and the people who were apart of it. I just feel like it saved my life.”

Usually, people offer gratitude to those who serve in our military. Despite everything that’s happened to him, Boone now finds himself on the other end: “The biggest thing that I wanted to say was a simple ‘thank you.'”