Is Life A Lottery Ticket – Part Four

Evan Solomonides — Died Before He Really Began to Live

If life is a lottery ticket, then at first glance, Evan Solomonides looked like someone holding a winning ticket from the very beginning.

He grew up in Boylston, Massachusetts in an upper-middle-class family. His father was a doctor. His mother was a special education teacher. He was raised in a home that valued gratitude, education, serving others, and giving back to the community. By most standards, Evan’s life was stacked in his favor.

And in many ways, it was.

But then, one night, everything changed.

Evan was driving home after working on a science fair project and watching the school play when a deer jumped into the road. In an instant, his car slammed into a tree. The impact was catastrophic.

His head went through the window.

He broke three ribs, his collarbone, his face, and his skull in four places.

And then… he died.

For a brief moment, his life was over before it had really begun.

Doctors didn’t think he would survive the night. Then they doubted he’d survive three days. Then a week. Eventually the conversation shifted from survival to quality of life.

They said he would never wake up.

Then they said he would never talk.

Never walk.

Never run.

Never go back to school.

Never go to college.

But sometimes adversity awakens something stronger than statistics.

Evan spent a month and a half in a coma fighting for his life. And somehow, step by step, he began proving everyone wrong.

What I love about this story is that Evan didn’t just survive.

He rebuilt.

He returned to school and eventually attended the Massachusetts Academy of Math and Science, a prestigious public magnet school where he was able to take advanced math and physics classes at Worcester Polytechnic Institute during his senior year of high school.

Even more incredible, he returned to the very science fair project he had been working on the night of the accident—and won with a novel method for manufacturing bioplastics.

Think about that for a second.

A young man who wasn’t supposed to wake up… went back and finished the work he started before he died.

That sounds like purpose to me.

Evan later achieved another dream that had hung symbolically on the wall of his hospital room during recovery—a Cornell University pennant that reminded him what he was fighting for.

He went on to attend Cornell, studying computational astrophysics and mathematical modeling, publishing papers, building relationships, and developing the skills that would eventually lead him into fintech startups, consulting, and becoming a founding partner in an exciting company called PLMBR.

But the most important part of Evan’s story isn’t the degrees, the companies, or the accomplishments.

It’s perspective.

Evan understands something many people never learn until it’s too late:

Life is fragile. Time matters. Potential unused becomes regret.

His favorite quote comes from poet John Greenleaf Whittier:

“Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: It might have been.”

That line carries weight when spoken by someone who briefly left this world and came back.

Evan uses the tragedy he survived—and for a short time didn’t survive—to fuel the way he lives. Not halfway. Not cautiously. But fully, authentically, and intentionally.

So was Evan handed a winning lottery ticket?

At first glance, maybe people would say yes because of the family he was born into.

But lottery tickets don’t determine whether a man quits when life crushes him.

They don’t determine courage.

They don’t determine resilience.

They don’t determine purpose.

Adversity revealed who Evan really was.

And maybe that’s the bigger lesson.

Sometimes the moments that appear to destroy your future are actually the moments that reveal it.