Alyssa Huffman is no stranger to Watersound Beach along Florida’s Gulf coast. It’s a beach the St. Louis resident frequently returns to, having grown up in the area.
“I used to lifeguard that beach many, many years ago,” she says.
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During one stay at the Florida beach last summer, Huffman witnessed a nightmare she never expected: A person at the beach was attacked by a shark.
“I had never heard of even a single person in over 30 years of living or frequenting there to get bit by a shark,” she says. “I didn’t really even think that it was anywhere near possible.”
The encounter and its aftermath, in which a bull shark severely injured a woman named Elisabeth Foley, to the point her left arm had to be amputated, aired last week during Discovery Channel’s Shark Week on a special edition of In the Eye of the Storm (which you can stream on HBO Max). The program shows the response from a group of people, including Huffman, as they helped Foley stay alive until emergency responders came.
“What the show doesn’t mention is, it was oddly divinely intervened, I don’t know another way to explain it,” Huffman says. “This is a small private beach area. There just happened to be, I want to say, eight emergency responders and multiple physicians, even an orthopedic surgeon there.”
For her part, Huffman determined she was best suited to place pressure on Foley’s left arm and keep her alert and awake.
“Because she was a mom and because her kids were there, it resonated pretty deeply with me, because I had been there,” she says. Years earlier, Huffman had been in a cab when it was struck by a drunk driver speeding 77 miles per hour.
“It’s a really lonely moment when you have a bunch of people working on you. You have this sense everybody has a purpose, but you don’t really know what your purpose is, other than to just let everybody do the work,” she says. With Foley, Huffman says she “just said and did what I wish somebody would have been there to say or do with me.”
That meant talking with Foley, reminding her to breathe slowly and helping her stay awake, Huffman says. When something like this happens the body can go into shock and naturally want to shut down, but she says that’s the last thing that should happen.
“I remember when I was in that car wreck, telling myself, ‘You have to stay awake, you’re a mom,’” Huffman says. “You have to stay awake, because it’s so easy to pass out and black out in those moments because that’s just what you want to do.”
Huffman is honest that she felt anxious when the show detailing the attack started airing because she didn’t know how much she’d end up reliving from that June day last year. In the year since, she’s stayed in close contact with Foley to support her however she can. Foley is still fundraising to cover ongoing medical and recovery costs.
“This wasn’t about me,” Huffman says. “This was about supporting another human going through the hardest transition of their life. I don’t think that story gets shared enough: how wonderful mankind can actually be.”
It’s a sentiment she pulls forward for her work now in St. Louis, where she’s building her medical device startup, Allumin8, which was among the 20 funded in Arch Grant’s most recent cohort.
Allumin8 makes 3D printed, porous implants with a pattern that mimics bone, so that bone can grow into it. She explains they’re designed to diagnose, treat, and heal different conditions, with the company’s first implant focusing on spine fusions.
“The goal is to reduce the revision rate in spine fusions; that’s the ultimate goal of the first product,” she says. “We have a responsibility if we’re going to put something in the market to help them get out of that pain.”
The experience with the shark attack helps to remind Huffman why she is committed to her company, and especially helping people who are in immense pain because of complications from spinal fusions.
“Moments like that remind me that people are the glue that hold everything together,” she says. “Supporting people in their moments of desperation and weakness is the greatest gift that you can give to somebody and allowing somebody to help you is the greatest gift.”
