Snowboarder Loses Eye Due to Goggle Incident. Now She’s Turning Her Accident into Advocacy

The snow was perfect that weekend, the kind of fresh powder Shelby Perry and her friends wait all season for.

“I remember having the most amazing weekend riding with my friends,” the 35-year-old, now based in San Diego, tells PEOPLE exclusively. “It was one of those trips you never want to end.”

At the time, Perry was already in the middle of rebuilding her life. Less than a year earlier, she had moved to San Diego to get sober, gone to EMT school and set her sights on a future in nursing. Her days were full — yoga, travel, snowboarding, time with friends — “just being really, really active,” she says.

It felt like everything was finally moving forward.

That momentum carried into a February 2021 snowboarding trip near Salt Lake City, Utah, where Perry and her friends spent the weekend chasing fresh, untouched snow. During their final run, on Feb. 28, she spotted “one last patch of powder” from the chairlift and made her way toward it, weaving carefully through a cluster of trees.

Then, in an instant, everything changed.

A branch struck her directly in the right eye. The pain was immediate —she describes it as sharp and overwhelming — but in those first moments, she couldn’t make sense of what had just happened.

At the time, she had been wearing magnetic-lens goggles, a newer design that allows for quick lens swaps, something she had never questioned.

“There was no locking mechanism or safety latch, which meant the lens could easily pop off,” she says. “That was actually the selling point… but it was also the danger I never considered.”

Moments later, she was sitting in the snow, trying to stay grounded as everything around her blurred.

She couldn’t open her eyes. She couldn’t see. And while she knew she was seriously hurt, she still didn’t understand how serious it was.

“I remember repeating my name to myself and thinking, ‘I know who I am, I know where I am — ski patrol is coming, just sit here and wait,’ ” she recalls.

“I knew I was in pain,” she adds. “But I didn’t realize what had actually happened.”

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Eventually ski patrol arrived and rushed Perry down the mountain in a toboggan to the Moran Eye Center, where surgeons attempted to repair the damage by placing 30 stitches in the whites of the eye. But they couldn’t reach all the way to the back. Still in the days that followed, hope lingered.

“My doctors were so hopeful at first,” she says. “They said miracles happen, and I believe in miracles.”

For a time, she held onto that, but gradually, the reality became impossible to ignore.

“I had zero vision or light sensitivity,” she says.

On April 29 of that year, Perry had her right eye removed.

“Honestly, I almost felt relief,” Perry says. “I was ready for answers. I was ready to move forward instead of sitting in the uncertainty.”

What came next was a long and complicated recovery. Still in Salt Lake City, she underwent additional procedures before eventually returning home to San Diego. In those early weeks, even the most basic tasks required help.

“I could barely see out of my good eye, so I needed a lot of help,” she says. “People were practically helping me around the clock.”

She adds, “My brain and body were working overtime to heal the trauma and adjust. So I was sleeping a lot.”

Even after the initial recovery, her journey wasn’t over.

“I later had another surgery about a year afterward because my prosthetic eye was rubbing against the implant and caused a hole,” Perry says.

The physical healing was only part of the recovery process. Emotionally, everything felt uncertain.

“The beginning felt scary in a way I had never experienced before,” she says. “I worried about never getting back to ‘normal.’ “

For a while, that question lingered: what would “normal” even look like now?

Then, slowly, her perspective began to shift. “What if there’s something greater than normal waiting for me?” she remembers thinking. “What if this story is meant for something bigger?”

It wasn’t a fully formed plan, just a thought, but it was enough to move her forward.

She started by sharing her experience on Instagram and TikTok.

“I was sharing what felt like journal entries,” she says. “And the amount of love and support I received was so powerful.”

That response didn’t just comfort her — it changed the direction of her healing. “What if others don’t have this kind of support?” she remembers wondering. “I could create that for people.”

That idea became the beginning of something much bigger.

Six months after her injury, Perry launched EYEHESIVE — first as a space to share stories from others who had lost an eye, then as a growing community.

“That radically transformed my healing process,” she says.

As the platform grew, so did her purpose. “I always post the truth,” Perry says. “I continue to step outside of what’s comfortable… because I know that’s what people actually need to hear.”

At the same time, she noticed a gap in something more tangible.

“I was patching all the time in the beginning and I just didn’t love the options available,” she says. “I wanted something minimal, sleek, discreet.”

So, once again, she decided to create what she couldn’t find.

What started as a personal need turned into a four-year journey to develop adhesive eye patches and, eventually, a business.

“I never believed I could run a business or be this kind of leader,” she says. “What I believe is possible for me today looks nothing like what I thought was possible before.”

Along the way, the community she built took on a life of its own — eventually evolving into what she calls the “One Eye Era.”

“The One Eye Era means that no matter what you’re going through, it’s your era,” she says. “You can take anything life throws at you and make it the most powerful chapter yet.”

Through virtual meetups, shared stories and now real-world events, Perry has watched that mindset transform others, too.

“People come in afraid to show their face or speak,” she says. “And they leave sharing their stories… talking about how EYEHESIVE changed their life.”

Looking back, Perry says the experience changed her in ways she never could have imagined — not just in what she lost, but in what she built.

“Life-changing injuries are not the end,” she says. “They are just the beginning.”

And for anyone still in the middle of that beginning, she offers the same question that once reshaped her own path: “Who do you want to be moving forward?”