Chase the Light

A professional actor with a promising career, Cesar Perez was on a meteoric rise until a drunk driver slammed into his car head-on. He coded on the paramedics more than once on the way to the hospital, and coded again when he arrived. It's a miracle he even survived. Still, he wouldn't have called it miraculous at the time. In one devastating blow, all his dreams had been ripped away. A severe brain injury had left him almost entirely incapacitated. His right arm was paralyzed. His femur had snapped in two. His face was shattered. He spent months learning how to breathe, eat, walk, and talk all over again. In the midst of it all, his girlfriend left him—the same girlfriend he had been on his way to see that fateful night. But life, ultimately, is a gift. Fragile, firm, and beautiful. Throughout the course of Cesar's long, often tortuous recovery, Chase the Light shines with courage, grace, and the resilience of the human spirit—reminding us that every life has meaning and every soul has a purpose, always, even in our darkest moments.

A professional actor with a promising career, Cesar Perez was on a meteoric rise until a drunk driver slammed into his car head-on. He coded on the paramedics more than once on the way to the hospital, and coded again when he arrived. It's a miracle he even survived. Still, he wouldn't have called it miraculous at the time. In one devastating blow, all his dreams had been ripped away. A severe brain injury had left him almost entirely incapacitated. His right arm was paralyzed. His femur had snapped in two. His face was shattered. He spent months learning how to breathe, eat, walk, and talk all over again. In the midst of it all, his girlfriend left him—the same girlfriend he had been on his way to see that fateful night. But life, ultimately, is a gift. Fragile, firm, and beautiful. Throughout the course of Cesar's long, often tortuous recovery, Chase the Light shines with courage, grace, and the resilience of the human spirit—reminding us that every life has meaning and every soul has a purpose, always, even in our darkest moments.

Cesar Perez is a Salvadoran immigrant who spends every day of his second chance at life striving to be the best possible version of himself. A passionate storyteller, he picked up the pieces of his broken past and bound them together into a new whole, full of love, persistence, faith, and determination. He wrote Chase the Light with a newfound yearning to guide others through the darkness.