Lorraine Miller remembers with perfect clarity the day she found out her 30-year-old son's life had changed forever.

She was at a Boy Scout meeting for one of her younger sons when her daughter knocked on the window. The other mothers at the meeting thought it was sweet that her daughter was saying hello, but there was an urgent reason for the visit: Lorraine's oldest son, Lee, was in the trauma unit of Cooper University Hospital following a crash.

He had spinal cord and nerve damage, and a brain injury. He was in a coma, paralyzed. When he woke up a day later, he couldn't recognize anyone.

"He didn't even know that I was his mother," Lorraine Miller said.

Lee Miller, now 49, still has no memories from the first 30 years of his life, but he can walk and even run - and he has the trophies to prove it.

"The doctors said I'd never walk again," Miller said. "But don't listen to doctors. They think they're God, they act like they're God, but they're not God. If you want something bad enough, you can achieve it. Just work really hard at it. Anything is possible."

Miller is training for the Brain Injury Association of New Jersey's Walk for Thought/Cycle for Safety event, set for Saturday, where he hopes to raise awareness of brain injury and also raise money for the cause.

His participation in the event will be more evidence of how far he has come since his crash.

On June 18, 1990, Miller was in a car alone in Camden. It was pouring rain that night; it had gotten so bad that most of the cars pulled off Route 130. Miller pulled onto Federal Street, where he hit a car that had stopped in front of him.

He was taken to Cooper, where he underwent a range of therapies. He was released in late August, and moved back in with his mother.

"He was a basket case," Lorraine Miller said. "He didn't know how he was feeling. He didn't know who he was. And he used to take things out on me."

After two years of discontent living at home, Bancroft NeuroHealth helped Miller relocate to a residence of his own.

In February 2009, he began rehabilitating at Temple University Hospital, and he eventually regained the ability to walk and do something he couldn't for 19 years - run.

Then, in April, he contacted Jeanne Bozicek, Special Olympics coordinator for adults at Bancroft NeuroHealth, and told her he wanted to compete.

Miller and Bozicek started training together every week for the South Jersey Special Olympics.

Miller "didn't care about winning a gold medal," Bozicek said. "He just wanted to run." And when the time came on May 2, Miller shined.

"I was nervous," Miller said. "But I knew I could do it. I had practiced really hard. I wanted to have fun. And even being able to run was reward enough for me."

But that wasn't all the reward he got. Miller won gold medals in both of his events, the 100-meter run and the 800-meter walk.

These wins helped Miller qualify for the Special Olympics of New Jersey Summer Games at the College of New Jersey from June 12 to 14. Even when going up against the best in the state, Miller came out on top, winning a gold in the 800-meter walk and a silver in the 100-meter run.

Miller's Medford apartment is cluttered with DVDs, CDs, fish tanks, and photographs - all the things he loves. He has friends in the apartment complex, and his sister and her daughter come to visit regularly to swim in the pool.

Some of Miller's ongoing issues are difficulty processing auditory information and difficulty expressing what he's thinking, according to his psychologist, Dr. Jeff Bessey.

One of his goals is to educate others about brain injury through public appearances, and he would also like to complete the Boston Marathon.

"You have a positive post and a negative post, like a car battery," Miller said. "If you take off the negative, the car's not going to run. . . . You need the negative in your life as balance. . . . What you do with the negative is up to you."

Now, both on and off the field, Miller inspires people wherever he goes.

"He's just a wonderful man," said Sharon Miller, unit secretary at Temple University Hospital. "If the rest of the world could be so driven, the world would be a much better place."

Contact staff writer Caroline Russomanno at 856-779-3990 or crussomanno@phillynews.com.

For more information about Walk for Thought/Cycle for Safety, or to donate to help Miller's efforts, go to www.bianj.org