Light From Darkness
A Survivor’s Tale
Where is your mindset after something bad happens to you? It’s a question Jay Wright, the two-time national championship coach of the Villanova University men’s basketball team, posed to his players almost daily during his tenure with the Wildcats. The idea was to prepare them to stay focused and resilient under the most intense moments of competition.
And the answer that local actress, writer, acting coach and filmmaker Lisa Regina has crafted to that very question over the past 20 years is nothing short of amazing, creating and building positivity out of what was a horrible experience. Rather than wallow in self-pity, she’s found ways to climb out of darkness and bring others up in the process.
After being violently assaulted and thrown out of a moving vehicle on the streets of New York City by her then-fiancée just two months ahead of their planned wedding, Regina took that pain and the immense feelings of trauma and eventually found a way to build that into positives, not just for herself but for many others, specifically United States military veterans. Through her physical and mental healing, it’s been a steady building process and a jigsaw puzzle that has seen her take many steps along the way, landing her near the precipice of what she believes is a compilation of years of learning, creating and giving as she works toward the development of a television series entitled Heroic Episodes. Her efforts have caught the eye of Joe Mantegna, the TV and movie actor/director, who is on board with Regina’s project as an executive producer.
A survivor, she says “the trajectory of my life changed” from the event 20 years ago. A little more than a year after her assault, she founded the non-profit 501(3)(c) foundation, A Write to Heal. Regina went on to be a keynote speaker for the YWCA after originally sharing her story with the New Jersey Coalition for Battered Women. Meanwhile, her experience in New York City, not just the assault, but her time as a non-traditional student studying in the film industry at NYU and eventually working professionally in the industry, gave her the knowledge and appreciation for what writing can do and how it can help individuals deal with handling their feelings.
“What really helped me heal was writing,” Regina recalls. “Just releasing that pain because you have so much bottled up, and then I shared a lot of that writing with women who were in my domestic violence groups. It was part of who I was and as I traveled the country talking about my experiences, I was able to help a lot of people.”
A Triton High School graduate whose family moved to Gloucester Township in South Jersey from South Philadelphia, she was also able to travel and speak internationally and learn to understand violence against women in other parts of the globe.
“I really learned that I was lucky to be alive to share my story and help others.”
Another turning point for Regina occurred in 2012, while she was teaching and coaching actors through a workshop, she was introduced to a female military veteran who was an amputee and legally blind, suffering these injuries while serving in Bosnia.
“Her name was (Ret. U.S. Army Captain) Leslie Nicole Smith (plus her service dog Isaac), and she eventually became the very first ambassador when actor Gary Sinise founded his Gary Sinise Foundation. She called me and wanted to take my workshop. She was amazing and came into my workshop, which had about 30 actors. A lot of the people in the workshop thought, ‘What is she going to be able to do?’ But she had the will and the ability to overcome her obstacles. The group was very inspired by her, as I was too. Yet she told me how she was inspired by me and how I was trying to take the educational path to help others who were suffering in different ways. There was a mutual appreciation there and we really bonded. But for me, as someone who was not in the military, I was able to develop a deeper understanding of the wide variety of unique challenges our veterans face.”
From that mutual respect and appreciation of one another, Smith became an ambassador for Regina’s non-profit. She was also a huge inspiration in Regina’s creation of Heroic Episodes, as she tries to build a television series centered on telling the true stories of veterans and military members and their unique experiences and their abilities to overcome.
“The goal is to shine a light on what these military members, first responders and firefighters have been through and to share their stories,” Regina explained. “Since meeting Leslie, I’ve spent about 12 1/2 years meeting other people like her with military backgrounds, veterans, fire, police, and interviewing them and getting their stories and adapting them into this television series that I’m writing.”
The plan, with the help and credibility of Mantegna, is to film the pilot episode of the series next year in the Philadelphia region, both in the city and the South Jersey suburbs. She says the concept of the show has the grit and reality of HBO’s The Wire, and mixes that with the heart and soul of the 1984 hit film The Karate Kid. It’s about the bonding of an injured veteran and an inner-city teen, their relationship and how they and their peers affect and help one another.
“It will be more than a TV series. It will provide job opportunities for both veterans and at-risk youth. It will also provide healing and empowerment for some of those who are in some of the real underserved populations in our community. It’s a reflection of decades of my advocacy work and experiences with that.”
But along the way, Regina has also found another way to inspire and help former military members with her non-profit’s Veterans Drone Training Program (VDTP). The program helps veterans to become Part 107 Commercial Drone Pilots by partnering with the Atlantic County Economic Alliance and Atlantic Cape Community College and they applied for a congressionally funded grant in March of 2023. The grant allowed for a dozen veterans to take these courses, in person, over about a four-month period. And they each were awarded a drone from her non-profit as part of the course.
“I’m a drone pilot with a Part 107 Drone Pilot License. I use them for filmmaking. Many veterans have unique experience and understanding of flying aircrafts. This program is a chance for veterans to heal from the traumas of war and really assimilate back into civilian life through job training and opportunities in the aviation and film industry. We can provide veterans with these skills and prepare them for the Federal Aviation Administration exam. And we developed a program to provide them with the training and the hard skills that they can use in the film industry, or search and rescue, real estate, even agriculture. There are so many opportunities in the drone industry, and it’s a great fit.”
That initial grant impacted veterans of different varieties, from older veterans from Vietnam, to veterans of more recent conflicts. The 2023 grant money has expired, so she’s continuing to apply for new grants, raise money and helping veterans continue to have access to online courses to acquire their drone licensing. And she’s able to assist veterans not just locally but anywhere in the country because of the online courses.
Clearly, Regina has not let the unfortunate situation that changed her life 20 years ago bring her down or hold her back. She has taken a mindset that has allowed her to figure out how to bounce back from a horrible situation and she’s bringing others back from the depths of mental and physical trauma, raising others up in the process.
“I’m really hoping to partner with and sit down and speak to philanthropists and likeminded people in the area who have similar views and share their thoughts about how they could give back and develop other ways we could impact veterans, first responders and those underserved populations.”
