By Christian Marshall
The Kansas City Star
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Former Kansas City Police Department officer Kate Hwang refers to the night that changed her life forever as her “alive day.”
Hwang was a year into her career at KCPD. One day, as she and her partner moved through their routine neighborhood patrol, they encountered a car parked the wrong way on the street.
Hwang figured they would write up a $25 parking ticket and then be on their way.
As Hwang and her partner placed the ticket on the car’s windshield and were returning to their vehicle, the vehicle’s owner approached, yelling expletives and ripping the citation to pieces.
Hwang’s partner stepped out of the car to confront the man, who threw a punch.
Hwang hit her officer-assist button, calling for backup. As the distress signal rang out, she recounted this week, she looked up and saw five or six more men approach their patrol car.
Hwang’s adrenaline kicked in. Her sole focus was on keeping her firearm away from her attackers. That fear left Hwang exposed, and she sustained several blows to her face and head as a result. She hit the back of her head on the curb as she tried to restrain one of the assailants.
Hwang suffered a traumatic brain injury from the attack, leading to ataxia, a neurological disorder that impairs movement and muscle control, and occasional seizures.
But none of that could stop Hwang from being a cop. Working in law enforcement had been her goal since she was a little girl. Her original dream was to serve on the NYPD , but the events of 9/11 led her to her post in Kansas City.
Being a cop wasn’t just her job, it was her life.
Hwang served for another five years with KCPD. She worked as an undercover narcotics detective and attended sergeants school, all while masking the effects of her seizures from her peers. Her police badge was her “coat of armor,” she said, protecting her from the pain of her invisible injury.
“I remember having seizures and just not saying things,” Hwang said. “It was don’t ask, don’t tell.”
Her memory of that night is fuzzy, and her time as an officers comes back to her in bits and pieces. But she remembers clearly the devastating feeling when she was forced to medically retire from the department.
“The seizures were becoming more severe, and I couldn’t hide them as much,” Hwang said. “It was like a shock to the system — just everything crumbled.”
Hwang’s consequential traffic stop was a little bit more than 25 years ago now. At the time, she believed she had lost not just her job, but her life’s purpose.
A quarter-century later, now 45, she has reached the summit of her new purpose in life. Late this month, Hwang traveled to New York for the Para Track and Field National Championships. She returned with a national title in three events: the 100-meter dash, 200-meter dash and shot put.
The medals symbolize the culmination of Hwang’s 25-year journey, defined by a philosophy she used to find success in her personal life as well as adaptive athletics.
“Always take a step forward and never look back.”
The ‘leaf years’
Before Hwang learned how to run on a track, she first had to take a step forward mentally.
She battled depression after retiring from KCPD and her marriage crumbled, too. She roamed America aimlessly in her car, returning to Kansas City only when one of her grandparents got sick.
Patti Erneste, Hwang’s coach and friend, refers to those years as her “leaf years,” because Hwang “flitted everywhere” like a leaf in the wind.
Erneste and Hwang met by chance at Park Hill High School north of Kansas City. Erneste taught math and Hwang patrolled the hallways as a campus supervisor, a position she obtained through the local rehabilitation center, Ability KC.
One day, Erneste inquired about Hwang’s disappearance from her normal spot in the hallways. She was told Hwang had a seizure and was taken to a local hospital, with no listed emergency contact.
Erneste rushed to the hospital. She had only interacted with Hwang briefly to that point, but it was her instinct as a teacher to help someone in need. After Hwang recovered, the hospital released her to Erneste, who took her in.
“I got her and she had nothing in her house, no food, nothing. I’m like, ‘People can’t live this way,’” Erneste said. “If that were a student of mine, I would be reporting them to the counseling office for services.”
“She got involved,” Hwang interjected with a smile. “Needless to say, she got involved.”
When Hwang spoke with The Star, Erneste sat with her, softly inserting details and filling in gaps in Hwang’s recollection. Those small interactions are emblematic of the relationship the two have shared in both the past and the present — Hwang moving forward and Erneste making sure she’s going in the right direction.
It was Erneste who found the Boulder Crest Foundation, a free 10-day program for military members and first responders that Hwang credits as the first step in turning her life around.
“It was the thing that kind of clicked because it was real,” Hwang said. “I couldn’t BS them, and they couldn’t BS me because we’ve seen the same things.”
Day by day, Hwang improved emotionally and physically, taking what she called “baby steps” as she checked off small goals that turned into big accomplishments. Those included earning her master’s degree from the University of Missouri. And that sort of personal progress and mission led to Hwang’s first interaction with adaptive athletics.
Four years ago, Hwang was working at The Whole Person, a nonprofit serving people with disabilities in the KC area. As several of her peers engaged with adaptive sports for the first time, Hwang felt compelled to give them a try herself. She gravitated toward track and field events, bringing the optimistic logic that would become her trademark.
“I can put one foot in front of the other, so I can sign up for the 100-meter dash,” she thought to herself. “I can throw a ball, so I can throw the javelin, or I could do the shot put.”
At the start, Hwang signed up for meets for fun, competing with little understanding of the rules, no coaching and even worse form. But she kept showing up, getting a second faster or throwing an inch farther every time.
Until last summer, when a Team USA para-manager approached Erneste at a track meet, the U.S. squad was looking for a thrower in the F -36 class — the division of adaptive athletes in which Hwang competes. The manager asked Hwang if she was interested in performing on a bigger stage.
“He was like, ‘I think she could be number three in the world if we got her to Worlds this year,’” Erneste said, “I’m like, ‘Are you serious?’”
Erneste spoke to Hwang and they agreed to give it a shot. Two weeks later, Hwang was on a flight to Eugene, Oregon — with her paperwork fast-tracked — to compete at the 2025 Paralympics National Championships.
In her first national meet, Hwang finished first in the shot put and 100 meters in the F36 class, and second in the long jump. That earned her a September trip to New Delhi for the 2025 Para World Championships. In India , in her first international meet, she claimed a bronze medal in the shot put.
Suddenly, Hwang was no longer signing up for weekend meets for fun. She was training to become one of the best adaptive athletes in the U.S.
Hwang assembled a team to help her achieve that goal. She began working with a private strength-and-conditioning coach, a dietitian, a sports psychologist and the performance lab at the University of Kansas . She said such efforts on the margins led to her success in 2026.
As others were celebrating the Fourth of July this year, Hwang traveled to the Czech Republic to compete at the World Para Athletics Women’s Grand Prix . She earned gold medals in the 100- and 200-meter dash, shot put and long jump, with personal bests in the 200 and long jump.
Weeks after dominating the Grand Prix , Hwang returned to New York , where she’d dreamed of being a cop, and left as a national champion. The trip became a full-circle moment that she attributes to all the people who have helped her along the way — in ways both personal and athletically oriented.
“It’s more like the realization of all the people that have helped me to get to where I’ve been,” she said. “There are just so many things that have made me who I am. It’s just an accumulation of things that are unbelievable.”
‘Tell me I can’t’
Earlier this year, Hwang decided to swap her shot put for sprinting spikes, with her eyes set on the next big goal: qualifying for the 2028 Paralympic Games in Los Angeles .
Shot put is Hwang’s preferred event, but there aren’t enough throwers in her classification for the event to be held at the Olympics . So she’s dedicated herself to improving her sprints in search of Paralympic gold.
But Hwang’s journey to 2028 includes far bigger obstacles than simply learning to maneuver the starting blocks or managing her ataxia — which can cause impaired movement and muscle spasms that can cut into practice sessions at a moment’s notice.
Her greatest obstacle is a perpetual lack of resources for adaptive athletes in the Midwest, a cause Hwang often speaks about on social media. Despite all the medals, and her association with Team USA , she said Division I universities like KU haven’t allowed her to use their tracks; smaller schools like UMKC don’t have the facilities to offer.
Hwang is hoping for a mild winter so she can train at the few public outdoor tracks in the area before retreating to one of the metro’s few indoor public facilities for the winter months.
This dearth of resources helps explain why she and Erneste co-founded Adaptive Warrior KC. When “The Whole Person,” the organization that connected Hwang with adaptive sports, stopped funding them, the two decided to start their own nonprofit. Their goal is to provide a place for disabled people in the KC area to access community, equipment and adaptive sports at all levels.
The foundation’s motto is appropriately tied to Hwang’s approach to her craft and the message she aims to convey to prospective adaptive athletes: Train Hard, Adapt Harder.
“Something’s always going to happen, and you’re going to have to adapt to it,” Hwang said. You can either get upset and give up, or you can say, ‘Oh, that’s just going to make me stronger. Awesome. Cool. Let’s go.’”
There are two labels that Hwang rejects as her acclaim as an athlete grows. The first is that she’s an inspiration — she says the term makes her uncomfortable because she doesn’t see her struggle or success as greater or less than anyone else’s.
When people come up to her at meets or events and say she’s inspired them, or share a simple “you’re awesome,” Hwang will flip the script and ask what makes them awesome, or how they’re inspiring their community. She doesn’t feel like she’s special, but rather just one person looking to make a difference.
“If you’re out there doing something, so is everyone else,” Hwang said. “If we’re all doing that and inspiring other people, it’s like a pebble in calm water.”
The second notion she seeks to dispel is that she dwells on the past. Hwang said she doesn’t think about her “alive day” often; she posted a brief Instagram message about it recently to mark 25 years. But she appreciates lessons learned through her recover and triumphs.
Her focus now is on what comes next. After a brief offseason break, she’ll return to the track in the hunt for a spot in L.A. in 2028. She and Erneste have already started planning her path to the Paralympics in California .
Hwang’s most important goal is always her next one, so there’s no reason to dwell on the last race or yesterday. Her next step is always forward.
©2026 The Kansas City Star. Visit kansascity.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
