Last summer, when James Culatta was hiking with his family on Topaz Mountain in Utah, someone who worked at the site recommended they see the hot springs.
Tired from all the movement they’d done so far, James, his uncle and baby cousin drove to see them. They were about a half-mile away from where the hot springs were located when they started exploring a nearby area.
He noticed a puddle with a substance that appeared to be warm but not dangerous. His uncle returned to the car. As he stepped on a rock, he felt the ground break from underneath him.
James fell into boiling hot mud that he struggled to climb out of. That brought its own challenges, because the things he grabbed to pull himself up were also unstable and breaking apart.
He eventually pulled himself out, took his shirt and pants off, laid down and immediately went into shock.
Shaking and shivering, James drank a lot of water. His family called for help, and a helicopter took him to a nearby hospital, where he’d remain for months.
James started his senior year at Herndon High School unclear if he’d ever be able to walk again.
But, through multiple surgeries, grueling physical therapy sessions and a motivation to end his high school career on a stage, he ended the year with the lead role in the school’s production of “Footloose,” dancing and kicking his feet around.
“With enough effort, you can do anything,” James said. “If you put your mind to it, you can accomplish great things.”
Immediately after the incident, James spent two months in an intensive care unit in Salt Lake City. Doctors took all of the skin off the top half of his body and pulled it off so they could graft it on the skin he had lost on the bottom of his body.
He had third-degree burns on over 50% of his body.
“It was very, very painful, very tough for him,” his dad, Richard Culatta, said. “We weren’t sure he was ever going to walk again.”
There was a surgery to remove dead skin and others to graft the new skin. In those circumstances, Richard said, patients can’t move until the skin attaches.
After two months, James was cleared for a commercial flight back to D.C. Then came another series of surgeries to keep the skin healing.
James had physical therapy multiple times a day until he could walk and move normally again.
“I remember taking that first step and feeling no response within the muscles of my legs, and I remember just collapsing and feeling nothing,” he said. “By that point, I really felt so discouraged. I felt so discouraged because I didn’t think I was ever going to be able to do what I love and dance on a stage ever again.”
Determined, James kept trying to walk more and more. He missed nearly the entire first semester of his senior year, so he took a lot of online classes and had to catch up on in-person coursework to ensure he could graduate on time.
He dreamed of playing Ren McCormack, but anticipated getting a minor role during auditions. James, according to his dad, “was still walking like a penguin. He was still barely able to start to walk.”
Herndon Theater Director Scott Pafumi, who knew James from the choir program and other musicals and shows, said he was his “regular smiley self again” when he came back to school in December 2024.
Pafumi was unsure how James’ audition would go, but his song, monologue and dance routine were done “amazingly,” he said. Pafumi told the music director and choreographer they had found their lead.
“It was just a beautiful story of getting to reward a kid that had just used hard work and perseverance to come back from where he came from,” Pafumi said.
As James continued to catch up with schoolwork, he was faced with challenges throughout rehearsals. Skin is stiff after burning, so he stretched for about an hour to ensure he had full mobility.
The live performances created a distinct feeling.
“Being in the hospital is a really rough place to be in, and it felt like, by this point, feels like an old dream, like a memory,” James said. “I’m so glad that I’ve been able to recover from that as well as I did.”
His dad, meanwhile, hadn’t seen any rehearsals. When he saw James perform the first night of the show, tears ensued.
“It was a miracle,” Richard said. “It’s just a miracle.”
James graduated with an advanced diploma, and this summer, he’s going to be a counselor at a burn camp in Utah.
“Nothing was more comforting than talking with someone who knew relatively what it was like to go through that pain and to suffer,” James said. “I want to be that for someone else and for some of the littler kids there.”
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