Big Dreams, Better Reality

The following is an excerpt from Alumni & Friends Magazine Summer 2025 issue. Read the full issue here.

FARGO – Serendipity is often the oxygen for hidden talent.

Had Emily (Paulson) Schmidt ’15 never inhaled the South African summer air during her honeymoon in 2024, an impressive shoulder mount to a 500-pound Kudu – an African antelope in which she herself harvested with a single rifle shot – would not be proudly displayed in her south Fargo home.

A self-proclaimed girly girl by cultural definition, the newlywed who had never hunted or fished prior to meeting her husband, Davis, is surprisingly a crack shot.

“My parents are like, ’What?!’” Emily laughed, as she finished an iced Americano at her neighborhood coffee shop.
“You’re the princess who was always little Miss Perfect and never did anything crazy and
now you’re hunting and fishing!”

Emily is doing much more than that. The UJ Alumni Association board member and Sanford neurology nurse, now in her 30s, is living her best life – one full of love, success, adventure and purpose.

It’s a life that the Fargo-Moorhead girl born in 1991 with Treacher Collins syndrome, a genetic disorder that affects the development of bones and tissues within the face and causes a range of craniofacial abnormalities and challenges, never felt was
out of reach.

With a loving family – parents Dan and Denise, and younger brother, Danny – by her side, countless caring doctors, surgeons, and ICU nurses in places such as Fargo, Detroit, and Chicago, and a supportive community free from bullying, Emily truly embodies what society at its best can produce.

She graduated as a salutatorian from Moorhead High School, transferred to UJ as a college senior after folding a devastatingly sour hand at her previous college, and is now the lead nurse of her Sanford unit, where she is stroke certified and nurtures those with brain and spine injuries back to health.

Emily was honored with the Star of Nursing Award by Sanford in 2016. She cared for the first patient received at Fargo’s 11-story Sanford Medical Center on July 25, 2017, and was chosen as the first Fargo Sanford Ambassador in 2021.

She defines the power of the human spirit. Having never let her condition become an excuse to let pity and self-doubt linger, Emily loves who she was and who she’s become—she’d dreamt of becoming a nurse and she was always going to live the life she wanted.

“Growing up there were times I felt down a little bit, but I never felt depressed,” Emily said, candidly. “My whole life people took care of me. My mom, my dad, and then all the nurses and doctors who saved my life back in the day. So, I wanted to be that person that could make a difference in someone’s life.”

CHER’S GOT YOU, BABE

Emily was born with insufficient pathways for breathing and eating, and she needed life-saving medical attention from the start.

A tracheostomy was performed on her as a baby, along with the insertion of a feeding tube, and she was unable to speak for the first few years of her life.

“When I had my first jaw surgery, I didn’t stop talking,” Emily smiled, explaining how as a toddler she used sign language to communicate.

She’d endure 20 surgeries, usually one per summer so as not to miss school, from when she was born to 2012. Her jaw required being wired shut on occasion to allow her face time to heal and grow, and although her auditory ability today still utilizes the support of prosthetic ears and hearing aids, Emily fell in love with music.

It’s a love that arguably began at around 15 months old, when Cher (yes, that Cher) held Emily in her arms during a taping of The Maury Povich Show on location in Atlantic City. The taping was held at The Sands Hotel in the middle of the night on October 23, 1992, following Cher’s 43rd live performance of her 50-date Love Hurts Tour.

Cher is the national spokesperson for the Children’s Craniofacial Association (CCA), which was being highlighted during the superstar’s appearance on Maury’s daytime talk show. The CCA helped arrange plans for Emily and her family to attend the concert and participate in the interview, along with other children with similar conditions.

“Cher had to do her concert first, and I was only one year old, so I didn’t sit still that whole time – my parents were chasing me around – and then I decided to crash,” Emily remembers being told. “I ended up falling asleep in Cher’s lap and so I slept through the whole show. I’ve gotten to see Cher many times since then. She knows my name.”

Emily has been involved with CCA herself practically ever since, helping to bring awareness to others about kids dealing with congenital craniofacial anomalies.

“I used to do a lot of speaking at high schools and elementary schools … bullying is so evident right now and it was never like that back in our day,” Emily said. “I don’t care that people stare at me. They’re just curious. They want to know why I look the way that I do, and I tell them. It’s what’s in the heart that matters.”

KNIGHT IN SHINING ARMOR

Emily was set to begin her nursing career in the spring of 2014.

She had been elected president of her school’s Student Nurses Association and all was well, until it wasn’t.

Three days before Christmas 2013 – and while vacationing in Arizona – Emily received news that a poor test score had prevented her from passing a class and she’d be forced to repeat her entire junior year or be removed from the nursing program.

Emily would no longer graduate with her friends, but beyond that, she was blindsided by the embarrassment of what she felt was a lack of institutional support.

“I was so upset, so let down,” Emily said. “All I did was study, eat, sleep, study … over and over again. You’d think they’d help you and want you to succeed?

“I said, ’I don’t think I can be here anymore.’”

Emily was in Frisco, Texas two weeks later on January 4 to witness the NDSU Bison football team demolish Towson University, Maryland, 35-7 for the FCS Division II national championship. Also in attendance was family friend and former UJ Trustee Dr. Dale Shook ’68, who helped convince Emily and her parents that what she needed was a few Jimmies in her life.

After all, both her uncle, former UJ athletic director Lawrie Paulson ’77, and cousin, Beth (Paulson) McWilliams ’14, ’17, were on campus at the time. Emily would first meet with former nursing professor Dr. Jackie Mangnall just a handful of days following the Bison game, and by moving to Jamestown during a North Dakota blizzard and arriving on campus for class on Monday, January 13, Emily became the newest Jimmie.

“It was the best decision I have ever made,” Emily said. “Having meaningful professors like Jackie, Kim Ash and Teree Rittenbach … they wanted me to succeed.”

Emily graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree with honors from UJ in May of 2015 and credits her trip with UJ’s nursing department to Malawi, Africa as life altering.

“That changed everything,” Emily said. “Just how to interact with different people, and learning that we don’t have to do things one specific way. You can change the way that you take care of people.”

PATIENTS MAKES PERFECT

Finally, following graduation, it was Emily’s turn to be an angel to others.

It isn’t uncommon for her to care for patients with traumatic brain injuries for months at a time, while also attending to sufferers of strokes for weeks until recovery is achieved.

She lives to provide them with the therapy they need. Emily has never called in to miss a day of work – not a single time – in nearly a decade.

Emily’s 10-year anniversary at Sanford is this September.

“My patients are my whole reason,” Emily said. “Every day I get to go take care of people.”

And although her story will continue to inspire all to knock life’s curveballs out of the park, something was still missing.

“I never thought I was going to get married,” Emily admitted. “I never thought I was going to find that person that could accept me, and then I found Davis.”

Davis, an avid outdoorsman and IT analyst for MasTec in Fargo, met Emily via Facebook Dating. Davis proposed to Emily on her birthday at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville in 2023 and they were married in 2024.

Emily became the stepmother to Davis’ 17-year-old daughter, AnnaLee, and a whole new world of hunting and adventure sprung forth.

“We’ve been to Hawaii, South Africa, Arizona, Nashville, Florida, a cruise to the Bahamas,” Emily said.

Emily will also always cherish her surprise acceptance into the Jimmie family. Her folks generously established an endowed UJ nursing scholarship in Emily’s name following her graduation, and she gladly plans to continue to be involved with UJ in the years to come.

“I’m always trying to promote students to go to UJ. We need more nurses,” Emily said. “I’m very happy and I love life.

“And, I’m a good hunter.”