They never had a pretty girl from Joburg. She loves TikTok, dances her dog. This is my best friend and my partner in crime. Radar. And putting on makeup. We are going to pack this on my eye. You could say Anastasia Pagonis is a typical 20 year old woman, but you would be wrong. Anastasia Pagona is still feeling the joy of setting a world record. I have two Paralympic medals, one gold and one bronze. Hopefully we’ll get some more this summer. Pagona isn’t just a record breaking swimmer, she’s also a social media star. I never know which one to take, so then I take all of them. With more than two and a half million followers on TikTok, she interacts with them but can’t see any of them. Y’all, I am here with ELF Cosmetics and we are at Tribeca Film Festival, and I’m gonna take you guys with me to get ready. Autoimmune retinopathy, which your immune system attacks your retina and basically eats it away. Pagonis was diagnosed with this genetic eye disorder when she was 14, eventually losing all of her vision. I went through about eight months of, like, a very dark depression, uh, where I wasn’t doing anything. My parents would force me to go on a five minute walk each day just to get out of the house. Got her a. A tandem bike. We go biking together. Got her a little horn so she would play the horn, weep. Weep and we would go ride around. After losing her sight, Anastasia’s doctor recommended swimming as a sport she may be able to enjoy. He was right. In 2020, she won two Paralympic medals. What was it like seeing your daughter win a gold? Oh, my gosh, I was beating up everybody. I was punching them. I’m like, like going nuts. I was going crazy. But at first, Anastasia and the pool did not see eye to eye, smashing my face on the lane line, and I had like a huge bumps and a bloody nose, and it was awful. And I was like, crying a circle, that I was never gonna do this again. And then the next day, I told my parents that I wanted to go back to the pool. Fast forward a few years later, and Anastasia is one of the top Paralympic swimmers in the world. At the games, she’ll be wearing these blacked out goggles, so every competitor is on an equal playing field. No light, no shadows, nothing. As you’re probably thinking, swimming without sight is extremely difficult. I don’t know how you do it. Guiding Anastasia, her coach, Darren Solotoff, as she’s coming in, I hit her pretty hard, or deliberately, um, so that there’s no doubt she knows really specifically that we’re coming in. That’s a perfect space for her on the wall. She’s such a special person. She’s way bigger than just a swimmer. Swimming star. Check. Social media star. Check. Inspiration? Check. There’s a little Anastasia out there that I could help out, and they’re going through bullying or vision loss or just anything, for that matter, and they’re having a hard time. I hope that I can be someone that they can look up to and hopefully be the light that I didn’t have. You had never lost your vision, where do you think you would be today? I always say that my vision loss closed a lot of doors for me, but I think it’s opened even more doors than it’s closed, which is so amazing. And I’m very blessed with that. This is what blindness looks like. You don’t have to put me in a box and be the stereotypes that you think a disability is. I can dress the way I want. I can do my own makeup. I can be a professional athlete. And now I’m here to show the world that for greater Long Island, I’m Jamie Stewart.