She’s Wall Street’s blind bombshell.
An airborne infection robbed Lauren Oplinger of her sight in 2009 — but the mysterious illness never sapped her fighting spirit.
Despite being legally blind, the bullish beauty works on the equity trading floor for JP Morgan Chase, where attention to detail is critical and a single error can be costly.
“I think a lot of people look at it as a strength — it’s a true testament to how strong I am and determined,” Oplinger, 25, told The Post.
But work came with adjustments.
On the trading floor at JP Morgan’s Park Avenue office, Oplinger is surrounded by three massive 24-inch computer monitors — twice the size of her colleagues’ screens — to track the market, has large, colorful stickers affixed to her keyboard to make out letters, and uses text-to-speech software to “read” her e-mails, which are fed to her through headphones.
That all helps during a hectic trading day, which begins for Oplinger at 6:30 am.
She works the sales side of the trading floor, taking instructions from clients, and passing them on to traders.
And Oplinger’s been aces.
“It’s an incredible example of fortitude to do her job the way everyone else does,” said her boss John Mackie, who gushed about her attention to detail, which he said limits the chance of mistakes and better serves clients.
“And given the size of these clients, you’re talking about some rather large numbers,” he said.
Mackie said Lauren’s spirit was best captured at a local gin mill about two months after returning to work: A colleague was helping Oplinger upstairs from the restroom, when a boozy patron said, “Wow, she must really be drunk!” She saw right through him: “Yeah, so drunk I can’t see.”
Oplinger, originally from Summit, NJ, arrived at JP Morgan in 2008 the same year she graduated from the College of Holy Cross in Massachusetts, where she played right wing on the hockey team.
It was a year later in February when her life changed.
An infection entered her lungs and coursed through her blood, attacking every major organ. She went into cardiac arrest, her kidneys failed.
For a month she clung to life at St. Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston, NJ, where machines helped her breathe and gave her nourishment.
In April she finally opened her eyes again. But she couldn’t see the relief on her mother’s face.
She couldn’t see anything.
Lack of oxygen caused by the heart attack damaged her optic nerve.
Oplinger — fearless in life — was terrified.
“When I opened my eyes, I couldn’t even see light,” she said.
She spent the summer in New Jersey, her vision improving, somewhat.
First she began to distinguish between light and dark, then she could see shadows.
She returned to work in September 2009, starting slowly so she could acclimate to the new software that awaited her. “I made mistakes, I think everybody has made mistakes, but for me it’s been more of a learning process.”
She was promoted from an analyst to an associate in January.
Today she still has no central vision, meaning she can’t see objects directly in front of her, and no peripheral vision either. She can’t make out people’s faces, has trouble with street signs — but stands tall regardless as she walks to work from her a Murray Hill apartment.
Next weekend she’ll participate in Lighthouse International’s Double Up for Vision Tandem Bike Ride/Walk, raising over $75,000 for the 107-year-old group, which works to fight vision loss and help the blind.
gbuiso@nypost.com