By Jami Ganz
New York Daily News
AIRDRIE, Canada — A Canadian paramedic had no idea she had treated her badly disfigured daughter in a car crash — until police came to her home to tell her the teen had died.
Montana Erickson, 17, was a passenger in an out-of-control car that collided with an oncoming truck on Nov. 15 on an icy road near Airdrie, Alberta.
Montana’s mom, Jayme Erickson, was summoned to the scene. But the teen was so badly disfigured, Erickson had no idea who she was.
Erickson was with Montana until she was extricated from the car and airlifted to a hospital, and “unknowingly was keeping her own daughter alive,” said friend and flight paramedic Richard Reed.
Minutes after Erickson got home from her shift, Royal Canadian Mounted Police were at her home to inform her Montana had been injured in the crash.
“The critically injured patient I had just attended to, was my own flesh and blood. My only child. My mini-me. My daughter, Montana,” Erickson wrote on Facebook. “Her injures were so horrific I did not even recognize her.”
At the hospital, Erickson said she was told her daughter’s injuries “were not compatible with life.”
Remembered by her mom as a “funny girl” who “fiercely loved her friends and family,” Montana hoped to one day call herself a lawyer, CTV News Calgary reported.
“She was a fighter and she fought until the day that she died and she was beautiful,” said Erickson, who was the first person on the scene at the crash.
“She was so beautiful If she ever put an effort into anything she would always succeed at it,” Erickson told reporters while surrounded by other emergency personnel in a show of support.
The teenager will live on through helping others as an organ donor, her mother said.
“Montana was able to give one last gift,” Erickson said of her daughter being a donor, noting that two of her organs have already been donated and “were life-saving.”
“We’re so happy to know that our baby girl is living on through others,” Erickson said. “In the wake of this tragedy, she has saved others.”
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With News Wire Services
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