Miracle teen gets flight to prom from saviors
Published: May 9, 2006
Nikki Kennedy arrived at prom in high style.
“It was awesome,” she said of her ride as she alighted from a helicopter.
The flight Saturday was the culmination of a seven-and-a-half month recovery for Nikki, a 17-year-old senior at Muhlenberg South High School, and a chance for several paramedics to see the effects of their work.
Nikki made the flight after being selected as a “miracle” patient by Air Evac Lifeteam, a West Plains, Mo.-based company that honors two or three patients a year.
Nikki, a cheerleader and Governor’s Scholar, nearly died after a car crash Sept. 25 near Greenville, Ky., and spent 2½ weeks in a coma.
That morning, Nikki and a friend, Heather Skaggs, were going out for breakfast when Skaggs’ Chevrolet Blazer skidded on wet pavement. The vehicle flipped several times, and Nikki, who wasn’t wearing a seat belt, was thrown out. The SUV landed on her legs.
Skaggs, who also wasn’t wearing a seat belt, stayed in the vehicle, suffering a broken ankle, broken wrist and broken jaw, Gina Kennedy, Nikki’s mother, said.
“They pronounced Nikki dead at the scene,” Gina Kennedy said of her daughter.
She credits Air Evac manager Jason Ingram with keeping her daughter alive by breathing air into her lungs until the helicopter arrived to take Nikki to Evansville’s Deaconess Hospital in Indiana.
Doctors gave Nikki little chance of recovery. Both legs were broken, and she had a closed head injury with swelling of the brain, Kennedy said.
After five weeks in the hospital, Nikki moved to rehab and went home to Greenville on Nov. 11. She finished her senior year through the school’s homebound program, and capped it with Saturday’s helicopter ride to the prom.
“She’s a miracle from God to me,” Kennedy said as she waited at the airport for the helicopter. “There’s no other way to say it.”
For the helicopter pilots and paramedics, seeing Nikki slide off the helicopter and head off to the prom was a rare treat.
“We don’t get to do things like this very often,” said Nancy Davis of Hopkinsville, an Air Evac nurse.
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