GARLAND, Box Elder County — It’s been an emotional year and a half for the wife of Utah Highway Patrol trooper Eric Ellsworth, who was struck by a car while on duty.
“He always had a little boy on his shoulders,” Janica Ellsworth said, looking at pictures of her husband and the couple’s three young sons. “Something I loved about him was we always came first.”
She says not a day goes by that he’s not still there for her and their three boys.
“He was a police officer and a protector,” she said. “That was just in his second nature, being a protector.”
Eric Ellsworth, 31, of Brigham City, was hit by a car on Nov. 18, 2016, while trying to direct other vehicles around a traffic hazard along a rural stretch of state Route 13 at 13600 North near Garland, Box Elder County. He was hit by a 16-year-old girl, described by the UHP as a "new driver." Ellsworth died Nov. 22 after several days in the intensive care unit at Intermountain Medical Center.
“I was always one of those police wives that thought he was going to be safe, that he would be OK. I’ll say my prayers, and he’ll be OK,” Janica Ellsworth said. “It’s just something that I deal with every day, and I think I’ll deal with it the rest of my life.”
It was exactly 18 months ago that Eric Ellsworth, even in death, saved someone else’s life.
About a hundred miles away, Amanda Holt was also struggling. After years of health issues starting when she was a young girl, she was diagnosed with a partially paralyzed stomach and kidney failure.
Her family was afraid she might not make it.
“You never know, you never know if you’re going to wake up the next day,” Holt said.
But on Thanksgiving Day 2016, she got a call that changed everything.
“The transplant team called me and they said, ‘We have another match for you,’” Holt said.
She would receive trooper Ellsworth’s pancreas and a kidney — a perfect match and a lifesaving gift.
"I feel like he did choose me," she said through tears. "Because he knew that I would always be a part of their family. I think that's like, that's specifically why he chose me to kind of be there, you know, through their hard times."
Janica Ellsworth and Holt connected through a letter, but it’s their love for Eric and his sacrifice that has bonded them for life.
“His sacrifice wasn’t for nothing,” Janica Ellsworth said. “There is another person and maybe a few others out there that are able to be here still because of him.”
Holt encourages all organ recipients to write the families of their donors, and thank them. Janica Ellsworth says her husband’s organs helped at least five people, and possibly more.