Jessica Wilhite was so cold, as was the young pregnant woman kneeling just outside the open door of the crumpled car, trying to hold the 22-year-old Utah native still. “You are so brave,” the stranger, Kayla Sandoval, cooed. “You are amazing. How do you stay so calm?”
“I need something to bite,” Jess gasped, her fingers digging into her would-be rescuer’s arm. Many, many weeks later, when they finally met again, Kayla smiled when she told Jess the fingernail marks were visible on her arm for a couple of days, a reminder of the terrible crash last Nov. 22 on a desolate Arizona highway near Cameron, where U.S. Route 89 bisects the Navajo Nation. In this moment, though, Kayla just bunched up the sleeve of the bulky sweater she was wearing and let Jess bite down.
The crash scene was chaotic.
Jess and her older sister and best friend Sabrina, 24, were driving north to Utah the Friday before Thanksgiving for their little brother Luke’s farewell as he prepared to serve a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. A planned 10-day visit home in South Jordan for that and the holiday would no longer be possible.
Instead, just before 7:45 p.m., a southbound truck crossed into their lane. It has been hard, even months later, to piece together all the details. Sabrina caught a flash of a truck just before they collided, crumpling the silver Kia she was driving so thoroughly that Jaws of Life were used to extricate her. Neither she nor other witnesses saw the truck’s headlights.
That blue Silverado truck was now upside down, flattened among dirt and rocks that rim the east side of this road. The driver sat beside it, forehead bloody, his back to the unfolding scene.
Kayla‘s four children were in the Sandoval car a short distance away, doors locked, under the watchful eyes of Connor, at 10 the oldest, and an older woman they didn‘t know. The woman and her husband had been heading to surprise their grandchildren in Oregon for the holiday and stopped minutes after the crash; he was outside the car describing the scene to the 911 operator, while she sat with the kids to distract them and to escape the bitter cold. It was 27 degrees and windy on this barren stretch of road.
Kayla‘s husband Desmond was reaching through the broken front left window of the Kia, trying to keep Sabrina awake. “Keep your eyes open,” he told her urgently as he cut away the airbag and seatbelt that impeded her breathing.
The Sandovals had just passed the sisters when they saw a truck without headlights. Seconds later, when Kayla turned to check on her kids in the backseat, she saw a dust cloud and an odd flash as the Kia‘s headlights mysteriously disappeared.
So they backtracked.
When he saw the mangled Kia and the flattened truck, Desmond, a former police officer, shouted at his wife: “Expect the worst. GO!”
He nudged Sabrina urgently when she started to drift off and Kayla gently plucked glass from Jess’ face. Jess was panicking and big sister Sabrina rallied to comfort her. The sisters asked each other, “Are you OK?”
They weren‘t, but they didn‘t know it yet.
A young Baptist missionary and his friend from Japan who were on their way to the Grand Canyon were there, too. When they arrived seconds after the impact, Desmond told them to see if anyone had been thrown from either vehicle. The missionary, Max McMurry of Tennessee, later recounted how he wept as they searched the uneven ground using light from their phones, fearful they’d find a dead body among the dirt and debris.
After telling Desmond no one else seemed hurt, McMurry and his friend prayed aloud as they methodically gathered each item thrown from the Kia by the crash and piled it neatly. It was a small act of service in a situation Kayla Sandoval was positive only the prayer itself was likely to help.
These strangers were united by a three-lane stretch of road, broken glass, twisted metal and the badly shattered bodies of Sabrina and Jessica Wilhite.
A sobering count
There are many ways to count the elements of a catastrophe. Months later, the reckoning of the wreck looked something like this:
For Jess, at least three operations, a 12-inch scar and 39 staples in her abdomen, 11 staples and a 5½-inch scar on her collarbone and five staples in one toe. Surgeons also removed a section of abdominal tissue and she has two deep, nearly 8-inch scars from the seatbelt across her hips. Many other scars and staples are hidden inside her body, uncountable but potentially life-altering. She had two drains placed in her abdomen and suffered an aortic tear, a bladder rupture, one broken cervical vertebrae, two broken lumbar vertebrae and a hole in her bowel. To fix it, doctors removed 2 inches.
Sabrina lost 18 inches of her left arm, amputated above the elbow days after the crash. Her count also includes two broken knees, two broken ankles, one broken toe, one broken heel, at least three compound arm fractures, four broken ribs, one severe crush wound, and kidneys and a liver that struggled to keep up. She has two screws in her foot and two plates in her right forearm. The family lost count of how many blood transfusions she needed.
She was unconscious for 10 days, including two after doctors stopped all sedation, and groggy for days after that. She was unable to eat for 69 days. Machinery helped her breathe for 58 days. She had 17 different surgeries, two of which were to stop bleeding at the back of her head.
Or you could count the days the sisters spent in the hospital. For Sabrina, the count was 117 total, including 48 in the ICU, and then time in a skilled nursing facility and a rehab unit. For Jess, the hospital inpatient count was 13 days, with an additional 14 days in rehab, plus one day later on for a complication. She couldn‘t go back to work for 61 days. Sabrina still cannot work. She’s busy with outpatient rehab.
Sabrina also turned 25 in the hospital.
The count would include six weeks of often-sleepless nights and countless prayers before Brent and Jen Wilhite were certain both their daughters would survive.
That wasn‘t a given. The first night, before they reached Arizona, an intensive care nurse sat with Jess in a dimly lit room in the Flagstaff hospital. “I didn‘t want her to die alone,” she told them the next morning.
It would be much longer before the Wilhites had any idea of what their daughters’ lives might look like.
Even now, that is a work in progress.
A distressing call
Brent and Jen Wilhite were with their boys, Luke, 19, and Max, 16, at a family holiday party in Kaysville when Desmond Sandoval called from the crash site. Brent didn‘t recognize the number and, figuring it was spam, he didn‘t answer. Desmond persisted.
What Brent heard didn‘t make a lot of sense to him; they’d been joking with Jess and Sabrina by phone just an hour or so earlier on their way to the party. Sandoval said the young women had been hit and were gravely injured. Brent motioned to his wife and they went outside to finish the call, then rushed back in to kneel with their deeply religious extended family for a group prayer before they were out the door and on their way to their South Jordan home to pack a bag, drop off the boys and head to Flagstaff. Jess had first been transported to nearer Tuba City for care, but her injuries were too severe, so both would be treated in Flagstaff.
Max Wilhite later recounted how, after his parents left, he rode his dirt bike aimlessly for hours, feeling helpless and lost and sick with worry about his sisters. The teen who considers himself a problem-solver didn‘t have enough information to tackle this crisis. He didn‘t know what to do.
Anatomy of a crash
How do you rebuild after a cataclysmic event — and can you do it completely? Jen and Brent Wilhite were praying their daughters could rise phoenix-like from the ashes of the wreckage. Alcohol was likely involved, though it’s not clear how much. It’s worth noting that the Navajo Nation the road runs through is a dry nation, no alcohol allowed.
According to the police report and eyewitness accounts, the driver of the truck, Herman Dugi, said he’d been drinking. Alcohol use on his part is listed in the Arizona Department of Public Safety police report as a contributing factor and it says he crossed into the Wilhites’ lane and hit their car.
But Deseret News has not been able to clarify whether a blood-alcohol test was conducted or if he was ever charged. A search of state and federal court records in Arizona didn‘t turn up anything.
Because U.S. Route 89 is a national highway that cuts through the reservation, jurisdiction is a bit confusing, maybe even to authorities. The Arizona state trooper on the scene wrote the accident report, noting he handed the possible criminal portion off to the reservation police in Tuba City.
Later, the Wilhite family learned the case had been turned back to Arizona DPS because the reservation police lacked jurisdiction.
Later still, as Deseret News tried to unravel what happened, a spokesman for the tribal police provided a chart that shows the tribe lacks jurisdiction under federal law because the Wilhites are not Native American.
Were any charges filed? Deseret News has been trying to find out. It took more than three months just to get a copy of the police report, which only shows alcohol as a contributing factor. Multiple attempts to interview the driver, including a visit to his home in Arizona, were unsuccessful.
Deseret News asked if the Coconino County attorney filed any charges and was told someone listed in the police report could get that information. But Sabrina said when she tried, she was informed they didn‘t have a report naming her, despite the fact she was grievously injured. She was directed to call a different number, where someone directed her to call yet another number, for a total of four calls yielding nothing.
That alcohol could have played any role is like a knife in Brent Wilhite’s side. He has spent the last 20-plus years of his career working on anti-drinking-and-driving messaging for an ad agency.
Helpers begin to appear
Three days after the crash, with both of her daughters still unconscious, Jen Wilhite flew home to see her oldest son off on his mission. Luke felt strongly he needed to serve God as planned and there was nothing he could do for his sisters. He’d been promised he could FaceTime or call as needed.
So Jen, who describes herself as a genuinely happy person almost always, was walking through the airport, watching other travelers and wondering how they could be so happy when her family was in such distress. She decided it would be important, no matter what happened, she later said, to come away from the crash with more empathy for others and what they might be going through.
That path was made easier, because if you’re counting the hard parts, you have to see the sweet moments, too — all attached to humans, oftentimes strangers.
Desmond and Kayla Sandoval had taken their children with them to Flagstaff to shop on the day of the crash. And as he left his house near Page, Arizona, Desmond absentmindedly picked up a special knife he’d used in his police career. It was designed to slice through seatbelts and other hard-to-cut materials.
It was also heavy and not very practical to carry around, so he and his wife joked about the fact that he’d brought it, since he never, ever carried it with him. That night, as the clock inched toward 8 p.m. and they were northbound toward home, they stopped at the crash. As he stood beside the wrecked car, he could see that Sabrina‘s arm was being crushed and she was having trouble breathing because of her seatbelt and the airbag. There’s little the average person could do about that, but he’d been packing the solution around all day. He cut her free and comforted her, then they stayed until both girls were on their way to the hospital, serving as a human lifeline connecting the sisters and their panicked parents.
The sisters had planned to spend the night at the home of a dear friend‘s mom in St. George. Jess Briggs is one of Jess Wilhites’ co-workers. She and her husband Henry left Mesa 90 minutes ahead of Sabrina and Jess on a different route north, via Las Vegas.
The two Jesses had shared their locations with each other on their phones, and when Jess Briggs noticed that her friend‘s had stopped moving, she figured they were just hungry. Soon after, she received a friend request on Instagram from Luke Wilhite, who told her there’d been a serious car crash and Sabrina was being cut from the car.
She called CJ Harrison, one of their bosses and a partner at DecisionPoint Financial in Mesa, where both Jesses are financial planners. Though it was after 9 p.m., Harrison jumped in his car and began the 2½-hour drive to Flagstaff so someone would be there for them until their parents arrived. An elder in their shared faith, he hoped to give them a blessing.
Later, he went to the nearest hotel, a Residence Inn, and got Brent and Jen Wilhite a room for a couple of nights. When he called the hotel owners the next day to tell them how great the clerk had been, he realized he knew them. He told Steve Shumway, who owns the hotel with his brother Shane, about the crash. The Shumways invited the Wilhites to stay for free.
“We got involved like everyone else, the workings of God that put people together,” Steve Shumway said. “We are Christians praying to have the opportunity to serve. We told CJ we would be happy to have the family stay there during the time the girls recovered.”
The Wilhites stayed about a month.
Meanwhile, Harrison and his partners decided to pay Jess as if she were on the job until she was back on the job. It was a tangible way to help the employee Harrison described as “probably the most motivated person I’ve ever known.”
Other angels appeared as news of the crash spread.
Jess Briggs’ in-laws had a cousin who rented out cottages in Flagstaff and they invited the Wilhites to stay there. Jen and Jim Gilliland, the owners, became great friends and a real resource for the Wilhites; Jen Wilhite still calls them her angels. Meanwhile, members of the local Latter-day Saint ward provided some meals, as did a local restaurant and another inn.
Despair just couldn‘t get a strong foothold on the family when so many people were helping them, Jen Wilhite said months later. And she guarded against anger at the other driver, though her husband and son Max were and are still mad. “I can‘t go there right now,” she said. “I need Heavenly Father to heal my girls.”
The people who show up
Max Wilhite’s life was also severely disrupted by the crash that threw his sisters’ in chaos. First, he was left at home with his older brother while they awaited news. After Luke left for his mission days later, he was sometimes home alone, neighbors and friends checking in, but he was also often in Flagstaff with his parents.
He liked to find a quiet corner of the dark hospital parking structure, where he’d retreat to shadowbox, pummeling an imaginary enemy that felt very real. It was a release for tension that had nowhere to go. A high-energy teen, he simply wasn‘t built to sit around waiting for news.
The siblings of sick children often feel overlooked. Max, a smart kid and avid reader who loves poetry and writing but is also very physically active, said he thinks “peripheral” is a better word to describe how he began to feel. His parents, he said, were focused where they should be, on his gravely injured sisters. But they could still see him out of the corners of their eyes.
He became an essential part of so many practical things that had to be done as the crisis unfolded, like helping his dad pack up the apartment the sisters shared in Arizona and driving the contents back to Utah while his mom stayed near the hospital. He was both physical help and emotional support for his dad.
“He was amazing,” Jess has said of her little brother, who put himself wherever he could be most useful and who embraced without complaint all the changes to make things easier for all of them. “He is the best of ‘em. That’s for sure,” she said.
Trapped for weeks in the Flagstaff hospital, the family was never without friends, both old and new. Jess’ co-workers visited en masse. Sabrina‘s mission companion stopped by. A variety of relatives made the trip, as important to Brent and Jen Wilhite’s morale as it was to their daughters.
One visitor brought gifts from members of their old ward in Sandy, Utah, creating an almost-Christmas: The care package included twin bears, one cream, one brown, that each said “Best Sister”; a photo of the sisters on a church-sponsored reenactment of Latter-day Saint pioneers’ journey to the Salt Lake Valley that was captioned “the Wilhite girls can do hard things”; and a rich assortment of baubles and inspirational items.
Jess and her mom took turns reading the notes to Sabrina, who had a gastric tube and needed mechanical help to breathe. She could mouth words but not yet speak.
That was Jan. 7, and Thanksgiving, Christmas and the New Year had all passed without fanfare in the quiet of an ICU 506 miles from home.
Sabrina loves Snoopy and her room in Flagstaff was decorated with the cartoon dog‘s image. On the “Snoopy super power wall of fame” were photos of relatives and friends who‘d sent prayers and love and sometimes driven long distances for a short visit.
That week, Brent, Jen and Jess Wilhite met Kayla Sandoval. Sabrina was, of course, still in the hospital, so they all visited her later. But seated in the hotel lobby, they heard the first direct eyewitness account from a would-be rescuer and Jess beamed. “You were my angel,” she told Kayla. “I know your voice.”
Two of Kayla‘s kids sat quietly while she talked about what her family witnessed that day. She was clearly still shaken. They’d wondered about the sisters, worried they’d died but hopeful they were long out of the hospital. Neither was true.
Two days later, Sabrina was stable enough to be flown to Utah.
Brent and Max drove back, while Jen flew in the air ambulance with Sabrina, who was transferred directly to St. Joseph Villa, a skilled nursing facility where she needed to heal more to be eligible for a rehabilitation center. Jess had a ticket on a commercial flight, a trial run to independence. Afterward, she admitted she hadn‘t considered how long the walk was through the Salt Lake airport. It was also a victory. She made it on her own.
Sabrina, on the other hand, could not yet sit up or stand or even picture walking. They used a hoist to move her into a wheelchair that someone else had to operate to adjust the angle at which she sat. Her right arm was not working due to severe nerve damage, plus its inactivity had led to bone spur growth, so when someone else moved her arm to keep it limber, it hurt.
A lot.
Her mom slept every night at St. Joseph; Sabrina couldn‘t even call for help on her own.
During the day, she smiled most of the time and was a good sport. At night, she worried and often cried. She was not sure what her future would hold, what dreams she would give up and what her new dreams would look like.
She was always singing before the crash. Now she could barely speak.
The mending begins
But time passed, bringing progress. In mid-February, Jess returned to work in Mesa, in a new apartment. She missed her former roommate and pal, Sabrina, but she was so happy to be among friends and what felt like her own life again. She started going to high fitness classes three days a week but said she wasn‘t close to where she was before the crash and she still had some pain.
She still tired easily, too. A few weeks later, she had another hospital stay related to the crash, caused by severe abdominal pain the doctors credited to scar tissue in her dissected bowel.
In this moment, though, she described being in Arizona again as “such a freeing feeling. Knowing where I was the night of the crash and the fact that they didn‘t know if I would make it, let alone what kind of life I would have if I did, I feel so immensely grateful to be here. I got to see my friends who I love today and laugh with them as we unpacked and set up my new place,” she wrote in a text.
“Tomorrow I get to go to church with a ward I love who fasted and prayed for me and sent me gifts and loving notes and messages while I was in the hospital.”
The next week, she wrote, she would go back to the job and co-workers she loves. “It just feels like I am getting back to the life that I had built that I loved living every day.”
Sabrina‘s return to normalcy has been very much an ongoing effort, and much of it played out in Intermountain Medical Center’s rehab unit on the 12th floor, overlooking the helipad that welcomes others who desperately need care.
Bits of humor decorated her room. A certified nursing aide, Cerise Scott, is artistic, so Snoopy was again on guard dog duty, watching over her from the white board that listed the day’s care providers and her vital signs.
Sabrina named her “residual remnant” — the technical term for her amputated arm. She calls it “Sabrinub,” and they posted joking nub wordplay on the side of a cabinet where it was the first thing seen as you enter her room: “Live, laugh, nub.” “A whole lotta nub.” “Enub is enub.”
At the end of February, she drove her wheelchair for the first time. The next day, an occupational therapist, Analena Holihan, took the Wilhite women to a spa for a celebratory one-handed manicure. It was a much-needed off-campus treat.
The Flagstaff nurses kept checking in. No longer charged with keeping Sabrina and Jess alive, they are now friends.
Sabrina was stable and finally learning what she can and can‘t do and what will likely be possible in the future.
One early March day, Jess visited from Mesa and, with her parents and Max, watched Sabrina walk with the harness that helped hold her up as she made tentative steps down the long hall in rehab. Then Paul Tippetts, the physical therapist, sat her down and removed the harness, telling her she was ready to walk on her own.
It was a terrifying moment for the young woman, who was weak enough that simply standing was hard. But she later said he thought she could do it, so she believed it.
A video and photographs show her taking a tentative step and then another and another, her family clapping and laughing.
When Jen texted a photo to a couple of members of the care team at the Flagstaff hospital, one responded, “Oh my gosh. We’re all crying. I just ran around and showed it to all the docs and nurses and we’re all crying and we’re all excited for you.”
Later, Sabrina admitted how weak she felt. “Even when I make progress, it’s so hard. Everybody can stand.” Then she thought about it for a minute and added, “But look at me. Three months ago I broke literally everything and I’m walking today.”
Rehab sometimes made her cry, but she still worked hard. Within days, she could walk 560 feet in less than six minutes without the harness. The rehab team called that a milestone test.
But when her nose itched, there was nothing she could do about it.
When progress feels slow
Besides physical therapy and occupational therapy, she was still getting wound care, too, for that spot on the back of her head.
Her kidneys and liver were starting to behave normally, after weeks of dialysis. She was told she would probably be able to go home in a couple of weeks.
But she would not be done with treatments. A great deal of rehabilitation, including learning to use a prosthetic arm, are in her future. And her other arm doesn‘t work.
Her pal Matt Keddington, a rehab aide, often joked with her, amping up the revelry when she faced especially difficult or painful tasks. He distracted her when her body hurt. One day, as she struggled to move from her wheelchair to the table where she did many of her physical therapy exercises, he told her earnestly, “Look at me and transfer your pain to me. You are doing amazing. Such good progress.”
She knew that was true. But it didn‘t keep her from being tired and discouraged, too.
It had been a long, painful journey that came out of nowhere. Like that truck.
Ready to move on
On March 12, 111 days since the crash, Sabrina was sitting in the wheelchair she could by then drive, at a table where an occupational therapist told her to take a small cup of water and pour it into a glass bowl a few inches away. She could only move her “good” arm forward a little and it took a ton of concentration. Her thumb twitched with the effort, but she joked that “moving well is a gateway drug to something.” The therapist, Emily Hannah, took her right hand and made her bend her finger. Hannah placed a small foam block between Sabrina‘s fingers and told her to imagine it’s a “pink Monster juice” — clearly a Sabrina favorite.
Sabrina slid her hand weakly and Hannah disparaged the effort as “old Sabrina stuff.”
“Those are fighting words,” Sabrina laughed. When the therapist said she must do it 8,000 more times, Sabrina bantered, “I did 2,000 when you weren‘t looking.”
By twisting sideways, she found she could angle her hand to empty the cup, only spilling about a tablespoon of water on the table. Her dad joked that she’ll be doing extra-easy chores at home in no time. She agreed. “I couldn‘t lift my arm 20 minutes ago, and now I’m pouring water.”
She always loved to paint and she’d been doing a bit of painting with her nub, a piece of modern art featuring blue and yellow slashes of brightness on hot pink paper. She and a younger patient planned a joint painting session soon.
Sabrina admitted she would miss everyone at the rehab center, but the end of being confined is near and she could hardly wait. “I will be so sad and so glad to go home.”
A goodbye
There’s no hint of sorrow March 19, when a half-dozen news cameras and an equal number of reporters, plus 60 or so of the Wilhites’ dearest friends, packed the rehab floor hallway to watch Sabrina walk down it to the wheelchair she would ride out of the unit and use at home for a bit. The walk was really part dance because she was bouncing with pleasure as Phil Collins’ “I’m on My Way” played in the background. The wheelchair was festooned with colored tinsel garlands.
As the video cameras rolled, Sabrina called it “an insane day that doesn‘t seem real” and said she’s both excited and grateful. It had been a long, difficult journey. She was in a coma, she said, for a long time and in the ICU for seven weeks.
Dozens of people, both friends and staff, lined up for a photo with her before she left the hospital.
Singing praises
The crash has provided lessons on how to be a friend, how to help others, how to adapt. Jen Wilhite said her big takeaway is about God. “There have been a lot of things that I believed about God and about Jesus and how they help you through things, and the power that they have to overcome the physical whatever. I believed it before, but I know it now. I lived it. I feel it to my bones,” she said.
She has also had a crash course in what she called the goodness of people. “We have been overwhelmed with the love … all the neighborhoods we’ve ever lived in, all the schools that the girls have ever gone to. … They were involved in performing for years, all the places and the kids that they performed with and their parents, all of the organizations the girls have belonged to, all of the wards that we’ve lived in, everybody cared and everybody made such an effort to help us through this,” she said.
Sabrina provided a May status report. She can walk great now. She’s working on her balance and just realizing how truly wobbly those first steps were.
A specialist has checked out her right arm, which is waking up. When nerves come back to life, there are tingles, but there are also jabbing, stabbing, really awful pains. They’re a bad good sign. The doctor predicts she’ll get all her sensation back. He thinks maybe her artificial elbow is a bit too large. He’ll replace it May 20 in what they hope will be a final or nearly-final surgery. He’ll plane down the bone spurs that cause so much pain, too.
She’s been working with a prosthetics specialist for weeks. Initially, she wanted the most high-tech arm she could get to attach to Sabrinub, but she’s changed her mind. The more high-tech arms are heavier and more complicated to master. For now, at least, she wants to focus on using very well the most basic arm that will do what she needs and wants it to do. Her list includes doing her own personal care, feeding and dressing herself, and other ordinary tasks. An arm that can give her that freedom will make her very happy.
And 177 days and 453 miles from that desolate strip of road, Sabrina still can‘t scratch her nose. But she’s singing again.
