Med tech stops to render aid on way to drill weekend Published Feb. 15, 2007 By Senior Master Sgt. Sandi Michon 439th Airlift Wing Public Affairs WESTOVER AIR RESERVE BASE, Mass. -- Master Sgt. Holly Crouch was on her way to a unit training assembly when she saw the car in front of her veer toward the median. She honked her horn in an attempt to warn the motorist. When she saw the car spin, flip several times and land on its roof in the path of oncoming traffic in the opposite lane, she feared the driver was dead. But that didn't stop Sergeant Crouch from calling 911 and sprinting to the car to help. The 439th Aeromedical Staging Squadron medical technician found an elderly woman alive and hanging from her seatbelt with her upper body twisted against the roof. When bystanders wanted to pull the woman from the wreckage, the reservist's military training kicked in. "No!" she yelled. "I'm an EMT. She might have C-spine compromise." Sergeant Crouch crawled on her belly through the passenger side of the car to help Constance "Maria" Hoyt. With one hand Sergeant Crouch stabilized the woman's head and with the other held her hand. She asked Ms. Hoyt to squeeze her hand to see if the injured woman was able to respond. Sergeant Crouch then checked her pulse and breathing, while scanning the woman's body for protruding broken bones or bleeding. When the woman started to panic, Sergeant Crouch asked her to breathe with her to help calm her down. She assured the woman that help was on the way. In talking with the woman, Sergeant Crouch learned Ms. Hoyt had been on her way to a doctor's appointment. "The woman asked me to call her doctor to let him know she would be late," the sergeant recalled in unbelief. Rescue workers jacked up the car and used jaws-of-life equipment to free Ms. Hoyt from her car. Sergeant Crouch took the woman's purse to the ambulance and gave a police report to state troopers before getting back on Interstate 88 in Oneonta, N.Y., to head to Westover. Miraculously, the injured woman sustained only bruising and superficial cuts to the face. In an interview a few weeks later, Ms. Hoyt was thankful to God for her survival and to Sergeant Crouch for her assistance. "I'm so grateful for Holly. She calmed me right down and kept telling me what would happen next, "Ms. Hoyt said. "She's excellent." Back in her Air Force Reserve Command unit, Sergeant Crouch was anxious to share her story. During the previous drill weekend, she had completed four days of EMT recertification training and wanted to thank her EMT recertification instructor at Westover, Master Sgt. Ray Johnson. Although he was not in that weekend, Sergeant Crouch shared her almost-surreal rescue saga with other members of her squadron as a tribute to her training. The special needs teacher and coach said she has used her military medical training before but never in such a dramatic way. "Thank God the outcome was good," she later told Col. Robert Sousa, her squadron commander. (Air Force Reserve Command News Service)