Las Vegan becomes hero on flight for life

Jeffrey Libby

Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2000 | 11:13 a.m.

Two hours into an abbreviated cross-country flight, the notes scribbled on Kristi Miller's jeans read something like this: 12:50 a.m. EST. Prepared patient for landing. Reassured her that we will be arriving soon. Continued to administer assistance with uncontrolled emesis. Braced myself for a rough unrestrained landing.

Miller, a registered nurse and women's health program manager for Nevada Area Health Education Centers in Las Vegas, was on a return flight from a conference in Atlanta Thursday when another passenger's health quickly deteriorated to an emergency state.

Dressed in jeans, cowboy boots and a T-shirt, Miller, 29, was one of about 250 passengers on the airbus. She had no idea that while battling turbulence from thunderstorms at 35,000 feet, she would straddle a pregnant woman on the floor of the first-class kitchen area and save her from complications stemming from a miscarriage.

Miller still has the bloodblisters on her hands from bracing herself and the woman between the cockpit and bathroom during the emergency landing at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport.

"I'm just excited by young people helping other people that may not be of the same race, religion or origin," said an elderly passenger of the America West flight who asked not to be identified. "You just don't see that often enough these days."

Miller, a native of Florida, is white. The woman she aided, whose identity has been protected due to medical confidentiality laws, is black.

"My only and main concern was that this young lady was going to be able to get help," Miller said Monday.

Aided by two other nurses, Miller managed to find a vein "blind" with the first of just three available needles on board. She then inserted an I.V. tube with a fluid bag hung from a coat hanger. She also attended to the woman through her unabated fits of vomiting.

The woman was suffering from low blood pressure and dehydration in connection with the miscarriage.

When asked about what instruments she had to work with, Miller said it was "what we didn't have."

There was no appropriate sterile dressing on board, no surgical tape to keep the I.V. in place, no thermometer and an inadequate I.V. fluid supply. Without a thermal body warmer, the threesome made due with about 30 blankets. Still, Miller commended the help provided by the flight attendants, pilots, and air traffic control on the ground.

The woman called Miller on Friday to thank her and to let her know that her condition had stabilized. The woman continued on another flight to an undisclosed destination, according to Miller.

Miller first met the woman in the airport bathroom before the flight and noticed that she seemed sick. Once on the plane, "just by being a person with a heart, I kept going back and asking if she needed anything," Miller said.

Miller said she isn't speaking about her role for selfish purposes.

"I want this to help. I lost 153 pounds in a year. I was diagnosed and treated for thyroid cancer and I have the scar to prove it," Miller said. "What I want to emphasize is that people shouldn't be scared to get involved. It doesn't have to be a lot. If you're there to lend a hand. Or to lend a car phone or a jacket. Or even if it's just a smile. That's getting involved and we all need to start getting a little more involved and start looking at the little things, like respect for others and treating people like we want to be treated."

Some passengers complained that their view of the movie screen was obscured during the nurses' effort.

But when the plane took off from Dallas-Fort Worth for Las Vegas, Miller didn't bother to proselytize.

Instead, after the roughly two-hour ordeal, still dressed in her soiled clothes, Miller ordered two flight bottles of whiskey. "Two Jacks. No ice. No cup. No lid," she said.

It wasn't until she landed in Las Vegas that she transcribed the notes from her jeans onto four pages of handwritten, neatly looping notes. Those will be submitted to America West, which declined comment on the incident beyond verifying that the airline has contracts with medical technicians who can instruct flight attendents from the ground during emergencies.