Training pays off at crash site

One of the trucks, which was southbound pulling a travel-trailer, went down an embankment, while the northbound truck remained in the roadway.

As a volunteer firefighter and trained emergency medical responder, Tackett’s first reaction was to get out of her vehicle and see if she could help anyone who was involved in the collision.

What she found was carnage.

“I’ve been a firefighter for a year and I’ve never been to an accident like that,” Tackett said. “It was pretty scary.”

The woman in the northbound vehicle, 68-year-old Dorothy Wilkerson, was already dead, and the two people in the other truck were in need of medical assistance, especially the woman in the passenger seat.

Tackett said she started giving first aid to the woman, identified by the California Highway Patrol as Valerie McLaughlin, of Nanaimo, British Columbia, while park rangers and other emergency personnel worked around her and tended to the driver, Ronald McLaughlin.

“She was bleeding out of her mouth. She was hurt all over,” Tackett said. “She never died on me. I just had to do a lot of work on her.”

Tackett did chest compressions on Valerie McLaughlin to keep the 61-year-old’s airway clear of blood, and helped get her ready to be transported to the hospital. McLaughlin, who was slipping in and out of consciousness, talked to Tackett the whole time she was awake, calling her “Sweetie” up until she was loaded into an ambulance and taken to St. Joseph’s Hospital in Humboldt County.

According to a CHP collision report, McLaughlin suffered major injuries, including a fractured hip and shattered elbow. On Wednesday, hospital officials listed her in stable condition. Ronald McLaughlin, 64, sustained minor injuries that the CHP report listed as cuts and contusions.

The report states the collision, which is still under investigation, occurred at a curve about one mile north of Bald Hills Road when Wilkerson, who was driving north in a Dodge Ram 3500, crossed over the center line, and the McLaughlins’ Ford F150 struck the right side of the truck in the southbound lane.

Wilkerson, who was from Bangor, Calif., but had previously lived in Klamath, died as a result of the impact.

Tackett said she wouldn’t have been able to assist Valerie McLaughlin if she didn’t have the training she got as a volunteer firefighter.

“I could have helped, but I wouldn’t have done what I did,” she said. “I wouldn’t have known what I was doing.”

It was only a year ago when Tackett joined the Gasquet Fire Department — not long after her grandfather, Frank Coleman, died. He was a longtime Gasquet firefighter, she said, and his legacy helped her make her own decision about volunteering.

“My grandpa was a firefighter for 15 years,” Tackett said. “That’s why I became a firefighter.”