Good Samaritan nurse: Victim saved me

One of the women who spotted a car crash, stopped to help and ended up becoming a victim herself says she's not a hero.

Two people were killed after two successive crashes on the same dangerous curve of Business Loop 131 near Westnedge Avenue in Kalamazoo Township.

MaryKay Macquarrie came upon the initial crash in the median around 3 a.m. on Nov. 18.

"I said, 'Do you need any help? I'm an emergency nurse,'" she recalled for 24 Hour News 8.

Macquarrie, 53, works at the Bronson Hospital emergency room, one of the largest trauma ERs the area.

"I didn't see any emergency vehicles so I was concerned that there wasn't anybody helping anybody," she said.

But Macquarrie could not have expected what happened next. The scene quickly turned from traumatic to tragic as she worked to help victim Trevor Stuck.

"I was just taking my stethoscope off and I looked up and saw another car coming at a high rate of speed at us," she said. "It was like she was aimed right at us. ... She couldn't have seen us. It was pitch black.

"I thought I was going to die."

Maquarrie says there was no time to alert the others, who were all trying to get help and stabilize Stuck.

"I didn't have time to get the words out. It came so fast," she said. "We got hit."

The second vehicle, driven by 22-year-old Margaret Robinson of Kalamazoo, barreled through the first crash. Off-duty Deputy Laura Misner, who had also stopped to help, was hit. So was Brittany Despins, a PRIDE Care Ambulance EMT who had been in the first vehicle.

In the moments after that second crash, Macquarrie remembers being pinned under the second vehicle.

"I know I kept saying, 'Please help me. Please help me,'" she said. "Because I was under the car. I just was waving my hand."

It "seemed like forever" that she waited for help, she said.

Trevor Stuck, also a PRIDE Care Ambulance paramedic, had already been injured in the first crash and died at the scene after the second crash.

"I knew Trevor was dead as soon as the car had hit me," Macquarrie said.

Despins was in critical condition for almost a week before she died Friday. Macquarrie said Despins was signaling for help after the initial crash.

Macquarrie went to the funeral for Stuck, whose family took time from their grief to thank her beside her hospital bed for being there for their son in what would be his dying moments.

"He shook my hand and then said 'thank you'," she said of Stuck's father. "(He said) that he owed me a debt, but he doesn't owe me anything."

When the second car hit, Macquarrie said she believes Stuck's body may have kept her from being injured further.

"I think Trevor saved my life," she said. "I think his body probably absorbed some of the impact."

That night, Macquarrie said, she was just a woman living out her life's passion of helping others -- both on the job and off. She insists she was not being a hero.

"Please don't use that word for me," she said. "It's our life. It's in our heart. It's in our blood. It's what we're trained to do."