Amanda’s dad, Greg, a captain with the Edmond fire department, had to work early on this Saturday, so Amanda’s mother, Tammy, got the girls and Cody, Amanda’s 12-year-old brother, up to get ready for the rodeo. They stopped at Charlie’s Corner Café for breakfast. They arrived at the rodeo arena around 11 in the morning, unloaded the horses, saddled them and got ready for the warm-ups.
Amanda had always been a strong competitor, and she loved the challenge of competing against the clock. A freshman at Welston High School, Amanda was a good student, who had many friends. People were always drawn to her smile and her desire to help other people.
Tammy was on the floor of the indoor arena with Amanda when she began her first event, barrel racing. “It was the fastest time she had ever had,” Tammy remembers, “and I was excited about getting to Amanda so I could congratulate her.”
A few minutes later, as the next contestant finished her run and headed out of the arena, Amanda’s world changed in one violent instant.
“I heard the girl yelling for everyone to get out of the way, that her horse wouldn’t stop,” says Tammy, “and then I heard loud noises coming from outside the arena door.”
Amanda was outside the arena, sitting on her horse, Star, talking to her friends. When the runaway horse came running through the door with its panicked rider still trying to stop it, it rammed full force into the back of Star, knocking her out from under Amanda. Witnesses to the accident say that Amanda fell to the ground hitting the left side of her head, and still holding the reins, pulled Star down on her. Star’s head then slammed into the other side of Amanda’s head.
“I knew it was bad,” Tammy says. “I saw that she was unconscious but breathing.” Tammy tried to maintain her composure. “I knew that I couldn’t lose it, because I wasn’t sure if she could hear me. I didn’t want to scare her.”
Amanda’s brother, Cody, knew his sister was badly hurt. Friends of the family comforted him, while Tammy held Amanda.
When a friend called Greg at the fire station and told him what had happened, Greg called the fire department dispatcher and told him to call Medi-Flight and start them toward the Harrah rodeo grounds. Greg sped to the scene and picked up Tammy and Cody. By the time he arrived, the helicopter was already airborne with Amanda on board, headed toward the OU Medical Center’s level one trauma center in Oklahoma City.
A hospital chaplain met the Westermiers at the door of the emergency room and took them to the waiting room while physicians worked on Amanda. Almost immediately, they took her to surgery to try to relieve the pressure inside skull before it damaged her brain too badly.
Greg remembers that the surgeon came out to talk to them right after the surgery. “He was very upbeat. He said the pressure had come down and he was extremely excited about the situation. At that point, we certainly thought there was a lot of hope.”
But, by the time they got Amanda up to intensive care, the pressures had started to rise and they took her back to surgery to put in a stent. But nothing seemed to help. They watched Amanda’s condition deteriorate steadily as the pressure readings continued to go up over the next five days. “Even so,” says Greg, “Tammy and I had an overwhelming sense of peace about the situation.” As they waited, scores of friends, family and co-workers waited with them, spilling out of the waiting room and into the hallway.
As a firefighter, Greg had seen many head injuries and he knew what could happen. “I had actually talked to one of the nurses about organ donation. We weren’t giving up; we just wanted to be prepared.”
“Of course, we hoped it wouldn’t come to that,” says Tammy, “but we knew what a giving person she was and that’s what she would have wanted.”
Amanda was known for giving many of her rodeo awards and buckles away to her friends. “She was lively and energetic and full of fun. She just loved people,” Greg says.
When physicians did declare Amanda brain dead, it was Amanda’s love of people and generosity that moved Greg and Tammy to say yes when they were asked if they would allow their daughter to be a donor. After they made their decision, they went home, not really knowing the magnitude of what they had just done.
A few days later, more than 1,000 people packed the Life Church auditorium in Edmond to honor the life, and mourn the death, of Amanda Westermier.
In an unusual series of meetings within a few days after Amanda’s donation, Greg and Tammy Westermier met all 5 Oklahoma recipients of Amanda’s organs: 9-year-old Dylon Holmes received one of Amanda’s kidneys in surgery at OU Medical Center, as did 68-year-old Lemuel Harkey. With the exception of her pancreas, which was given to a man in Galveston, Texas, the other organs went to patients at the Nahzi Zuhdi Transplant Institute at Integris Baptist Medical Center. Rogene Moreland received one of Amanda’s lungs, Ruby Rogers, 59, received her liver, and Diana Harris received Amanda’s heart.
“It was the right decision,” says Greg. “We know all of the recipients and it’s been a joy to get to know them. All of that has been a positive thing out of a horrible tragedy. It doesn’t replace Amanda and it doesn’t make us miss her any less, but at that point, Amanda was gone and we couldn’t bring her back. The next best thing was to not miss an opportunity to do something positive with what was left.”
“I knew others would benefit from Amanda’s donation,” says Tammy, “but I guess I hadn’t thought about how many lives would be touched.”
Heart recipient Diana Harris reflected on her new life a few weeks after the transplant. “Amanda gave me back my life. Our paths came together and now we are one,” Diana said tearfully. “When I met her parents, Greg and Tammy, they told me how much she had accomplished in her short life and what a giving person she was. They said she would have wanted me to live by having her heart. I want her story to be told. She was a champion barrel racer, you know. I now have the heart of a champion.”
