“I always thought I would live” Lake Villa woman recounts morning tree branch pierced her

Helen Miller promised pretzel rolls and cookies Tuesday to the four members of the Lake Villa Rescue Squad who helped save her life last month.

They looked back the Waukegan School District 60 art teacher and Lake Villa resident and said they would be happy with the snacks, but the real treat was seeing Miller alive.

“I was amazed your pulse never got above 70,” rescue squad member Bill Chebny told Miller, two weeks after he helped pull her from her car with a two-foot long tree branch sticking out of her abdomen. “You were so calm throughout the whole thing. It was amazing.”

Miller, joined by the firefighter/paramedics who rescued her, spoke publicly for the first time Tuesday about the potentially fatal Oct. 26 incident.

She was driving east on Grand Avenue in Lindenhurst during a tremendous thunderstorm about 7:45 a.m. that morning when high winds blew a tree over and onto her SmartCar.

“I didn't see any of it,” Miller said. “It happened so fast. One second I was driving and the next, I saw a tree.”

A branch from the 65-foot maple pierced her windshield and plunged about 12 centimeters into her stomach, pinning her inside the car. There was no physical pain, she said, because a previous heart condition left her stomach numb.

“I felt pressure on my lungs from the tree, but nothing in my stomach,” Miller said. “I tried to push the tree but it wouldn't budge. I tried to move my seat but I couldn't because the tree was preventing me from doing it.”

What did hurt was seeing passing motorists taking pictures of her in the car, but not stopping. Finally, someone stopped and contacted the Lake Villa Rescue Squad.

“I would yell for help but no one stopped,” she said. “I couldn't move. I felt like some of them just left me to die.”

Bill Barber, one of Lake Villa paramedics to arrive at the scene, said he was stunned to discover Miller alive and alert.

But Miller said she never had any doubt.

“I was confident I would live and get through it,” she said. “I always thought I would live.”

After she and the branch were removed from the SmartCar, she was taken by ambulance to Advocate Condell Medical Center in Libertyville. She would spend the next two weeks in the hospital recovering.

Miller described the 20-minute ambulance ride as “uncomfortable” because the members of the rescue squad all had concerned looks on their faces. So, she tried to “lighten the mood.”

“So, we sang ‘Ice Ice Baby' all the way to the hospital,” she said. “And, just to mess with them every once in awhile, I would tell them I felt tired. And they would start screaming at me, telling me I couldn't go to sleep.”

Now out of the hospital, Miller still has a reminder of the incident: the two-foot long tree branch that pierced her abdomen. She said she intends to make a shadow box out of the wood and use it to hold the many cards and letters she received from her students.

“I do feel like there is someone watching out for me,” she said with a smile. “I've used up three of my nine lives.”