1 year after medical helicopter crash in Sacramento, family honors flight nurse's legacy

One year after Suzie Smith was killed in a medical helicopter crash, her family is still grappling with the loss of a woman they say held their family together.

Smith was a veteran flight nurse whose career spanned five decades. Her family remembers her not only for her work caring for patients, but for the kindness she showed to everyone around her.

Her son, Gabe Smith, described his mother as tempered, tender and tough — someone who could bend and not break.

"That absence is so present right now. I've never felt silence scream so loud," Gabe said.

He described the past year as the most difficult of his life.

"I would sugarcoat it, but my mom would chastise me for lying," he said.

Throughout her career, Suzie Smith spent decades caring for patients in the air. She participated in medical missions in other countries and, closer to home, escorted patients of all ages to hospitals during some of the most frightening moments of their lives.

"my mom made waves in every room that she went into, but they were all waves of kindness," Gabe said.

That commitment to helping others continued until her final day. Smith was working aboard a REACH medical helicopter when the aircraft crashed.

Gabe said his final moments with his mother in the hospital are memories he will carry with him.

"I got to hold her hand. I got to say everything that I wanted to say to her," he said.

He also carries a physical reminder of his mother with him. Gabe wears a bracelet containing some of her final heartbeats and her fingerprint.

"I wear her some of her last heartbeats and her fingerprint right now as a reminder that, you know, we only get so many heartbeats like, so let's leave a, let's even impact on the world. Let's be the change that we want to see in the world," he said.

Now, the Smith family is working to turn their grief into a way to continue her work.

The family is launching the Our Angel That Flies Foundation, which will support medical missions in Central America and provide tuition assistance for future nurses.

Gabe said the foundation is inspired by what his mother would have wanted her family to do.

"To quote what my mom would say, she would want this to light a fire under our butts and get us moving," he said.

For Gabe and his family, honoring Suzie means carrying forward the values she lived by.

"Let's keep that legacy going. Let's keep on spreading kindness, one act at a time," he said.