‘A good Samaritan that works at Good Samaritan’
Pregnant woman says she survived fiery crash thanks to nurse’s selfless actions
Naperville resident Miranda Rosasco is thankful this year that she and her unborn baby survived a fiery crash, and she wanted to say so in person Wednesday to the woman whose extraordinary actions made that possible.
Cheryl Gallet, a nurse at Advocate Good Samaritan Hospital in Downers Grove, was en route to work on Interstate 355 the morning of Oct. 20 when she came upon two cars involved in a crash near the Ogden Avenue exit.
With no one else having stopped to help, Gallet knew she couldn’t just drive by, she said.
By the time she reached Rosasco’s car, a second person had joined Gallet and together they pulled the 25-year-old woman to safety while a third person doused the flames coming from her burning SUV.
“I’m just so happy to finally meet you (again) in person, just to thank you for everything,” Rosasco told Gallet, of Lemont, during a reunion organized Wednesday by Good Samaritan Hospital.
Gallet said her decision to stop and help was a no-brainer.
“I don’t know if it was nursing instincts,” she said. “I just know there’s a car upside down and backward. It wasn’t right and no one was there. Someone just had to go make sure to see if that person needed help.”
Javier Medero, Good Samaritan’s surgical services director, said he wasn’t surprised by Gallet’s actions.
“It goes without saying she truly is a good Samaritan that works at Good Samaritan,” said Medero, who described the 58-year-old nurse as humble and selfless.
Rosasco was on her way to work on a congested northbound I-355, planning to exit onto Interstate 88, when a car in the right lane struck Rosasco’s Honda HR-V as it pulled into the center lane, she said. The force of the collision caused her vehicle to go sideways, where it hit several other cars and flipped over, she said.
“When (my car) was on (its) roof, I was kind of hanging there upside down,” Rosasco, a special education teacher in Glendale Heights, said. “It was very traumatizing and a scary experience.
“I didn’t know if other cars had seen where I was, if I was going to be hit again. The only thing I could really think to do was keep honking my horn over and over again just to try to get someone’s attention.”
Gallet didn’t see the crash happen but knew something was wrong when traffic came to a “complete, utter, urgent stop.”
“I put my turning signal on to get off on Ogden,” she said. “As I was starting to accelerate slightly, I saw a car all by itself upside down and backward and another car up against the median. Nobody was around those two cars at all.”
A man also stopped, and together they ran over to Rosasco’s vehicle. A third person worked to extinguish the “flames coming out of the grille,” Gallet said.
“It was me and this other gentleman who were able to get (Rosasco) out,” Gallet said. “She wanted to sit down right away on the median, but we kind of moved her away because we didn’t know if those flames were going to come back.”
Once Rosasco was in a safe area, Gallet started asking questions to check her condition as they waited for emergency responders.
“It was cold, it was dark (and) it was noisy with the southbound traffic,” said Gallet, an operating room nurse with 35 years’ experience.
“I just sat there with her, trying to comfort her, especially after finding out she was pregnant.”
Gallet expected Rosasco would be taken to Good Samaritan, but “she never arrived.” Instead, Rosasco was transported to Edward Hospital in Naperville.
Rosasco, 21 weeks pregnant with her first child at the time, suffered some bruising but was otherwise unhurt. The baby is doing well, she said.
“I was very, very worried something had gone wrong,” said Rosasco, due in March. “But when they did all the tests, everything was normal, which was pretty much a miracle.”
Rosasco had Gallet’s contact information, and her sister-in-law realized both she and Gallet worked at Good Samaritan.
“We gave (Gallet) some gifts, but what do you give someone who saved someone’s life?” said Stephanie Rosasco, who’s also pregnant and due in March.
“It’s such a small world that we have that connection,” Miranda Rosasco added.
Miranda’s husband, Jimmy, 30, called Gallet their “guardian angel.”
The Rosasco family and Gallet also praised the efforts of the two men who quietly helped that morning.
“I’m so thankful to everything they did to help me that day,” Miranda Rosasco said. “I wish there was some way we could thank them.”