12-year-old ATV crash victim led life heart first, family says
It was a special Mother’s Day for Heather Baker.
In the morning, her 12-year-old daughter gave her a heart-shaped card she had made herself, and then cooked her breakfast from a heartshaped menu: “waffles and eggs over easy on a plate rimmed with strawberries.”
Later, Amber Baker accompanied her mother as she got a massage and had her hair curled, then the two of them took a quiet walk in Hawrelak Park, arms draped around each other like best friends.
“It was an amazing day, one of the best we ever had,” Heather Baker says, seated at her dining room table in south Edmonton, a stack of Amber’s drawings and track-and-field ribbons at her fingertips. “The love I felt was so intense and so real, I knew I had to hang onto it.
“I didn’t know why, but I am grateful I did.”
On May 19, six days after overwhelming her mother with bound- less love, Amber was killed in an ATV crash south of Hinton. Fearless and always seeking adventure, she was on a camping trip with friends when the vehicle she was driving flipped, pinning her beneath it.
The last thing she did before she died was apologize to the friend who had been riding with her, and who had pleaded with her to slow down.
“She was the light in my life,” Heather Baker says of her only child. “I just feel she was a gift from God to everyone around her. She always put others first.
“I used to tell her, ‘When I grow up, I want to be just like you.’”
A sixth-grader at Keheewin School, Amber Baker loved to dance and sing, play basketball and ski, rock climb and zipline, and draw angels, butterflies, flowers and mermaids.
A Valentine’s baby born at the Grey Nuns Hospital in Edmonton, she adored her mother’s home province of Nova Scotia, and collected seashells that her grandmother scattered while walking ahead of her along the beach in St. Margaret’s Bay. At the pool near her home in Mill Creek, a close family friend, Lance Roskin says, “She was like a Navy SEAL.”
A free spirit who wore brightcoloured shoes and nerdy, oversized glasses, Amber Baker believed in herself and encouraged classmates to do the same. “She was a real character,” says Cheryl Storie, who teaches language arts and social studies and serves as assistant principal at Keheewin School. “She was enthusiastic, loved life and was a risk-taker.
“She loved getting up in front of the class. She was brave.”
Classmates were stunned when they heard about Amber’s death, and honoured her by donning oversized glasses and dressing in her favourite colours — red and black — at an assembly.
Next year, a cheerleading award will be presented in her memory, and the first garden planted as part of a school greenery project will be named after her.