Clinic to Honor Girl's Memory.

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Author: Unknown

Dateline: SCOTTSDALE, Ariz.

Kelsey Thomsen might be alive today had there been an emergency facility along a stretch of road called Mexico Highway 8. Kelsey, who was 20 when she died, was involved in a car accident at a remote point on the highway.

The highway runs between Sonoita, Ariz., and a town in Mexico commonly called Rocky Point. Victims of accidents that occur on this highway find themselves many hours away from medical care. "You're talking enormous distances and lots of desert," Dan Judkins told The Associated Press. Judkins is the trauma coordinator at University Medical Center in Tucson, Ariz. His department often cares for accident victims from Highway 8.

Judkins says emergency care in that area of Mexico is substandard. "Their emergency-care system is Third World in nature," he said.

Kelsey's dad, John Thomsen, says Kelsey and the two girls she was traveling with were discovered immediately. "But it took approximately three hours," he said, "for someone to locate an ambulance, get the ambulance gassed up, and get it ... to the [accident] site."

Trauma-care experts say that the chances for survival after an accident depend on how quickly a victim receives medical care. Experts refer to the first 60 minutes following an injury as the "golden hour." The chances for survival drop sharply if a victim doesn't receive care within one hour of the injury.

After Kelsey's death, John Thomsen had an emergency-care facility built along Highway 8. He hoped that the facility would help accident victims like his daughter reach trauma care well within the golden hour.

The first facility was a large tent that had been supplied with emergency equipment. Bad weather eventually destroyed the tent, so Thomsen is now planning to build a permanent clinic and hopes to raise funds for its construction.

Kelsey's mother, Judy, said, "If there had been something there, some sort of critical care, I'm convinced in my heart [Kelsey] would be alive today."

PHOTO (BLACK & WHITE): The Thomsens with a photo of their daughter, Kelsey, who died on September 23, 2004, on a deserted stretch of highway. Local medics arrived too late to save her.