Carolyn Cross boarded a Northern
Thunderbird Air flight to Kelowna, B.C.,
on the afternoon of October 27, 2011, looking
forward to her weekend retreat. The
49-year-old mother of three runs her own company,
Ondine Biomedical, and was going to share
ideas and swap strategies with six other entrepreneurs.
Sitting toward the back of the nine-seat
plane, she had a kitty-corner view of the cockpit.
“I have a very vivid memory of the pilot on takeoff,
and he seemed to enjoy the lift. I was looking
at the golden pinks and yellow of the sky. The sun
was on his face and he leaned back, enjoying the
freedom of flight.”
About 15 minutes later the pilot leaned over his
shoulder to tell the passengers he was turning back
to Vancouver airport because there was a small
oil leak and it needed to be checked out.
Carolyn, a nervous flyer, noticed his hand was
shaking, and it seemed they were climbing very high
for a small plane. “It was a real pronounced shake,
almost uncontrollable, and his hand was very whitish.
It was enough for me to think, ‘Okay, we are
in trouble.’ ” At that point she reached into her purse
for her cellphone and began typing goodbye messages
to her three kids — David, 15, Jamie, 11, and
Julia, 9 — and her husband, Bob Cross, a successful
oil and gas entrepreneur, who was in the United Kingdom on business. “I knew exactly what I
wanted to say; I didn’t want to scare them and
write, ‘Mummy is dying in a plane crash,’” she
says. “Mummy loves Julia and Jamie” is the subject
line on the email message to her two youngest.
To pieces. I will always be with you.
I will always watch over you
Be kind to each other
Be good at what you do
Be a good role model to others
I am proud of who you are
Love you forever
Mummy
The time of the message was 4:02 p.m. The
crash occurred at 4:10 p.m. Once she was sure
that her email and texts to her husband and eldest
son were delivered, Carolyn says, she was filled
with peace. She was prepared to die.“I had always
been fearful of crashing to my death. Now I’m
actually not afraid of that anymore. It’s rather odd.
I had such a sense of peace up there.”
As the plane turned around to approach
the airport, most of the passengers seemed oblivious
to any problems. The guy in the seat next
to her was chatting about his cottage. “Only when
we banked really hard to the left did people
understand we were in serious trouble. Shortly
thereafter, I felt the sensation of
weightlessness and realized we were
dropping,” says Carolyn. “The last
thing I remember is looking down
and seeing this patch of green. I
couldn’t tell how fast we were falling.
But I knew it was a straight-down
kind of thing.” Mercifully, Carolyn
blacked out and does not recall the
moment of impact.
“The next thing I knew, I smelled
fuel and immediately jerked awake.
I started yelling at the other passengers,
‘Wake up! Wake up! Get out!’
There was a wall of fire on my right.”
The plane’s tail had been sheared
off and the flames were closing in
on her. Carolyn realized the twisted
and dislodged seat that she was
still buckled into was blocking the
exit. “My seat had come out, and I
was in the aisle.” She pulled herself
free from the crushed metal, but
when she tried to stand up, she
couldn’t feel her legs. She found out
later that the vertebrae in her spine
had been compressed. “I fell down
hard, which broke my teeth and
smashed my head.” She managed to
drag herself to the door, where she
was lifted out and carried to safety
by a bystander, Simon Pearce, who
happened to be driving along the
roadway with his wife, Kim.
A pilot with Transport Canada
who had been trained in emergency
situations, Simon says he was simply
acting on instinct when he jumped
out of his car and ran over to the
burning plane. But in Carolyn’s
mind, Simon and the many other
bystanders who rushed to rescue the
plane’s occupants are heroes—and
also survivors. “It takes a certain kind
of person and a certain kind of madness
to step into a burning fuselage
that reeks of gasoline to rescue us,”
she says. “My trauma on the plane
was limited because it all happened
so quickly and then I was out. These
people had to go in there and pick
and choose what they could and
couldn’t do with flames approaching
them. You don’t just walk away
from that.” (Photo credit: Dana Low)
Carolyn found she was still clutching
her cellphone. She pushed the button to call home and handed it to Simon’s wife,
Kim, saying, “Please tell my family I’m okay.” She
collapsed in pain and shock as she heard the
conversation between Kim and her family.
The odds of surviving a plane crash vary
widely depending on the size of plane (the
smaller the deadlier), where it’s flying, stage
of flight and so on. Carolyn’s list of injuries from
being pancaked between metal and roadway
is long: jaw trauma, broken ribs, a fractured
pelvis, broken teeth, head trauma and a knee
injury akin to having the bottom of your leg
wrenched by a large animal.
Carolyn was rushed to hospital, where she
underwent an operation on her leg and spent two
weeks in recovery. Her rescuer, Simon, came to
visit her there with his wife. “There is an energy
about her that my wife and I both felt,” says
Simon. “She is a force to be reckoned with.”
The pilot, 44-year-old Luc Fortin, was killed
on impact, and his co-pilot, Matt Robic, 26, was
severely burned and died of his injuries three
weeks later in intensive care. But miraculously,
all seven passengers survived.
Simon is still haunted by the crash and the
death of the pilots, but with counselling he
is getting back to normal. “My worst fear was
being trapped inside a fiery aircraft.” He has
since returned to the skies but says his first
couple of flights were difficult, like learning to
fly all over again.
Carolyn is consumed by her mission of getting
her rescuers recognition. She gave several astonishing
media interviews in the days immediately
following the crash — “because I thought
the media had it wrong.” To her, the story wasn’t
about the crash or even the survivors. It was about
the bystanders who risked their lives to help.
Survivor and crusader
Carolyn is known for her singular passion,
and it is this gigantic drive that fuels her company.
“You never make a bet against Carolyn,”
says Nick Loebel, her chief technology officer,
who has worked closely with her for more than
12 years. “It is not about luck, it’s indomitable
force of will.” That’s what helped Carolyn haul
herself to the door of the plane. “I realized I
needed to get out and I closed my eyes to concentrate
all my efforts to move to the exit,” she recalls. She feels she
survived the crash for a reason: to bring her
cheap, effective superbug-zapping laser to hospitals
and clinics around the world.
The laser was originally developed to combat
periodontal bacteria, but another near-death
experience made Carolyn realize it had a much
more expansive use: Her daughter, then two years
old, almost died from a misdiagnosed antibiotic-resistant
infection. “I was devastated. If I could
have traded my life and limbs, I would have. It
was the frustration of being able to put men on
the moon, and here is this tiny little girl and this
hospital and all these great people not able to do
anything,” she recalls. “At that point, I became
a champion for the antibiotic-resistance cause.”
The crash has intensified what she considers
to be her life’s mission: bringing Ondine’s technology
to hospitals around the world. Ondine’s
concept is brilliant in its simplicity. When a
special agent or liquid stain is applied to pathogenic
cells like bacteria, and laser light is added,
a powerful germ killer is created that doesn’t
harm human tissue. Nick describes it as like
“pouring bleach on the outside of the bug.”
Because the bug doesn’t know it is being attacked
and killed, it never has a chance to defend itself
from its killer or, more importantly, to form a
resistance. The result is a powerful, inexpensive
and quick-acting alternative to antibiotics in
the fight against superbugs.
Carolyn’s lofty goal is, simply, to change the
way hospitals fight infections. By giving admitted
patients a quick swab and a zap of Ondine’s laser
in the nasal area (where many nasty bugs lurk,
and the laser can easily reach), hospitals and clinics
can block the bugs from entering the facility,
spreading and turning lethal when they do not
respond to today’s overused drugs. “There are
barely any new antibiotics being created,” explains
Carolyn. “It costs a billion and a half dollars
to come to market, 10 to 15 years to get through
the Food and Drug Administration; it’s way too
much money and risk. So we’ve got an existing
arsenal of antibiotics that are becoming more
and more used and abused.” Changing the system
sometimes requires a steamroller, someone like
Carolyn, who refuses to give up. “There is a reason
I was spared, and I know what it is,” she says.
In fact, rather than retreat to lick her wounds
and reconnect with her family after the crash,
Carolyn feels she has to work harder and smarter.
“It kind of pissed me off, because I realized the
company is so vulnerable to my health, and that’s
not good enough.”
Picking up the pieces
Coming to terms with the horror of the crash has
been hard on her husband. “He was away, and it’s
always worse for a spouse when there is so much
out of one’s control—the potential devastation
to our family and way of life,” she says. “I think
he has a renewed sense of the fragility of life and
the importance of doing things that are meant
to be done and not sweating the small stuff.”
In the same way fate seems to keep knocking
on Carolyn’s door, she felt the benefits of her
determination first-hand. After the crash, Carolyn
was taken to Vancouver General Hospital (VGH),
the first major institution to roll out Ondine’s
technology. Like all patients undergoing surgery,
she was zapped clean by Ondine’s laser. Carolyn
was released from VGH on November 10, at 4:30
p.m., two weeks to the hour after she was rushed
in. In a triumphant email sent from her hospital
bed to her company, she wrote she was in good
spirits, with a “newfound appreciation for how
great it is to be getting back to a normal life.”
For Carolyn, that means returning to work and
to her quest: the global fight against antibiotic-resistant
superbugs—even if she has to get on
airplanes to do it . “I have a very profound sense
of my calling. My family understands that. I am
more driven now than ever. I am determined
to make a difference.”