'Thank you for being an angel': Woman searches for nurse who helped her after crash on I-20

DEKALB COUNTY, Ga. - A suspected case of drag racing in broad daylight landed an innocent driver in the hospital for almost a week. The Stone Mountain woman, who turned 35 Thursday, had to spend the day in the hospital. 

A number of drivers stopped that day to help including a nurse who is now being sought so they can be thanked properly.

Kateri Birgenheier has spent the last six days recovering in the hospital. She knows she was lucky to have walked away from the accident and credits God’s grace and a number of good Samaritans including a nurse who she said came out of nowhere.

"She was so amazing. She came out of nowhere like an angel. She had a whole brief case full of things and she pulled out gauze and bandages and she bandaged up my arm," said Birgenheier.

Birgenheier spoke from her hospital bed on Thursday about the accident. She wants to find the nurse who stopped at her accident scene last week, helped her and possibly saved her from losing her arm.

"I want to tell this nurse ‘thank you, thank you for being selfless, thank you for being an angel for my child,’" her mother, Kimberly Clarkson, said fighting back tears.

Birgenheier said she will be forever indebted to all the good Samaritans who stopped that day.

"I’m very grateful. It could have been so much worse. And I’m very grateful to everyone who stopped to help me," Birgenheier said.

She said she was driving eastbound on Interstate 20 near Wesley Chapel Road last Friday around 2 p.m. when she said she was hit by one of two drivers who were drag racing.

My car flipped and it felt like it happened in slow motion. And I just remember saying, ‘Oh, my God, oh, my God, oh my God,’" she said.

What’s unbelievable, she said the driver who hit her stopped and spoke to her.

"Ironically, the driver of the car who hit me came to me and started hugging me and saying, ‘oh my God, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry. We’re gonna get you to the hospital. We’re gonna get you to the hospital.’ And as I’m trying to kick out the window, the windshield of the car, they get into what I presume is another friend’s car and leave the scene," she said.

Medics rushed her to the hospital after she suffered a severe injury to her left arm. Doctors operated Monday. 

Both mother and daughter are still appalled at how this all happened.

"Just the sheer stupidity of people that would race on a highway and put other people’s lives at risk," her mother said.

DeKalb County police said the case is still under investigation and no arrests have been made in the case. Birgenheier describes the nurse as an African American woman in her 40s, about 5-feet-4-inches talle with shoulder length hair and her husband was driving a black pickup truck. 

As for Birgenheier, who owns a mobile spa, she cannot work as she has months of recovery ahead of her.

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