‘Little star’ keeps shining
Steve and Belle Autry didn’t notice the green and white flag that fluttered above Spokane’s Sacred Heart Medical Center last Saturday, the day they turned wrenching grief into a great gift.
But the signal flew just the same in honor of their daughter, Gabriella, the toddler who died after a May 23 car crash apparently caused by a driver distracted by a cell phone.
Hospital officials hoist the flag and unfurl twin banners near the Sacred Heart cafeteria every time someone donates organs, as the Autrys did, or when someone else receives donations through potentially life-saving transplants.
In 2006, it flew 171 days, said Sacred Heart chaplain Dan Ritchie.
For the Colbert couple who spent eight years trying to conceive their only child, a curly-headed girl who had just learned to say “night-night,” there was no question about the decision.
“She was just a bright little star,” said Belinda “Belle” Autry, 35, a nursing assistant at the Spokane Veterans Affairs Medical Center. “For me, it’s just to know that there’s a piece of my daughter living on in someone else.”
Gabby’s heart went to a 2-year-old girl in Colorado, transplant officials told the Autrys. Her kidneys went to an undisclosed recipient in Seattle. And her liver went to a 5-month-old girl in San Francisco who was days away from dying.
“We had to bring some sense of meaning out of this tragedy,” said Steve Autry, 35, a contract construction supervisor for ConocoPhillips Alaska.
Gabby was critically injured May 23, when her mother’s Subaru Legacy was struck from behind as Belle Autry waited at a traffic light about 5:30 p.m. at Day-Mount Spokane Road and U.S. Highway 2, according to Washington State Patrol officials. A Chevrolet Blazer driven by Michael Q. Beckley, 34, of Spokane, hit the Subaru, propelling it into a Volvo in front of Autry’s vehicle, officials said. Steve Autry said WSP officials told him that Beckley allegedly was traveling about 55 mph and didn’t see the traffic light because he was distracted by a cell phone.
Although Gabby was properly secured in a child safety seat in the back seat, she suffered head injuries so severe that Belle Autry had doubts from the start.
“It took a while to stabilize her. I was holding out hope, but I just had a feeling she wasn’t going to make it,” Belle Autry said.
A $100,000 warrant for Beckley’s arrest on charges of vehicular homicide was issued late Wednesday. Beckley – whose court record includes several criminal offenses, including driving under the influence, driving with a suspended license and without insurance, possession of a controlled substance and theft – disappeared after he was treated and released for injuries after the accident. WSP officials had not located him by Thursday and were asking for help through the local Secret Witness program.
“The fact that he’s still driving is repulsive,” said Steve Autry, who was 2,000 miles away when the crash occurred, at work at his job on the Kuparuk oil field on the Alaskan Arctic Plain near Prudhoe Bay, Alaska. “He deserves anything that comes to him.”
Added Belle Autry:
“Karma has a nasty way of coming back and biting you in the ass.”
The Autrys, who have been married more than 11 years, reminisced this week about the little girl who was “always happy, from the moment she got up until the moment she went to bed,” her father recalled. Gabby was a busy child who started walking at 11 months, knew 50 words of sign language, and loved the family’s menagerie of pets, which included two cats, two dogs and two ferrets.
“She knew all the sounds the animals make,” Belle Autry said. “She even knew the sounds the ferrets make.”
Gabby’s favorite toy was a stuffed rabbit called Bun-Buns, her parents said.
“She couldn’t go anywhere without her bunny, her blankie or her binki,” Steve Autry said, recalling the family’s pet name for Gabby’s pacifier. “We called them her ‘three Bs.’ ”
As the Autrys struggle to make sense of their loss, a couple of issues have become clear, they said. First, they want to urge drivers to pay attention.
“It was a cell phone that caused this. He was talking on his cell phone,” said Steve Autry. “I hope that people will stop and think before they answer that call.”
Second, they said that agreeing to donate Gabby’s organs and tissues offered solace at a dark hour. They’d like to have contact with the organ recipients and their families, if possible, Belle Autry said. Officials at LifeCenter Northwest, the Bellevue organ procurement organization, encourage donor families to write letters that sometimes lead to contact – and lasting relationships.
The Autrys have been flooded with expressions of care and concern from family, friends and community members since the accident. On Saturday, they’re planning a celebration of Gabby’s life.
Sacred Heart Medical Center staff and the law enforcement and medical crews who responded to the scene of the crash will be invited, the Autrys said.
But that’s the only memorial they plan for the child they called “their miracle baby,” the laughing girl who would have turned 2 on June 30.
The body of Gabriella Simone Autry was cremated after the transplants were complete.
Told of the flag that flew Saturday in her honor, the Autrys were surprised.
“I wish we could have known that,” said Steve Autry. “It would have been great to see the flag going up for Gabby.”