‘She was always looking out for somebody else,’ husband tells ABC 10 of Suzie Smith
R.J. Smith remembered the last conversation he had with his wife, Susan “Suzie” Smith, before the final, fateful flight a week ago Monday that cost the air ambulance nurse her life.
“’Hey, baby, I’m going to work. I’ll see you tomorrow,’” Smith recalled in an interview with Sacramento television station ABC 10 from the couple’s home in Palo Cedro, near Redding. “She goes, ‘Did you get your lunch? OK, I love you.’”
It was a small, quiet conversation shared by so many couples that spoke to something larger about Smith. Smith, 67, died Friday at UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento, husband R.J., her children and other loved ones by her side, days after the medevac helicopter that carried her, a pilot and paramedic crashed onto busy Highway 50 seconds after takeoff from the medical center trapping her under the wreckage.
“She was always looking out for somebody else,” R.J. Smith told ABC 10 reporter Nazy Javid.
Smith dedicated her life to nursing during a 50-year career, the last 20 with Reach Air Medical Services in Redding. She was aboard the Airbus EC130, operating as Redding-based Reach 5 — with pilot, California Highway Patrol veteran Chad Millward, 60,; and paramedic Margaret “DeDe” Davis, 66 — when the copter crashed onto Highway 50 in East Sacramento.
Both Millward and Davis remain in critical but stable condition at UCDMC.
Motorists rushed from their vehicles to push the wrecked helicopter off of the trapped Smith and she was taken to the hospital where the doomed craft had taken off just minutes earlier.
A woman of deep faith, her nursing career also involved mission work outside the U.S. Husband R.J. told ABC 10 her work helping and healing others was a natural extension of that faith.
“She was a champion for the less fortunate,” he said in the ABC 10 interview. “Her being a nurse was just an avenue where she could share the Gospel.”
Suzie Smith’s body was flown Sunday from Sacramento to Red Bluff where a waiting procession took her the final miles to Palo Cedro.
Family are planning a public celebration of Smith’s life, said Reach officials.
This story was originally published October 14, 2025 at 12:38 PM.
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