Crash survivor focuses on appreciating life

The last time Mercedes Ramirez-Johnson spoke to her mother was nearly 12 years ago, aboard an airplane.

Her mom was playing matchmaker, so the spoken-for college student decided to move a row back, next to her dad. She soon fell asleep on his broad shoulder.

Little more than a half-hour later, the American Airlines flight slammed into a mountain short of its destination at Cali, Colombia, destroying the jet and killing everyone on board except Johnson, three other people, and a mutt subsequently nicknamed Milagro, miracle. Johnson's parents did not survive.

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She relives the Dec. 20, 1995, crash roughly once a week, thanks to her new full-time career as a motivational speaker.

The 32-year-old Lewisville resident, whose birthday is the same day as the accident, travels the country, speaking to chambers of commerce, company get-togethers, and conferences. Johnson's message: Appreciate life. She calls her speeches "a return-on-investment living."

Audience members aren't the only ones who leave with tear-streaked faces _ sometimes she does, too.

"I went through a plane crash, and I begged for a second chance at life," she said recently during an emotional, hourlong interview at her home. "It's a responsibility I feel I have that since I did get a second chance at life . . . I need to make the best of it."

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Johnson awoke about 4 a.m. on Dec. 20, a Wednesday, for her family's holiday trip to visit relatives in Colombia.

The family, then living in Kansas City, had to get to the airport as early as possible because they didn't have plane tickets. They were flying American on standby, using the employee travel perks enjoyed by Johnson's father, a former pro wrestler who retired and went to work as a mechanic for Trans World Airlines.

Benjamin Ramirez wasn't supposed to be on the flight with his daughter and wife. He had a long list of "honey-do" errands that included taking down the Christmas lights before heading out of town.

The plan was for Benjamin to join the rest of his family the next day in Colombia. But he worked late into the night Tuesday hoping that he could still go.

"Surprise," Benjamin said as he drove the two women to the airport. "I'm going to go ahead and go with you guys. I got everything done."

Every other year, Johnson and her parents went to see her dad's family in Colombia and then to see her mom's family in Nicaragua, connecting through American's big Miami hub.

The Boeing 757 was fully booked, but some seats became available just before departure, according to a final report released by the National Transportation Safety Board. That allowed Johnson and her family to finally get off the standby list and onto the plane.

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Johnson sat next to the window on the right side of the plane in an exit row.

Her mom was in the middle seat, and 19-year-old Mauricio Reyes, a student majoring in business at the University of Michigan, Dearborn, was in the aisle seat.

Directly behind Johnson was her dad.

Her mom instantly took a liking to Reyes because he was a good-looking man about Johnson's age who was from Colombia.

"Oh, God," Johnson thought. "What's happening here?"

A self-described "late bloomer" who didn't date a lot, Johnson was already going out with someone from her school, Northwest Missouri State. She had to put a stop to what her mom was doing.

"Remember that guy that came to the house during Thanksgiving?" Johnson, leaning over to her mother, said softly. "He gave me a really nice pair of earrings, and I guess you could say we're technically dating now."

"Oh, really?" came the reply.

Before the onslaught of questions could begin, Johnson excused herself from the row and sat next to her dad.

A guy movie that Benjamin Ramirez loved featuring Sean Connery was just starting, but Johnson couldn't stay awake.

The smooth flight suddenly became bumpy, jolting Johnson awake.

She looked around but didn't see any other passengers concerned, so Johnson wasn't either. Over the years she had grown accustomed to bumpy flights heading into Cali, which sits in a valley surrounded by mountains.

A couple of minutes later, all hell broke loose.

Johnson felt her back being mashed against the seat. It seemed as if the nose of the plane was pointing straight up.

The pilots flying down the valley had entered the wrong coordinates into the plane's autopilot system and mistakenly turned left, heading into the mountain. Too late, the pilots fired the engines full blast to bring the plane up.

The moment felt like an eternity in Johnson's mind, but, in fact, it only lasted about 10 seconds.

She cursed repeatedly, then felt ashamed and worried about getting chewed out later by her parents.

Then she heard her mom saying a prayer in the row ahead of her.

"Just straighten it out," Johnson chanted over and over, gripping her dad's hand.

Then a loud boom rang out from the back of the plane.

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Johnson woke up and looked around, but wasn't sure where she was.

Everything was dark and blurry.

It was just before sunrise on Thursday, Dec. 21. Thinking that she was waking up in her cousin's bedroom in Colombia, she reached for her glasses on the nightstand.

But there was no nightstand and no glasses.

She rubbed her eyes again and looked around.

Her contacts had been knocked out of her eyes, Johnson realized. But how?

It had taken her 10 to 15 minutes to piece it all together and figure out that the plane had crashed.

She looked around and saw dangling wires and luggage from the overhead bins strewn about. And bodies laying everywhere.

Johnson began yelling for help in English and Spanish.

Reyes, the young man who had captured the attention of Johnson's mother, suddenly yelled out in English and Spanish.

"He was cussing up a storm," Johnson said later.

Her voice grew louder. She was lying in the middle of the aisle in a part of the fuselage that remained intact. Reyes stuck his arm into an opening in the plane, trying to pull Johnson out, but he was eight to 10 feet away.

"Get to my hand as close as you can, and I'll try to pull you up," he told her.

She started to drag herself over, but looked down and noticed a problem with her right leg. From the middle of the thigh to her toes, the leg was numb. And that part of her leg was behind her, making a "V" shape with her upper thigh and hamstring.

"How am I doing this," she thought. It didn't occur to her that the leg was broken.

Out of the airplane, Johnson noticed that Reyes looked fine other than a couple of spots of dried blood on his face.

The crash site was on the side of a steep mountain, 9,000 feet up, with trees and lush vegetation all around, making it hard to stand.

The temperature was in the 30s, but Reyes took off his shirt and tied it around Johnson's leg to stabilize it.

"OK, let's go find a road for help," he said. Reyes put his hands on her neck and began to pull her up slowly.

Like a bolt of lightning ripping through the right side of her body, Johnson felt pain for the first time. In addition to her leg, Johnson had suffered extensive internal injuries around her stomach, brought on by the airplane's seat belt.

She screamed and told him to put her down. Reyes ended up going out alone to look for a road.

It took about 18 hours from the time of the crash to when rescue helicopters hovered overhead.

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Johnson spent the next 10 days in the hospital in Colombia before returning home. She spent another couple of months at Truman Medical Center in Kansas City. She returned to school at Northwest Missouri State by the May after the crash.

Johnson settled a lawsuit she filed in connection with the crash; the terms weren't disclosed. She still trades occasional e-mail messages with Reyes, who works in New York in international finance.

And her boyfriend from Northwest Missouri State remains in the picture.

Chris Johnson proposed to Mercedes in the upscale Plaza shopping district of Kansas City on the first anniversary of the crash.

Just before he popped the question, they rode around in a horse-drawn carriage looking at the Christmas lights, but she couldn't help but feel down.

After asking her to marry him, he added: "I just wanted to do this on this day so that you'd have something happy to remember every year instead."

They were married a couple of years later in Kansas City. Chris Johnson landed an assistant coaching job with the SMU basketball team, and the two moved to Dallas, where he now works as a financial adviser.

Last year, Johnson returned to Colombia for the first time since the crash, where she visited her parents' graves and introduced her husband and children to her father's family.

After recovering from her injuries, Mercedes worked in sales jobs in the healthcare and technology industries. But when her twin boys were born 3 1/2 years ago, she decided to retire from the hustle-and-bustle life of a traveling saleswoman.

Mercedes found her new calling in something she had been doing part time since several months after the crash: Motivational speeches.

At first, she gave them for free. Today, she earns $5,000 for a speech inside the United States, $6,000 for one internationally. She says she gives about a speech a week.

Mercedes Johnson believes that she has come a long way.

She delivered her first speech about the accident to a group of young Hispanic leaders in Chicago 11 years ago. She broke down and sobbed during the talk. She slowly learned how to talk about her experience passionately, but with some detachment.

"It's almost as if I'm telling a story," she said, while fidgeting with a tissue she used to dab her eyes. "But I can't get too into it, because then I'll do what I'm doing right now."