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After hearing about a La Vista traffic crash involving 25-year old Amber Wilkin's car and a fully-loaded dump truck, I immediately thought about a conversation I had with her parents 5-years ago.

Amber remains in critical condition.  A tube helps her breath.  According to family, her brain function, while improving, is nowhere near where it needs to be.

It was May 2005 and I interviewed her parents, Craig and Shelley, about the loss of their 15-year old daughter Kayla.  She was a passenger in a car that was hit a year earlier at 222nd and West Center.  She did not survive.

What is still locked in my memory -- and will likely stay that way for the rest of my life -- is what the family told me that day.  They kept Kayla's cell phone service activated so they could hear her voice any day, any time.

Her father told me then: "I don't think we'll ever disconnect the service because friends still call it and so do we."

It breaks my heart that this family has to endure this again.