Local nurse who died in single-car accident remembered
Joseph Jackson vividly remembers the blouse his wife, Kimberly, was wearing when he last saw her one Wednesday morning in their Palmdale home before she left to run some errands.
Joseph, 54, a retired fire inspector for the Los Angeles Fire Department, would see remnants of his wife’s blouse in a burned vehicle she was driving later that day.
At about 10:42 a.m. on March 9, Kimberly Ann Jackson, a neonatal intensive-care unit nurse at Providence St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, died after the vehicle she was driving rolled off the roadway, into some sagebrush and caught on fire on Avenue N-8 near 36th Street West in Palmdale, Joseph Jackson said on Monday.
He said that, although his wife had been taking seizure medication, she was in good health and had been losing weight. He thinks his wife must have blacked out when her car headed toward the sagebrush.
“The exhaust of the engine, I believe, caught the bush on fire, which caught the car on fire,” he said. “There was no attempt [by her] to try and get out of the car.”
That Wednesday was a complete shock for Joseph Jackson, who also had an aunt and cousin die earlier this month. He was at his aunt’s funeral in Inglewood that tragic morning his wife died. However, he became concerned when his daughter called him to say that her mother hadn’t picked her up yet.
“I’m getting nervous because my wife lives to pick up her kids,” he said. “For her not to pick them up would be out of the ordinary.”
Though he was panicked, Joseph Jackson said he tried to think positively. But then he received a call from an investigator with the Los Angeles County coroner’s office who gave him the news he was dreading.
“My last view of her was during that morning, when we were talking about our plans,” he said. “She had this trip planned to go to Syracuse to go see her brother.”
Kimberly Jackson, who was originally from the city of Timmins in Ontario, Canada, was a neonatal intensive-care nurse for more than 20 years and spent most of her career at St. Joseph, said Tracy Fergusson, the neonatal intensive-care unit nurse manager at the hospital.
Fergusson said she was dismayed to hear that Kimberly Jackson had died unexpectedly, agreeing with Joseph Jackson that his wife was in the best shape she had been in for a while.
“She was just one of those people who were cool during emergencies and great with families,” Fergusson said. “She was just cool as a cucumber all the time.”
Kimberly Jackson left behind her husband and a teenage daughter and son. To help with her children’s education costs, the nonprofit Fire Family Foundation started a fund where people can donate money to the family.
“This fund that they’ve set up is just perfect because I know everybody [at St. Joseph] wanted to do something for her,” Fergusson said. “Her kids were her life, so we’re so happy if we can help at all with what her kids are doing.”
To donate to the fund, visit firefamilyfoundation.org.
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Anthony Clark Carpio, anthonyclark.carpio@latimes.com
Twitter: @acocarpio
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