Katelyn Ibarra still remembers the terrifying moment in the Colorado snow squall, when she came upon a Steamboat Springs Transit Bus that collided head-on with an SUV.

It was March 29, 2016, and she was traveling near with her parents to celebrate their 19th wedding anniversary. She was 16 years old, and in front of them on a sharp turn along an ice-slick Routt County Route 44 loomed a crumpled Ford Explorer and the bus, hard up against mountain snow.

“I was wearing my Vans,” Ibarra, 24, said. “And I remember that specifically because it was a really, really nice day in March — like an unusually nice day for March in Colorado — and then it just started sleeting. That’s why this crash happened.”

Her father rushed to reach the driver behind the wheel of the Ford. Ibarra rang 911, then grabbed a first aid kit and followed. The driver was severely injured. The collision killed the dog in the backseat. 

“That was the saddest part,” she recalled. “I could barely look at the dog.”

Told by her dad to check the bus passengers, Ibarra scampered to the bus driver, who seemed disoriented. So Ibarra climbed the snowy cliff and then squeezed through the shattered windshield. She told the commuters who were bleeding to stay calm and put pressure on their wounds, but recollected that “everyone was pretty hysterical.”

A few motorists stopped to help, but some confessed they couldn’t “do blood and gore,” Ibarra recalled. So she asked them to fill bags with snow and toss them to her. She used the makeshift ice packs to ease the pain of the injured passengers.

Ibarra was the last to leave the bus after emergency rescuers arrived. She moved seats so commuters could escape from the emergency exit.

“I always think, ‘I hope somebody would do that for me if I were in a crash,’” she said.

In the wake of the bus tragedy came calls for Ibarra’s humble heroism to be recognized. Girl Scouts of USA quickly bestowed upon her its highest award for lifesaving. And then on March 25, 2017, the Congressional Medal of Honor Society presented her with its prestigious Young Hero Award at a special ceremony at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall in Arlington, Virginia.

There, she met military heroes Salvatore Giunta and Tom Kelley. 

Giunta was the fourth Medal of Honor recipient from the war in Afghanistan. The previous three were awarded posthumously. He received the nation’s highest award for battlefield bravery due to his actions as a team leader with Company B, 2nd Battalion (Airborne), 503rd Infantry Regiment, on Oct. 25, 2007, in the bloody Korengal Valley.

During a Taliban ambush, Spc. Giunta sprinted into the enemy fire to attack the insurgents and rescue his wounded squad leader. Despite Taliban rounds shredding his body armor, he administered medical care to the man. After tossing grenades at their foes, Giunta led his team to help other wounded soldiers. 

He bolted forward and raced down two insurgents carrying away an American soldier. Giunta killed one and wounded the other before beginning to treat his injured comrade.

Now a retired U.S. Navy captain, Kelley received his Medal of Honor for leading eight river assault craft boats on a daring June 15, 1969, mission to rescue a trapped U.S. Army infantry company along the Ong Muong Canal in Vietnam’s Kien Hoa Province.

When a mechanical glitch caused a loading ramp on one of the armored troop carriers to fail, Kelley ordered the other boats to circle the crippled craft. He then boldly positioned his own monitor directly in the face of Viet Cong fire and yelled at his men to attack.

In the fierce firefight, an enemy rocket-propelled grenade speared into the coxswain’s flat, slicing through the thick armor and then detonating inside Kelley’s boat, peppering him with shrapnel.

Despite suffering severe head wounds and the loss of an eye, Kelley continued to direct his column of boats from the deck of his monitor until they exited the kill zone. 

Ibarra graduated from Texas Tech University in 2021, earning her Bachelor of Science in Nursing. She’s now a charge nurse in neurology and practices as a travel nurse in hospitals all over northern Colorado and southern Wyoming, caring for up to five patients during her shifts. She hopes to work next in the emergency room or an intensive care unit.

She credits the bus crash for teaching her how to remain calm during emergencies, but she almost never talks about her own heroism or the awards. Instead, she draws inspiration from Kelley, Giunta, and the other veterans she’s met, and then uses their stories to help heal her patients.

“It did make me more aware of what’s going on with them, and just appreciating them, knowing what to say to them, because a lot of my patients are veterans,” she said. “And I just feel like, if I can’t give back to these guys that did give me my medal, I can at least give back to them.”

“That’s the only time I bring it up voluntarily,” she said. “If I name off some that they know, and tell them some of their story, they’ll get into it. Then they’ll start telling me their stories, and then we can really bond.”

The Congressional Medal of Honor Society has been accepting nominees for their Citizen Honors Awards since 2007. The nonprofit annually conducts a nationwide search to pick five U.S. citizens and an organization to recognize, as part of a larger effort to fulfill its mission of promoting the values of the Medal of Honor: courage, sacrifice, integrity, commitment, patriotism and citizenship.

Only military Medal of Honor recipients select individuals and organizations from those finalists to receive the awards and be honored on National Medal of Honor day, March 25.

To nominate someone for the Citizen Honors Awards, visit cmohs.org/citizen-honors/nominate. The deadline is December 1, 2024.

—————————————————————————————————————————–

Noelle Wiehe is an award-winning journalist from Cincinnati, Ohio. She has covered several Army units and deployed as an active-duty Army soldier, in support of Operation Inherent Resolve to Kuwait. As a Military Veterans in Journalism fellow, she reported on every branch of the military as well as the first responder community for Coffee or Die Magazine. Today, she continues to serve through her work with Military Veterans in Journalism and as a military beat freelance writer while residing in Lafayette, Louisiana.