Who: Jenn Smiley, 28, a WellSpan nursing assistant, and Zuheil Maldonado, 43, an accident victim from Red Lion.

What: Jenn was driving home from work around noon on a rainy fall day. She was about to turn left off Springwood Road, north of Dallastown, when she saw a car heading toward her, flashing its lights.

“Something told me to keep driving straight,” she says. “I don’t know why.”

Jenn, who is a former volunteer firefighter, followed Springwood Road around a bend and saw why the car was flashing its lights: a horrible accident had just occurred. A crushed car was pushed to the side of the road, next to another damaged vehicle.

“There was just a lot of debris everywhere,” Jenn recalls. “I got out and ran to the scene. There were two other people there and one of them happened to be my brother-in-law, who also stopped. I didn’t realize it was him until we both went to the car to help the person inside. I was kind of in the zone.”

She and her brother-in-law tried to pry open the door of the car but could not so they broke through the windshield and cut the deployed airbag so they could see the person in the car. It was a woman who was bleeding from her mouth, had a huge, blood-filled lump on her head and a distorted leg pointing at an unnatural angle.

Jenn talked to the woman, who was disoriented and yelling, trying to calm her and let her know that help was on the way. When rescuers arrived, they had to cut the roof off her car to extract the woman and then took her to WellSpan York Hospital. A shaken Jenn left the scene.

Jenn works as a floater, moving around to different units, as she is pursuing a nursing degree at Jersey College’s School of Nursing at WellSpan Health. A few days after the accident, she reported for work in a unit on Tower 3.

“I just walked into a room and realized, ‘Oh my gosh, you were the person in the accident,’” she says. “She started bawling when she realized who I was. It was just crazy.”

She met Zuheil, whose nickname is Z. She had broken both of her legs, a wrist and some ribs in the accident, as well as dislocated her hip. For the next three weeks, while Z recovered from her surgeries and began to heal, Jenn faithfully visited her every few days.

Z was discharged to a nursing home, where she healed for another six weeks. She is now fully recovered and back to work at her job as an aide at a support program for people with autism and intellectual disabilities.

Words to live by: “It kind of hit home when I saw her in the hospital as a patient after the accident,” Jenn says. “After having an experience like that, you always wonder what happens to someone. It was good seeing the outcome, seeing that she survived and is doing well.”

Jenn heard Z tell her family several times, “She didn’t have to stop, and she did!”

She notes, “I guess I always stop when that stuff happens just because it’s just something I’ve always done, after being a firefighter. If I can help someone, then I want to.”

When she encountered Z in the hospital by chance after the accident, she knew she wanted to keep helping her.

“I was just someone to visit her and keep her spirits high and encourage her to just keep trying,” says Jenn, who was honored for her actions with a Rose Award, given to WellSpan York Hospital team members who demonstrate qualities that exceed expectations.

Z, who is married and has an 11-year-old child, calls Jenn her “guardian angel.”

“I’m a believer and I believe that God saved me from the accident. I had no seat belt on that day,” says Z, who says she now wears her seat belt every time she gets into her car. “There was no way I came out alive. And God sent her. Her role was to get me the help that I needed.”

“We need more people like her,” Z adds. “For her to stop, you can tell she loves what she’s doing. That’s her mission. It’s in her.”

After the accident, Z was amazed that Jenn’s kindness continued.

“That girl was always in my room,” she says. “She visited me. She talked to me. I just love her.”

Zuheil Maldonado (left) hugs Jenn Smiley, her "guardian angel."