KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (WATE) A Knoxville woman was awarded the Key to the City in Sedalia, Missouri, after saving the life of a car crash victim.

Jada McMillan is a Knoxville native and a graduate of Hardin Valley Academy. In 2021, she joined the U.S. Air Force. She currently works as an aerospace medical technician and is stationed at Whiteman Air Force Base in Knob Noster, Missouri.

She was driving home from work on July 9 when she witnessed a crash.

“There was a car in front of me, I’m looking down changing the music, I looked back up and I see the car in front of that car just swerving into the other side of the road, dipped into one ditch, came out the ditch a little bit airborne and then nose dived into the other ditch,” McMillan said.

The car was being driven by a 23-year-old nurse named ShiAnn.

A woman got out of the car in front of McMillan, and McMillan recognized her as another employee at the airbase, Darci Curtis. The two quickly jumped into action.

McMillan is EMT certified. Initially, she did not want to move ShiAnn out of the car and risk making her injuries worse. But then things changed.

“When I saw the smoke coming from underneath her hood, I was like that’s not a good sign so me and Darci knew, ‘ok, we need to get her out of here,’ so Darci’s holding the airbags up out of the way and I pulled her out of the car,” McMillan said.

Meanwhile, ShiAnn’s mom, Melissa Johnson, was rushing to the crash. ShiAnn’s phone sent an alert to Johnson’s phone saying that she had been in a crash, with the location attached.

She was about 10 minutes down the road when she got a phone call.

“It was obviously an unknown number and it said Knoxville, Tennessee, and I started to ignore it because I had bigger, better things to deal with at that time,” she explained. “Then something just said maybe this has to do with the accident.”

“When I answered it the first thing I heard was ShiAnn going, ‘mama,’ and then Jada came on the line and said she’s okay.”

ShiAnn is still recovering. Her mom said she broke two vertebrae in her back, had spinal cord swelling, bone edema around the area, and ruptured three disks.

A few months later, McMillan got a call from the Mayor of Sedalia. At first, she thought it was a prank.

“All I hear is, ‘Hi Jada, blah blah blah I’m the mayor,’ and I’m like, ‘girl, come on, stop playing in my face,” she explained. “And he’s like, ‘yeah, I want to present you with a key to the city.’ I didn’t even know that was a real thing; I thought that was something that really only happened on TV for superheroes.”

Jada received the award last week and was able to meet ShiAnn’s family.

“Once the introductions had been made and we, for a lack of better terms, knew each other at that point, it felt like family,” Johnson said. “And it was an honor to be able to say these are the people that gave me my kid back.”

“Honestly, I thought that was better than even getting the award,” McMillan said. “Just getting that closure and getting to meet them, and I know that they were so grateful for everything that happened and them expressing that, and they gave us flowers, that was just a really special moment.”

Darci Curtis, the other woman who pulled ShiAnn out of the car, was also given a Key to the City. She works in pharmacy on the airbase, in the same building as McMillan.