Hollywood brings a New Mexico couple’s story to the big screen

	‘The Vow’ The film, which stars Channing Tatum and Rachel McAdams, opens nationwide today. It is based on the book written by Kim and Krickitt Carpenter.

“We’re very happy with the film and, of course, Hollywood took some liberties,” Kim said of their unique personal story. Soon after the two married in 1993, Krickitt lost her memory and had to learn to love her husband all over again.

“Rachel and Channing made sure that they understood our story,” Kim said. “They watched interviews of us and studied us to make sure they got it right. Basically, they took 23 years of our life and turned it into a 103-minute film.”

Seeing the Carpenters today, they lead a very normal life. Kim, 46, is the executive officer for San Juan County, while Krickitt, 42, is a substitute teacher in Farmington and they have two children – Danny James, 11, and LeeAnn, 8.

“It’s all been a blessing for us, and we don’t take anything for granted,” Kim said. “We’re enjoying the fact that our children can experience our story on two different levels.”

For the Carpenters, their story began in 1992 when the two met over the phone when Kim, who was a baseball coach at New Mexico Highlands University, called the sportswear company that Krickitt worked for to place an order and they clicked. The pair then started a long-distance relationship – Kim in Las Vegas, N.M., and Krickitt in Anaheim, Calif. As the relationship moved on, the couple spent more time together and eventually married on Sept. 18, 1993.

But two months later, their lives changed. On Nov. 24, 1993, the then-newlyweds were traveling along I-40 to Arizona – just six miles outside of Gallup.

As their car came up behind a slow-moving, flatbed truck with no taillights, Krickitt swerved left to avoid the truck only to be struck by a Chevy pickup.

The crash sent the Carpenters’ Ford Escort flying and when it landed – on its roof – it skid for more than 100 feet along I-40.

Kim had fractured ribs, lung damage and facial lacerations while a severe skull fracture and massive hemorrhaging sent Krickitt into a coma.

In mid-December 1993, Krickitt came out of her coma, only to have lost the memory of the past 18 months.

“This was the time where Kim and I had met and gotten married,” she said. “I still don’t remember that time or anyone that I met during the time. And I don’t think I’ll ever get it back.”

Aside from having no short-term memory, Krickitt would sleep for 23 hours a day and when she was awake, she was like an infant.

Krickitt had no motor skills and had to learn how to walk.

She said basically a two-year period was wiped out of her memory and yet she had to move in with this stranger – her husband – who took care of her.

He bathed her, combed her hair and fed her.

“I had wedding rings and photos, but no memory,” she said. “It was very confusing to me. But in order to move on, I had to accept what happened to me and allow myself to get to know Kim again. It was a choice for me to love him a second time, but it came with a lot of work. I took it slow and got to know him and based on what I saw and felt, I liked it. It all sounds so simple now that I explain it, but there were plenty of struggles.”

The couple remarried in 1996. Kim said their journey has been filled with peaks and valleys.

“It’s been a struggle to get where we are today,” Kim said. “The one thing that always remained true is that we made a vow to each other in front of our family, friends and God. It was to take care of each other no matter the case.”

Kim said he and Krickitt have lived pretty transparent lives since 1996, when their story was being told worldwide. In fact, Journal readers first met the couple in a story by Toby Smith published two weeks before they remarried.

“We’ve been interviewed by news outlets all over the world,” Kim said. “I had one Japanese television producer tell me that the world needs this story. So Krickitt and I are just doing what we feel we need to do. We are fighters and love one another.”

The two wrote their story, “The Vow: The Kim and Krickitt Carpenter Story,” which was published in 2000 and is the basis for the movie. They have updated the book, “The Vow: The True Events That Inspired The Movie,” which is coming out today. It includes photos and information about the movie.

A screening of the film was held in Farmington on Wednesday for friends and family.

Kim said it was an opportunity to say thank you to those who helped the couple overcome many of the obstacles.

“The first paramedic to help Krickitt came to the screening, as well as the flight nurse to accompany her to the ICU,” he said. “It was a special night for us because we got to share the story through a different medium with those closest to us.”

— This article appeared on page A1 of the Albuquerque Journal

Here is Toby Smith’s original story from 1996:

* A COLLISION LEFT NEWLYWED KRICKITT CARPENTER WITH NO MEMORY OF HER MARRIAGE AND AS HELPLESS AS A BABY, BUT HUSBAND KIM DIDN’T GIVE UP; TWO YEARS LATER, THEY ARE READY TO RENEW THEIR VOWS.

LAS VEGAS, N.M. — Wedding photographs decorate shelves and tables in a tidy, two-bedroom apartment here. They are joyous pictures, these shots of a beaming bride and groom, taken just 2 1/2 years ago.

Soon, there will be new wedding photos — of the same couple.

When Kim and Krickitt Carpenter got married, they felt they knew each other well. Then an automobile accident turned them into strangers. Following a two-year recovery in which each battled pain and despair — and, at times, each other — to get better, the couple rediscovered one another.

For the Carpenters, love and a guiding spirit have proved to be remarkable forces.

Life together just beginning

The brand-new, white Ford Escort cruised along Interstate 40 on Nov. 24, 1993. Behind the wheel, Krickitt Carpenter, 24, was headed to her parents’ home in Phoenix for Thanksgiving vacation. Her husband, Kim, 28, the baseball coach at New Mexico Highlands University, was lying on the car’s back seat, trying to rest a bad cold. Kim’s assistant coach at Highlands, Milan Rasic, sat in the passenger’s seat up front, on his way to Arizona to catch a plane.

About 6:30 p.m., six miles west of Gallup, Kim was awakened by a scream from Krickitt, then by Rasic’s voice calling, “Watch out!”

The Carpenters’ car had suddenly come up behind a slow-moving, exhaust-spewing flatbed truck with no taillights. Swerving to avoid the truck, Krickitt veered to her left, only to be struck immediately by a Chevy pickup, following closely behind.

The Ford Escort went flying. When it landed, the car skidded along I-40 on its roof for more than 100 feet.

“Krickitt!” Kim yelled as he lay pinned in the wreckage. Rasic answered: “You all right, coach?” Though he hurt all over, Kim knew he would live. He didn’t know about his wife, nor why he was so wet.

It wasn’t water that soaked Kim. It was Krickitt’s blood.

Rescuers took the three travelers to Gallup’s Rehoboth McKinley Christian Hospital. Kim had fractured ribs, lung damage and facial lacerations. Rasic had injured his shoulder.

But a severe skull fracture and massive hemorrhaging in her brain sent Krickitt into a coma.

As Kim lay in the hospital’s emergency room, a doctor entered and handed him a small manila envelope. Inside, Kim found his wife’s wedding ring and wristwatch.

“I’m terribly sorry,” the doctor said.

Somehow, Krickitt held on and later that night she was airlifted to University of New Mexico Hospital.

The following morning, Kim found his wife in Albuquerque hooked up to a life-support system.

“If she lives,” Kim heard someone whisper, “she’ll likely be a vegetable.”

In the hospital’s chapel, Kim prayed with all his soul. And as he did, he couldn’t help realizing that just as his life seemed to have started, it now appeared to be ending.

   Near-storybook romance 

In 1992, Kim Carpenter was a coach as well as assistant athletic director at Highlands University. A sturdily built, gung-ho NMHU grad who had grown up in Farmington, Kim had one real love in life: baseball.

That September, Kim telephoned a sportswear company in Anaheim, Calif., to order sweatsuits for his team.

The sales rep, Krisxan Pappas, whom everybody called Krickitt, had a nice voice, Kim noticed, and within a few days Kim called her back.

In a short time, the two were talking on the phone every week, then three or four times a week.

In January, Kim mailed Krickitt a copy of the HU baseball team’s media guide. By early March, they swapped photographs. And in April, Kim invited Krickitt to Las Vegas for a series of ballgames with Northern Colorado.

When they finally met in person, Kim marveled at all he had in common with this spunky young woman with big blue eyes.

Indeed, both had been college athletes. Krickitt had been a gymnast at Cal State-Fullerton. Like Kim, Krickitt’s father was a baseball coach, and, like Kim, she was a Christian.

In May, Kim met Krickitt in California during a recruiting trip.

In June, Kim returned to California and, crouching on one knee outside her apartment, he held up a bouquet.

“Who are those flowers for?” Krickitt wondered. But, of course, she knew.

On Sept. 18, 1993, the pair wed in Scottsdale, Ariz. When Kim stood at the altar, he held Krickitt’s wedding ring in a baseball mitt.

After honeymooning in Maui, the pair returned to Las Vegas and settled in Kim’s apartment. Krickitt served as the baseball team’s statistician that fall and official team cookie baker.

“I can’t imagine,” Kim sighed to friends, “how I could be any happier.”

Married to a stranger 

Doctors at UNMH eventually agreed the best place for Krickitt would be Barrow Neurological Institute, near her parents’ home in Phoenix.

Barrow had an outstanding reputation for treating patients with head injuries, and by mid-December 1993, three weeks after the accident, three months after her wedding, Krickitt came out of her coma.

Still, the progress that followed was agonizingly slow.

Krickitt would sleep for 23 hours a day and when she wakened she was an infant, right down to the diapers she had to wear.

“I have to bathe her, comb her hair and feed her,” Kim reported to his parents.

When she tried to walk, Krickitt had no motor skills. Worse, she had no short-term memory.

While she could recall her childhood and teen-age years, her marriage and life in New Mexico were a blank.

“Who are you married to?” a therapist asked her one day.

“I’m not married,” said an expressionless Krickitt.

“Who’s your husband?” the therapist pressed.

“Todd,” answered Krickitt, mentioning the name of an old boyfriend.

With tears in his eyes, Kim staggered out to the hospital’s hallway and slammed his fist against a wall.

Kim Carpenter had never accepted defeat easily, not as an athlete or as a coach. Though he wondered if Krickitt would ever lead a normal life, Kim refused to give up on her. Sure, it would be easy to dump Krickitt, to leave her; it happened all the time in head-injury cases. Instead, he prayed even more and rededicated himself to getting Krickitt better.

“Hardest coaching job I’ve ever done,” Kim told his boss back at Highlands, athletic director Robert Evers. School officials urged him to take as much time off as he needed. Las Vegas rallied with financial support.

Little by little, Krickitt began to improve. Kim, who had been working with Krickitt on coordination, using a whiffle ball and bat, one day in January lobbed her a pitch. Usually Krickitt missed the ball by 4 feet. This day she socked it over Kim’s head.

But these high points always seemed to be accompanied by lows. When Kim refused to let his wife ease up during rehab, she snapped at him: “Why don’t you go back to Las Vegas or wherever you’re from.”

By February, Krickitt, her physical condition benefited by a lifetime of gymnastics, had improved enough to leave the hospital and move into her parents’ house. She would continue at Barrow as an outpatient.

In March, Kim returned to Las Vegas and his duties as baseball coach.

One afternoon, Krickitt told a Barrow therapist, “I miss that guy who was here.” A few days later, she called Kim in New Mexico.

“How are you?” Kim said.

“Fine,” said Krickitt. “I gotta go now.”

As Krickitt mended, Kim struggled, and that April he resigned as baseball coach. Mentally and physically, he was simply exhausted.

On April 14, 1994, Krickitt returned to Las Vegas.

She recognized nothing. Someone else, she decided, had decorated the apartment. When her mother showed her china that Krickitt had selected the year before, Krickitt touched the unfamiliar dishes and said only, “They’re pretty.”

When Krickitt studied her wedding album, she didn’t know the bride in the photos. “It’s like living in a dream,” she told Kim.

More therapy continued, in Las Vegas and Albuquerque. That fall, Krickitt went back to work, as an exercise technician at Northeast Regional Hospital, a job she’d had before the accident.

As the couple became reacquainted, Kim discovered that Krickitt was not the same person he had married. The pre-accident Krickitt, Kim remembered, was patient, self-confident, whip-smart. The new Krickitt got frustrated easily, was clumsy at times, and had trouble learning new things. Moreover, she often spoke in a tone of voice that Kim had never heard. For the first time ever, the couple got into arguments. After one quarrel, Kim remarked, “I miss the old Krickitt.”

“I miss her, too,” Krickitt said.

Meanwhile, Kim had changed, too. The accident caused him to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder and, on occasion, to treat Krickitt as a parent would treat a child.

Eventually, he went to a counselor who worked with Kim to leave the past behind and who suggested that Kim date Krickitt again, that he court her.

So he did. The pair started going out — to the Pizza Hut, to the Serf Theatre, to watch Highlands play football and basketball games.

And sometime during this courtship, Kim Carpenter fell in love with his wife — again.

And then Krickitt Carpenter fell in love, too.

On Feb. 14, Valentine’s Day, Kim went to Krickitt’s workplace and, with a bouquet in hand, got down on one knee to propose, just as he had done almost three years before.

“Who are those flowers for?” Krickitt said once more. But, of course, she knew.

The Carpenters have picked May 25, and Pendaries, a resort near Las Vegas, to renew their vows. But it will be a wedding ceremony as well. Krickitt will wear the same dress she wore the first time. She will have her same maid of honor and three of her original five bridesmaids will attend.

And when the event ends, the couple will go to the same Maui hotel they stayed in back in 1993.

   ”I’ve seen the miracles” 

The other day, while making plans for their wedding, the Carpenters reflected on how they have found peace from so much hurt.

“I’m not marrying the same person I married three years ago,” Kim said. “But I’m not the same person, either. For instance, baseball doesn’t mean what it used to mean to me. That was part of our old life. Krickitt and I, we’re closer now, we’ve got a different bond now, a more meaningful connection than before.”

Kim said the accident has strengthened his Christian faith. “My friends say I’ve become a religious freak. No, I tell them, I’ve just seen the miracles that God’s work can provide.”

Krickitt isn’t getting married again just because people expect her to do it.

“I have flash memories of my life just before the accident, but I don’t have heart memories. That’s what I want to get back. Something in my heart.”