Jordan Wells Walking Again, One Year After Miracle Survival

After car accident, Jordan Wells was the sole survivor of rescue chopper crash.

ByABC News via logo
February 26, 2009, 12:07 PM

Oct. 5, 2009— -- It was just one year ago that 19-year-old Jordan Wells lay dying in the woods near her hometown of Waldorf, Md.

In September 2008, Wells was a college freshman home for a weekend reunion when she survived a car crash only to endure a medevac helicopter crash on the way to the hospital that killed everyone else on board, including her best friend.

Wells lost one of her legs and in the last year has undergone 24 surgeries to repair a broken cheekbone, nose, eye socket, shoulder blade and the five disks that were dislodged along her spine.

Now, thanks to a cutting-edge prosthetic, Wells is back on her feet and said she is "feeling great."

"It feels like a real leg," she said today on "Good Morning America." "I'm just happy to walk."

On Saturday, Sept. 27, 2008, Wells, then 18, was behind the wheel of her car at 11 p.m., driving on slippery roads with best friend Ashley Younger, 17, in the passenger seat.

"I was driving and it was raining really, really hard that night," Wells told "20/20" earlier this year. "I don't remember how fast I was going, but I sure was saying to Ashley, I was like, 'I'm about to lose control.' And so before I knew it, it was going across the median and it was like bump, bump, bump, and we hit a tree."

Police and ambulances arrived on the scene to find the two girls in hysterics. Wells wanted to tell her parents about the crash but in the confusion, she lost her cell phone. Her parents, Scott and Lynn Wells, had no idea their daughter had been in a car accident.

Ashley Younger reached her mother, Stephanie Younger, on her cell phone, and her parents raced to the scene of the accident, where paramedics were trying to get the girls out of the car and determine the extent of their injuries.