Vanessa Carrillo remembers seeing those headlights.

But while she'll never forget them — whether because the image is burned into her memory or because of the numerous scars on her slight body — she refuses to dwell on them.

"What good is it going to do me to get mad about what happened?" asked Carrillo, the 19-year-old emergency medical technician whose ambulance was struck head-on Dec. 14 by a wrong-way, suspected drunken driver traveling at well over 100 miles per hour on Interstate 25 south of Santa Fe.

"I don't get too mad about it, but I don't have any sympathy for her (Kylene Holmes, the suspected drunken driver who died in the crash) either. What she was doing was stupid and I could have been killed. I actually feel lucky."

The toll

Lucky is relative.

The 4-foot, 11 1/2-inch — "don't forget the half," she insists — 92-pound Carrillo, the youngest of four girls in her family, will be using a wheelchair and in need of 24-hour assistance for at least two months, and likely will not be able to drive again for about six months.

With her 21-year-old sister, Desiree, and father, Larry, at her side, and photos of her late mother, Elizabeth, who died in 2006, looking down from a mantel, Carrillo sat in front of a fire in her La Cienega home Friday morning and explained how lucky she feels.

"Lucky" for her includes showing off scars, stitches, staples, bruises and trying to count the number of fractures doctors say they found — a count the family agreed is at least 35, including 15 fractures in her facial bones and at least 20 breaks in her legs. Doctors inserted numerous pins and rods for stability. She also had a torn tendon in her left elbow that had to be reattached while she was under a medically induced coma at University Hospital in Albuquerque, where she was airlifted after the crash.

"It could have been worse," she said in her shy, soft voice.

Moving on

The young woman's ability to move past the Dec. 14 crash without anger isn't exactly shared by everyone around her.

"I don't feel bad at all for what happened to them," Larry Carrillo, Vanessa's father, said of Holmes, the 26-year-old wrong-way driver from El Paso who died in the crash or her 38-year-old passenger, Jennifer Michelle Belvin of California, who was released from the hospital more than a week ago.

"One of them is dead and the other, she got to walk away and is probably going on with her life out in California now like nothing happened. It was just stupid what they did. They could have killed my daughter, and she wasn't doing anything wrong."

The investigation

Holmes and Belvin were drinking at Cowgirl BBQ less than an hour before the crash, and while an attorney for the downtown Santa Fe restaurant says a credit card receipt shows only two drinks purchased by the pair, police are still looking into how many other drinks the two women might have had that they didn't purchase there themselves.

Santa Fe Police Chief Aric Wheeler on Friday said he can confirm the investigation has revealed the women did have at least some drinks purchased for them, but said he could not confirm how many or who bought the drinks.

"All I know is somebody obviously kept giving them drinks," Larry Carrillo said.

A search-warrant affidavit filed by police indicates a bottle of vodka, unidentified pills and "green leafy" substances were found in the 2007 Nissan Altima that Holmes was driving.

Emergency dispatch recordings released this week indicate that less than an hour after the two women left Cowgirl BBQ, and after a bouncer there called police alerting them to a pair of drunken women about to leave the area, at least four calls came in between 2:16 a.m. and 2:22 a.m. reporting a the car speeding the wrong direction on northbound I-25.

While police don't know exactly how fast Holmes was driving, the first caller at 2:16 a.m. reported seeing Holmes between mile marker 299 and 300. The crash was reported just eight minutes later at mile marker 279, around 20 miles from the first reported sighting.

Dispatch logs show Santa Fe police were at the Cerrillos Road exit less than a mile away laying down road spikes at the time of the crash with the hopes of puncturing the tires of Holmes' car.

Wheeler has said he would like to see Belvin charged as an accessory to a crime.

The state's Public Regulation Commission, meanwhile, is investigating past inspection records of Rocky Mountain EMS regarding the ambulance Carrillo was driving, which had a driver's side air bag that did not deploy in the head-on. Multiple former Rocky Mountain EMS employees have contacted news media and the PRC concerning the company.

Vanessa, meanwhile, says she can't wait to go back to school to be a doctor in the fall of 2011 and get back to working as an EMT sometime soon.

Support system

Vanessa Carrillo spent her time before Dec. 14 shuffling between ballet recitals and practices, school and her job with Rocky Mountain EMS. Now, she's "watching a lot of Grey's Anatomy and Desperate Housewives" and also waking up at 7 a.m. each morning to watch Rugrats.

While doctors recommended she spend the next two months in a nursing facility while she rehabilitates, her family refused.

Desiree Carrillo, a 21-year-old certified nurses assistant who has worked at Christus St. Vincent Regional Medical Center and is pursuing a nursing degree, has traded in usual sibling bickering for a primary caregiver role around the family home.

"We don't fight as much as we used to now," Desiree said. "But don't think this one can't still get cranky sometimes. For now, I just let it go."

The Carrillo family said getting through the past few weeks since the crash probably wouldn't have happened without the support of the close-knit rescue community that has rallied around the family.

When it was reported in The New Mexican that Vanessa Carrillo woke up after surgery asking for a Dr. Pepper, her friends and supporters were apparently reading.

"I've been given more than 200 Dr. Peppers now, I think," she said, almost frustrated because she's on liquid restrictions that prevent her from drinking much soda. "It's OK. You can never have too much Dr. Pepper."

When she needed a ride home on Christmas Eve, the Turquoise Trail Volunteer Fire Department used its ambulance to transport her — one of about 15 emergency-response ambulances, police cars and firetrucks that took part in an escort from the Albuquerque hospital to the Carrillo's La Cienega home.

When it became apparent that workers compensation benefits for medical bills were only going to cover so much, James Valencia, the chief of the La Cienega Volunteer Fire Department, where Vanessa Carrillo is a volunteer, immediately set up a fund at First Community Bank to help the family with bills.

"I guess you can say you always sort of figure that your friends (in the EMT community) and family are going to be there for you if something happens," Vanessa Carrillo said. "But until something like this happens where you really need them, you just don't really know. But all this support has been so great. I guess that's why I feel lucky."

Contact Geoff Grammer at 986-3076 or ggrammer@sfnewmexican.com. Read his blog at SantaFeCrime.com.