Vanessa Carrillo says she was just thirsty.

Now, she's getting a little unexpected assistance to quench her thirst and pursue medical school.

When the 19-year-old emergency medical technician woke from a medically induced coma the morning of Dec. 15 — a little more than 24 hours after a drunken, wrong-way driver plowed into the ambulance Carrillo was driving on Interstate 25 — the first request the injured teen had was for a sip of her favorite drink.

"I just asked for a Dr Pepper," Carrillo said. "I was thirsty. What else would I ask for?"

Followers of the young girl's long road to recovery took notice.

Mention of that simple request for a Dr Pepper found its way into an article published in the Dec. 16 edition of The New Mexican. During the next two weeks, friends and fellow first responders bombarded Carrillo with "probably around 200" Dr Peppers while she recovered.

"It's OK," she told The New Mexican from her La Cienega home for a Jan. 1 article chronicling her progress. "You can never have too much Dr Pepper."

Stuart Feltman, vice president of sales for Coca-Cola Bottling Co. in Santa Fe, sent a copy of the Jan. 1 edition of The New Mexican to Dr Pepper's national headquarters.

"We were so inspired by this girl after reading that article," Feltman said. "We all have kids, and this really just hit home with some of us about this girl who was doing everything right — she knew she wanted to be a doctor, she was an EMT, she was going to school to follow her dream — and then because of something that was absolutely no fault of her own, all this happened to her.

"We knew we had to do something."

Ah, the power of product placement.

While details still need to be finalized during a meeting with the Carrillo family today, Feltman confirmed that 50 cents of every case of Dr Pepper sold during the next month — "at least a month, maybe longer I hope," said Feltman — at the Santa Fe Walmart store and area Quick Stop convenience stores will be put into a fund to help Carrillo with college expenses.

The Hart family, longtime owners of Coca-Cola Bottling Co. in Santa Fe, will pay 25 cents, and that will be matched by Dr Pepper, Feltman said. He wasn't sure if Sam's Club sales would be included, "but I sure hope so, because they sell a lot of Dr Pepper," Feltman said.

Carrillo, who also was an aspiring ballerina and a volunteer with the La Cienega Volunteer Fire Department, has said she wanted to be a doctor ever since she watched firefighters, nurses and other medical professionals care for her mother, who died in 2006, when Carrillo was just 15.

"She knew then she wanted to be a doctor and not only said it, she went out and got certified as an EMT by 17 and was working for an ambulance company, doing everything right to get into medical school one day," Feltman said. "This was a young lady who had it all going for her, and then this happened. We just hope we can help, in some small way, make sure this doesn't derail what she was hoping to do."

Carrillo, who is unable to attend classes this semester, hopes to re-enroll next fall at The University of New Mexico.

The 4-foot-11 1/2 — "don't forget the half," she insisted in a late December interview — 92-pound Carrillo said she is grateful for the generosity of Coca-Cola and Dr Pepper and also of hundreds of complete strangers who have been generous with cards, grocery-store gift cards and other donations to help her family with unexpected expenses.

"I was at Smith's last week, and a man recognized me from the paper and came up to me and wanted to tell me his two daughters admired me," Carrillo said. "Then when he did that, three or four other people recognized me, too, and started coming up to me to talk. I'm sort of shy and embarrassed by all this, to be honest. The generosity has been amazing from so many people I've never even met."

Carrillo singled out a few, including members of the Los Alamos Fire Department, who have been especially generous since the crash. On Dec. 24, a caravan of about 15 first-responder vehicles, including the Turquoise Trail Volunteer Fire Department, which provided an ambulance for Carrillo free of charge, escorted the Carrillo family from University Hospital in Albuquerque to their La Cienega home so she could spend Christmas there.

Last week, Carrillo finally met the two Santa Fe police officers who crawled into her ambulance the morning of the crash and kept her company until firefighters were able to cut her out of the smashed vehicle.

James Valencia, chief of the La Cienega Volunteer Fire Department, set up a fund at First Community Bank, which took community donations for the family.

The driver who hit Carrillo in the Dec. 14 crash, 26-year-old Kylene Holmes of El Paso, died at the scene. A toxicology report released last week from the state Office of the Medical Investigator in Albuquerque stated Holmes had a blood alcohol content of 0.26 — more than three times the legal limit to drive — and traces of marijuana and painkillers in her system. Holmes' passenger, 38-year-old Jennifer Michelle Belvin, survived the crash.

Carrillo had 20 breaks in both legs and 15 in her face as a result of the crash. She also tore a tendon in her arm. She has already begun physical rehabilitation and said therapists have set a target date of Feb. 3 for her to try and put weight on her legs for the first time. For now, she still requires 24-hour assistance from her sister, Desiree, 21, and her father, Larry, and she continues to use a wheelchair.

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