1995 train derailment survivor recalls how woman helped save him

PHOENIX (AZFamily) — Two strangers formed a bond during the chaos of a sabotaged train derailment in Arizona and now, 30 years later, they’ve reconnected.

The woman and young boy were passengers on Amtrak’s Sunset Limited train when the FBI said someone caused it to derail in 1995.

The boy, now a man, came across our True Crime Arizona story about the derailment online and used it to reconnect with the woman who helped him.

They thought they would never find each other again, and ironically, both had been looking for each other for decades.

The derailment of the Sunset Limited killed an engineer killed and dozens injured.

That engineer had been the only person caring for 9-year-old Patrick Healy as he boarded the train in Longview, Texas, headed for Portland, Oregon.

The story we told was posted on YouTube.

“It would be the first time I ever saw anything about it,” Healy told us.

He said the story came up as “suggested” while watching music videos with his niece.

He was on the train alone, and when it derailed, Amtrak staff asked passenger LouAnn Zulawski to watch over him. We interviewed her for that story on Monday.

“The FBI was talking to you and this and that, and then all of the sudden, there she was. There she was!” exclaimed Healy with tears in his eyes. “For the first time, I heard her say my name.”

Emotional, Healy thought maybe now was his chance to find her.

“I watched it, I watched it again, I watched it again, and then I started trying to find some information out on how to get in contact with your team,” said Healy.

Healy described the aftermath of the crash and the passengers’ screams.

He watched two lights come over the mountaintop out the train window and instantly felt a rush of calm in the chaos.

“I knew right then everything was going to be OK. Everything was going to be alright, and when that feeling hit me and the lights hit the window, Ms. LouAnn in the back through the screams said my full name and told me to come to her. She was here to help,” recalled Healy.

Zulawski tried to get him in front of media cameras so his family could see he was alive, but after that, they got separated.

“In a sense, she saved my life. On the other hand, she was the only one that day there for me,” said Healy.

The True Crime Arizona team got Healy and Zulawski in contact with each other for the first time in decades, which touched Zulawski just as much as it did Healy.

“It’s not very often that someone tells you that you saved them and that you’re their angel and that they’d been looking for you for 20 years,” said Zulawski.

While the derailment crime is still unsolved, this was the closure both passengers said they needed after all this time.

“I wanted her to know, word to word, mouth to mouth, from my own voice to her, what she meant to me, what she means to me still, you know. She’ll always forever be in my heart and a staple in my life,” said Healy.

There is still a $310,000 reward for anyone with information about who deliberately derailed Sunset Limited in October 1995.

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