When an eight-vehicle crash left Ross Kopfer and his 11-year-old son trapped in their Ford F-150 pickup, the hood in flames, they never imagined passersby would save them.
Kopfer and his son were saved after a deadly freeway crash by 2022 Waukesha County Technical College graduate Tyler Martins and others. In May, he was the keynote speaker at Martins' graduation ceremony.
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Ross Kopfer's truck is shown after passersby rescued him and his son.
Ross Kopfer meets in April with UW Health nurses who cared for him during a lengthy hospital stay for numerous injuries from a freeway crash. The nurses, from left, are Dave Schambow, Jennifer Milz, Vanessa Gates, Jessica Fall, Kelsey Spaith-Hilton and Lisa Pine, embracing Kopfer.
Ross Kopfer, center, and his son, Jacob, second from right, are grateful for the actions of motorists credited with saving their lives in a deadly 2020 crash. Truck driver Earl Morgan-Heft — along with Tyler Martins, second from left, and his sister, Erica Martin, right — rescued the Kopfers from their burning vehicle and treated them at the scene until medics arrived.
Earl Morgan-Heft and Erica Martins embrace at the Oconomowoc home of Ross Kopfer. Morgan-Heft, a truck driver from Lone Rock, and Martins, a nurse from Hartland, didn't know one another until they helped Kopfer and his son, Jacob, survive a deadly pileup two years ago.
Jacob Kopfer, left, and his dad, Ross, center, prepare to take the field before a baseball game last month in Summit, near their home in Oconomowoc. Jacob is back to playing baseball and Ross is back to coaching after both sustained life-threatening injuries in a deadly crash in 2020.
Ross Kopfer, with his son, Jacob, said most people think about the welfare of direct victims in the aftermath of deadly crashes like one the Kopfers survived two years ago. People should also think about how first responders, nurses, family members and Good Samaritans like those who helped save the Kopfers are doing, he said.
Ross Kopfer shows a photo of his Ford F-150 truck, from which he and his son were rescued before it exploded, after a multi-vehicle crash on Interstate 39-90-94 near Lodi on June 12, 2020.
Ross Kopfer, with son Jacob, were driving to a baseball tournament in Mauston two years ago when their truck was part of an eight-vehicle pileup that killed four. They traveled to another baseball tournament this weekend in DeForest, not far from the scene of the crash on Interstate 39-90-94 near Lodi.
No time to lose: Finding rare diseases in infants
Wisconsin doesn't screen newborns for some disorders other states include, which can delay treatment that could prevent death or disability.
As parents urge state officials to expand the program to catch more ailments early, doctors are increasingly turning to genome sequencing to diagnose some critical conditions.
Wisconsin doesn't test for Krabbe and Pompe diseases, deadly but treatable disorders detected in many other states.
Tardy tests can delay essential treatment, as a New London family learned.
Lawsuits over medical privacy in Minnesota and Texas forced those states to destroy millions of stored samples.
Other states say they test for more conditions, but a Wisconsin lab director said it isn't "a counting game."
Jenna and Kyle Heckendorf lost their son, Bryce, to Krabbe disease seven years ago when he was 18 months old
Atlas Faucher, 5, was diagnosed with Pompe disease at 4 months old
Jeremy Thoms, 21, has Krabbe disease and received a stem cell transplant at 4 weeks old
Wisconsin and most states test newborns for spinal muscular atrophy. But 12 don't, despite the need for prompt treatment.
The state started testing babies for severe combined immunodeficiency disorder in 2008.
Adults with spinal muscular atrophy can take two of three treatments, approved within the past five years.
Amy and Adan Medina’s children, Mateo, 10, Javier, 5, and Amelia, 3, were all born with SMA or spinal muscular atrophy
For the Gutzdorfs of Watertown, the situation for their son "was very much life or death."
At University Research Park, San Diego-based Illumina makes enzymes used in its DNA sequencers.
Rikki and Joshua Gutzdorf’s son, Theo, 3, was born with Stuve-Wiedemann syndrome that was diagnosed three weeks after birth through genome seq…
