(COLORADO SPRINGS) — A cadet at the U.S. Air Force Academy is now looking forward to continuing to serve his country, start a family and become a pilot, but said none of this would have been possible, if a nurse hadn’t stopped to help after his parachute malfunctioned.

Cadet 3rd Class Boaz Abramoff comes from a family of Jewish immigrants, with his parents and two brothers born in the Netherlands before coming to the United States. He said his grandparents were children and remember being in hiding during the Holocaust, and witnessing U.S. troops marching in to liberate them. He said his grandpa was so grateful, he came to America and enlisted in the 101st Airborne Division and served in the Korean War.

“For us, me an my brothers, it was never even a question that we would serve,” Abramoff said.

Now, all three brothers are serving in some capacity, but Abramoff’s service was almost cut short in July of 2023.

“I was taking Airmanship 490, which is the jump program,” Abramoff said.

The program includes weeks of preparation before a cadet even gets to jump out of a plane. When the day finally comes, they know exactly what to do and when. Abramoff said his first two solo freefall jumps had gone off without a hitch.

“For the first ten seconds, it’s just you. Like, no parachute or anything. Then again, you’ve done all this training, you know your steps and you pull the parachute and it comes up and you do all the things,” Abramoff said. “It’s a really, really cool experience.”

On his third jump, everything started out just as it had previously, but it didn’t end the same. Abramoff said he doesn’t remember what happened next, but an off-duty nurse who was driving past the airfield on the Air Force Academy did.

Alicia Shamblin, a military spouse who also has a son at USAFA, was driving home from Costco, passing the airfield. She knew cadets were jumping that day and watched as the jumpers landed in the open field, where they were supposed to.

But one cadet was not with all the others.

“They were supposed to land here,” Shamblin said, pointing to the airfield. “He was over there, and I could tell by the way the parachute was coming down that it was going to be a crash.”

Abramoff was headed straight for an area near the Santa Fe trail along the railroad tracks. Shamblin said she immediately pulled her car over once she crossed the bridge, and began scrambling down the embankment in her sandals, crunching over cacti and ripping through gnarled bushes.

“I did not want someone’s son or daughter to essentially die on their own,” Shamblin said. “I initially ran to just be with that cadet in their, what I thought might be their final moments, and pray with that cadet.”

When she got there, she saw the cadet was still alive, and she would have to put her nursing skills to use.

“I noticed he was face down and knew that we would have to turn him over and support the head and spine,” she said. “He had quite a bit of debris in his mouth and I knew if I didn’t get that out of his airway, he could potentially breathe that into his lungs.”

She and another person who showed up to help positioned Abramoff on his pack and she supported his head and neck until emergency services arrived. Medical officials later said if she had not been there, he likely would have died. The fact she happened to be a nurse driving by at the right time, she said, was no conicidence.

“It was divine intervention. I don’t believe it was a coincidence, I call it a ‘God incidence’,” she said.

From there, Abramoff was taken to a nearby hospital where he said he was in a coma for several weeks. He took a year off recovering, and just came back to the USAFA this past summer. It was a decision, he said, that was a no-brainer.

“That was never even a consideration for me because this is the number one place,” Abramoff said.

Shamblin has since been a part of Abramoff’s life, developing relationships with his parents, and of course him.

“He’s my fourth child, so I’m hopeful there will be wedding invitations and baby announcements,” Shamblin laughed.

Abramoff said everything he has done or will do in the future, is all thanks to her.

“Hopefully I’ll do a lot, you know, for my country, start a family, all of these things. None of that would happen if she wasn’t there exactly when she was and she didn’t do exactly what she did when she did it,” he said.

Shamblin said she hopes this can also encourage others who have the tools or skillset that are needed to act if there ever is an opportunity to do so.

“Had I driven past and thought, ‘Somebody else will do this,’ I mean, we have no idea what would have been the outcome. So, I would challenge anybody. Be that person. Listen to this still small voice. Stop and respond. Because I think seconds matter.”

Abramoff said the goal now is to become a pilot. He still has yet to jump since the accident, but hopes once he is medically cleared, he will as soon as he can.