Premium ContentClick on Premium Content on the Featured navigation bar for information.
Tamara Curtis and her mother hadn't spoken all weekend. So as Tamara, 36, left an Alcoholics Anonymous retreat in Treynor, Iowa, she got on her cell phone with her mother.
Tamara told her mother she was on an open stretch of road; it was OK to chat. Tamara talked about how good she felt after her retreat. She expressed joy at heading home to her 12-year-old son, Keith.
Then Joan Curtis, who was in Las Vegas at the time, heard Tamara exclaim, "Oh, my God, what's that?"
"That was the last thing I heard from my daughter," Joan Curtis said today.
Tamara Curtis's car collided with a pickup truck east of Council Bluffs. She was flown by helicopter to the Nebraska Medical Center, where she died.
The Pottawattamie County Sheriff's Office reported that Tamara Curtis was driving north on 300th Street when she stopped at the intersection of U.S. Highway 6.
Corey Hacket, 32, of Oakland, Iowa, was driving his 2003 Chevy Silverado east on Highway 6. He told authorities he saw Curtis' Ford Focus stop, briefly, then enter the highway. He was unable to stop and struck the driver's side of her car.
Tamara Curtis grew up in Omaha and graduated from Bryan High. She eventually settled in Minneapolis and worked at a number of jobs, the last for an insurance company. Her mother also lives in Minneapolis, and the two were close, Joan Curtis said.
About two years ago, Tamara Curtis returned to Omaha. She hadn't been able to find work and she recently went through a divorce. Still, Joan Curtis said, her daughter was doing well.
Tamara Curtis got involved in AA and had been sober for about 1 1/2 years, her mother said. She volunteered at St. Joseph Villa, where her grandmother lived, while waiting to land a job.
Her father, Keith Curtis, owned a home in south Omaha, and she and her son set up house there with their dog, Gizmo. This fall, she sent the younger Keith off to seventh grade at Bryan Middle School.
Not long ago, Tamara Curtis and her mother had spoken of their mutual wish to be organ donors. So when the time came Sunday, the Curtis family asked that Tamara's organs be used to help others.
"She was a spiritual and loving person," Joan Curtis said of her daughter. "She really cared about other people."
Copyright ©2012 Omaha World-Herald®. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, displayed or redistributed for any purpose without permission from the Omaha World-Herald.
