Rachel Jordan and her family rebuild their shattered lives one step at a time

Rachel is cherishing home life with her beloveds Eric and Evan. Photo / Kathy Elliston

Kerikeri's Eric and Rachel Jordan came to New Zealand with their baby son from their native America to transform their lives. However, a devastating helicopter crash last year transformed it for them. They explain to Jodi Bryant, the ripple effects from that fateful day and how positivity, goal setting and support from their Kiwi friends is helping pave the way towards rebuilding their lives.

Rachel Jordan always knew something major would happen to her around the age of 40, but she didn't anticipate relearning to sit, stand and walk following a helicopter crash at the height of her career.

"I anticipated all my life that something major was going to happen at that age," says the 42-year-old mother of one. "But I thought it was going to be a disease. It was going to be life-changing, I've always known it."

Normally she'd listen to her intuition but when she had an uneasy inkling that June day last year, she silenced it. It was a couple's wedding day after all, and she had the honour of photographing it.

The multi-award-winning photographer was and still is sought after to capture people's special days. Her photography career began 25 years ago doing portraits before she moved into wedding photography following a request to photograph a friend's nuptials. She loved it and her portfolio evolved from there.

She and husband Eric began Two Little Starfish, specialising in fine-art photography depicting intimate storytelling, with her work described as "emotional, whimsical and elegant".

It was Rachel's passion and drive to capture these important moments in people's lives that led her to Canterbury that crisp winter's day. Having already lost multiple wedding jobs because of the Covid pandemic, she'd leapt at the chance to photograph a wedding in between restrictions.

Pushing aside her fear of flying, but uttering the words "please don't crash" to the pilot, she boarded the helicopter for the post-ceremony photo shoot in the picturesque Southern Alps.

The nation knows what followed; only moments after take-off, the power cut out to the Robinson R44 before it plunged some 100m to the golf course below where the bride and groom had earlier exchanged their wedding vows.

All four on board survived, later attributed to the pilot's flying skills. However, no one felt the impact, having blacked out before the collision.

Rachel recalls wakening among the wreckage: "I knew my back was broken due to not being able to move my feet. I'd watched enough movies to know that it's not a great sign. I was very calm, though, and later learned I did crawl out of the helicopter to a degree as I thought the helicopter was going to blow up. So when the ambulance arrived, I was laying on the ground with my feet stuck in the helicopter. The chopper was completely smashed to the ground so there was no bottom any more, just grass beneath us."

A surgeon and his group playing golf near the crash site immediately ran to their aid. They asked Rachel if she wanted to call anyone and she asked to speak to her husband at home.

"I said, 'Honey, we've been in this crash and I know my back is broken'. My husband didn't know if I was being serious because I was speaking so calmly, but there was this screaming in the background."

Despite extensive injuries, Rachel was determined to walk out of hospital, and she did.

All passengers suffered extensive injuries. Rachel's included a fractured spine, along with seven of her ribs and sternum. One lung was half-lacerated by her ribs, and she broke her right wrist and fractured bones in her feet and ankles. She also suffered a brain bleed, though has had no lasting effects from it.

She was taken to the intensive care unit at Christchurch Hospital, where she spent several weeks and underwent multiple surgeries, before being transferred to Middlemore Hospital in Auckland, closer to Eric and son Evan, then 10.

Nurses had to turn Rachel every three hours and the pain was like nothing she'd experienced. Naturally, the usually positive thinker, at times, found herself teetering on depression.

But with a change in mindset Rachel weaned herself off all medication and, incredibly, on the day she was due to leave hospital three months after the accident, she took her first steps and walked right out of Auckland's spinal unit with the aid of a walking frame.

"I told everyone I was walking out of there, I refused to not be walking," she says. "It was my goal.

"I don't know what it was, it never felt real at the time and I never got down about it because I always felt like I would walk again. There's definitely times you can get depressed but I have an amazing support group; my husband and son and super-supportive friends who were always visiting me."

With border restrictions, Rachel and Eric's own US-based family have been unable to fly to their side.

Says Eric: "Without the family being able to access us at all physically, we've had to do everything through Zoom. They felt so utterly helpless, it was very scary for them. They would have been here no matter what.

"There were also a couple of lockdowns where [Evan and I] were separated from Rachel while she was facing lots of challenges."

Without nearby family, the endless support from their Kiwi friends helped immensely, along with donated funds of about $25,000 through Givealittle.

Rachel has returned to portrait photography, recently producing this maternity image. Photo / Two Little Starfish; Makeup / KatyJaneMakeup

In September, Rachel returned to the place she and Eric made their home in 2011 after they had set off from their native America with a six-month-old Evan to travel New Zealand in an RV. Kerikeri, with its somewhat tropical clime, small town and surrounding countryside, ticked the boxes for where they wanted to settle and they've never left.

Reflecting on how the crash has impacted life for the family, Eric shares: "I would say it's like it's sent ripples to every little aspect of life that you don't anticipate it touching. It touches every corner; your finances, relationships, your daily routine, your emotional state.

"Everything's like working our way back to normalcy. It basically tore our entire business down so we've had to rebuild that from the ground up," continues Eric, who at 19 started a design company in the US that he ran for many years, managing 35 people.

Rachel's sought-after wedding photography is described as emotional, whimsical and elegant. Photo / Two Little Starfish taken at Liddington Gardens Kerikeri

"There was not a lot of nature where we lived, everything's concrete. We would go to the little parks to sit in the grass just to smell the flowers for a bit and stop for the moment so, with New Zealand, we wanted to reconnect with nature and we wanted our son to appreciate the beauty around us.

"We tried to change our pace of life but the helicopter crash just took our plans and turned them upside down. Basically, we came to New Zealand to transform our lives but the helicopter crash has transformed it more."

However, the couple have watched their son Evan blossom before their eyes.

"I never anticipated that he would be so strong throughout it all and I think it's definitely grown him up having to deal with such a large challenge so young. When he was with his mum in the hospital he was just amazing, he was really calm and strong and it made him emotionally mature. But he was kind of an old soul when he was born so he's approached this the same way," says his proud dad.

Portrait photography has long been a passion of Rachel's. Photo / Two Little Starfish; Makeup / KatyJaneMakeup

Rachel says their son has been a huge helper, instrumental with her recovery, as has setting goals. Goals – a product of a positive mindset, are also based on Rachel's intuition.

"I've had lots of dreams that I can walk again so I'm hoping they come true."

To help realise them, she spends three hours a day working out to strengthen her body, incorporating both cardio and weights, in addition to physiotherapy.

"When you have a partial spinal injury, it's literally about rewiring your body and a lot has to do with mental perseverance. You can sit on your butt every day and hate life or you can think positive and your body will respond to it," she explains. "It's a real slow progression with spinal injuries, but things improve magically week to week. If you get depressed and down on yourself, you're not going to work out and get better.

"I was already a goal-oriented human – I have to have goals in life and be creating. I don't sit and dwell on the accident, I just think life takes you on a journey and there's a purpose to it."

While originally paralysed below the waist, Rachel says she can now feel everything, though has drop feet.

"It no longer feels like I have sandbags strapped to my legs and I can now walk with canes and drive the car," she says, adding that driving has given back her freedom and independence.

Sometimes she needs to shift the goalposts further when she realises her goals were a little ambitious, but eventually she reaches them. Her latest is to ditch the walker in six months.

"My goal is to walk unassisted but if I need to walk with canes for the rest of my life, so be it."

Getting back into her beloved garden – her other passion – was hugely rewarding once she mastered it. "I couldn't even get down to the ground to garden. It's literally like being a baby. Then I had to train myself to get back up from the ground. I've been addicted to gardening forever, it's my zen."

Another milestone was regaining control of her bladder – "suddenly I could pee and it was beautiful!"

As well as daily workouts, gardening, the school drop-off, spending time with her son and husband, the busy mum has picked up a camera again and is refocusing on portrait photography – less taxing on the body than wedding photography - and aims to open a Kerikeri-based studio in six months.

"Portrait photography is a love of mine that's never gone away," says the 2020 Best Portrait Photographer recipient in the Looks Like Film awards. "The focus is on female portraits especially, such as maternity and glamour," she explains, adding that she shoots from her walker.

The experience has also motivated Rachel to one day create an organisation to help people in wheelchairs feel beautiful by giving them free photo shoots. "There's a very high depression rate for people with spinal injuries and I want to make them realise that they are worthy with these injuries. However, I am still healing myself so this is still a goal."

In 2019, the New Zealand Institute of Professional Photography named her Regional Photographer of the Year, and the same year she won Best Wedding Photographer in the Looks Like Film awards. And her reputation is still flourishing; She is having to turn down dozens of bookings for weddings, which breaks her heart.

"That's been the hardest thing for me and I've actually cried more over that. The physical aspects are fine but I loved capturing people's days, I did it for 13 years and shot hundreds of weddings. It was pretty much my life every weekend. It's like taking part of my soul.

"It's so hard because when I get a request, their wedding could be a year from now but I just know how physically taxing on the body weddings can be. But being able to shoot weddings again is a very big driving force in my life.

"I think I'm super-lucky that my body is healing and can move where it could have been so much worse. It's just a completely different shift in the way I see everything. If somebody has their health and are able to do stuff, then they're super-blessed."

It is believed the other passengers' recuperation is continuing and investigations into the crash are ongoing.

In terms of how her outlook has changed from a year ago, Rachel has this to say:

"Life is really precious and short and appreciate every little moment you have. When I was in hospital, a friend would push me outside every single day just to touch the dirt. I just needed that balance. Now, I appreciate the fact I can garden. The same goes with exercise. These things people think are torture, I appreciate.

"Everybody has a time stamp and we don't know how long it will last. Before, I would get stuck in these head loops worrying about little things and what people thought of me. All the different life stuff just seems so minuscule now."