WEBSTER, N.Y. — Kylie Smith, an honors student and soccer standout at Webster-Schroeder, survived a lightning strike thanks to the quick actions of a nearby good Samaritan who knew CPR.

In August of 2024, Smith went to Webster Park with a friend’s family to take pictures of a beautiful sunset. Just seconds after snapping some photos, her life changed forever. “We started walking over to this bridge and we were going to like go over it to get a better view of the sunset and that’s just when I got struck,” Smith recalls.

Her finger was still on the button of the camera when she was struck by lightning. “Just one big boom, like a little bit.. it’s not super clear but I do remember that,” Smith tells News10NBC Investigative Reporter.

Andrea Rogers, a surgical tech at UR Medicine trained in CPR, was sitting in her car at the park at the same time. She remembers the same big boom. “It hit a tree to the right of where I was positioned and it was such a big flash of lightning that it made you look and it shook the ground, I felt the whole ground shook,” Rogers says. “Literally it sounded like a bomb had just gone off… and so as I’m waiting for that branch to fall, somebody from exactly where that tree was comes running into the parking lot, screaming, asking for help.”

Rogers rushed out of her car to help, figuring someone had a heart attack. But she quickly realized it was Smith on the ground, unresponsive. “Her clothing was all shredded down the midline, so, when I encountered that I realized this was not just a heart attack,” Rogers recalls. 

Smith’s sneakers were blown off and her heart had stopped. “My only thought is, I did what a mom would do, which is how do I save this kid and I thought if my daughters are ever in a situation like that, I hope that somebody would come to the rescue,” Rogers says.

Rogers’ chest compressions worked. Smith was revived at the park and then rushed to Golisano Children’s Hospital. “I got 2nd and 3rd degree burns from my neck, down my chest and a little bit on my left ankle and from the fall, I broke my jaw ” Smith says.

All things considered, she feels very lucky. There have been very few long-term physical effects of the lightning strike.

Smith hasn’t been back to the park since this happened but she often thinks about how grateful she is that Rogers was in the right place, at the right time, with the right skills. She got a chance to tell her that when the two met up recently.

She was also happy to share how she’s trying to pay it forward. “My soccer team, we all got CPR certified and took a course for it so, I like to think that now there’s more people in the world who know how to save somebody if you have to,” Smith says.

For more information about CPR certification, click here

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