Have you ever remained friends with a paramedic who saved your life?

Eight years ago, St John Ambulance metropolitan operations response manager Simon Klass (above right) was told a 16-year-old girl (above middle) he took to hospital after she was hit by a car would unlikely survive the ordeal.

In 2015 he received a thank you email and found out the girl had survived and has since been welcomed into the family, earning a new honorary ‘Mum and Dad’, attending her 21st and even her marriage back in March.

“She was skittled and catapulted and sustained some pretty significant head injuries, amongst others, and we really battled to keep her breathing and keep a maintained airway,” he told Gareth Parker on 6PR Breakfast about the 2015 incident.

“By the time the paramedic crews left hospital we were already pretty much reassured she was unlikely to survive because of the extent of her head injuries.

“It’s somewhat of a closer, because we’re able to go ‘okay we did our best and the patient is not surviving, now we can think about the next one’.”

Klass said paramedics often don’t get information on patients they have delivered to emergency departments close to death.

“We are often left wondering, did they survive or did they not, unless we actively follow up,” he told Parker.

It was two years later Klass got a random email from someone thanking him for saving their life. He was unsure who it was, so went against his instincts, wrote back and realised it was the then 16-year-old girl, whose family then invited him to dinner before a lasting relationship with her and the family ensued.

“It’s absolutely amazing, someone that the first time you meet them they are all but dead, and to see them walking down the aisle eight years later looking breathtakingly beautiful, yep, that one brought a tear to my eye,” Klass said.

Press PLAY below to hear more about the fantastic ending and relationship between the pair