Amid 90-degree heat, she spent hours canvassing tourists in front of the White House for donations to help refugees in Ukraine, her family said. As she finished her shift on Thursday last week, a storm gathered overhead, thickening with clouds, rain and thunderstorms. That Thursday happened to be her 28th birthday, her family said. So while Amber waited for her husband to pick her up for a celebratory dinner, she once again sought refuge in the same tree, huddling with three others under its outstretched branches, according to her family and authorities. Three people were killed by lightning on Thursday near the White House One was Brooks Lambertson, a young and up-and-coming bank vice president from Los Angeles. It was Donna Mueller, 75, a retired teacher, and her husband James Mueller, 76, who came from Wisconsin to Washington to celebrate their 56th wedding anniversary. And there was Amber, a young woman from California whose travels in the Middle East teaching English had awakened a desire to help those affected by war and poverty in this region. They strangers were brought to this very spot on the east side of Lafayette Square, at that very moment for different reasons — business, vacation, passion to help. Just before 7pm, was at that point — under a leafy tree about 100 feet from a statue of President Andrew Jackson — that lightning struck. Experts would later record a strike in the area as six individual power surges that hit the same spot within half a second. If the electricity had hit the tree first, experts said, it would have sent hundreds of millions of volts up the tree before passing through the bodies of those gathered beneath it. “It shook the whole area,” an eyewitness later said. “Like a bomb literally went off, that’s what it sounded like.” The strike leaving all four seriously injured. The Secret Service and the US Park Police – who keep the park in front of the White House under constant patrol – rushed to help. On Friday morning, police announced that the elderly couple from Wisconsin had died. Later that night, the banker from Los Angeles also died, police said. Amber would be the only survivor. What happens when lightning strikes – and how to stay safe The lightning stopped Amber’s heart, said her brother Robert F. Escudero. Two nurses, who happened to be visiting the White House on vacation and saw the Secret Service running to help, immediately began CPR on her and were able to restore her pulse, he said. The lightning left her unable to walk and caused severe burns on the left side of her body and hand, her family said. That was the side her bag was on, carrying the iPad she used to sign people up for refugee donations. Her parents rushed to Washington from California, and her mother has documented her fight for recovery on Facebook. The lightning left Amber struggling to breathe at first, her mother, Julie Escudero, wrote. But by Friday, nurses were able to get her off the ventilator. The lightning also destroyed her short-term memory. She was scared and confused about what happened to her. “We certainly don’t want her to remember the incident right now,” her mother wrote on Facebook. But every time she wakes up, her mother wrote, she asks what happened to her, will she die and be able to walk? Her family said one thing she is particularly concerned about is raising money for refugees. She had studied international studies in college and traveled to Morocco and the United Arab Emirates, according to her brother and her work profile. She spent a year teaching English in Jordan and soon after began raising money for non-profit organizations. He started working in Washington last year for a group called Threshold Giving, and focused specifically on raising funds for the International Rescue Committee, a global aid agency. “The first thing he said to me when we FaceTimed is, ‘I have to go back to work on Saturday,’” Robert Escudero said. “He’s worried about raising money for refugee children. He asked me, ‘Who’s going to get the money for them if I’m not out there?’” A friend started a GoFundMe page to raise money for her medical bills. So her brother said he promised Amber he would work with Threshold Giving in the coming days to also create a way for people who learn about her story of survival to donate to refugees. The only thing her family has yet to discuss with her is the fate of the others who were with her that night under the tree. “She’s starting to realize there were others and she wants to know how they’re doing and what she did wrong,” her mother said in a Facebook post on Sunday. “She cares so much about others, it’s going to be hard for her.” On Sunday, many signs of the fatal lightning strike were still visible in Lafayette Square. One tree bore streaks of charred bark, cracks and a large hollow in the main trunk where the wood remained twisted like bruises. People passing through Lafayette Square stopped at the tree to look at the signs. One of them was Cal Vargas, Lambertson’s childhood friend, who died. She brought a wreath and a bouquet of white flowers to place at the base of the tree. Vargas and Lambertson were friends since kindergarten and grew up together in Folsom, California, where they shared a passion for sports and the Sacramento Kings. “He was an amazing person,” Vargas said quietly. “He always had a smile on his face, always looked on the bright side of things.” Earlier on on the day the lightning struck, Lambertson, 29, had arrived in Washington on a business trip from Los Angeles. It was hours before a dinner reservation when the storm hit him, Vargas said. In a telephone interview, Lambertson’s father, whom The Washington Post is not identifying by name to protect his privacy, said his son was “probably the best person I know.” He said his son’s kindness, generosity and humility “came through in everything he did, in all his interactions with people.” He worked at City National Bank as a vice president managing sponsorships for the company. He had done marketing for the NBA’s Los Angeles Clippers, and graduated from California State University in San Luis Obispo, according to a statement from the bank. The elderly Wisconsin couple who also died that day were celebrating their 56th wedding anniversary, family members said. Donna Mueller, 75, and her husband, James Mueller, 76, were high school sweethearts before they married. James ran a drywall business for decades while his wife worked as a teacher, according to one of their daughters-in-law, who also spoke on condition of anonymity to protect her privacy. The couple lived in Janesville, Wis., about 70 miles west of Milwaukee, and had five grown children, ten grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. “Both would do anything for their family and friends,” relatives said in a statement. The chances of someone being killed by lightning are extremely rare. Over the past decade, only an average of 23 people in the United States died each year. Multiple deaths are even rarer. Before last week’s strike, the last time three people died in one incident was more than 18 years ago on June 27, 2004, when three people in Georgia were struck by trees at Bedford Dam State Park, he said. John Jensenius, an expert at the National Lightning Safety Council. Because lightning tends to strike tall objects, experts warn that taking shelter under a tree during a storm is extremely dangerous. When a tree is struck by an electrical charge, the tree’s moisture and sap easily carry the electricity, transferring it to the ground around the tree, experts say. “When lightning strikes a tree, the charge doesn’t penetrate deep into the ground, but spreads out along the surface of the ground,” Jensenius said. “This makes the entire area around a tree dangerous and anyone standing under or near a tree is vulnerable.” For that and other reasons, Amber’s survival was miraculous, her family said. If it hadn’t happened right in front of the White House where Secret Service agents are. If only the two nurses who revived her hadn’t gone on vacation and seen what happened. On Saturday night, Amber was finally able to take a few steps on her own, her family said. She was supposed to start a master’s degree in international relations this fall at Johns Hopkins University — the latest step in her work trying to help refugees and those suffering abroad. “He is an amazing person with a strong will. And she has such a heart for others,” her brother said. “So the goal now is to get her walking again by the time classes start in a few weeks.” Magda Jean-Louis contributed to this report.
