(CNN) Maddy Wilford, a junior at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, teared up before speaking Monday at Broward Health North, the hospital where she was taken after being shot at least three times on February 14. 'We were almost dumbfounded' 
 
 Lt. Laz Ojeda of Coral Springs Fire Department was one of the team of first responders who transported Wilford from the school to the hospital. When Wilford was brought to them, Ojeda said, they thought she was dead. The gutsy, split-second call probably saved her life. Instead of taking her to a hospital with a children's facility some 30 miles away as he had been instructed to do, Ojeda made the decision to take Maddy to a hospital just 10 miles from the high school. He asked a second time, and she whispered that she was 17. Her mother, Missy, said the family was grateful both for Mr. Trump’s visit and for the efforts of the doctors and emergency workers who saved her.
– Maddy Wilford was shot multiple times in the Parkland school massacre and was near death as first responders tended to her after the shooting. But an observant Coral Springs Fire Department lieutenant asked the teen an important question as they prepared to whisk her away, and it was one that ended up saving her life. Per CNN, Maddy was in such bad shape when she was brought to Lt. Laz Ojeda and his rescue team that they initially thought she'd already died. "Signs of life," however, soon emerged, and after a Broward County Sheriff's Office SWAT team member sealed up a chest wound, they readied her to go to a children's hospital 30 miles away, where they'd been instructed to take the 15-year-old. Except Ojeda wasn't convinced she was only 15. And so, as Ojeda tearfully relayed at a Monday presser, he asked the girl twice how old she was; she finally answered she was 17. Based on that info, Ojeda, who thought she'd die before they got her to the children's facility, made the call to take her to a hospital just 10 miles from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. There, operating surgeon Dr. Igor Nichiporenko quickly did "damage control" on the badly injured teen, who'd been shot in the abdomen, chest, and upper sternum, with tendons "shattered from gunshot wounds." Astonishingly, Wilford was out of the hospital in less than a week. "Young people have a tendency to heal very fast," Nichiporenko says, per the New York Times. "She's very, very lucky." He adds that Ojeda's decision saved Maddy's life. Ojeda is just glad he was there to make the call. "I thank God for allowing us to be an instrument in this miracle," he told CNN Tuesday. As for Maddy? "I'm so grateful to be here," she said at the news conference, per CNN.